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1438880_2 | to Mr. Klinghoffer, Mr. Abbas seemed to search for words that would express regret but not an apology, and that would equate the Klinghoffer killing with American and Israeli military actions that have caused civilian deaths. ''Of course, it wasn't my fault,'' he said. ''I didn't shoot the man. But he was a civilian, and I ask myself, 'What was his fault?' It is no different whoever the civilian who is killed may be -- whether you drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki or you kill some innocent person who is walking down a road.'' The difficulty, or impossibility, of making an ethical distinction between between the killing of the World Trade Center victims and the murder of Mr. Klinghoffer, who was a retired businessman, seemed lost on Mr. Abbas, as did the fact that an Italian court has convicted him of murder in the Klinghoffer case. He faces a life sentence in Italy, and American prosecutors have left open the possibility that a federal indictment for piracy, hostage taking and conspiracy could be revived. It was dropped in the 1990's, partly because of the statute of limitations and partly because Justice Department officials were not sure that their evidence would stand up in an American court. For the Klinghoffer family, no mollifying statements now seem likely to be of any value. Reached for comment on Mr. Abbas's statements, Lisa Klinghoffer, one of Mr. Klinghoffer's two daughters, said: ''Abu Abbas was found guilty by an Italian court for the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, and we still hope to see the day when he will be brought to justice. Nothing Abu Abbas says matters.'' Over the years, Mr. Abbas, whose real name is Muhammad Abbas, has given a number of interviews about the case, always maintaining -- against the conclusions of American investigators, who called him the mastermind of the ship hijacking -- that he was innocent in the killing. He noted that he was not aboard the Achille Lauro during the hijacking, but in Jordan, and that he negotiated the deal in which the hijackers surrendered the ship off the Egyptian coast in return for passage to Mr. Arafat's headquarters, then in Tunis. The interview was arranged after a reporter for The New York Times had a chance encounter with Mr. Abbas in the lobby of the Rashid Hotel here; later, Mr. Arafat's embassy in Baghdad provided Mr. | Ringleader of '85 Achille Lauro Hijacking Says Killing Wasn't His Fault |
1436959_2 | away from traditional ideas of family planning and embraced the idea that giving women more control over their lives would provide a check against explosive population growth. The program of action called for stabilizing the world's population at no more than 9.8 billion by 2050 and it urged countries to make health care widely accessible, reduce maternal mortality, provide universal access to primary education and stem the spread of H.I.V. and AIDS. The program also suggested that where abortion is legal, it should be made safe. The program's acknowledgment that legal abortion could be part of health care has drawn objections from the Vatican and several Muslim and Latin American countries. But over the years, the United States has consistently reaffirmed the Cairo principles. One of the Vatican's chief negotiators in Cairo, John Klink, was an adviser to the United States delegation in Bangkok, United Nations officials said. Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, praised the Bush administration's stand. ''We certainly approve of any effort by the administration to make it clear that abortion is not an acceptable method of family planning,'' Mr. Johnson said. ''There is a sort of code used in some of these U.N. documents, and groups that advocate expanded access to abortion do construe these phrases to include abortion.'' The dispute over the Cairo program is only the most recent example of administration efforts to withdraw American support from United Nations programs that it contends promote abortion. In July, the administration decided to withhold $34 million in previously approved aid to the United Nations Population Fund, contending that the agency helps Chinese government agencies that force women to have abortions. In May, during the United Nations General Assembly's special session on children, the Bush administration, the Vatican and some Muslim countries unsuccessfully pushed for a policy to prevent teenagers from getting abortions. The group also sought to make abstinence the centerpiece of sex education for unmarried teenagers. Timothy E. Wirth, the under secretary of state for global affairs in 1994, said he expected the Bush administration to reaffirm the Cairo program eventually. If it does not, he said, the United States might alienate important allies just as it is trying to build international support for its Iraq policies. ''The reaction would be very negative,'' Mr. Wirth added, ''at a time when the administration is trying to put together international coalitions on | U.S. May Abandon Support Of U.N. Population Accord |
1436959_3 | traditional ideas of family planning and embraced the idea that giving women more control over their lives would provide a check against explosive population growth. The program of action called for stabilizing the world's population at no more than 9.8 billion by 2050 and it urged countries to make health care widely accessible, reduce maternal mortality, provide universal access to primary education and stem the spread of H.I.V. and AIDS. The program also suggested that where abortion is legal, it should be made safe. The program's acknowledgment that legal abortion could be part of health care has drawn objections from the Vatican and several Muslim and Latin American countries. But over the years, the United States has consistently reaffirmed the Cairo principles. One of the Vatican's chief negotiators in Cairo, John Klink, was an adviser to the United States delegation in Bangkok, United Nations officials said. Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, praised the Bush administration's stand. ''We certainly approve of any effort by the administration to make it clear that abortion is not an acceptable method of family planning,'' Mr. Johnson said. ''There is a sort of code used in some of these U.N. documents, and groups that advocate expanded access to abortion do construe these phrases to include abortion.'' The dispute over the Cairo program is only the most recent example of administration efforts to withdraw American support from United Nations programs that it contends promote abortion. In July, the administration decided to withhold $34 million in previously approved aid to the United Nations Population Fund, contending that the agency helps Chinese government agencies that force women to have abortions. In May, during the United Nations General Assembly's special session on children, the Bush administration, the Vatican and some Muslim countries unsuccessfully pushed for a policy to prevent teenagers from getting abortions. The group also sought to make abstinence the centerpiece of sex education for unmarried teenagers. Timothy E. Wirth, the under secretary of state for global affairs in 1994, said he expected the Bush administration to reaffirm the Cairo program eventually. If it does not, he said, the United States might alienate important allies just as it is trying to build international support for its Iraq policies. ''The reaction would be very negative,'' Mr. Wirth added, ''at a time when the administration is trying to put together international coalitions on various efforts.'' | U.S. May Abandon Support Of U.N. Population Accord |
1436980_0 | On Lafayette Street in SoHo, a little more than a mile from ground zero, the World Trade Center soars resplendently on a billboard that cries, ''Rebuild the Towers, Bigger and Better Than Before.'' Across the street, at the firehouse for Ladder 20, which lost seven firefighters on Sept. 11 and also houses the Fire Department's mental-health counseling services, a darker view of the billboard prevails. ''Tasteless,'' said one firefighter as he stood on the sidewalk one morning. The emotions conjured by the image of rebuilt twin towers are as raw today as they were a year ago, both for friends and family members of the victims and for the people who would have the towers rebuilt. Politicians and planners have repeatedly dismissed the idea of rebuilding the towers, saying it is not economically feasible because few people want to work 100 stories above ground, especially at ground zero. But a few vocal groups of tower supporters insist that a large segment of the public is on their side. These small groups, which say they have gathered thousands of names on petitions in support of their goal, have continued to put up billboards, manage Web sites, speak and pass out leaflets at public hearings, often generating enthusiastic responses. ''The public generally supports the towers, and we're trying to make sure they are heard by the bureaucrats,'' said Louis Epstein, the founder of the World Trade Center Restoration Movement, a group of local residents that is planning a rally at 11 a.m. today at City Hall Park. It is not entirely clear whether the tower advocates have directly influenced the debate in ways they have not been given credit for, or whether they simply represent a strain of thought shared by some of the public, but certainly not everyone. But Mr. Epstein said the groups were part of the clamor that has already changed the course of the rebuilding once, in the rejection of the six original designs for the trade center site, and he maintains they could do so again. The claims of widespread support may not be as far-fetched as some have portrayed them. At a July 20 public hearing at the Javits Convention Center, the 4,500 participants were asked to name the features that they most liked and disliked about the six original designs. The No. 1 response among disliked features stated, ''Schemes are not ambitious enough -- buildings | Longing for a Sept. 10 Skyline; Some Vocal Groups Call for Restoring the Twin Towers |
1436945_0 | An international conference on climate change concluded here today with the adoption of a declaration that sidestepped any future commitments by developing countries to curb the emission of the gases that cause global warming. Within a decade, countries like China, Mexico and India are collectively predicted to surpass industrial nations in their releases of these gases. But climate agreements so far have exempted the poorer countries from obligations to reduce the release of greenhouse gases. After two days and a night of negotiations, the wording was a victory for the developing countries, which fought hard to ensure that the declaration did not include any possible future measures they might have to abide by. The European Union, by contrast, had pushed for language on future reductions in the production of greenhouse gases. In essence, the final document, the Delhi Ministerial Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, says each poor country should develop its own ''appropriate'' strategy to reduce emissions according to its own capacity, rather than being bound by an international consensus. In the meantime, the declaration said, the focus should be on adapting to climate change as much as trying to prevent it. Building on principles laid down in Johannesburg in August at the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, the declaration reiterated that economic and social development and the eradication of poverty are the priorities of developing countries. | Proposal to Reduce Greenhouse Gases Loses Momentum |
1444586_1 | Seneca Meadows have paid for many of the public improvements intended to attract visitors and new residents. ''I weigh the pros and the cons,'' said the town supervisor, Peter Same. ''The cons are odor and traffic. The pros are finances.'' But that trade-off is suddenly getting a second look. Last month, when word spread that the landfill operators wanted to expand, many residents cried foul. A public hearing on Nov. 14 to discuss possible rezoning to allow operations on adjacent farmland drew hundreds of people. While officials of Seneca Meadows, which is privately run, emphasized their contributions to the local economy, many residents spoke against the plan and hundreds of voters signed petitions opposing it. Two days later, an eight-hour fire at Tire Solutions International, across town from the landfill, destroyed about 5,000 scrap tires. The fire at the tire recycling facility prompted local officials to declare a state of emergency, asking residents not to leave their homes. The fire was quelled, in part because of firefighting foam supplied by Seneca Meadows, which keeps the substance on hand in case of a fire at its own tire recycling operation. But the timing could not have been worse, Mr. Same said. Although the tire fire had no other connection to Seneca Meadows, it reminded people of a 1999 fire at the landfill that led to the evacuation of 1,500 people. Seneca Meadows officials described the fire as a flare-up fueled by a chemical dumped by the Seneca Army Depot, a closed base. ''We certainly don't want to be thought of as the dumping ground for New York State,'' Mr. Same said. ''We're a bedroom community, a tourist destination.'' Still, he said, people need to understand that without landfill dollars, municipal spending will go down and taxes will go up. Seneca Falls has an agreement to collect 4.5 percent of the landfill's gross revenues. As waste operations have grown, so has the town's income from the landfill, to an estimated $1.8 million in 2003 from $330,000 in 1991. The money has become increasingly important as the community has lost industrial jobs to factory closings and cutbacks. Landfill revenues account for more than 40 percent of the town's $4.3 million budget and have financed a new community center, a downtown renovation and an expansion of the water system. Seneca Falls has not raised property tax rates since 1996. But critics note that thousands | Dump Vexes a Real-Life Bedford Falls |
1443428_0 | To the Editor: I read with interest George James's article on the use of cellphones while driving (''Say What? Ambivalence Over the Use of Cellphones Keeps Legislators From Cracking Down,'' Nov. 17). I have no such ambivalence. I fully support state legislation banning the use of hand-held cellphones while driving. I have seen drivers swerve, suddenly stop, cross lane lines and make other dangerous mistakes while talking on their hand-held cellphones. On the other hand, I have often seen drivers pull off to the side of the road and use the phone to ask for directions or seek other assistance -- no problem. Mr. James quotes Stephen Carrellas of the National Motorists Association as saying that he would ban talking to another passenger or playing with the radio rather than ban cellphones. But Drs. Donald A. Redelmeier and Robert J. Tibshirani, whose 1997 article in The New England Journal of Medicine was also cited by Mr. James, further clarified their research by stating in a commentary in 2001, ''Making calls on a cellular telephone is distinctly more risky than listening to the radio, talking to passengers and other activities commonly occurring in vehicles.'' As their 1997 statistical research paper states: ''Taking a sip of coffee only takes a moment and drivers can self-select the moment they think appropriate. In comparison, a cellular telephone conversation is a much more extended exposure during which driving circumstances can change dramatically.'' As for fellow passengers, they contribute ''not just to distraction but also to vigilance,'' the article says. I urge legislators to read the complete text of these articles. They can be obtained by reaching Dr. Redelmeier in Canada at (416) 480-6999 or at the e-mail address dar@ices.on.ca. ROBERT C. RIZZOTTI Mr. Rizzotti is a councilman in the Borough of Waldwick. | No Cellphone Ambivalence. Just Pass the Drivers' Ban. |
1443502_1 | an employee's computer use. If there were a strong suspicion of wrongdoing by an individual -- sexual harassment or illegal music downloading, for example -- then the employer should investigate. But to engage in routine electronic surveillance of employees without probable cause is overreaching. By providing a mode of operation that lists only types of sites visited, not particular sites, this software seems nicely designed to address the employer's concerns while protecting the employee's privacy. (Even better would be a mode that registered simply non-work-related or work-related sites, without describing them more luridly.) Genuine improvements in productivity demand mutual trust and respect, not cunning methods of spying, whether high tech, low tech or even no tech. Few of us work well knowing that our supervisor might lurk behind the cactus in the corner. You know, unless we work at a nursery. My husband and I live in a rural area that is quickly being developed. Apparently, the owner of an adjacent housing development wants our land. A friend of a friend built a home in that development and had a bad experience with the owner. He has asked us for right of first refusal to buy our 12 acres so he can get back at her, the owner. Is it ethical to sell a friend of the friend the land, knowing he'll use it as a club? Anonymous, Ohio If you knew the friend of a friend would use the land as a guerrilla training camp from which his antisuburbanites would launch deadly forays into development owners' tract homes, then you'd have to hesitate before selling. But all you really know is he doesn't like her. He might want the land simply to ensure that her suburb won't sprawl further into his semirural bliss. This might thwart her dreams of split-level hegemony, but there's nothing unprincipled about it. Indeed, it may please many in your community to limit growth. You're right to consider that your land sale has implications for other people, but you needn't be governed by either the one's expansionist dreams or the other's revenge fantasies. Incidentally, if you want to preserve the rural quality of your area, some states let you sell development rights to programs that protect the land in perpetuity. Or you might talk to a lawyer about putting a nondevelopment covenant in the deed. And by the way, I like the image of the | Snooping Employers |
1443461_4 | Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee as a prophet with important future influence; Weakland later discredited himself by secretly paying off with church funds an adult homosexual lover. But otherwise this book is as convincing in its analysis as the earlier one was in its statistics. Schoenherr's focus is on the priesthood in America, but he refers peripherally to a situation that is regularly misrepresented by conservative Catholics -- the numbers of priests in the developing world. They claim that seminaries are full there, and will even supply a surplus of priests for the declining West. They rely not on absolute numbers but on percentage increases in indigenous seminaries after the withdrawal of missionary priests from colonial countries. To double or triple formerly modest outputs there does nothing to solve the fact that the Southern Hemisphere is where the priest shortage is greatest. In the United States, the number of priests per 10,000 faithful declined from 12.9 in 1965 to 9.8 in 1990. In the same period the priests per 10,000 in Africa declined from 5.4 to 2.3, and in Latin America from 2.3 to 1.4. Any gains made in recent years do not come even remotely close to closing that gap. No wonder Schoenherr can report that bishops in Africa and Latin America have requested Rome's permission to ordain married men in order to fill their imperative need for more priests. World figures for the priesthood are clear. The Catholic Almanac of 2001 gives the Vatican's own figure of 404,620 priests in 1998. In 1977, the year before John Paul II became pope, the figure was 410,030. Priests have not increased in number, though they have increased dramatically in age, as one would expect where the total was not growing. Meanwhile, 300 million new Catholics came into the world during this pontiff's reign, making the priest-to-faithful disparity ever more serious. The results of this are clear, even in America, which is far better off than Africa or Latin America. Lay Catholic ministers outnumber priests here, and most of these are women, and permanent deacons (male) now number one for every 1.6 parishes. These lay assistants and substitutes are required because of understaffed or nonstaffed parishes. Despite these statistics, some bishops continue to deny that the priest shortage is more than a temporary dip in the demographics. Some dip. Garry Wills is the author, most recently, of ''Why I Am a Catholic.'' | Going Their Way |
1443265_0 | MAYOR MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG'S new idea for New York City homeless shelters? Retired cruise ships -- the discos and bars removed -- docked at the Hudson or East Rivers. ''In many ways they are ideal,'' said Linda I. Gibbs, the city's commissioner of homeless services, who was dispatched to the Bahamas last week by the mayor to inspect three ships. But homeless advocates sharply objected. ''It's disturbing,'' said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless. ''Putting outcast people offshore -- there's something punitive about it.'' The idea of putting society's most marginal residents on boats to float away, symbolically if not literally, isn't new. It dates to the 14th century, at least, said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a well-known psychiatrist and historian of mental illness. The mentally ill of Europe were said to have been shipped away from the respectable and securely housed, Dr. Torrey said. In ''Madness and Civilization,'' published in 1965, Michel Foucault wrote that ships conveyed the mentally ill from town to town, which ''must have seen these 'ships of fools' approaching their harbors.'' Recently, historians have been questioning the existence of ''ships of fools,'' said Dr. Torrey. But the image, true or not, has gripped people for 500 years, showing up in everything from a 15th-century Hieronymus Bosch painting to the 1965 film, ''Ship of Fools''. ''It's the idea of a closed world, cut off from civilization and populated by outcasts,'' said Dr. Torrey. Mr. Markee said the symbolism of isolating the homeless is as troubling as the practicalities. It reminded him, he said, of the barges that served as city jails from 1988 to 1992. In 1898, New York City put homeless men -- or tramps, as they were called -- on ships, after Theodore Roosevelt, serving as president of the Board of Police Commissioners, gave his officers two weeks to stop housing tramps in police stations. Their solution, said Kim Hopper, an anthropologist who studies the homeless, was to refurbish a barge for the destitute; it was moored at the foot of East 26th Street, in the East River. During the Great Depression in the 1930's, he said, homeless people slept in just about every public space imaginable, including morgue ferries. And in 1984, when the emptying of state mental institutions left thousands of homeless people to fend for themselves, Mayor Edward I. Koch proposed fixing up mothballed wartime ships | Ideas & Trends; There Goes the Neighborhood |
1443538_2 | thoughtful and accused of being New Vaudevillians more than a decade ago, despise the term.) What could be new about acts as ancient as jugglers brilliant at bumbling? The answer is attitude. Today's performers are clearly younger, the intellectual riffs on seemingly old-fashioned acts are green-apple fresh and, in some instances, shows are longer, deeper and more thoughtful. Todd Robbins, a magician and sideshow performer who has just started a new variety show in SoHo, says why not call it Newer Vaudeville. Trav S.D. (Get it? Travesty), who has his own vaudeville show starting Dec. 13, said vaudeville's turn-of-the-century pioneers were immigrants a step removed from Ellis Island. They worked the boards because it beat working in factories. ''Instinctively, we're artists,'' he said of the new generation. Some call the new scene postmodern vaudeville, a term that makes others groan. ''Postmodern is so last century,'' said James Taylor, publisher of Shocked and Amazed magazine, which is devoted to the sideshow arts. Dick Zigun, whose Coney Island U.S.A. has pioneered the resurrection of old entertainment forms in New York City since he established a beachhead in Coney Island in 1985, thinks neo-geo-vaudeville might be just the term. He has no idea why. Katherine Valentine, who put together Va Va Voom Room, a traveling troupe of actors who combine old striptease routines, juggling and humor with a performance-art sensibility, says it all comes down to the Big Wow. ''You've got to have a gimmick,'' she said. ''A really brilliant gimmick.'' The Bindlestiff lineup changes at least every weekend. And the acts change much faster. Mr. Pennygaff, sword swallower extraordinaire, began a recent show by announcing that anybody who didn't like him could wait six minutes and see something completely different. And sure enough, the Fire Goddess materialized. There was a cotton-candy evanescence to things. ''This combination of performers may never be seen on the same stage again,'' intoned Mr. Pennygaff, who in reality is Keith Nelson, one of the founders of Bindlestiff. You know the type: he cuddled an Emmett Kelly doll as a child, traded a bottle of whiskey for juggling lessons and majored in anarchist studies at Hampshire College. His partner is Stephanie Monseau (Ringmistress Philomena), who started out as a modern dancer. The two met a decade ago when both were waiting on tables in the East Village, and have since toured hundreds of thousands of miles doing everything | Old-Time Vaudeville Looks Young Again |
1443213_0 | OUTSIDE, cold rain pelted a bleak stretch of Avenue of the Americas. Inside the King and I, a Chelsea plant store and cafe, a group of 20 or so New Yorkers, mostly Parisian transplants, sweated among palm and orange trees and gnawed on cold crab legs. Catherine Malandrino, the fashion designer, had rented the place from the owner for a party: ''I think, a dinner in a garden in the middle of New York!'' she said. At 6 o'clock on that mid-November evening, two hours before guests were to arrive, she had been in the cafe's small kitchen, arranging marinated asparagus and mushrooms alongside tomatoes and mozzarella on 20 plates. Hardly the harried chef, Ms. Malandrino, a transplanted Parisian herself, wore a sequined top with décolletage, a chiffon miniskirt, fishnet stockings and stilettos. The skirt and top were her own designs; the shoes, Prada. The previous night she had made a purée of potatoes, peas and mint, which she was reheating. Everything else was cold -- easier to manage for a crowd, she said. A friend, Philippe Georges André, had prepared dessert, a raspberry- and rose-petal gâteau. At a little after 8, with a jazz trio fronted by Joan Paladin, a singer-drummer, in full swing, the guests began to wander in. Bernard Aidan, Ms. Malandrino's husband, circulated with wine and Champagne. ''Something to drink?'' he asked. ''Some rosé?'' After toasting his wife's health, Mr. Aidan entered into a discussion on the merits of French men. The consensus was that the French are warmer and that they respect (accent on the ''re'') their women above all. ''It's a masochistic relationship to love,'' Mr. Aidan said. ''We love the dependence on them. Independence? I don't believe in it.'' ''It's a weakness,'' Mr. André said. ''You suffer more,'' Mr. Aidan said. ''But we like to suffer,'' Mr. André said. At that moment, Mr. André's wife, Marceline Souliers, a screenwriter-producer, singer-accordion player, former modeling agent and one-time water-skiing champion of France, began to sing ''Falling in Love Again'' in German, à la Marlene Dietrich. Noting that Ms. Souliers is 13 years his senior, Mr. André remarked, with melancholy pragmatism, ''The women live longer, so it's the only chance to die together.'' With the ambience teetering between Parisian salon and Weimar cabaret, guests were summoned à table. The antipasti appeared, the Burgundy was uncorked. ''We always end up talking about sex,'' Ms. Malandrino remarked. ''It's | It May Not Be the Bois de Boulogne, But a Chelsea Cafe Feels Like Home |
1443309_3 | vanishing at a particularly rapid pace in recent years. At the huge Quelccaya Ice Cap, which stretches across Peru, the largest glacier, Qori Kalis, is retreating at a rate 44 times as fast today as it was from 1963 to 1978, when American scientists determined it was melting by about four yards a year. Glaciers in Venezuela are nearly extinct, and in Bolivia the mass of glaciers and snowcaps has shrunk by 60 percent since 1978, according to government estimates. In all, according to the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, Andean glaciers have retreated by as much as 25 percent in the last 30 years. ''They cannot resist,'' said Mr. Gallaire, the hydrologist, speaking in his office in La Paz. ''These glaciers are much more fragile than in the north. It is the great problem of the tropical glaciers.'' Government officials and scientists believe that if the glaciers keep melting at this rapid pace, a serious water shortage could loom for Bolivia, which lacks the resources or know-how to adapt to the significant climate changes it has done little to generate. Most scientists blame industrialized nations, like the United States, the world's largest producer of heat-trapping gases. Government officials said the country had not planned for the effects of continued global warming. No in-depth studies have been conducted, and no plans for building or improving reservoirs and other infrastructure are even on the drawing board. ''The problem is we are using reserves that are being reduced,'' Mr. Gallaire said. ''So we have to ask, what will happen in 50 years? Fifty years, you know, is tomorrow.'' The most pressing concern, government officials said, is the possible shortage of water for the 1.5 million people of La Paz and the adjacent city of El Alto. Over the next decade, water use in the region is expected to increase by 20 percent. Scientists say that without the glaciers the region's natural water cycle will be disrupted. Glaciers release water in dry seasons and collect it in rainy ones. ''It's a natural dam,'' said Lonnie Thompson, a research scientist at the Byrd Center who has studied Andean glaciers closely. ''Some people refer to these glaciers as the world's water towers, and once they're dry, you lose that water.'' For now, at Aguas de Illimani, the French company that runs La Paz's water supply, the situation is not seen as critical. | As Andean Glaciers Shrink, Water Worries Grow |
1443153_1 | by New York's Department of State, Millennium is looking to the United States Department of Commerce to override the state agency's decision. Critics argue that the need for Millennium's gas has not been sufficiently demonstrated, in light of other projects like the Eastchester Expansion and the Northeast ConneXion Pipeline that would reportedly supply just as much gas and avoid many of the problems plaguing Millennium. Millennium's own environmental impact statement acknowledges that the Eastchester Expansion project, already under way, ''could serve the New York City area, providing similar pipeline capacity'' as the Millennium pipeline would, but without the coastal zone impacts. Not mentioned in the debate is the need to use energy efficiency to curb reliance on imported fossil fuels. The proposed route makes little environmental sense. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved routing the pipeline across Haverstraw Bay, which would mean about two miles of dredging and up to 400 feet of bedrock blasting, thus stressing critical fish populations, including that of the endangered short-nose sturgeon, which over-winter in the bay, and the dwindling Atlantic sturgeon, which use it as a feeding and nursing ground. Cutting a wide swath through Westchester woodlands and wetlands also makes no sense. Millennium would slash through a pristine 2.5-mile stretch of the New Croton Reservoir watershed, which supplies unfiltered drinking water to 900,000 people each day. The inevitable addition of phosphorous and other pollutants to reservoirs and streams would threaten the integrity of the water supply and violate the Clean Water Act. A number of preferable alternative routes deserve further review, including those proposed by New York's Department of State. One option is to route the pipeline down existing rights of way like the New York Thruway to a Hudson River crossing at the Tappan Zee. Another would have the pipeline stop at the existing Bowline power plant in Haverstraw. The existing Algonquin pipeline right of way could be used to take gas across from Bowline to the Indian Point nuclear plant site. As for avoiding watershed impacts, Con Edison has stated, under oath, that there are ways to take Millennium gas south into New York City without any construction in Westchester. It is increasingly clear that the health of our environment and of our communities is inextricably linked. Millennium and all interested parties must have an honest dialogue about the region's energy needs and the alternatives. And the Department of Commerce, | Millennium Pipeline Bodes Ill for River |
1441020_1 | the bishops voted overwhelmingly for a policy that they insist amounts to zero tolerance, although victims of abuse are not convinced. Phase 2, for which many prelates began laying the groundwork at the meeting, is to lead the church back to ''holiness'' by proclaiming core doctrine and discipline. A corollary is shunning the notion that the church should change, allow married, gay or female priests or rethink teaching on birth control, divorce or sexuality. ''These are things in the church that are not policies,'' said Auxiliary Bishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit, rector of Sacred Heart Major Seminary. ''They're doctrines, and they aren't ever going to be negotiable, For us to explain ourselves as a church, we need to say that.'' Archbishop Keleher and Bishop Vigneron are among the eight prelates who drafted a plan that won little publicity at the conference but that could be a pivotal event for the church in United States. The panel began a call for a Plenary Council, a historic gathering of American bishops. The last one was in 1884. One hundred and six bishops, about a third of the total, signed the call, Bishop Vigneron said. The bishops gave the idea a green light this week, and they will take it up again at their next meeting, in June. Such endeavors move slowly in the church. The earliest a council would be held is in 2004. The vision is for a grand gathering of bishops, theologians, religious women and men and laypeople, as well as Vatican representatives. The meeting, Bishop Vigneron said, would ''reinforce the identity of the priesthood,'' emphasizing the commitment to celibacy and chastity and the importance of daily Mass, regular confession, asceticism and simplicity of life. It would also convey, just by its composition and agenda, that the identity of the priesthood does not include women, married men or gays. ''To people who hold up those avenues for improvement, to say to them, 'That's not what we're going to do,' '' Bishop Vigneron said. ''A council would put us into a situation where we say to the public, 'These are our nonnegotiable doctrines.' '' The bishops are well aware that the scandal made the church vulnerable to expectations of change. In the lobby of the hotel where the bishops met, a former priest passed out brochures promoting a married priesthood. Nearby, gay Catholics were on their knees demanding that the | Tradition as Healer |
1440994_0 | The streets of this town above the Arctic Circle and alongside the Mackenzie River are lined with heavy construction equipment and dormitory trailers for drilling workers, all poised for a long-expected natural gas bonanza. Seventy-three trillion cubic feet of proven and potential natural gas reserves -- three and a half times what the United States uses annually -- lie within the Mackenzie River delta area, mostly on native lands, promising to convert this remote region of Canada into a major energy provider for the vast American market. Most of the native groups that once opposed drilling and a planned $3 billion pipeline project have abandoned their protests and now favor exploiting their energy resources. The territorial government is pressing Ottawa for an ambitious road and bridge program that would lower production costs. But as winter dawns, allowing for the movement of drilling teams down the region's frozen river system, energy companies are planning only one-sixth as much exploration and drilling this year as they completed in 2001. With natural gas prices way down from their peak late in 2000, largely because of a slowing United States economy that has curbed American demand for the fuel, the bonanza that once looked so promising here has yet to materialize. ''Everybody's ready at the starting line and we're just holding our pose,'' said Ken Mitchell, vice president for transportation at the Inuvialuit Development Corporation, a local venture capital firm that has invested in seismic research and drilling and is a unit of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, a business and public interest group owned and operated by Inuvialuit Indians. Still, Canadian energy experts and businesspeople here in the Northwest Territories say that the lull, part of a general slowdown in drilling across North America, is just a temporary delay of an expansion of natural gas development that will transform not only the Northwest Territories but much of the rest of northern and coastal Canada as well. ''We still think that the northern gas pipeline will go ahead eventually,'' said Martin King, energy commodities analyst at FirstEnergy Capital, an investment bank and brokerage house based in Calgary, Alberta. ''Before too long, we think prices will be generally stronger, supplies tighter, and that will certainly help the economics of building the pipeline.'' Canada is already the world's third-largest natural gas producer, after Russia and the United States, with about 50 percent of its 6.5 trillion cubic | A Prospect Delayed In Canada's Arctic |
1437972_1 | the original flight, are particularly concerned with who would pay if the missed flight was the fault of security and not the airline. But another issue is the new procedure for searching bags, largely out of the owner's presence. The issue is so sensitive that there is even debate over who will tell the public. The airlines believe that the solution is for passengers not to lock their bags, but they want the government to announce that to the public. The airlines also want the government to tell travelers that it is the government, and not the airlines, that will be conducting the searches. The airlines and airports are hoping that Congress will extend the Dec. 31 deadline in at least some places. But the liability and logistical issues will exist in at least some places even if the Transportation Security Administration gets extensions at some airports. Most of the problems from liability to logistics require decisions from the security agency, but airline and airport executives concede that their are no easy solutions. Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, very few bags were opened, and the Federal Aviation Administration, which was then in charge of security, required that the owner be summoned to open the bag, to reduce the risk of a security guard being hurt by a booby trap. But under the system now evolving, many bags will be opened out of view of the passenger, in back rooms where luggage is sorted for loading on airplanes. In fact, the preferred solution at most airports is to put the screeners and their equipment in the back rooms, where the conveyor belts carry the bags on their way to the planes. ''Those bag rooms aren't big enough for the bags, let alone all the people they'd put down there,'' said Todd Hauptli, a spokesman for the American Association of Airport Executives. ''And there's a whole lot of bags that need to be opened up.'' The performance of the screening machines is a loosely guarded secret. The machines that scan whole bags at a time are said to reject 25 to 30 percent of them; those machines measure the density of objects inside, and sometimes cannot distinguish between explosives and chocolate. Most of the bags rejected by these machines must then be opened. The other main system is called trace detection, in which a technician rubs a gauze pad over objects to | Tough Issues on Baggage Screening Remain |
1437940_2 | labor is cheaper. Analysts said the Southeast Asian nations had little choice but to enter into the agreements with China because of its economic and military power. ''We are fully conscious that China is a superpower,'' said a senior official with Cambodia's Ministry of the Environment. ''Maintaining economic ties with it is very important.'' In another area of potential cooperation and conflict, China and the leaders of five other Asian nations endorsed major development plans along the Mekong River. China has begun a series of dam projects on the river that could disrupt the ecology and the economies of downstream nations, particularly Cambodia and Vietnam. ''Everyone is afraid to stand up to China in this region,'' said Aviva Imhof of the United States-based International Rivers Network, which has criticized development projects. The so-called Greater Mekong Subregion includes Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. Prime Minster Hun Sen of Cambodia alluded to potential development problems, saying: ''We see the signs of such stress in erosion, siltation and changes in water currents. For the sake of our common futures we must implement a Mekong management strategy that ensures sustainability.'' The other major issue discussed at the three-day meeting was terrorism, which has become an increasing worry for Southeast Asia, particularly after the bombing last month on the Indonesian island of Bali. The region is worried not only about potential attacks but also about their effect on tourism, which is a major enterprise for a number of the countries. They agreed today to take joint action to prevent attacks by militants and to try to assure visitors that they would be safe. Western governments have issued a number of travel warnings recently. ''True, they were a reminder for people to be cautious, but one should not jeopardize the good image of the entire region,'' Mr. Hun Sen said. The gathering in Phnom Penh amounted to a coming of age for Cambodia, which in the last five years has begun moving away from decades of war and mass killings. Many of the capital's rutted streets were paved for the occasion and adorned for the first time with traffic lights, a gift from China. A government spokesman said the greatest challenge in preparing for the summit meeting was to provide ''presidential suites'' in hotels for visiting leaders. Until now, there were only three such luxury accommodations in the city. | China and Neighbors Move Ahead on Trade and Island Issues |
1437899_0 | The verdant mountains and high-altitude wetlands of northern Peru nurture a dazzling variety of plants and animals. Few humans live there, so nature has been allowed to flower. That seemed about to change two years ago. Lumber companies developed plans for large-scale logging in the area. Conservationists feared it would be cut by new roads and settled by laborers. Researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago, which has a century-old tradition of research in Latin America, traveled to the area in August 2000 for a three-week inventory of its natural resources. They found a ''staggering diversity of habitat types'' and 28 species apparently unknown to science. The researchers might have followed academic tradition by spending years painstakingly studying their specimens and then reporting their findings in a scholarly journal. The Field Museum, however, has adopted a much more aggressive approach. Just six months after their expedition, the researchers completed a vivid and richly illustrated report for the Peruvian government. Working with local conservation groups, they proposed that the entire area they had studied, a tract bigger than Connecticut known as the Cordillera Azul, be declared a national park. President Valentín Paniagua of Peru issued a decree in May 2001 creating the park. It is one of the largest in the world. This project was part of the Field Museum's campaign to preserve some of the world's last remaining wild places. ''We're using the resources of the museum to translate science into action for conservation,'' said Debra K. Moskovits, who supervised the project. ''We go into areas that have really high potential for conservation but are not known to science, and that are under imminent threat. The way we collect data hasn't changed much. The big difference is what we do with the data.'' Ms. Moskovits said she often found that government officials were surprisingly eager to learn details about their country's natural resources and to receive suggestions about how to protect them. ''We put information in the hands of the right people, and we put it in a regional or global context,'' she said. ''We're advocates for conservation. We give a voice to national conservation groups that for various reasons can't always speak for themselves.'' Only one other institution in the United States, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, carries out a range of conservation efforts comparable to the Field's. In the past the National Museum of | Museum's Goal: Save the World's Wild Places |
1452789_0 | INTERNATIONAL A2-7 White House Backs Away From North Korea Policy The Bush administration has backed away from a longstanding declaration by the United States that it would not tolerate a North Korean nuclear arsenal, as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other officials insisted that making demands of the government or threatening military action against its nuclear facilities would be counterproductive. A1 Kenyan Challenger Wins The opposition candidate Mwai Kibaki, 71, was elected president of Kenya in a sweeping victory over the faction that has ruled Kenya since the country's independence from Britain in 1963. Observers hailed the result as a significant victory for democracy in Africa. A1 Palestinian Boy Killed A 10-year-old Palestinian boy who was throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers was shot and killed in the West Bank town of Tulkarm. A spokesman for the Israeli military said patrolling troops had responded to a riot with weapons not designed to cause death. A7 Five Arrested in France The French police detained five men, including a baggage handler at Charles de Gaulle airport in whose car weapons, explosives and detonators were discovered. The airport employee's father and two brothers, as well as a family friend, were also arrested. A6 Chilean Paramilitary Group There are more than 50 charges pending against the paramilitary religious group known as Colonia Dignidad and its leaders, but the sect continues to flourish in Chile. A3 Mass Protest in Venezuela Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans filled the streets, committed to a national strike to force the ouster of President Hugo Chávez, left. President Chávez has promised to use replacement workers, while his opponents have vowed to continue the strike. A2 Australian Antiterror Ads Australia is starting an advertising campaign urging people to be alert to terrorist dangers at home. The campaign includes television, radio and newspaper ads, and will cost $7 million over the next three months. A8 NATIONAL A10-12, 14 Health Care Economy Gives Northeast a Boost With little of the fame that can be claimed by Silicon Valley, the Northeast's urban corridor has quietly built its own economic powerhouse by becoming the nation's health care epicenter, a 15-year transformation that has provided the region with an important economic cushion in the recent downturn. A1 Bush Rivals in the Senate Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina are about to become junior members of the Senate. They will be the | NEWS SUMMARY |
1445297_1 | software from Intelligent Light, which in licensed versions typically sells for $12,000, was being sold by Chinese entrepreneurs for $200. The posted advertisement for the wares promised that a ''step-by-step install guide and crack file make it easy to install and use!'' Which means that anyone with a modem and a little cash can evade the export control rules, even those that apply to prohibited countries. ''All they need to do is get a wire transfer, and they can get the software over the Internet,'' Mr. Legensky said. Jeanne L. Mara, the company's president and chief executive, said, ''It stinks that people can get it for nothing -- but it absolutely stinks that these guys can get it for nothing.'' But when companies want to take action against a breach of the export controls, they often find themselves frustrated -- whether because the United States government is reluctant to crack down on emerging trade allies like China or because software piracy over the Internet is almost impossible to stop, even when there are attempts to do so. Ms. Mara said that she had made the rounds in the Commerce, Justice, State Departments and the Small Business Administration. For her troubles, she said, she got many sighs and apologies from officials who seemed averse to addressing the delicate politics and economics of United States-China relations. Black-market sales and violations of copyright are not new, and China has long been notoriously lax in its protection of international copyright. The Business Software Alliance, an industry lobbying group with a vigorous anti-piracy program, estimates that 92 percent of the business software used in China is pirated. Robert M. Kruger, the group's vice president for enforcement, said that despite small declines in the rate of piracy, the dollar amount was growing as the nation developed. ''The bottom line is, we have still a tremendous amount of work to do to make China a safer place for intellectual property, and software in particular,'' he said. Though the case against piracy is passionately argued by paid advocates for the music and film industries and Silicon Valley, the Business Software Alliance's own surveys show that most consumers find it hard to summon outrage. They see the fight as a way to ensure that Bill Gates and Britney Spears get every penny coming to them. Not all concerns about software piracy, however, are about ensuring that the rich become | Black Market For Software Is Sidestepping Export Controls |
1445292_3 | to a new era in which these principles seemed increasingly radical -- he did insist that the American system of campaign financing was distorting the right to vote. Another change was Mr. Rawls's growing interest in justice for women. Unlike some of his younger colleagues -- Robert Nozick, for example, who also died this year, a man of constantly surprising perceptions -- Mr. Rawls had, at first, little sense of the goals for which feminists were striving. But he understood that many of the proposed changes were just, and he worked constantly to integrate a concern for women's equality into his work. Although he never questioned the naturalness, in some sense, of the traditional nuclear family, he did much to respond to feminist criticisms, acknowledging that families as we know them are often unjust to women. In his writings on international justice, he repeatedly underlined the importance of women's equal opportunity as a key to global justice. John Rawls has sometimes been portrayed as a kind of natural saint, who effortlessly put others first. I believe the reality was more complicated and more admirable than that: he had a keen sense of the emotions that make for injustice, yet waged a constant struggle for justice. I recall a conversation with him about Wagner's ''Tristan,'' when I was a young faculty member. I made some Nietzschean jibes about the otherworldliness of Wagnerian passion and how silly it all was. Mr. Rawls, with sudden intensity, said to me that I must not make a joke about this. Wagner was absolutely wonderful and therefore extremely dangerous. You had to see the danger, he said, to comprehend how bad it would be to be seduced by that picture of life, with no vision of the general good. America has increasingly moved away from John Rawls. Inequalities have grown, and the electorate seems largely indifferent to them. But our own greed and partiality can hardly diminish the virtues of his distinguished work. Perhaps we can regard the occasion of his death as a challenge to look into ourselves and identify the roots of those selfish passions that eclipse, so much of the time, the vision of the general good. Purity of heart would be to see clearly what has blocked that vision and to act with grace and self-command toward the general good. Martha Nussbaum is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. | Making Philosophy Matter to Politics |
1445369_6 | elsewhere were using them. Jan Todd of the University of Texas at Austin became a competitive lifter in the 1970's when she married Terry Todd and began tagging along when he went to gyms. ''I got caught up in this quest for strength,'' she said. Soon she was smashing world records. By the 1980's, however, many female weight lifters had begun taking steroids. Ms. Todd, who refused, saw her lifting career come to an end. ''She trained harder than anyone I've ever seen,'' Terry Todd said. But he added: ''No matter how hard she trained, it was a foregone conclusion that these other women were going to catch her, and they did. It's frustrating. It takes the fun out of the sport.'' One female power lifter, Tam Thompson, told Mr. Todd, in an interview he recorded on April 15, 1986, that she had begun taking drugs because she thought other women were taking them. Eventually, Ms. Thompson said, her voice deepened ''and I noticed these strange hairs showing up. I thought, 'Well, that's no big deal. A hair here, a hair there. Big deal. I can live with it.' The next cycle it got worse. But by then, I figured the damage had already been done, and I went ahead with the full cycle of steroids because I had a meet coming up.'' She added, ''I've been off the drugs almost two years now, but I still have to shave every day.'' As steroid use seeped into sports and bodybuilding, historians say, muscles became more desirable for ordinary men and women. Steroids were classified a controlled substance by Congress in 1990, but cultural change made them seem more appealing. Men, Mr. Fair said, became entranced with Arnold Schwarzenegger and began craving big, hard bodies. Women, who had been barred from weight-lifting rooms, found that the doors had opened with the passage of Title IX, the 1973 law that required universities receiving federal funds to provide women with equal access to athletic facilities. Now, Dr. Pope of Harvard said, the transformation is everywhere. Women in the centerfolds of men's magazines are increasingly muscular. Male models in advertisements and on magazine covers increasingly appear shirtless, muscles bulging. Even G.I. Joe was affected. ''G.I. Joe in the 1960's used to be perfectly ordinary looking,'' Dr. Pope said. But over the years, he added, the action figure pumped up. The Black Market Illegal to | With No Answers on Risks, Steroid Users Still Say 'Yes' |
1445315_0 | From all appearances, the store on Deer Park Avenue in North Babylon, N.Y., nestled between shops and restaurants, looked like any other music store along a strip mall. But if law enforcement authorities are right, the Long Island store, Spin Music, was one of the biggest bootlegging operations on the East Coast, taking in $2.5 million a year in profit. Prosecutors say a family with ties to organized crime ran the operation, using its modest home in West Islip to produce 10,000 bootlegged CD's a week, by artists ranging from Jay-Z to Jennifer Lopez. The family sold rows of the CD's at the store and also delivered about $50,000 of pirated goods each month to various sites in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the prosecutors say. Music executives, seeking to explain a decline in CD sales, have often cited free digital downloads and Internet file sharing. But they are coming to believe that old-fashioned bootlegging is a huge problem, too, costing the industry tens of millions of dollars. Total music sales are down about 13 percent so far this year compared with the similar period in 2001, according to Nielsen Sound-Scan, which tracks music sales. A trial involving the store manager, Ralph J. Marino, 71, and his family will offer a glimpse into what prosecutors say is a major music piracy enterprise. In State Supreme Court in Hauppauge, N.Y., prosecutors will try to show how pirated CD's are made, distributed and sold. Five members of the Marino family have each been been charged with two counts of failing to disclose the origin of a recording. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for Dec. 17. Bootleg recording was a lucrative trade for organized crime decades ago. Crime families peddled stolen vinyl records and eight-track tapes in the 1970's, said Frank Creighton, director of the anti-piracy unit for the Recording Industry Association of America. But when cassette tapes became widely available, consumers began copying their own records. Also, eight-track tapes disappeared from the market. Now, criminal organizations are returning to the business, law enforcement authorities say. CD and DVD burners have made it easier to make CD's, and crime families have the ability to disseminate material on a large scale, authorities say. Competition is tough. Members of organized crime, loose-knit groups and individuals are vying for their share of the illicit market, in stores and on the street. Consumers may or may | Arrests Illustrate a Growing Concern Over Bootlegged Recordings |
1446722_2 | JetConnect puts a server computer on the airplane, like the servers that are at the heart of office computer networks. The server connects to the Internet once every 15 minutes, meaning it uploads and downloads information in batches. Plans are to add high-speed e-mail later. Initially JetConnect will have news, weather, games and destination information, and it will allow instant messaging. It costs $5.99 a flight, which is a bargain compared with the $4-a-minute seat-back phones, on whose technology it piggybacks. The airlines and Boeing say they have demonstrated to safety regulators that the radio link that relays the computer communications to. the ground do not interfere with other equipment on the plane, either radio-related (like navigation signals) or electronic parts that might react to stray emissions from electronics carried by the passengers. However, cellphones have not been tested that way. Electronics experts say that the radio frequencies assigned to cellphones are different from those used for navigation but that cellphones may emit some radio waves at unassigned frequencies. There is scant evidence of actual problems in flight, but a recent report by the Civil Aviation Authority, the British version of the Federal Aviation Authority, said that use of cellphones on airplanes could lead to false warnings of unsafe conditions, which would increase crew workload and reduce the pilots' confidence in their automatic safety systems. It could also produce noise in flight-crew headphones, the report said. And cellphone companies say that the phones can cause problems aloft by trying to connect to several cell sites on the ground at once. But such concerns may be something of a nonissue, because, as passengers who do not follow the rules have discovered, most cellphones do not work well at cruise altitudes. Seat-back telephones on planes do work because they are certified to emit only at authorized frequencies. And they use a far more powerful transmitter. There is hope, though, that cellphones could be used safely in airplane cabins, through an entirely different route. Soon, experts say, the phones will be designed to communicate over short distances with other hand-held electronic devices, like personal digital assistants, so that the phone could retrieve a number from a Palm Pilot or similar device. That short-range radio circuit might be used to connect the cellphones to the existing air-to-ground link used by the seat-back phones. Likewise, laptops could be connected wirelessly to a bigger transmitter on | Fliers Will Soon Be Able To Go Online On Board |
1446849_4 | last decade. During this period, the definition of autism was expanded to include more able children on one end and more mentally impaired on the other. Using the new definition, one in 250 children were labeled autistic. Despite the changing definition, Dr. Crimmins said, ''When you compare apples to apples we're now talking about one in 500 children having autism compared to one in 2,000 a decade ago.'' His results, which have not yet been published, appear similar to the escalating rates noted in various studies across the country. A child is now more likely to have autism than Down syndrome, a detectable chromosomal abnormality causing mental retardation. A baby is more likely to develop signs of autism than a teenager is to develop schizophrenia. With appropriate support, children with Down syndrome often live at home well into adulthood. Therapy and recently developed anti-hallucinogen drugs can help bring teenage schizophrenics back to reality. But children like Kristie, even with the most patient parents and best educational opportunities, are often placed in long-term residential centers before they reach their teenage years. The state, county and local school district typically split a student's annual tuition, upward of $100,000. Despite near universal agreement that there is some hereditary link, no genes have been identified and no prenatal test exists to warn prospective parents of this devastating disability. ''As a mother, when something so bizarre happens, something you never heard of, you start looking at yourself,'' Mrs. Vaughan said. ''What did I do to make this happen? What if I hadn't moved here? You investigate everything. Life becomes so difficult because there are only 24 hours in a day.'' Did the Indian Point nuclear power plant, PCB's in the Hudson River or fertilized lawns cause a countywide epidemic, Mrs. Vaughan wondered. Did the inoculation for measles, mumps and rubella that Kristie received shortly before her diagnosis unleash her autism? Autism is four times as common among boys as among girls. Why was her daughter stricken? Dr. Crimmins's study appears to discount Mrs. Vaughan's suspicion that something specific to Westchester caused Kristie's autism. His statistics are based on submissions from preschool directors across the state identifying 4- and 5-year-olds with autism, children with impaired social interaction, communication and behavior. The results indicate that autism rates have swelled everywhere, he said; Westchester rates match the sharp increases found throughout the state. Working out of Albert Einstein | When Autism Strikes |
1446681_2 | ruminates on a year in her garden's life. Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart By Steven Bach. Da Capo, $19. A portrait of the hugely popular Broadway entertainer. THE DEATH OF SWEET MISTER By Daniel Woodrell. Plume, $13. Pulpish fiction about jealousy and fury in the Ozarks. The devil's larder By Jim Crace. Picador USA, $12. Teasing parables and parodies of knowingness. The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan Edited by John Lahr. Bloomsbury, $16.95. Snapshots from the journalist and critic's final decade. The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance By Anthony Gottlieb. Norton, $17.95. Western rationality from Aristotle to Descartes. The Dying Animal By Philip Roth. Vintage International, $12. The further adventures of an academic Lothario. Embers By Sandor Marai. Vintage International, $12. A 1942 novel about a love affair in Austria-Hungary. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software By Steven Johnson. Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, $14. A study of swarm logic: the ability to display greater intelligence collectively than alone. Eva moves the furniture By Margot Livesey. Picador USA, $13. A novel about a Scottish woman's invisible friends. The Feast of the Goat By Mario Vargas Llosa. Picador USA, $14. Fiction based on the life of a Caribbean dictator. Fingersmith By Sarah Waters. Riverhead, $15. A Dickensian novel of orphans and madhouses. Fire By Sebastian Junger. Perennial/HarperCollins, $13.95. Essays and articles on war zones and risk-taking. Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum By Tyler Anbinder. Plume, $16. A cultural history of America's first real ghetto. Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War By Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad. Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, $14. Biological weapons from anthrax to salmonella. The Grand Complication By Allen Kurzweil. Theia/Hyperion, $16. A tale of a librarian in search of a missing watch. Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller By Jackie Wullschlager. University of Chicago, $19. How an ugly duckling transformed children's literature. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories By Alice Munro. Vintage Contemporaries, $14. Nine tales of characters coping with dark moments. Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale By Chuck Kinder. Plume, $14. A gonzo novel about a pair of literary outlaws. The Hunters: Two Novellas By Claire Messud. Harvest/Harcourt, $13. Fiction about paranoia and the power of the past. I Cannot Tell a Lie, Exactly: | A Noteworthy Collection |
1446988_0 | Manuel López Gómez is watching the green world around him disappear, ravaged by people whose only path from starvation lies in slashing and burning the jungle to plant a patch of corn. ''We are out of balance here,'' said Mr. López, 60, a local farmer turned conservationist. ''We are trying to stop the destruction. If nothing changes, all the land around here will be destroyed.'' Five miles up a muddy trail from Emiliano Zapata, in southeastern Chiapas State, is Mexico's largest unpolluted lake, Laguna Miramar, and beyond that stands the last rain forest in Mexico. But today almost half a million poor people, speaking six different languages, live in that dying forest. For some here in Chiapas, the issue is turning from saving the trees to saving the people. A century of government reaching into this most remote corner of Mexico has left most citizens with next to nothing. President Vicente Fox's plans to build dams, railroads, highways and industries linking Chiapas to the outside world in a 21st-century free-trade network are grand but unrealized. And in Chiapas, development often means destruction. Starting in the late 19th century, the government sold foreign companies the right to tear the great mahogany and cedar trees from Chiapas. In 1972, the government deeded what was left -- a forest as big as Connecticut -- to the tiny and untrammeled Lacandón tribe, a few hundred people, who farm by trimming the forest canopy, not erasing it. Since then, more than two-thirds of the Lacandón forest has been sawed down, first by timber companies with heavy machinery, then by peasants -- some from Chiapas, some from farther north -- all seeking a little land by which to live. In 1978, the government declared the remaining forest, 1,278 square miles of it, an international sanctuary: the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, presumably off limits to development. That pledge has been stretched to the breaking point by the pressures of poverty, population growth and political struggles. Seen in satellite images, the green land of the bioreserve shrinks every year, like a lake slowly going dry. The trees are cut, the undergrowth is burned, the thin topsoil planted with corn until the crop fails, the land then grazed by cattle until the rains wash the earth away. Hundreds of settlements struggle in isolation, sharing little sense of community, rarely seeing eye to eye, often lacking a common language. Under | Growing Poverty Is Shrinking Mexico's Rain Forest |
1446919_8 | Chelsea Market that is the future site of Zukabar, a tribal theme bar and restaurant to be operated by the owners of Buddha Bar, Aymeric Lombard, a French-Italian investment banker, took in an exhibition called ''Lost Worlds.'' A mostly European crowd made dinner plans on cellphones below the new agey photomontages of Buddhas, glaciers and landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Tower of Pisa. ''The big trick about Europeans is that we look like we have more money than we do,'' said Mr. Lombard, 31, who was neatly dressed in a collared shirt and a crew neck sweater. ''You can get very nice, cheap clothes in Naples and look better than Americans who spent thousands on an outfit at Gucci or John Varvatos.'' Noni Helms, 26, a German investment banker who moved to New York last year, dresses every evening in a suit, puts his tie in his pocket and heads for the clubs around midnight. He leaves them at about 3:30, pausing to attach his tie, and arrives at work by 4, when the European markets have opened. ''New York is great fun,'' said Mr. Helms on a recent Wednesday at Lotus, where he was slumped against a modelesque brunette in the back room. ''Except I always feel jet-lagged.'' To Rub Shoulders With a Euro THESE are some New York spots favored by Europeans: BUNGALOW 8 (club), 515 West 27th Street. After 1 a.m. DOWNTOWN (restaurant), 376 West Broadway (Broome Street). Late dinner. FÉLIX (restaurant), 340 West Broadway (Grand Street). Sunday brunch. LE BILBOQUET (restaurant), 25 East 63rd Street. Saturday brunch. LOTUS (club), 409 West 14th Street; Wednesday nights. PANGAEA (club), 417 Lafayette Street (Fourth Street). Wednesday nights. POWDER (club), 431 West 16th Street. REHAB (club), 380 Lafayette Street (Great Jones Street). Weekends. SERAFINA (restaurant), 393 Lafayette Street (Fourth Street). Wednesday night late dinner. And two places that are coming soon: BUDDHA BAR (club), Ninth Avenue at 16th Street. Opening March 2003. CIELO (club), 18 Little West 12th Street. Opening New Year's Eve. Correction: December 15, 2002, Sunday A front-page picture in this section last Sunday with an article about the increased number of Europeans frequenting Manhattan nightclubs was published in error. While it showed the club Pangaea during a party largely attended by Europeans, the young man prominently shown holding a glass and leaning across several people was not European. He was Robert Denning of Greenwich, Conn. | A New Eurofestation |
1446731_2 | may be what interests us, but it mainly distorts if you only look through that lens.'' Although Babbitt doesn't share Taruskin's enthusiasm for Tchaikovsky's work, he certainly agrees on this point. ''I understand that Tchaikovsky suffered terribly and that he was a homosexual, but that doesn't interest me. It would never occur to me to listen to Tchaikovsky in those terms.'' HISTORIOGRAPHY In his own day, when nationalistic sensibilities were ascendant, many countrymen savaged Tchaikovsky for being too stylistically cosmopolitan, ''looking to the West while so many other Russians were turning eastward,'' according to Leon Botstein, a conductor, musicologist and president of Bard College. ''Despite the resistance, though, he would become common ground between the two schools.'' Not right away. After his death in 1893, Tchaikovsky increasingly came under attack from modernists who found him full of fluff and bombast. Although Igor Stravinsky resuscitated Tchaikovsky's reputation, most modernists still had scant regard for him well into the latter half of the 20th century. ''As late as 25 years ago,'' according to Patrick McCreless, chairman of the Yale University music department, ''virtually no one in the music-scholarly community was interested in Tchaikovsky. But things have changed radically.'' Walter Frisch, a Columbia music professor, personifies the shift. ''If you'd asked me 20 years ago, I might have joined the bandwagon that said he's just bad Beethoven or bad Verdi, that he's too sentimental or pretty, that he's not complex. But that's applying standards developed for other music. He's just not an adherent of the Beethoven model.'' COMPOSITION AND APPEAL Tchaikovsky himself copped to a fundamental inability to master some compositional forms. With much of modern composition prizing rigorous formality, even atonality, the whimsy and melodic emphasis of Tchaikovsky was bound to take some hits. As Babbitt puts it: ''It is often said that his music lacks the structure of textbook form. His pieces are mostly studied as orchestral niceties. That's all.'' But you can't keep a good tunesmith down. Enter postmodernism. ''Today, there is a continuing modernist group that takes issue with him as a composer who they say can't command a grammar of music composition that transcends the imposition of a story line,'' Botstein says. ''But most of this is snobbery. All great art is complex, even when it appears simple.'' So Tchaikovsky is more than treacly and twee? ''You can make the mistake of mistrusting pleasure,'' Frisch says. ''There's a | Tchaikovsky |
1446726_2 | alternate airport -- John Wayne in Orange County instead of LAX, or Hartford, instead of Boston, each about an hour away from the bigger airport. Or, if your travel dates are flexible, try flying at ''off'' times like Christmas Day, New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Internet agencies like Travelocity.com or Expedia.com can offer last-minute bargains, and travel agents are experts at arranging bookings on short notice. Buying a plane ticket with some flexibility can make the extra expense worthwhile should your travel plans change. By now it should go without saying that anything that might be considered a weapon -- nail files, pocket knives and so on -- should go in checked luggage. Moreover, according to the Transportation Security Administration, any metal object that triggers a checkpoint alarm will result in a secondary screening (including pat-down and wand), so passengers should put all metal items (keys, jewelry, loose change, lighters, cellphones and the like) in a basket or, better, a carry-on bag for transit through the screening machine. Also, the security administration says, air travelers should avoid wearing shoes with metal shanks or grommets, clothing or belts with metal buckles, snaps or studs, body piercings or underwire bras. Speaking of shoes, they may be checked randomly by security. Southwest Airlines suggests wearing slip-ons for ease and notes that shoes with thin soles are checked less frequently than those with thicker soles and with heels. For those who don't care to have their belongings publicly displayed, the security administration also suggests underpacking, so as to avoid spilling the bag's contents upon opening, and storing personal items in clear plastic bags to allow screeners to see what you have without needing to open toilet kits and the like. According to the security administration, any reference from anyone, even children, to bombs, explosives or weapons will be treated as a terrorist threat, so parents should caution youngsters against making such comments. For children traveling unaccompanied, or elderly or handicapped travelers, the airline will issue a pass authorizing one adult to accompany them to the gate area. At holiday times airlines tend to be more strict than usual about carry-ons; officially passengers are permitted one carry-on bag plus one ''personal'' item, which can be a laptop, purse, small backpack, briefcase, or camera case. The Transportation Security Administration suggests placing identification tags with your name, address and phone number on all baggage, including | If the Holidays Aren't at Home |
1446938_0 | THE traffic is murder out there, and Ed on the car phone wants to know: Why can't those liberal weenies mix it up? Translation: when you're backed up on the expressway and a radio voice is howling at you, why isn't that voice ever a liberal? For much of the last decade, conservative talk radio hosts built carnivorous empires by gorging on the foibles of Bill Clinton. Now, two years into the Bush administration, liberals and Democrats are still waiting for a syndicated carnivore of their own. As Mr. Clinton said in a speech last week, referring to a range of conservative media: ''They have a destruction machine. We don't have a destruction machine.'' What Democrats do have is a yammer gap. At a time when the public is pretty evenly divided politically, conservative talk radio, long led by Rush Limbaugh, continues to grow. New or newly syndicated programs featuring the conservative television talk show hosts Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity made their debut on 200 to 300 stations in the last year. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, G. Gordon Liddy and other conservative hosts are still going strong. Meanwhile, one of the few longrunning liberal hosts, Gloria Allred, was sacrificed to poor ratings in October after 14 years in Los Angeles, joining Jim Hightower, Mario M. Cuomo and Alan M. Dershowitz. ''I can't think of a single card-carrying liberal talk show syndicated nationwide,'' said Ron Rodrigues, editor in chief of Radio & Records, a trade magazine. The question is: why can't liberals create blast-furnace entertainment for their causes? The answers may inhere in the nature of liberalism, said Robert Thompson, a professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University. Where radio conservatives have thrived by drawing hard distinctions between right and wrong, he said, ''the liberal tradition as we understand it acknowledges a diversity of people and values.'' In the heat of drive-time squawk, he said, ''That's easily thrown back in their face by making them look mealy-mouthed.'' Like other forms of news and entertainment, talk radio is a numbers game. Conservative talk radio, which arose from the Federal Communication Commission's 1987 repeal of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, releasing stations from the obligation to provide balanced opinion, ''is a result of radio being a niche medium,'' said Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers, a trade magazine. Stations look for heat, not breadth. ''The hosts that light the fire tap into a | Why the Right Rules the Radio Waves |
1446670_56 | A. Talese/Doubleday, $45.) A prodigiously researched history that is neither top-down nor bottom-up but cross-sectional: shunning traditional chronology and players (aristocrats are scarce), Ackroyd instead offers a London defined by a set of recurring motifs -- smell, sound, speech, fog, fire, ghosts and plague are some of the more significant. LONE PATRIOT: The Short Career of an American Militiaman. By Jane Kramer. (Pantheon, $25.) Real-life anthropology: the author hangs with a band of self-styled ''patriots'' in Washington State, finding them armed to the teeth yet reassuringly inept. LONGITUDES AND ATTITUDES: Exploring the World After September 11. By Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) A collection of essays, supplemented by diary entries and previously unpublished notes, by the Times's foreign affairs columnist, many of them on the implications of 9/11 and the sheer complexity of America today. LOST DISCOVERIES: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science -- From the Babylonians to the Maya. By Dick Teresi. (Simon & Schuster, $27.) A knowledgeable, witty science writer surveys the numerous scientific achievements of non-European civilizations, many of them well known to historians of science but usually excluded from classrooms in favor of Westerners. THE LUNAR MEN: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. By Jenny Uglow. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30.) A study of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which met monthly in the latter 18th century over the defining activities of the modern world: science and industries based on science. LYRICS OF SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore: A History of Love and Violence Among the African American Elite. By Eleanor Alexander. (New York University, $26.95.) Alcoholism, bipolar disorder and the stresses of extreme visibility all played a part in the unfortunate relationship of America's first famous black poet and his wife, herself a writer of considerable distinction. THE MAKING OF A PHILOSOPHER: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy. By Colin McGinn. (HarperCollins, $25.95.) An autobiography whose author rose from Blackpool to Oxford to Rutgers, showing what it is like to be a philosopher in action: tough, determined, amusing, combative and clever, as well as engaged in an important and difficult task. MASTER OF THE SENATE: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. By Robert A. Caro. (Knopf, $35.) In this new volume of his humongous life of Johnson (whom he is beginning to admire, a little), the author follows his man in taking | Notable Books |
1452220_0 | GREAT things are happening along Westchester County's waterfront. Projects in communities from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow and Peekskill are connecting people to the river and with recreational, residential and commercial projects that will invigorate local economies while improving the quality of life of residents. Westchester County has been a seedbed of environmental activism for almost 40 years -- since the day when a group of citizens gathered in a home in Irvington and vowed to fight a proposal to build a power plant on Storm King Mountain in the Hudson Highlands. A court eventually ruled that the citizens had legal standing to oppose the project in the famed ''Scenic Hudson Decision,'' considered a defining moment in the modern environmental movement. That concept of citizens' involvement in the decisions that affect their communities is alive and well throughout the Hudson Valley. In Yonkers citizens rose up in the 1980's to stop construction of six 38-story luxury condominium towers that would have blocked public access to the river and views of the Palisades for city residents. Now a new mixed-use project is under construction. Soon children and families will be able to stroll along a public esplanade, dine in restaurants and learn about the Hudson River at the Beczak Environmental Education Center, while low- and mid-rise town houses will be available for sale and rental. In Irvington a contaminated industrial lumberyard has been converted to a public park and senior center adjacent to a commercial complex. This brownfield reclamation resulted from a joint effort of the village, county, state and the Scenic Hudson environmental group. In Sleepy Hollow, General Motors and its development partner, Roseland Properties, have collaborated with the mayor and regional environmental and cultural organizations to design a progressive residential and commercial development. The project will protect river views and access while revitalizing this crucial 100-acre waterfront parcel. More than 40 public meetings have occurred in the last few years to gather public input on a development plan expected to set aside 25 to 33 acres of green space. As the public awaits crucial details on the density of development and projected traffic impacts on Route 9, Roseland and GM have indicated they will remain open to citizen input throughout the permitting process. An exception to this string of successful public-private collaborations is a project proposed for Ossining by Capelli Enterprises Inc. This massive nine-story monolithic structure would stretch 150 | Keeping an Eye on the River View |
1452329_0 | To the Editor: Aside from the question of where the hydrogen for a hydrogen fuel-cell car will come from, there is another problem. In my town, Los Angeles, most of the land surface is paved in dedication to automobile driving: roads, freeways, driveways, parking lots, parking structures, curbside parking, home garages and so forth. Neighborhood after neighborhood is gashed by broad no-man's-lands of 2- to 8-lane streets, of 8- to 20-lane freeways. What will hydrogen cars do to make all that less necessary? What will they do to make it easier for a child or an old lady or someone in a wheelchair to cross Hawthorne Boulevard at rush hour? What will they do to make possible a tranquil dinner at a sidewalk table, a softball game in the street, a quiet evening on the porch -- all now obliterated by the ceaseless passing of nervous, hurried traffic? Go to the Hollywood Freeway at rush hour, or the parking lot at the mall, and envision them full of hydrogen-powered cars. What's different about the scene? That's right: Nothing! RICHARD RISEMBERG Los Angeles, Dec. 17 | Finding the Hydrogen For Hydrogen-Powered Cars |
1452208_25 | baseball. In 1996, he was inducted into the university's Sports Hall of Fame. Mr. Suchodolski began teaching in Stratford, then moved to Rocky Hill where he spent 25 years as a teacher, coach and principal. In 1969, he became a special education supervisor in the Hartford schools. Mr. Suchodolski was also a high school football referee for nearly 50 years, serving as time keeper when old age prevented him from taking a more active role in officiating. Mr. Suchodolski died April 13. He was 85. 'Go-to Guy' for Navy When the first Seawolf submarines were being built at the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, cracks developed in the welding of the special high-strength steel so the company and the Navy turned to Warren Mayott and, as expected, Mr. Mayott quickly solved the problem. Mr. Mayott, Electric Boat's director of technical services, was considered one of the premier welding engineers and metallurgists in the country. The company president, Michael W. Toner, said that during Mr. Mayott's more than 40 years at the shipyard, ''the Navy wanted to hear what Warren had to say before they went forward with any recommendation. He became, over the years, the real 'go-to guy' for materials and metals joining.'' Mr. Mayott was credited with developing the ultra-sonic testing of welds, which could be done while a ship was under construction. This procedure replaced the use of X-rays, a major improvement since construction to be halted because of Xrays radiation. When the Trident and Los Angeles classes of submarines were being built, Mr. Mayott came up with a new, controlled welding program that reduced rejection rates for welded materials from 17 to 1 percent. ''When Warren said, 'This is the answer,' '' said John F. Shipway, the Electric Boat's vice president for full submarine support, ''without exception, that was the path we always took. The fact that we have used the strongest steel in the world in our submarines in a cost-effective fashion is because of what Warren did for our Navy and our nation.'' Mr. Mayott, who had cancer, died Jan. 5. He was 62. Following a Cause Carol Kimball was an environmentalist and naturalist, a writer and a fund-raiser for a variety of causes. As a fund-raiser, Ms. Kimball held development positions at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Columbia University, the Metropolitan Opera, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Connecticut Chapter of the Nature Conservancy. As | Full Lives, Captured In Memory And Words |
1452035_5 | does tragedy produce pleasure? ''It is not just that we feel glad and grieved at the same time,'' Eagleton says, ''but that we feel glad about our grief.'' Perhaps we should get rid of the old association of tragedy with high morality and be content to think that, since we are human, a certain sadism is involved in the pleasure it gives. Or perhaps there is something in the old scapegoat theory, recalling the victim, or pharmakos, who suffered to expiate the guilt of the society. The scapegoat need not be a great person; anybody will do for rejection: ''This desolate, abandoned figure is a negative sign of social totality.'' Standard opinions wilt under this writer's scrutiny. We were taught that the ''Oresteia'' of Aeschylus mirrored the process by which the vengeful power of the Furies gave way at the end of the trilogy to the civility of the Eumenides, but this is false: ''The drama is about both at once, about the law and the Eumenides together.'' This is essentially a Freudian explanation: civilization requires the repression of the anarchic drives that ultimately sustain it. We take pleasure in tragedy that reflects this tension. In the end Eagleton's explanation is religious. St. Paul says ''we die every moment,'' so ''we can disarm death by rehearsing it here and now in the self-bestowals of life.'' And Eagleton chooses as his prime instance of a work that examines these questions of life and death not a play but a novel, ''The Magic Mountain,'' by Thomas Mann. ''Life and death, the novel reflects, are perhaps just different viewpoints on the same reality.'' Throughout this lively but often difficult book the author repeatedly seeks to blend together, or at any rate bring face to face, these apparently antithetical positions. ''Humanity is suspended undecidably between the affirmation and negation of life,'' and this plight is fundamental not only to tragedy but to life itself. This may be true throughout history, but the author has in mind the present tragic condition of the world, when we have to think of the scapegoat not as one piece of human refuse but as ''whole sweated, uprooted populations.'' Thinking about tragedy, we should consider that tragic state -- the poisoned planet, the agonies of the refugee and the starving child. But that is tragedy in common parlance, distinct from any usage that might connote exaltation and pleasure. Thinking | Good News From Bad |
1452144_0 | AS the Dec. 31 deadline approaches for the nation's 429 commercial airports to begin screening all passengers' luggage for explosives, travelers checking bags can expect a new round of security procedures. Until now, most of the changes implemented by the Transportation Security Administration have focused on improving the systems used to screen passengers and their carry-on luggage. And for the most part, air travelers have become used to stepping out of their shoes, emptying their pockets and removing their belts and zippered jackets when passing through metal detectors. But the Congressional mandate requiring the screening of all checked baggage for explosives has involved another wave of changes at many airports, which passengers will notice to a varying degree in the coming weeks and months. Although airline and airport executives initially feared that the transition would result in chaos during the busy holiday travel season, the consensus seems to be that passengers should expect some inconveniences -- like longer waits to check bags and more intrusive luggage searches -- but that major disruptions are unlikely. Expect Longer Lines ''It's not going to be pretty,'' said David Plavin, president of the Airports Council International-North America, an association that represents state and local authorities that operate airports in the United States and Canada. As the new luggage-screening systems go into effect, Mr. Plavin said, check-in areas will probably have longer lines than usual. But, he said, ''we're hoping we've convinced the T.S.A. that it's really important that their screening activities not delay the system so much that it brings it to a halt.'' The systems used to screen checked luggage will vary from airport to airport -- and in some airports from terminal to terminal. The two most common methods are explosive detection systems, known as E.D.S machines, which are the size of a minivan and function like medical CAT scans, and explosive trace detection or E.T.D. systems, which involve an agent's passing a cloth around and perhaps inside a bag and then running the cloth through a much smaller machine nearby. Virtually all airports will eventually use either or both of these systems to screen every bag that is checked -- sometimes using one method as a backup for the other when a bag raises an alarm. Not all airports have yet installed the equipment required for one of those systems, so over the short term some terminals will rely on interim | More Screening At the Airport |
1451064_3 | landmarks preservation. Over the years relationships among these agencies have become stale, frozen, inimical to change. Is this a reality or a status quo? What has become clear in the past week is that this state of affairs is light-years away from the aspirations of the public these agencies represent. Six teams of architects have worked overtime and for the most part at their own expense to give these aspirations a range of potential forms in which they might be realized. Here is a set of options for reimagining the skyscraper. This is what it might be like to honor the victims of 9/11 by descending into the earth. Here are possibilities for parks and garden apartments in the sky, 24-hour vertical cities, towering infrastructures for the 21st-century informational city. Here, in short, is creativity, applied to recasting the city's future, in response to a tragedy that has already transformed the urban prospect. The collective energy generated by these possibilities has excited the public far more, I believe, than the anticipation aroused by any one or two of these designs. The energy is no less real than the inertia that kept New York from moving forward. Is it just wishful thinking on my part, or do I correctly sense that some public officials have caught the spirit? Up to now, it has been far easier to regard the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation as an obstacle to architecture than as a supporter of it. Perhaps this was inevitable. As one official commented at last week's news conference, we have been traveling without a road map. It's not surprising that the design process started off with the familiar formula of public-private development. Still, when was the last time we heard any public official acknowledge openly that his agency had ventured into unknown territory where no familiar formula was likely to be useful? That acknowledgment was in itself a creative response. Perhaps this official and others have begun to grasp what the public has already perceived: these six projects are not merely star performances by famous architects. They are revelations of ourselves: who we are, what we care about, where we stand in relation to our moment in history. We've got Olmsted parks, Art Deco towers, prewar apartment buildings of brick and stone. We don't need cheap versions of places we already know. We need to relearn that such wonders have not ceased. | In Latest Concepts for Ground Zero, It's Reality vs. Renaissance |
1451114_0 | When United Nations inspectors entered the Baghdad space research and development center this morning to carry out their first inspection at the site, they queried the scientists heading the various laboratories there about potential links between creating Iraq's prototype satellite and making weapons. ''They asked us about the nature of this department,'' said Dr. Amer Naoom, who heads a laboratory producing components for a satellite Iraq says was designed to take images from space. ''They asked if we had anything to do with Al Samoud rocket, and they asked us if we had contributed to the Remote Powered Vehicle, an aircraft.'' The eight inspectors spent three hours walking through every room in the six-story building, asking similar questions of researchers involved with space technology, space optics, atmospheric studies and remote sensing. The laboratories could have been almost anywhere in the world, with the notable exception of some computers deploying Saddam Hussein's picture as the screen saver. The inspectors asked what the computers were used for, the Iraqi scientists said, but did not read anything on them. They left the building with just a small sheaf of papers that included drawings of the satellite design. At a time when the inspectors are under increasing pressure from the United States to show some results, the slow, deliberate methods they employ to comb through hundreds of highly technical sites like the space research center underscore the herculean task ahead. At the same time, Iraq remains adamant that it neither possesses prohibited weapons nor has anything to hide. At a news conference today, Gen. Amir al-Saadi, President Hussein's chief weapons adviser, said Iraq had no further information to provide, despite pronouncements to the contrary in Washington and elsewhere last week. He even suggested, with determined sarcasm, that Central Intelligence Agency officers could come and point out suspect sites to the inspectors. ''We have no objection to American intelligence services come here to lead them to the places that they say are hiding prohibited arms,'' General Saadi said, proposing that any outstanding questions could be solved in technical discussions between Iraq and the inspectors. He said Washington and London were trying to pre-empt the results of the inspections by rehashing old accusations already parried by Iraq. He began plowing through a page and a half of questions that he said were prepared by the State Department last week cataloging Iraq's omissions from the 12,000-page declaration | For U.N. Labor of Hercules, A Talk- and Walk-Through |
1449179_3 | that I was out beyond myself, had almost lost all touch with who I even was, and it was . . . bliss. After that Sabbath afternoon of rapture among the Forms, it was philosophy for me, and I eventually got my doctorate in the field. During the period of intense concentration when I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation, I had to forgo novels altogether. The very day that I finished my dissertation, I went out and splurged on a bunch of yummy, high-caloric novels -- great, big, fat 19th-century works (always my favorite) -- and I gorged myself. I would read, say, the last page of Henry James's ''Portrait of a Lady,'' sigh with pleasure and open up Thomas Hardy's ''Jude the Obscure.'' So for me there is some serious explaining to do, at least to myself, as to how it is that, in addition to being a professor of philosophy, I am also a novelist. I used to have a procedure to follow before I would allow myself to read those marvelous things, novels. How can I justify actually producing them? And it does not help that my first and enduring philosophical love, Plato, so completely disapproves. He famously banished all the artists from his imagined utopia, finding them incorrigibly disruptive of the perfectly rational society he was trying to devise. There were not any novelists per se in ancient Athens; the closest approximations were the epic poets. But what Plato has to say about them leaves no doubt that he would really have hated us modern novelists. Plato himself was a literary artist of the highest rank. He skillfully shaped literary devices like dialogue, metaphor and allegory into his seductive arguments. But Plato is wary of all forms of rapture other than reason's. He is most deeply leery of, because himself so susceptible to, the literary imagination. He speaks of it as a kind of holy madness or intoxication and goes on to link it to Eros, another derangement that joins us, but very dangerously, with the gods. A novelist at work hears many voices in her head. There are the voices of the characters of course and, less distinctly, the overall tone of the narration: is it dreamy and associative, detached and ironic, fever pitched? Sometimes even the setting in time and place seems to speak in a low distinctive murmur. In the mix in my | Carried From the Couch on the Wings of Enchantment |
1449230_0 | North Korea's nuclear program dominated the debate in the South Korean election campaign today, four days before voters cast ballots for a successor to President Kim Dae Jung. Although both Lee Hoi Chang, the presidential candidate of the conservative Grand National Party, and Roh Moo Hyun, the candidate of the governing Millennium Democratic Party, have called for dialogue with North Korea, they differed sharply today on how to respond to the North's nuclear threat. Mr. Roh said Mr. Lee's criticisms of President Kim's policy of reconciliation with North Korea were worsening tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Mr. Lee's ''confrontational stance'' toward the North, Mr. Roh said, ''will foster anxiety about war.'' Mr. Lee said Mr. Roh was naïve about North Korea and ''not qualified to resolve the nuclear crisis.'' Mr. Lee, who has been trailing in the polls, clearly saw his chances improved by North Korea's statement last week that it would restart a nuclear plant capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium and its demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency unseal the canisters in which spent fuel rods are stored at the nuclear complex at Yongbyon. Ri Je Son, who runs North Korea's atomic energy department, said his government would take ''necessary measures unilaterally'' if the agency did not comply. The agency has had two inspectors at Yongbyon since the signing of the agreement in 1994 in which North Korea promised to give up its nuclear weapons program. The other issue that has permeated the campaign is South Korea's strained relationship with the United States. Both Mr. Lee and Mr. Roh, however, have muted their criticism of Washington despite the continuing anti-American protests in South Korea over the deaths of two girls hit by an American military vehicle in June. The incident and the acquittal in a United States military court of the two sergeants who were in the vehicle have fueled demands here for the withdrawal of the 37,000 American troops in South Korea. A telephone call from President Bush to President Kim on Friday in which Mr. Bush expressed sadness over the incident deflected some of the criticism that he had not issued a formal apology. Still, many protesters said they were not satisfied. About 50,000 of them filled downtown streets here on Saturday. Many held small lanterns and shouted anti-American slogans. Smaller protests took place in Pusan, Taegu and Kwangju. The Rev. Moon Jung Hyun, a major | South Korean Candidates Focus on the North |
1445964_3 | Kim, executive director of iMentor, put it: ''It's a flexible way to be a mentor, but it's still a commitment. You can't just flake out and not show up.'' Sarah Jane Rehnborg, a consultant in volunteerism and community service at the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community at the University of Texas at Austin, which hosts the Virtual Volunteering Project, noted that time management is an important aspect of virtual volunteering. ''There are expectations on the other end,'' Dr. Rehnborg said. ''When a child sends you a letter, for instance, they expect to hear back. You have to have a system in mind that will keep you on track.'' She said that when she is concerned about responding to something she does not have time for right away, she prints it out and leaves it on her desk. Others recommended scheduling time to send e-mail messages or work on a project. For those with the time to give, a single volunteer experience can give rise to others. Last year, working through iMentor, Mr. Melillo mentored a student at Sheepshead Bay High School in Brooklyn. That student has since graduated, but Mr. Melillo has become a research coach at the school. He provides assistance mainly by e-mail. Getting Involved Before Offering Your Services If you decide to volunteer, look for a group whose mission appeals to you. ''It's important that you enjoy what you're doing online as in real life,'' said Sarah Jane Rehnborg, a volunteerism and community service consultant at the University of Texas at Austin. ''Find an opportunity that you feel would make a difference.'' She recommended asking about training and support. ''Most of us are now pretty proficient in e-mail,'' she said. ''But that doesn't mean we know anything about interacting with a child.'' Be prepared to answer questions, too. Most organizations have an application process; among other things, they may ask about your skills, your motivation and what you hope to gain and give. If you are seeking a mentoring role, you should also expect the organization to conduct an extensive background check. The following Web sites have searchable databases of opportunities: www.volunteermatch.org, www.idealist.org, www.netaid.org and www.networkforgood.org. You can also ask organizations that you admire or already support and look for listings at volunteer centers. The Virtual Volunteering Project has excellent resources, including information about online mentoring (serviceleader.org/vv/FAQ /mentor.html), which is sometimes hard to find. Sarah Milstein | Volunteers Are Virtual, but Connections Are Real |
1446097_0 | Achille Castiglioni, the Italian architect and designer whose infusions of wit into domestic objects like lamps and stools helped establish Italy as a leader in sophisticated modern design after World War II, died on Monday in Milan at age 84. He is survived by his wife, Irma, two daughters, Giovanna and Monica, and a son. His family did not announce the death until yesterday, citing the desire to protect their privacy. Born in 1918 in Milan, Mr. Castiglioni graduated from Politecnico di Milano in 1944. He joined his elder brothers Livio and Pier Giacomo in their architecture and design studio, which was established in 1938 with Luigi Caccia Dominioni. Livio Castiglioni left the company in 1952. The remaining brothers worked on architectural and urban planning commissions like the Montecatini pavilion at the Milan trade fair in 1962, as well as the product designs that came to characterize the playful intelligence by which Italian design was known throughout the last half of the 20th century. They include the Mezzadro (Sharecropper's Stool), a standard tractor seat with a sleek base, and Sgabello per Telephono (Telephone Stool), a stark column topped by a bicycle seat, which were parts of Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglionis' ''ready-made'' series of 1957. The two brothers also distinguished themselves, as a team, with notable lighting design, which included the Arco lamp, designed in 1962. The chrome ball shade, suspended seven feet from its marble base on an arch of steel, was a sly solution to hanging a lamp in a room without making a hole in the ceiling. Its inspiration was street lighting, brought inside, and its structure, literally a suspension of belief. The lamp, still in production, is emblematic of the high style associated with Italian design. The Ventosa reading lamp, designed in 1962, attached to a table with a rubber suction cup. It could also be stuck, like a miner's light, to the head. Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni collaborated, with both signing their work, until Pier Giacomo's death in 1968. Livio Castiglioni died in 1979. Mr. Castiglioni's designs continued to recast the ordinary with surprise. His later products, characterized by simplicity, included Brera, a series of lamps with an opaque white shade that looked as naturally formed as an egg. ''When design is recognized, universally, as the cultural force that it is in Italy, he will be considered amazing, like Duchamp in his influence,'' said | Achille Castiglioni, 84, Modern Design Leader |
1445971_0 | URL of Sandwich What's your favorite sandwich? For some that question is simply too personal. But those willing to share favored fillings should visit the Sandwich Project (www.iliveonyourvisits.com/sp). The site now lists more than 520 submissions from around the world (but mostly Britain and North America), and that number is growing fast. Derren Wilson created the site out of an all too familiar desperation: ''I was getting sick of buying the same sandwich every day from the shop up the road for my lunch at work,'' Mr. Wilson, a Londoner, said by e-mail. The home page displays the most recent submissions as well as 20 random sandwiches. It also allows a search by ingredient (try chocolate or, if you're an Anglophile, Marmite), although you can enter a bread type as well. Mr. Wilson added that he deletes only ''sandwiches that are inedible or submitted by time-wasters.'' Nearly half the submissions contain cheese, with peanut butter and mayonnaise also proving popular. ''My favorite worst sandwich consists of pieces of chocolate, pickled onions and ketchup, all melted together in a toasted-sandwich maker,'' Mr. Wilson said, raising questions about his definition of inedible. Eventually he hopes to allow people to vote on the best sandwich. But for now, the site can help add variety to your menu, or at least provide confirmation that there are others in the world who like Fritos on their PB&J. Photo Fakes I no longer trust photos that land in my e-mail box -- cats can't get that big, can they? -- or even those on ''most popular'' lists on news sites. Too many turn out to be digital manipulations or staged pranks. Still, I sweated through the ''Hoax Photo Test'' at the Museum of Hoaxes, a site that catalogs deceptions contrived for the public, dating from the Middle Ages to the Internet era. The test (www.museumofhoaxes.com/tests/hoaxphototest.html) contains some of the most widely circulated images from the e-mail circuit. You must correctly categorize the first 10 photos as ''real'' or ''hoax'' before you can move on to the second level, which includes another 10 snapshots (don't worry, you can peek at the answers if you're stumped). In just three weeks, more than 100,000 people have taken the test, said Alex Boese, curator of the site and author of the newly released ''Museum of Hoaxes'' (Dutton). Although he doesn't have exact scoring figures, ''most people get 12 to 17 | Online Diary |
1446076_0 | The agricultural chemicals company Syngenta of Switzerland will team up with an American pharmaceuticals developer, the Diversa Corporation, in a research deal that Syngenta hopes will keep them ahead of the competition in the biotechnology business while giving them a presence in the market for making drugs from plants. Syngenta, the first to sequence the genetic map of rice, plans to merge its genome research into Diversa's pharmaceutical business in a $118 million deal. Diversa, which is based in San Diego, will receive milestone payments and royalties on products they help develop. In addition, Syngenta, which is based in Basel, will raise its stake in Diversa to 18 percent. Alison Langley (NYT) | World Business Briefing | Europe: Switzerland: Biotechnology Venture |
1444858_2 | ways,'' he said. ''At any moment they could have been killed.'' The future President Kennedy, then a 26-year-old Navy lieutenant j.g., had been given command of PT-109 in the spring of 1943. The small boats were designed to spy as well as to attack enemy ships and then make a speedy escape. Assignment to a PT boat was so dangerous that only single men were allowed to join the crews. Sixty-nine PT boats were lost in World War II and 331 crewmen killed. On the night of Aug. 2, 1943, Kennedy and his crew were on patrol near Kolombangara Island when the boat was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. The ensuing explosion threw Kennedy to the deck aggravating a back injury, a problem that would plague him the rest of his life. Two men were killed but Kennedy and 10 other crewmen were in the water or clinging to a piece of the hull. Kennedy spent three hours pulling people back to a piece of the ship. With the hull sinking the crew swam three miles to a nearby island. This was when Kennedy towed a badly burned crewman by holding the man's life jacket strap in his teeth. They couldn't find any food or water on the island and Kennedy and another crewman had no success getting help by swimming into the area where PT boats patrolled. All the while they had to hide from Japanese boats. For Max Kennedy it was surprising to see just how close the islands controlled by the Japanese were to the PT-109 crew. The crew swam to another island where they found coconuts. Kennedy carved a message requesting help into a coconut and gave it to two natives. They carried it to a New Zealand commander on a nearby island. ''If they had been caught they would have been tortured and then killed,'' Max Kennedy said. Max Kennedy had an opportunity to meet those two men on Dr. Ballard's expedition. That meeting is chronicled in a National Geographic special that was broadcast on MSNBC last week. A six-minute version of the television show is part of the exhibit. A boat came to rescue Kennedy's crew. Kennedy was later cited by the Navy for his bravery. All of PT-109's crew are now dead. Dr. Ballard, who is known for his discovery of the Titanic in 1985 as well as many other wrecks, | Uncovering PT-109 And Family History |
1444838_0 | THE ROYAL PHYSICIAN'S VISIT, by Per Olov Enquist. (Washington Square, $14.) Set in the Danish court in the 1770's, this fact-based yarn by a veteran Swedish novelist and playwright tells of how the German physician to the young king becomes Denmark's de facto ruler, and of how the idealistic doctor's affair with the queen dashes his dream of transforming the backward kingdom into a land of liberté, égalité et fraternité. Last year our reviewer, Bruce Bawer, said the ''principal characters are realized with a vividness and subtlety that place the book in the front ranks of contemporary literary fiction.'' Another Swedish novel, Doctor Glas, by Hjalmar Soderberg (Anchor, $12), records the psychic unraveling of a Stockholm doctor, gradually driven by an inner voice to murder a repulsive local pastor. Originally published in Sweden in 1905, this ''brief, strange book . . . sketches the light and shadows of its time,'' Adrian Mitchell wrote here in 1964. ''It is a volcano, shaking, about to erupt.'' THE DREAM OF REASON: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, by Anthony Gottlieb. (Norton, $17.95.) Using few technical terms and a witty style, this survey of the development of Western rationality spans the 2,000 or so years between Aristotle and Descartes (a second volume is planned). Gottlieb, the executive editor of The Economist, ''writes with fluency and lucidity, with a gift for making even difficult matters seem comprehensible,'' Richard Jenkyns said here last year. FOR ROUENNA, by Sigrid Nunez. (Picador USA, $13.) This novel's narrator, a spiritually adrift writer, is reluctantly drawn into the orbit of a woman whose memories of her service as a combat nurse in Vietnam are both horrifying and thrilling. The narrator's ''depressive universe of fine judgments . . . is blown away by the tragic vitality of a blue-collar figure of rough insight, ordinary taste and an incapacity for self-delusion,'' Richard Eder wrote here in 2001. ISADORA: A Sensational Life, by Peter Kurth. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $17.95.) This biography traces the blazing path of Isadora Duncan, the progenitor of modern dance and quintessential free-spirited American, who charmed Europe throughout the first quarter of the 20th century even as she scandalized respectable society with her flamboyantly unconventional behavior. Kurth's evenhanded approach is sardonic yet appreciative, and his ''excellent work'' provides ''the fullest and most coherent account of the life to date,'' Robert Gottlieb said in these pages | New & Noteworthy Paperbacks |
1444981_0 | Like a patient on life-support, the old Towers Nursing Home, a chateau-style landmark at 106th Street and Central Park West, has long teetered on the brink. But this time, some preservationists were afraid that death was near. Built in 1884 as the nation's first cancer hospital, the building had sat dormant for 27 years, despite a parade of developers who took turns trying to resuscitate the ailing landmark. They included Ian Schrager, of Studio 54 fame, who tried but failed to renovate it into apartments. In early 2001, a Chicago developer actually broke ground on a $200 million project to transform the hospital into a regal foothold for a 26-story residential tower. Work proceeded steadily. The interiors were gutted, delicately, so as not weaken the red-brick and sandstone-trim shell. Ailanthus trees, otherwise known as ''tenement palms,'' that had sprouted from the turrets were surgically removed. Slabs from the roof were peeled off, bringing sunlight where pigeons and crack users once nested. Then last November, without any word to neighbors, construction stopped. ''The building has been opened to the elements,'' said Kate Wood, executive director of Landmark West, an advocacy group. Instead of stabilizing and preserving the building, Ms. Wood said, the developer was accelerating its deterioration. ''It's demolition by neglect,'' she added. According to the developer, Daniel E. McLean, the president of MCL Companies in Chicago, the problem was money. ''The financing we had was stopped,'' he said. ''After Sept. 11, there were a lot of people who lost confidence.'' Last month, local preservationists pleaded with the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to intervene before it was too late. The building had been granted landmark status in 1976 as ''one of the most distinguished buildings facing Central Park.'' Unknown to the letter writers, Columbia University had stepped in a month earlier and bought 50 of the 99 units for its faculty. The condominiums, which were being marketed for $1.3 million to $7.2 million, will offer valet parking, a health spa and views of Central Park. Few units had been sold previously, in part because of the neighborhood's untested market for multi-million-dollar apartments. With half the units now sold, Mr. McLean secured a $130 million construction loan three weeks ago, and work crews returned to the site almost immediately. ''There's been a lot of rumors floating around,'' Mr. McLean said. ''The building should be complete in 18 months.'' DENNY LEE NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: | One More Rescue Attempt For a Battered Landmark |
1444932_0 | ''THE LARAMIE PROJECT,'' the play that the director Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project created about the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming, had its world premiere in 2000 at the Denver Center Theater Company. The production moved directly to New York for a respectfully received Off Broadway run. As frequently happens to successful plays, ''The Laramie Project'' was taken up by numerous regional theaters -- it was the second-most-produced play of the 2001-02 season, according to American Theater magazine -- and made into a star-studded HBO movie, which was broadcast in March. Ordinarily, that would complete the lifespan of a play. Once it has been published and filmed, it more or less retires from public consciousness. But ''The Laramie Project'' has had an extended life. This season alone there will be nine professional productions in the United States, one in England and 17 in Germany. And between January 2002 and June 2003, some 440 productions by American high schools, colleges and amateur theater groups will have taken place -- a number in very small towns, from Hattiesburg, Miss., to Anacortes, Wash. Clearly, ''The Laramie Project'' has entered the mainstream of American culture in a way few plays do. More than a docu-drama fleshing out a news story, it has become a catalyst for communities to discuss something of urgent importance: in this case, hate crimes, homophobia and the treatment of difference in American society. Mr. Kaufman and members of his company first traveled to Wyoming in November 1998, a month after Matthew Shepard had been savagely beaten, tied to a fence and left to die by two local men his age whom he had met in a Laramie bar. The brutality and symbolism of the attack brought worldwide attention. Over the course of two years, Tectonic members interviewed 200 townspeople and boiled down 400 hours of transcripts to a three-hour play involving 67 characters. For the most part, they address the audience directly, voicing every possible sentiment about Shepard's murder and the environment in which it took place. The open-endedness of the theatrical style provides any number of ways for a particular community to engage with the play. For example, a production that opened last month at a public school, Newark Memorial High School in California, near San Francisco, took on unexpected immediacy in the aftermath of the murder of a local transgendered | A Play Has a Second Life as a Stage for Discussion |
1450131_5 | plate. If the wreath is lighted, the lights should be designed specifically for outdoor use on an automobile and the bulbs should be white and nonflashing to avoid mimicking emergency vehicles. In most cases the wreath will not block air intake enough to overheat the engine. But while putting a wreath on a car is doable, is it wise? Mr. Greene at Griot's Garage recommends buying a double-sided wreath and then putting a barrier like a piece of cloth between the car and the wreath, to decrease the chances that the wire frame might touch the car. He recommends attaching the wreath with several plastic pull ties, not wire. No matter what the precautions, he wouldn't put one on his own car, a BMW M3. ''The wire ring inside a wreath and the needles could abrade the finish on the hood or grille,'' he said. ''Anything rubbing against the car, anything with dirt on it, acts like sandpaper.'' In the worst case, a wreath could cause irreversible cosmetic damage to a chrome grille. ''If you scratch chrome,'' he warned, ''it's toast.'' SOURCES Wreathing Your Car With a Holiday Salute DRIVERS who like to greet other vehicles on the road with holiday spirit have a number of sources for decorations. Here is a sampling: FRESH GREENS -- A balsam wreath for automobiles is sold by Cube Mountain Products for $12.95 plus shipping and handling. The wreath is single-sided and comes with a red bow and a plastic pull tie for attachment (800-639-0847; www.cubemtn.com). LIGHT UP THE SNOWFLAKE -- The Iowa 80 Truck Stop sells illuminated displays in the shape of a snowflake or Christmas tree for $17.99. The store also sells a plastic wreath 20 inches in diameter with white lights for $24.99. All connect directly to the car battery. Also available is a string of 25 clear lights for $9.99 that connects to the cigarette lighter (866-446-9280; www.iowa80.com). INSIDE PLUG-IN -- A plastic wreath 18 inches in diameter, with clear lights, has been selling well for J. C. Penney. The wreath attaches to the cigarette lighter and costs $29.99 (800-222-6161; www.jcpenney.com). HOLIDAY FLASH -- Light-up green and red tire valve caps are an accessory for drivers who want to trick out their vehicles. Each cap has a battery-powered light that flashes when the tire moves. The effect is a circle of light around the wheel (800-935-6366; $12.99 a pair). DRIVING | The Holiday Spirit Taken Out for a Spin |
1450160_0 | A baby girl born infected with the West Nile virus in Syracuse a month ago is the world's first documented case in which the virus was transmitted in the womb, health officials said yesterday. The baby was born with severe brain defects and is being treated for a respiratory infection in a hospital, said Dr. Lloyd F. Novick, the Commissioner of the Onondaga County Health Department in Syracuse. West Nile infection was diagnosed in the baby's 20-year-old mother before the baby was born. Dr. Novick and federal health officials emphasized that they could document the baby's infection with the virus but could not prove that it caused her brain damage. ''It's very possible that West Nile virus was the cause of the baby's neurological deficit, but with only one case it's impossible to really determine cause and effect,'' Dr. Lyle Petersen, a West Nile expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference. To reduce the risk of infection by the mosquito-borne virus, Dr. Petersen and other health officials urged pregnant women to wear protective clothing and to use insect repellents containing Deet in the mosquito season. The virus is still being transmitted in some Southern states. ''There is no evidence that Deet causes problems for a mother or infant,'' Dr. Petersen said. The disease control agency said it did not advise doctors to use blood tests to screen pregnant women for West Nile virus, in part because no specific treatment exists for it. The mother-to-child transmission was another surprising development involving the virus, which was detected in the Western Hemisphere for the first time in New York City in 1999. Since then, epidemiologists have documented transmission of the West Nile virus through blood transfusions, to recipients of transplanted organs, possibly through breast milk, and to laboratory workers. Also, birds have spread the virus quickly and widely throughout the country. The virus was identified in 2,289 counties in 44 states and the District of Columbia this year and for the first time in 1,929 counties and 16 states, officials at the disease control agency said. In 2002, the virus was identified in 359 counties in 27 states and the District of Columbia. This year, the virus is known to have infected 3,389 people, of whom 2,354, or 69 percent, had inflammation of the brain or meningeal covering of the brain. There have been 232 fatalities, | Transmission Of West Nile In the Womb Is Confirmed |
1450197_0 | Air travelers should avoid putting food or undeveloped film into packed bags, and should not lock them, the Transportation Security Administration said today. The agency is already screening some checked bags for explosives, and is to screen all checked bags by Dec. 31. Some equipment for detecting explosives does so by measuring the density of objects, and chocolate, cheese and some other processed foods have the same density as some explosives. James M. Loy, the under secretary of transportation for security, speaking today at the airport in Jacksonville, Fla., said that screening had gone well during the Thanksgiving rush and that his agency was committed to having it go smoothly at Christmas and on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day as well. Planners say they hope that scanning machines will automatically ''clear'' 70 to 75 percent of the bags, and that operators, looking at computer-generated images, will clear most of the rest. But the remainder will have to be opened. If screeners open a bag, they will insert a note saying that they have done so. He recommended that if travelers had personal items in their baggage that they did not want handled they should pack the items in clear plastic bags. Photographic film can be damaged by the X-rays in scanning, and the agency advises travelers not to wrap gifts, whether checked or carried on, because they may have to be opened for inspection. THREATS AND RESPONSES: AIRPORT SECURITY | Agency Gives Revised Rules For Air Travel |
1447891_2 | black women were not uncommon; they represent 7.1 percent of all names listed on Massachusetts birth certificates for black girls from 1974 to 1979. The 50 percent advantage in interview requests for white-sounding names held in both Boston and Chicago, and for both men and women. This discrepancy complements findings from earlier studies in which researchers sent a small number of matched black and white ''auditors'' to apply for jobs in person. Typically, though not always, the black job seekers were less likely to be invited for an interview or offered a job. Those findings, however, were criticized because the applicants knew the intention of the study and might have behaved differently. In addition, the auditors might not have been well matched with the jobs in question; they could have been overqualified or underqualified. Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan's study is less susceptible to these concerns. First, they used a large number of names and inanimate résumés. Second, the job openings involved administrative, sales, clerical and managerial positions, and they submitted résumés patterned after real résumés of people who were actually seeking similar jobs. Their most alarming finding is that the likelihood of being called for an interview rises sharply with an applicant's credentials -- like experience and honors -- for those with white-sounding names, but much less for those with black-sounding names. A grave concern is that this phenomenon may be damping the incentives for blacks to acquire job skills, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy that perpetuates prejudice and misallocates resources. Two main theories explain labor market discrimination. One, known as taste-based discrimination, posits that employers -- or customers, co-workers or supervisors -- have a preference against hiring minority applicants, even if they know they are equally productive. The other, known as statistical discrimination, assumes that employers personally harbor no racial animus but cannot perfectly predict workers' productivity. In this case, an employer assessing an applicant would assign some weight to the average performance of the person's racial group, instead of basing the judgment solely on the individual's merits. A difference between these models is that employers sacrifice profits to indulge in taste-based discrimination, while, in principle, statistical discrimination, if based on accurate information, can help the bottom line. Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan cannot distinguish between the models -- and both may be applicable -- but they suspect that their finding that employers in heavily black areas of Chicago are less | Sticks and stones can break bones, but the wrong name can make a job hard to find. |
1447912_4 | axes and hoses to be fair defensive weapons, unlike guns, for which they often punish ship crews. The axes are used to sever the pirates' grappling hooks, and the hoses spraying water off the stern are supposed to make the pirate boats wet and slippery platforms from which to mount an attack. The pirate boats are typically equipped with several outboard motors on the back, allowing them to go up to three times as fast as the tankers, which lumber along at 11 knots, the equivalent of 13 land miles an hour. The pirates also use a low-tech version of stealth technology: they choose boats made of wood, which are hard to spot on radar. Laws in many ports bar the equipping of tankers with deck guns. Many companies, including Petroships Pte. Ltd., which operates the single-hull Petro Ranger and seven newer tankers, also ban the crews from carrying guns. ''Let's say we shoot at them,'' Mr. Fong said. ''When they board they would kill us all. Once they board we are finished -- if we lock the doors, they break the glass'' of the windows. Four and a half years ago, a dozen pirates swarmed aboard this tanker off the eastern coast of Malaysia and took the crew prisoner. The pirates sailed to China to try to sell the gasoline and diesel fuel, then worth about $2 million at wholesale prices. But a Chinese marine police vessel discovered the tanker and freed the crew. The International Maritime Bureau's records show a decline in reported attacks against vessels in the Strait of Malacca in the last two years. Bureau officials say that partly reflects the fact that fewer captains are reporting incidents, but also some progress in combating piracy. China has begun keeping pirates out of its waters, notably by executing members of one gang that murdered the entire crew of a vessel. Malaysia has purchased more fast patrol boats and has identified some of the ringleaders of pirate gangs based in nearby countries, said Muhamad Muda, the commander of Malaysia's marine police. ''We gave them the warning that if they ever came into Malaysian waters we will apprehend them and eliminate them,'' he said. Indonesia, struggling with a crippled economy, has proven unable to mount such an ambitious effort. Intelligence officials say most pirates are based on the Indonesian side of the strait and buy the collusion of villagers | Warnings From Al Qaeda Stir Fear That Terrorists May Attack Oil Tankers |
1449640_5 | added, Jacadi expects global revenue of about 135 million euros ($138 million), or 3 percent more than 2001. That would follow a 9 percent increase from 2000 to 2001. About 55 percent of revenues are generated outside France, compared with 35 percent five years ago, he said, with the United States contributing about 20 percent of non-French revenue, up from 17 percent five years ago. Jacadi is reacting to growing competition in its home market as well as to a European trend away from expensive frills and toward less-expensive streetwear. Indeed, while Jacadi still stresses what Mr. Charpentier likes to call ''bon chic, bon genre'' -- roughly, real chic, real style -- it overhauled the collection two years ago to accommodate the streetwear trend. ''The colors, the style, the cut are more modern,'' he said. Still, neither the streetwear trend nor the uncertain economy has yet crimped Americans' taste for the French children's look, and Jacadi has done well with velvet dresses that go for up to $79 or jumpers for up to $89. Part of its strategy is to aim at ethnic groups whose tastes may tend to the frilly. Its Web site, for instance, specifies that Tagalog is spoken at a Madison Avenue store and Korean at several other sites. Jacadi has also done well by introducing French customs like the ''birth list,'' analogous to a wedding list, which allows customers to sign up for gifts. The custom has long been widespread in France, and all gifts now account for roughly half of revenue in United States stores, according to Mr. Charpentier. Mr. Fiske of Boston Consulting said stores like Jacadi play on parents' ''sense of nostalgia, the pleasures of childhood,'' adding that sometimes nostalgia for ''what childhood wasn't is even more powerful than what it had been.'' He and other analysts say the latest trend among apparel makers like Jacadi is toward accessories -- children's furnishings, wallpaper, shoes, even perfume for a 5-year-old. Mr. Cohen of Bonpoint said his company recently opened Bonton, a huge new loftlike store in Bonpoint's old couture workshop in Paris offering children's clothes and accessories under one roof. ''The image is more modern, more sporty, more contemporary,'' he said. If the concept works, he said, expansion could follow, even to the United States. But an accessorized Jacadi is there first, Mr. Charpentier said, offering ''children's furniture, things for the room, lamps, strollers.'' | Taking French Children's Fashion Global |
1449681_1 | fish caught a couple of miles upriver from Phnom Penh on the Tonle Sap, represented a routine catch for the conservation program, which is sponsored by the University of California, Davis, and the National Geographic Conservation Trust. The really big scores, both for Mr. Hogan and for the fishermen, are the giant catfish, underwater beasts as heavy as two linebackers -- one of the biggest, and most endangered, freshwater fish in the world. Every fisherman with a bag net big enough to catch them has Mr. Hogan's mobile telephone number. He is ready, 24 hours a day, to speed up the river with a pocketful of cash. ''We know all the fishermen's names, we know who they are, and they know who we are,'' said Mr. Hogan, who has run the program for the last three years. He buys the big fish for about 45 cents a pound, measures them, photographs them, tags them and then slips them back into the rushing brown water. For a monster of, say, 600 pounds, the transaction can approach the average yearly income of a Cambodian fisherman. The Mekong Giant Catfish (Pangasianodon gigas), king of the river, is the largest and most vulnerable of its creatures, and Mr. Hogan said it would probably be just the first of many species to disappear. ''The fish is basically going extinct,'' he said. ''The first year I was out here, in 2000, they caught 11 fish. Then in 2001 they caught seven.'' As the current catfish season comes to an end, this year's total catch is down to five, only three of which survived their capture. In neighboring Thailand, their other remaining habitat, a new dam has blocked the migration of large fish and no giant catfish have been caught for the last two years. That marks the bottom of a steady decline, with 60 fish caught in 1989 and 16 in 1995. Thai specialists working to breed giant catfish in reservoirs have failed so far to establish self-sustaining populations. Even if they succeed, it is unlikely that the giant catfish will survive in the rivers much longer. The migrations of the giant catfish and hundreds of other species depend on the seasonal ebb and flow of floodwaters, which could be disrupted by a series of dams now being built in southern China and elsewhere along the Mekong and its tributaries. ''Hydropower development smooths out these cycles,'' | Mission on the Mekong: Save the Giant Catfish |
1449666_0 | A United Nations regional conference on population issues closed contentiously today, with Asian nations overwhelmingly rejecting efforts by the Bush administration to insert anti-abortion provisions into an international agreement on family planning. The head of the United States delegation also stirred controversy at the conference, held in Bangkok, by declaring on Monday, ''The United States supports the sanctity of life from conception to natural death.'' Abortion rights groups said the statement overstepped rulings by the Supreme Court that uphold the right to abortion. The seven-day Asian and Pacific Population Conference was almost completely consumed by an often acrimonious debate pitting the American delegation against Asian countries over abortion, sex education and methods of birth control, participants said. The United States had sought to win support from the more than 30 nations for changing language in a 1994 Cairo agreement on family planning, which called for controlling population growth by improving health care and education, fighting poverty and AIDS and expanding legal rights for women. The Bush administration contends that portions of the Cairo agreement -- which has become a blueprint for family planning policies in many developing countries -- promote abortion, pointing specifically to the phrases ''reproductive health services'' and ''reproductive rights.'' Over the past week, the American delegation pushed forcefully to delete or amend those phrases. It also pressed language promoting ''natural'' family planning methods, including abstinence, and it tried to remove references to adolescents in a section dealing with reproductive rights, arguing that the provision promoted sexual activity among teenagers. Today the American delegation's attempts to change portions of the Cairo agreement were rejected by votes of 31 to 1 and 32 to 1. It also unsuccessfully attempted to have a strongly worded ''general reservation'' denouncing abortion added to the conference's final plan for action. ''Because the United States supports innocent life from conception to natural death, the United States does not support, promote or endorse abortions, abortion-related services or the use of abortifacients,'' the addendum said, referring to substances that induce an abortion. The plan that was adopted includes steps to implement the family planning agreement reached in Cairo. It suggested fighting poverty by concentrating on 12 areas, including family planning, gender equality and combatting H.I.V. and AIDS. Nearly 67 percent of the estimated 1.2 billion people who live in extreme poverty are in the Asia-Pacific region. The State Department said in a statement: ''Some participants at | Over U.S. Protest, Asian Group Approves Family Planning Goals |
1449102_0 | IF you know how to find out how much money was spent last year on advertising aimed at children or how many foreign students are enrolled in American universities, you might -- just might -- be able to work at Harper's Magazine for a few months. That is, if you could also successfully complete the rest of an elaborate application that tests writing skills as well as detailed familiarity with the magazine. If accepted, you will be given interesting assignments enabling you to work closely with the magazine's editors and develop valuable professional contacts. There is a catch, though: you will be expected to work full time without pay. Despite this drawback, about 150 people, most of them college graduates, applied for 12 internship slots at the magazine during the past year, said Rachel A. Monahan, an assistant editor at Harper's. ''It sometimes frightens me to see what qualified people we reject,'' said Ms. Monahan, herself a former intern. It is nothing new for people to work without pay while attending college, say, while studying acting. But in this tough economy, many young New Yorkers find that having excelled at top schools is no longer enough to impress a future employer, and more are seeking unpaid work after they graduate. ''I wouldn't say it's a huge trend,'' said Jane B. Celwyn, the director of career development at Barnard College. ''But the fact that we're hearing it at all is something relatively new.'' Graduating seniors are facing the worst job market in two decades, she said. And an already dismal job outlook is expected to worsen. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a research organization, employers in the Northeast responding to a recent survey said they expected to hire 8 percent fewer graduates this academic year than they did last year. No one knows the number of unpaid interns in New York, but they can be found at museums, public radio stations and research institutions as well as magazines. One enterprising Duke graduate and biology major, Ben Tweel, 23, effectively created his own internship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center by offering to work as a volunteer laboratory technician. While job hunting, Mr. Tweel noticed that interviewers would pull his résumé out of a stack of 50 or more. ''I realized I had to make myself stand out,'' he said. Mr. Tweel finds the work very rewarding and says | Finding Rewards in the Job, Not the Pay |
1448713_0 | The grand 21st-century movement toward industrialized biology took a rapid scurry forward this year with the invention of a remote-controlled rodent. The ''ratbot,'' created at the State University of New York's Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, is a lab rat wearing a tiny radio-controlled backpack, operated by a human working at a remote laptop computer. Three wires connect the backpack to the rat's brain. One sends a signal that makes the rat turn left, the other makes it turn right and the third stimulates the ''medial forebrain bundle,'' causing sensations of intense pleasure to the rat. By firing the pleasure button whenever the rat turns or moves in the desired direction, the human operator can direct the ratbot to scurry through tight pipes, climb trees, even master its instinctive fear and stroll boldly through brightly lighted open spaces -- lured on by this overwhelming electronic bliss. The SUNY researchers play up the noble idea that cheap, disposable rats might carry out the dangerous activities of expensively trained rescue dogs. Outfitted with tiny video cameras, ratbots might search for earthquake victims trapped under rubble, for instance. But it is just as easy to envision many vastly more sinister applications of ratbots in the fields of espionage and warfare. A rat that will go where it is told is an ideal delivery system for biological weapons. And recall: rats are traditional lab specimens because most anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human. How many people would seek out this ''botting'' process just for the ecstatic sense of pleasurable surrender to another's commanding will? To be botted, with or without one's consent, may turn out to be one of the age's darkest and creepiest native vices. Bruce Sterling | The Year in Ideas; Remote-Controlled Rats |
1448892_0 | THE new baggage screening rules being phased in at the nation's 429 commercial airports are creating a host of concerns for holiday travelers, with many wondering about delays, thefts and even whether they should carry wrapped gifts. Congress set a Dec. 31 deadline for the federal Transportation Security Administration to screen all checked baggage for explosives. Though the agency is expected to meet the deadline at the majority of airports, it will receive extensions of up to a year at 15 to 30 of the largest airports to fully comply, according to Stephen Van Beek, senior vice president of policy for Airports Council International North America, a trade association. Five methods will be used to screen luggage: explosive detection systems, or E.D.S., which are machines the size of minivans that use technology similar to that for CAT scans in hospitals; explosive trace-detection machines, whose operators rub a gauze pad over a piece of luggage, then feed the pad into the machine for analysis; explosive sniffing dogs; bag-matching systems; and old-fashioned searches by hand. The security agency has said that it will determine which methods will be used at each airport after consulting with airport managers. Last week, the administration eased some security measures, which could help speed the travel process. Cars will be allowed to park closer to airports, in spaces that had been off-limits for security reasons after the Sept. 11 attacks. Federal authorities also said some passengers, after passing through initial security checkpoints, would be screened only at randomly selected gates. Still, some experts warn that the new baggage security procedures, in combination with everything else, may result in significant delays and cause some people to miss flights. ''Travelers are going to have to brace themselves,'' said Kenneth P. Quinn, a former chief counsel for the Federal Aviation Administration who now represents airports and security companies. ''The ability to process 1.5 billion bags plus through E.D.S. in an accurate and expeditious manner is highly suspect.'' There is also the potential for theft or damage if bags are opened for searches in areas where their owners are not present. ''I know a lot of travelers lock their bags, and I expect some locks will be broken,'' said Bruce Baumgartner, manager of aviation at Denver International Airport. It is unclear who will be liable if theft or damage occurs. Robert Johnson, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, said it | Personal Business; As Screening Increases, Travel Light to Travel Best |
1448550_3 | to cultivate disdain for talking, laughing, swearing, dinner-party attendance, sex before marriage and theatergoing, unless they were able to focus on the moral of the drama to the exclusion of all other pleasures. All this makes Stoicism an astringent tonic for a society afraid of its own eager submission to the reign of its impulses. It is not a stretch to think of the Stoics as the Drs. Laura and Phil of the ancient world. They thought of themselves as therapists; the Roman philosopher Seneca called Stoicism a philosophy that came like a physician to heal the sick. Marcus, who wrote in the stern but kindly voice of the self-help guru (his slogan was, ''It's up to you!''), holds particular appeal for leaders in need of self-control. Of course, there will always be those who read Stoic writing because they consider it their duty to master the great ideas of the past. But people actually converted to Stoicism tend to be drawn to it by a more visceral urge: Stoics self-flagellate. They never try to hide their weaknesses; they simply beat them out of existence. ''Go on abusing yourself, O my soul!'' wrote Marcus Aurelius. ''Not long and you will lose the opportunity to show yourself any respect.'' The more grandly the Stoic vaunts his unconcern with fame or glory, the more he reveals about his battle against a lust for those things. ''The entire earth is but a piece of dust blowing through the firmament, and the inhabited part of the earth a small fraction thereof,'' Marcus wrote. ''In such a grand space, how many do you think will think of you?'' Contemporary pop Stoicism, like the original philosophical version, offers a vehicle for self-loathing. ''Gladiator'' was a full-blown Hollywood blockbuster that railed against the corruptions of Colosseum entertainment. What made Marcus Aurelius' son Commodus a villain, among other things, was that he recycled his father's glorious military campaigns in the form of gladiatorial variety shows. ''A Man in Full'' is a comedy that could only have been written by a man who had spent a lifetime cataloging the details whereby Americans flaunt their hard-won social status, even if the book cautioned against such worldly aspirations. The newfangled Stoicism improves on the older kind in that it never demands that its adherents become ascetics or renounce anything. A philosophy that lets us do what we want and hate ourselves | A Philosopher in Full |
1448575_0 | With strict post-Sept. 11 airport security rules in effect as the heavy holiday travel season draws millions of passengers to airlines, the Transportation Security Administration has issued advice on how to get through the ordeal as smoothly as possible. One important consideration is the increase in the amount of X-rays that checked luggage will be subjected to. The agency now suggests that passengers not put undeveloped film into their checked luggage, either exposed or unexposed, because it may be damaged by the radiation. Even the lower-radiation machines used to examine carry-on baggage can damage some film, including that rated at ASA 800 or above, specialized or sensitive film, or any film that is subject to such examinations more than four or five times, because the effect of X-rays is cumulative. One way to avoid disappointment over ruined holiday pictures is to buy film at your destination and have it developed there. Passengers with undeveloped film may ask the screener to inspect it by hand. The list of what may or may not be taken on a plane has been updated. Knitting needles, for example, may now go aboard as carry-on luggage, as can safety razors, but scissors with pointed metal tips cannot. Sporting goods like baseball bats, golf clubs and spear guns cannot be taken aboard, but can be included in checked baggage. The agency's full list is available at www.tsatraveltips.us. Since gifts are subject to examination in both carry-on and checked luggage, the agency suggests that they be wrapped on arrival or shipped in advance. To speed the way through the checkpoint, the security agency suggests that passengers place their keys, coins, cellphones, jewelry and other metal objects in their carry-on luggage. After you go through the metal detector, you can then retrieve the items after the luggage goes through the X-ray machines. And, since the agency included it on the list of dos and don'ts, the following presumably occurred: ''ALERT! Babies should NEVER be left in an infant carrier while it goes through the X-ray machine.'' Noted. IRVIN MOLOTSKY TRAVEL ADVISORY | Attention Holiday Shoppers: Pack Carefully |
1449010_1 | methods, officials said. But an array of Asian and European diplomats attending the conference, as well as representatives of nonprofit organizations observing the event, asserted on Friday that the United States delegation was virtually isolated in its position. These observers said the administration was opposed by the majority of the approximately 30 nations represented at the conference, including India, Indonesia, China and Pakistan. They also argued that the American delegation's refusal to budge from its demands had stalemated the conference and made discussion of other pressing issues, like H.I.V. and AIDS prevention, impossible. ''People hoped to discuss very practical, service oriented things: how to develop services to deal with sexually transmitted infections, H.I.V. and AIDS, how to do sex education,'' an Asian diplomat said. ''People's frustration was that we're not able to discuss what we really want to discuss, because the U.S. insists on renegotiating key Cairo concepts which we are not willing to do.'' Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who supports abortion rights and who sent an observer to the conference, said, ''This is another example of the Bush Administration versus the world that, regrettably, will be at the expense of women.'' But a State Department official asserted that ''some participants in the conference are seeking to force the United States to agree to language supporting abortion.'' ''Our goals are to focus on poverty, health and education, respect for women and the family as the fundamental unit of society,'' the official said. ''We seek an outcome that does not support or promote abortion.'' The fight in Bangkok comes at a time when the Bush administration has been trying to win international support for its Iraq policies and to dispel the perception that it is increasingly acting on its own. Some delegates argued that the dispute was undermining both efforts. Those critics also asserted that the Bush White House, like the Reagan White House before it, was carrying the abortion fight overseas mainly to bolster its support among Catholic and fundamentalist Christian voters. The critics also pointed to the presence of a former adviser to the Vatican, John Klink, on the United States delegation in Bangkok and at previous family-planning conferences. A State Department official said Mr. Klink was serving in a voluntary capacity at the behest of the White House. ''This is purely about domestic politics,'' said Adrienne Germain, president of the International Women's Health Coalition. | U.S. Raises Abortion Issue At Conference On Families |
1448692_0 | Cellphones were sometimes called ''wingless angels'' after the tragedies of Sept. 11. They helped save trapped people and quickly reunited disaster survivors. They enabled the captive uprising that kept a fourth hijacked plane from attacking Congress or the White House, thus saving America's political leadership from the fate of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. In 2002 came the ''SensorNet'' proposal, the first coherent plan to transform the American cellphone system into an organized, state-supported bulwark of homeland security. The scheme is simple. The United States has some 30,000 cell-phone towers coast to coast. By no coincidence, these towers are grouped around the densest population centers, usually in the tallest points around. Cellphone towers therefore make ideal platforms for anthrax sensors, which sniff the wind for dangerous spores. In biowarfare, early warning strongly favors the defenders. An attack that is quickly detected and identified can be snuffed out before it becomes a raging plague. Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, once a stalwart of cold war nuclear-bomb research, is the home of the SensorNet effort. Scientists at Oak Ridge were already engaged in a five-year, $45-million project to develop an early-warning air sensor to detect biological and chemical attacks: the Block II Chem-Bio Mass Spectrometer. Similar sensors for detecting radiological exposure already exist. Under SensorNet, such units would be strapped to cellphone towers, where they would get solid physical support and cheap, dependable electric power. Linked together, these sensors might become an instant national alarm system -- for a mere $2 billion or so. Of course, there are a number of airborne threats to American health and safety that are caused not by Al Qaeda but by Americans themselves: vehicle exhaust, factory emissions and cigarette smoke. SensorNet could keep an eye on those as well. For its investment, then, the American public might harness today's bleak paranoia and provide a genuine and long-lasting improvement in public health and the cleanliness of American cities. Bruce Sterling THE YEAR IN IDEAS | Cell-Tower Anthranx-Detection Network, The |
1448982_0 | Anyone who has money, a good job or a friend in the right place has long since abandoned this riverside city. Banks and government offices have drawn their shutters. The medical clinic will close its doors for good next week. Empty buildings have been taken over by squatters. The people who remain here are poor, desperate, unlucky or all three. They are Noahs in search of an ark. Just over six months from now, the silt-laden Yangtze River, swelled by the giant Three Gorges Dam, will inundate Yunyang's quay, then the old promenade, then the river-view apartment buildings. It will lap up to the city's main street. Even the poor will have to move to higher ground by then, but many still do not know how. ''We want to live someplace that has flowers and lights, where it's pretty and not so dark all the time,'' said Jie Shibi, a 43-year-old mother of two who has lost her job as a port worker. ''We just want to leave.'' The Three Gorges Dam is the largest hydroelectric project ever attempted. It is someday supposed to generate as much electricity as 18 nuclear power plants and help control the flood-prone river. Yet its cost is high, even beyond the $30 billion price tag of the dam itself. The dam will create a virtual inland sea and raise the level of the Yangtze for 300 miles upstream, displacing 1.13 million people, more than 120 cities and towns, and uncountable historic artifacts. Low-lying Yunyang, the county seat, is the most intensely affected, with 160,000 people who must move. The government has provided some relocated people with homes in wealthier places, like Shanghai. Others now live about 20 miles upstream in New Yunyang. It has shiny pink- and yellow-tiled apartment buildings and a manicured park overlooking the Yangtze from a bluff. The heaviest burden is borne by those who are staying on in what will remain of the old city. Even after demolition crews finish blowing up buildings that fall beneath the projected new water line, and even after workers finish stripping the 1,700-year-old Zhang Fei Temple of its treasures and carting them away to a new site, many thousands of people will still call this place home. Parts of the old city will survive the deluge, but its residents say its spirit has been fully submerged. ''Emigration has left this place destitute,'' said Bao | A Coming Flood Erodes the Life of a Chinese City |
1448631_0 | The dream of e-mail has always been that of an open world. It was to be a revved-up cognate of the telephone and, hearkening to a simpler age, shouting across the village square. With a few keyboard strokes, Jimmy or Timmy in Brisbane, Australia, could easily shout out to another Jimmy or Timmy in Sandusky, Ohio. Those days, however, may soon be gone -- thanks to whitelisting, a new technology that allows users to keep bothersome strangers out of their e-mail in box. The primary reason e-mail is becoming a closed system is spam, the dreaded electronic junk mail that floods in under the guise of deceptive subject headings like ''Great seeing you last week'' or ''I found those pictures you wanted!'' In recent years, spam has become an annoyance pandemic. The average Web user gets more than 2,000 unsolicited messages annually. Businesses, especially, have suffered. According to one study, managers spend 10 minutes of every hour being forced to read about low mortgage rates, how to increase the size of certain body parts and the like. These are hardly welcome new components of a well-oiled economy. Whitelisting technology helps you to filter out this chaff by permitting you to receive e-mail only from people and Internet vendors you specify. (The name is a play on blacklisting, in which people on a specified list are ostracized.) Most major e-mail providers now include some kind of filtering service. America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo!, for example, have incorporated whitelist guards into their systems -- with varying success. AOL itself has a five-option smorgasbord, which includes blocking just about everything or allowing only certain domain names (say, Amazon.com). But whitelisting in its purest form -- granting access solely to those whose exact addresses you know at this moment -- has proved to be a bit too black and white for most consumers. People don't want the spam, but they do want to hear from that old high-school sweetheart. Efforts are now being made to gray things up a bit, to create technology that probes deeper, in order to avoid banishing as-yet-unknown e-mail messages you might actually want to read. An e-mail security firm called MessageLabs has enlisted heuristics technology, identifying what it calls ''spam DNA'' instead of going with the all-or-nothing approach. This is probably a good thing. E-mail may be the Wild West of communication -- a virtual seedy saloon -- but | The Year in Ideas; Whitelisting |
1448588_0 | The human mouth is home to more than 300 species of bacteria living in a mucky film of proteins, carbohydrates and germs known as a biofilm. Swirling around in our saliva, this biofilm contains one particularly nasty bug, named Streptococcus mutans, that secretes an enzyme that attacks tooth enamel and causes cavities. Now, however, scientists have designed a genetically engineered bacterium that does toothpaste one better: it actually kills the Streptococcus in your mouth. British and Swedish researchers took the harmless Lactobacillus zeae bacterium commonly found in yogurt and added a gene to it that enables it to produce antibodies. Thus armed, the Lactobacillus then goes hunting for Streptococcus mutans and poisons it by sticking the antibodies to its surface. In theory, human saliva could be stripped of its meanest bug. Last July, startling results of experiments on rat teeth were published in Nature Biotechnology. The rats were fed supersweet drinks and simultaneously had their teeth doused with the friendly Lactobacillus germ. After only a few weeks, their rates of tooth decay were 40 percent lower than rats in a control group. Before scientists perform these experiments on humans, however, they must grapple with what is known as the law of unintended effects. The ''oral ecology'' of the human mouth is highly dynamic and complex. If scientists upset the mouth's biochemical balance through genetic engineering, it might cause unpleasant surprises somewhere down the road. If scientists kill off the Streptococcus with antibodies, would a potentially explosive Darwinian niche be opened up into which all kinds of fearful unknowns might pour? As it happens, a researcher at the University of Florida, Robert Burne, has perhaps come up with another genetic twist that may help solve this problem. Burne has devised various strains of Streptococcus mutans that have been supplemented with a gene enabling them to produce an enzyme called urease. Urease facilitates the production of ammonia, a base for enamel-making in the tooth. In theory, Burne's brilliant bacterium could kill its more malevolent siblings and rebuild your teeth at the same time! Again, experiments on sweets-eating rats have been promising. One big hurdle remains, however: getting the average American to swill genetically modified bugs instead of Listerine. Lawrence Osborne | The Year in Ideas; Genetically Modified Saliva |
1448585_0 | American cities used to become rich and important by attracting high-energy, low-skilled workers from abroad or from farm states. Now they do the same thing by luring brainy young people away from less livable American cities. Austin, San Francisco and Seattle are sparkling with newly arrived smarties who recently fled Cleveland, Harrisburg and St. Louis. The 2000 census, which shows a clear correlation between a city's prosperity and its attractiveness to college graduates, suggests a new, winner-take-all pattern in urban growth. A handful of cities are quickly moving away from the pack in their ability to attract and retain workers with college degrees. In the top 100 metro areas, the 25 cities that began the 90's with the highest percentage of college graduates ended the decade with even more. The highfliers saw the educated share of their population jump by 6 percentage points -- twice the average growth of the other 75 cities. Winning seems to feed on itself, as cities like San Francisco, Boston and San Diego have become more than just good places to find a high-paying job. They are cool places to hang out, with gourmet food, great live music and an abundance of well-spoken, well-dressed singles looking for sex and marriage. Losing, too, feeds on itself. Cities like El Paso, Gary and Hartford are dreary places with diminishing night life and an acute shortage of upwardly mobile romantic prospects. The good catches with college degrees have high-tailed it to Raleigh-Durham or Denver. (It is hard for demographers to tweeze out patterns in huge cities like New York or L.A. They gain and lose millions of smart people in ways that do not lend themselves to easy analysis.) There is a downside for the winner cities -- chronic inequality. Cities with the highest percentage of college graduates also tend to attract low-skill, low-wage newcomers to work in the yuppie service economy. They make coffee, mow lawns and mind babies, but have low salaries, poor benefits and little upward mobility. They also tend to be segregated, not by race but by income, from the highfliers they serve. Yet there is no mistaking the dollar value of luring in ever-more-smart young things. The Austin American-Statesman, in an analysis of nine years of income-tax records, found that 10,000 more people moved to Austin from Dallas-Fort Worth than moved in the other direction. Those who came to ever-smarter Austin were better | The Year in Ideas; Intellectual Magnet Cities |
1448954_1 | mismanagement -- including the practice of putting out every single fire -- have left dense thickets of undergrowth. Often these projects are aimed at protecting small communities at the forest edge. But rarely do they involve cutting so many trees, or such big ones, especially in sensitive wildlife habitat deeper in the woods. In its announcement of the project, the Forest Service referred to the logging euphemistically as ''management-caused changes in vegetation,'' and said the study would test whether the benefits of the cleared areas, which would create firebreaks, exceed the ecological damage, especially to the spotted owl habitat. Like the more famous northern spotted owl of the Pacific Northwest, the California species is struggling for survival. Environmental advocates who have long fought logging in the region, and some scientists, see this proposal as science on the model of Japanese whalers, who take their harpoons to sea in what they call a research project -- one that happens to put whale meat on the menus of pricey restaurants in Tokyo. ''This comes to almost 30,000 acres per year of suitable owl habitat that would be logged,'' said Chad Hanson, an anti-logging advocate at the John Muir Project and a Sierra Club board member. The conservation groups say the plan is an attempt to reverse existing rules, including those adopted during the Clinton administration, that put much of the forest off limits. As evidence they pointed to the administration's announcement last week of changes in rules governing logging -- changes that the government said were aimed at limiting forest fires. The administration's goal was to cut through environmental reviews, court appeals and litigation that slow approval of the projects. Mark Rey, the assistant secretary of agriculture who oversees the Forest Service, said adversaries in the debates should learn to trust each other and the government. ''I certainly trust the environmental groups,'' said Mr. Rey, who was formerly a lobbyist for a forest industry group. ''They've spent millions of dollars on political ads to demonize the administration, but that doesn't mean I don't trust them.'' He spoke with tongue firmly in cheek, knowing that environmental groups are certain to challenge the administration's proposals in court. In fact, there was a big ruling last week on a related issue, when a federal appeals court in San Francisco decided to reinstate a ban on building roads in 60 million acres of national forest. The | The Nation; To Save the Forest, The Trees Must Go |
1446188_5 | music halls. This year Mr. Busse has added more sites than ever before: Grant's Tomb, the New Amsterdam theater and several Central Park structures, including Bethesda Fountain, Belvedere Castle, the bandstand, the dairy and the Bridle Path Arch. The landmarks are not literal; they are projections of a fantasy New York invested with the rustic charm of a country visitor. ''See, the top is off Rockefeller Center,'' he says of a headless building with a Radio City marquee. ''But who looks up to see all those stories? And there's a whole lot more behind the public library in real life.'' In the wintry beauty of the garden, spring need never arrive; even self-described disaster is sort of sweet. ''Disaster?'' he asks, recalling earlier mishaps. ''Well, I learned never to put on acorns that were still edible. One year the squirrels ate the lampposts. They could have devoured the city. Somewhere there was a squirrel with some lacquered nuts.'' The buildings are made of a variety of plant life like contorta vines, eucalyptus and cinnamon bark. Each replica inspires its own substance. The Snuff Mill tavern is composed of tobacco leaves -- for what, after all, was snuff? The Washington Arch from Washington Square Park is made from a twisted willow and walnut shell. A grape leaf forms the Central Park bandstand. The Statue of Liberty holds aloft a dried blossom torch. This year Mr. Busse lettered the Apollo Theater sign in tinted radish seeds. Squint at the lettering, and you can also detect catalpa pods. As the Gingerbread Express winds through the minicity, I find refreshment in the small gorges, the whooshing waterfalls and the winding creeks. When the little locomotive chugs past, Mr. Busse's eyes follow with a longing one can share to become small enough to climb aboard and round the bend past the turrets of the Belevedere Castle and beyond. The Botanical Garden's Snow Dome is one of New York City's best holiday gifts to itself. Inside its glassed-in world, children can let their imaginations run free, adults may enjoy a pleasurable regression and lovers may embrace -- the garden in winter by electric starlight is, after all, among the most romantic places in town. Laura Shaine Cunningham is the author of the memoirs ''Sleeping Arrangements'' and ''A Place in the Country.'' Her most recent book is the novel ''Beautiful Bodies.'' All Aboard for the Holiday Express! | A Miniature Joy Ride on 1,000 Feet of Toy Track |
1446350_2 | settlement of a sexual abuse case she brought in 1991 and now works for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, SNAP, said that she was trying to telephone all 400 Californians on a list of those who had contacted the organization over the last 10 years to tell them about the new law. She is working from a desk at a Beverly Hills law firm, Kiesel, Boucher & Larson, which has handled many sexual abuse cases. While the Archdiocese of Boston, also besieged by lawsuits, which have already cost it about $50 million, announced this week that it might declare bankruptcy, the California bishops have not said that they would move in that direction. But in their letter and in other church communications, they imply that the church's people and good works are at risk from the anticipated wave of lawsuits. ''The Catholic church has been falsely portrayed as a large corporation with 'deep pockets,' '' the bishops' letter says. ''In reality, the vast majority of Catholic assets belong to the people of our parishes, schools, charities and other institutions.'' The letter, which many bishops will personally read to parishioners in churches this weekend, says that the church has taken many steps to prevent sexual abuse and that the law is unfair. It says: ''Some of the lawsuits may involve the revival of already settled cases and some may involve alleged perpetrators and witnesses long since dead. Under those circumstances it will be difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the truth.'' Raymond Boucher, a lawyer who has handled many cases against the church, denounced the bishops' letter as a ''repulsive and shameless'' legal tactic. ''It's a public relations ploy attempting to play on the guilt of Catholics in the hopes they will suppress victims from coming forward and filing claims,'' Mr. Boucher said in an interview. ''I'm going to be in church on Sunday and I plan to stand up and turn my back when they read that letter.'' [SNAP said on Thursday that it plans to distribute an alternative letter to parishioners on Sunday written by the mother of a molestation victim in Kansas who committed suicide.] The California law waiving the statute of limitations for a year was drafted in part by Laurence E. Drivon, a Stockton lawyer who has won millions of dollars in sexual abuse claims against the church. Mr. Drivon had access to | California Dioceses Brace for New Abuse Suits as Law Allows Litigation of Old Cases |
1445831_0 | To the Editor: The Harvard study on cellphones and drivers illustrates how cost-benefit analysts can miss the forest for the trees (''The Pros and Cons of Car Cellphones Are Called Equal,'' news article, Dec. 2). The real issue is not whether the perceived benefits to the cellphone-using drivers equal or exceed the costs (2,600 estimated highway deaths and 330,000 injuries per year). It's whether those selfish drivers have the right to put my life at risk for their momentary convenience. EDWARD GROTH III Pelham, N.Y., Dec. 3, 2002 | Danger Ahead: Driver on the Phone |
1445756_1 | Kenyan coast. American and Kenyan officials have pointed to a Somali group called Al Itihaad, which is believed to have links to Al Qaeda. Both groups have been named as possible suspects in the attacks. The attention on the illegal traffic across the Kenyan-Somali border casts a new light on the historic smuggling routes that form a 2,000-mile arc from Pakistan down the eastern coast of Africa to the Comoros Islands, between Mozambique and Madagascar. Western officials suspect that in recent months Al Qaeda operatives have used the routes to move guns and people around the region, taking advantage of the predominantly Muslim areas along the coastline. If so, Al Qaeda would be continuing a pattern it established years ago. Kenyan officials say the bombs used in the 1998 attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and injured 4,000, were smuggled in from Somalia. The American military is stepping up its efforts to cut off the traffic in East Africa. It has begun outfitting the border post here with modern equipment like satellite telephones, and agreed to provide speed boats and four-wheel-drive vehicles as well. As one of its contributions to the war on terror, the German government regularly dispatches low-flying planes to track the movements of dhows, the wooden boats that meander up and down the coast here. People who know the region well express skepticism that the American-led effort will penetrate the age-old smuggling network, which is sustained by tribal links and religious sympathies. ''They have been using these routes for hundreds of years, and they know every dip and cut in the coastline,'' said a Western aid worker, who has worked in East Africa for 15 years. ''Every one of them is a Muslim, and they only trust each other.'' Of all the region's smuggling centers, the Kenyan-Somali border seems to highlight the difficulties in policing the illegal traffic in people and guns. The boundary, formed in 1925 by an agreement between what was then British East Africa and Italian-controlled Somaliland, cuts across 424 miles of trees and savannah to the shores of the Indian Ocean. From the air, there is not a hint of activity by either government for more than 100 miles. On the land, there is the seemingly infinite expanse of the African bush; and by sea, the wide vistas of ocean. Up close, the boundary seems lost | Kenya's Porous Border Lies Open to Arms Smugglers |
1445765_1 | favored clients, securities regulators began to see how haphazard the retention of e-mail messages was at some brokerage firms. For example, regulators found that some firms discarded, recycled, or wrote over the e-mail tapes that should have been kept, sometimes after less than a year. While some firms relied on their employees to preserve copies of their e-mail messages on their computers' hard drives, there were no systems in place to ensure that the e-mail messages were in fact maintained. In some cases, the hard drives of computers used to preserve e-mail messages were erased when an employee left a firm. In recent years, securities firms have argued to regulators that retaining e-mail messages is too onerous and that it is unclear which messages have to be kept. The firms have also been lobbying Congress to exempt e-mail messages from the records that must be maintained under securities laws. But the S.E.C. reaffirmed its position in November 2001 that e-mail messages are among the documents that must be preserved. Stuart Kaswell, general counsel of the Securities Industry Association, said in a statement yesterday: ''We hope this settlement paves the way for a final resolution to the record-keeping challenges that are currently confronting the industry. These challenges include clarifying the vague 'business as such' standard applicable to communications so as to more precisely define which internal e-mail communications a firm must retain.'' But several regulators rejected any notion that the law was imprecise. Linda C. Thomsen, deputy director of enforcement at the S.E.C., said, ''Everyone is free to try and change the existing law, but until it is changed you are obliged to comply with it.'' One person involved in the investigation said: ''What was disturbing here was not that someone made a good faith determination of a rule and was maybe wrong in how they interpreted it. They didn't like the rule and they were talking about changing it and in the meantime they just did not comply.'' Regulators involved in the case were careful to say that the brokerage firms had failed to comply with the law, not that they had deliberately destroyed documents. But the regulators said cases would be brought against firms if evidence of the destruction of e-mail messages surfaced in any of the continuing Wall Street investigations. Intentional destruction of e-mail messages could result in suspension or expulsion from the securities industry. All five firms | THE MARKETS: Market Place; Five Brokerage Firms Fined For Not Keeping Messages |
1449441_3 | in a 1994 accord with the United States and other countries in the region. At first, for example, Japan joined with South Korea, Russia and China in quietly arguing that it would be better to continue economic assistance to North Korea while resolving the nuclear crisis. American allies in the region, too, are said to lean toward upholding another part of the 1994 accord -- helping North Korea build two light-water nuclear reactors that could supply some of its energy needs without a risk that they could be converted to nuclear weapons production. The United States wants to cut off all such aid, except for food assistance to civilians, to protest North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Asian diplomats say the next pivotal moment on North Korea will come after presidential elections in South Korea on Thursday. Some in the Bush administration say that, without taking sides, they hope Mr. Lee, the hawk, will win the election. By the same token, they want to encourage the Japanese to stand up to North Korea and not give in to its demands for more economic benefits in return for halting its weapons program. The Japanese minister of state for defense, Shigeru Ishiba, was also at the meeting in Washington today. He and Ms. Kawaguchi said they also favored proceeding on a program to develop a missile defense system that would shield Japan and other countries from missile attacks from North Korea or other countries. They also said they supported United States policy on Iraq, particularly on returning to the United Nations Security Council if the inspections imposed by the Council are rebuffed by Baghdad. Secretary Powell declined to speculate on how Japan might help in any military effort against Iraq. In the past, Japan has shied from participation in direct military action. But in the Persian Gulf war, in 1991, Japan contributed several billion dollars to the war effort waged by the United States and its allies. Japan has continuously asserted that its postwar Constitution, written by Americans during the occupation, bars the use of its armed forces in anything but direct self-defense. ''We are in the closest coordination,'' Secretary Powell said, ''and it is up to the government of Japan, the people of Japan, to determine how they might respond in the face of a mandate from the international community to do something about Iraq's lack of cooperation.'' THREATS AND RESPONSES: DIPLOMACY | Japan Says Nuclear Effort In Korea Merits Hard Line |
1450603_3 | not handle seat changes or passengers checking luggage. Now, travelers checking luggage can indicate how many pieces they are checking; their luggage tags will print out at a nearby customer service agent who attaches the tags and take the bags. (With some airlines, passengers checking luggage need to use dedicated machines near these agents.) Jack Walsh, a spokesman for Alaska Airlines, said there had been a high degree of acceptance of the self-service machines among travelers, with 36 percent of passengers in November using self check-in. Asan example, he cited an instance this summer when two busloads of cruise passengers arrived at theAnchorage airport at the same time, a situation that might have caused lengthy waits without check-in kiosks. ''It took 13 minutes to process 90 cruise passengers,'' Mr. Walsh said, ''And a lot of them had never done self-service before.'' Alaska is one of three airlines that offer Web check-in besides the self-service kiosks -- a service it began offering in November 1999. Passengers on Alaska traveling with e-tickets can check in up to 30 hours before any domestic flight, at the Web site alaskaair.com. After entering an electronic ticket number or a confirmation number, travelers can print their boarding passes from a home computer, then check any luggage, if necessary, at self-service kiosk locations, curbside or at special ''Web bag drop'' locations at some airports. Northwest, which introduced Web check-in at nwa.com in May 2000, allows e-ticket passengers to check in online between 30 hours and 90 minutes before a flight, for all domestic and most international destinations. (International passengers must enter their passport information; documents are verified at the airport.) More recently, Delta introduced online check-in for its SkyMiles frequent flier members at delta.com (under Flight Tools), though the check-in window is somewhat more limited than for the other two airlines: between 6 hours and 30 minutes before a flight's departure. Web check-in is available only for Delta's domestic flights. American Airlines, which has a total of 495 self-service machines at 62 airports, was planning to add an online check-in option by this weekend at www.aa.com. As an incentive to get passengers to try self-service check-in, most airlines are offering bonus frequent flier miles to travelers who use their Web sites or kiosks to check in for a flight before Dec. 31. But airline representatives emphasized that passengers who need help from a ticket agent will not | Flight Check-In: Do It Yourself |
1450715_3 | publicity'' over accounting scandals. ''When students read that accountants are so important to the economy, they wonder whether they should go into it,'' Mr. Hollander said. ''The effect has been positive.'' The scandals may be helping in another way. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires more stringent procedures for top executives to sign off on financial statements. Those executives, in turn, are making underlings do likewise. And all those senior managers need expert advice. ''Sarbanes-Oxley has created enormous job opportunities for people,'' said Jeffrey R. Hoops, partner with Ernst & Young and president-elect of the New York State Society of C.P.A.'s. The stumbling economy has also probably increased the lure of a profession that offers job security and good money. Whatever the reason, the number of students who majored in accounting rose by 2 percent in the 2000-01 academic year, after declining in the boom years of the late 1990's, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. And Beatrice Sanders, the institute's director of academic and career development, says numbers for 2001-02 appear to show even more interest in the field. On the demand side, a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers on the degrees projected to be most desired by companies this academic year showed that accounting jumped to No. 1 from No. 3 last year across the nation, and remained at No. 1, where it was last year, in the Northeast. The public accounting firms are just now finishing up the bulk of their college hiring and preparing for the busy tax season. But they are expected to continue adding people next year at a strong clip. Blane Ruschak, national director of campus recruiting for KPMG, for example, said that while campus hiring for 2001 and 2002 remained ''pretty flat,'' at about 200 people in the New York metropolitan area, the firm expects the number to be ''slightly up'' for 2003. And Cindy Beeman, KPMG's national director of recruiting, who handles the hiring of experienced accountants, said that in the 2002 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, KPMG hired 800 such professionals in New York and that the company will probably do the same this year. ''The level of business hasn't gone away, it's increasing,'' Ms. Beeman said. It is unclear exactly what effect the demise of Arthur Andersen will have on the job market. While the large firms did buy many practices | A Silver Lining to Scandals: More Are Drawn to Accounting |
1450840_3 | responsible for feelings you didn't know you had. ''I'm not a racist'' came to sound a bit like ''I don't have any homosexual anxiety.'' ''Racism'' and the other terms of the 60's blurred the distinction between thoughts and deeds. The social scientists of the 50's had insisted that ''prejudice'' and ''discrimination'' were different things: Allport gave the example of an employer who dislikes Jews but treats them the same as anyone else. But ''racism'' suggested an unconscious attitude that invariably spilled over into behavior. As if in sympathy, the word ''bias'' acquired the same ambiguity around this time, as people began to use it not just for a mental predilection but for the actions that followed from it -- as in ''bias attack.'' Whatever the fortunes of the 60's social movements, their linguistic success was immediate and total. ''Negro'' was abandoned so rapidly that there were probably some Southerners who never used the word at all -- they went straight from ''colored'' to ''blacks.'' And while ''prejudice'' has survived, its use in racial contexts has been declining since the 60's. In a database of 18 major newspapers, the relative frequency of phrases like ''race prejudice'' has declined by 60 percent since 1980 (as far back as the online records go), while the frequency of ''racism'' has doubled. But those figures can be misleading. While the unreconstructed right was quick to adopt the new language, in their mouths the words were less the marks of new concepts than the relabelings of old ones -- not the discredited notions of the days of Jim Crow, but the notions that 50's liberals had discarded when they left words like ''prejudice'' behind. Listen to Senator Lott defending himself on the BET network: ''In order to be a racist, you have to feel superior. . . . I don't believe any man or any woman is superior to any other man or woman.'' That's pretty much the way someone like Allport would have defined ''prejudice'' in the 50's -- as a simple matter of mistaken beliefs, and ones you can confidently reassure someone you don't harbor. A LONG with Mr. Lott's pointing to the blacks he had hired, it suggested exactly the sort of comfortable assumptions people were rejecting when they abandoned ''prejudice'' for ''racism'' 40 years ago -- around the same time Americans were learning to smile at protestations of tolerance that began with | The Nation: Moving Target; The Shifting Lexicon of Race |
1450716_0 | A FEW weeks ago, just when the warnings that there might be a transit strike had begun to permeate our collective shield of denial, I rode Metro North back home. The man in the seat behind me talked nonstop into his cellphone, complaining to his unseen listener (who listened and listened and listened) about how he hated his commute. The train part wasn't so bad, he said, but he couldn't stand having to ride the subway all the way downtown. The cars were overheated, or underheated, and they smelled. There were always too many people, and they smelled, too. And, he continued, his voice rising, the looming strike was now threatening to take all that away. What would he do, he wailed, without his blasted subway ride? The conversation reminds me of a joke my grandmother used to tell: the food there is awful, and such small portions. That thought holds true for so many pieces of the workaday world. The wretched commute made precious is just one example. Our work is filled with burdens that leave a void when they are lifted. Beepers and cellphones come to mind. Most people who carry them for work hate them (particularly the beepers, which aren't useful for anything but making us jump). Maybe it's the symbolism of being always tethered to work, or the concrete interruptions of movies, meals and sleep. Either way, taking them off or shutting them down feels like liberation. But losing them -- that's something else again. To lose a reviled beeper is to suddenly feel lost. You check in obsessively, certain that something is happening and you are the only one not in the know. The bosses who hand out these electronic chains fall into this category, too. Many of us hate them. If not for those overseers we would not be working so hard and earning so little. If not for them, the department would run better; our worth would be more appreciated; staff memos would not be condescending; our ulcers would shrink. Then those same bosses are transferred or promoted or fired -- and most everything, at best, stays the same. The devil you know is often better than the devil you don't. How often have you missed the very person you had wished would leave? The meta-example of devils we desperately miss, of course, are our jobs themselves. They are grinding, underpaying and constraining. | It Just Stinks. But Don't Take It Away. |
1450783_3 | may run for a distance before falling. The hunter acquires possession upon the act of wounding the animal, not the eventual capture. Similarly, whalers acquire possession by landing a harpoon, not by subduing the animal. In the salvage cases, an individual may take possession of a wreck by exerting as much control ''as its nature and situation permit.'' Inadequate efforts, however, will not support a claim of possession. The ''nature and situation'' of the property at issue does not immediately lend itself to unequivocal dominion and control. It is impossible to wrap one's arms around a whale, a fleeing fox or a sunken ship. The opposite is true of a baseball hit into the stands of a stadium. Not only is it physically possible for a person to acquire unequivocal dominion and control of an abandoned baseball, but fans generally expect a claimant to have accomplished as much. Having reached a dead end with possession, the judge introduced the idea of Mr. Popov's ''pre-possession'' of the ball, something beyond wishing but short of having: A court sitting in equity has the authority to fashion rules and remedies designed to achieve fundamental fairness. Consistent with this principle, the court adopts the following rule. Where an actor undertakes significant but incomplete steps to achieve possession of a piece of abandoned personal property and the effort is interrupted by the unlawful acts of others, the actor has a legally cognizable pre-possessory interest in the property. Possession can be likened to a journey down a path. Mr. Popov began his journey unimpeded. He was fast approaching a fork in the road. A turn in one direction would lead to possession of the ball -- he would complete the catch. A turn in the other direction would result in a failure to achieve possession -- he would drop the ball. Our problem is that before Mr. Popov got to the point where the road forked, he was set upon by a gang of bandits, who dislodged the ball from his grasp. Recognition of a legally protected pre-possessory interest vests Mr. Popov with a qualified right to possession and enables him to advance a legitimate claim to the baseball based on a conversion theory. Moreover, it addresses the harm done by the unlawful actions of the crowd. It does not, however, address the interests of Mr. Hayashi. The court is required to balance the interests of | Word for Word/Play Ball!; How Finders Keepers Turned Into a Joint-Custody Case |
1450658_6 | has never married. She said she has felled her share of elk and caribou and knows how to handle a rod and reel. Mr. Barta took her goose hunting. ''I am absolutely upside-down crazy about her,'' Mr. Barta said. ''I am in full courtship and would love to marry this woman.'' The question is whether she wants him. ''There's potential,'' Anne said. The hunt continues. Mr. Barta preened for a photographer, smoothing his gray stubble of hair and sucking in his gut, trying to stand at an angle that made him look thinner, hoping that an in-shape, athletic woman, 30 to 45, with a lust for blood sports would notice him in the paper. ''I am not looking for a fake relationship and I am not looking for a Stepford wife,'' Mr. Barta said. ''I am looking for a mate for the rest of my life.'' A Living Socrates ''Good Evening, I'm Socrates,'' said Ronald Gross, dressed in a chiton, the ancient Greek version of a toga, sandals and a headband. Mr. Gross, 67, of Great Neck was standing in the community room at the Great Neck Library touting his latest book, ''Socrates' Way: Seven Master Keys to Using Your Mind to the Utmost'' (Putnam, 2002). He has been impersonating the philosopher for 14 years. As a boy, Mr. Gross noticed his father tearing a few pages out of a thick book every day as he left to catch the subway to work. It was Plato's ''Dialogues,'' where much of what is known about Socrates was recorded. ''He said that his work did not bring him into contact with very interesting people,'' Mr. Gross said, ''so the ride to work and the ride back home he could spend his time in the company of the most interesting men who ever lived and engage in the most interesting conversations and go to the most interesting parties and that's what he was doing when he was reading that.'' At age 12, his father took him to the play ''Barefoot in Athens,'' in which Socrates stomps around onstage, challenging authority. Mr. Gross didn't wear shoes for a week. Years later, in his first philosophy class at Syracuse University, Mr. Gross noticed a woman carrying a copy of Plato's ''Dialogues,'' which had been out when he checked the library's shelves. He has been married to the woman, Bea Gross, who teaches critical thinking at | On the Hunt, Cupid's Arrow In His Quiver |
1450634_0 | Two reports offering data and analysis of housing trends in New York City have recently been published. ''The State of New York City's Housing and Neighborhoods, 2002'' -- a community-by-community look at indicators like housing prices, mortgage originations, foreclosures, tax delinquencies and vacancy rates -- is being offered to the public by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at the New York University School of Law. The report, which includes 475 tables and maps, also tracks shifts in population, income, crime and school achievement levels. ''The data allows people in these communities to plan for future needs,'' said Prof. Michael Schill, the N.Y.U. center's director, who prepared the report with two research fellows, Denise Wallin and Glynis Daniels. The housing and neighborhood report is available, at no cost, at www.law.nyu.edu/realestatecenter, or by e-mailing creup@juris.law.nyu.edu. ''Housing NYC: Rents, Markets and Trends 2002,'' compiled by the New York City Rent Guidelines Board, focuses, particularly but not exclusively, on the city's rental market. ''Our data is a barometer for what it costs to run a building and how those costs translate to rents,'' said Anita Visser, executive director of the rent board. Information on ordering the report, which costs $23 plus shipping charges, is available at (212) 669-8246 or by e-mailing ask@housingnyc.com. Postings | POSTINGS: 2 New Reports on New York City Published; Analyzing Housing Trends |
1450849_0 | The black bears here are acting up again, popping out car windows and ransacking campsites, and park officials are struggling to understand why. After three years of extraordinary declines in bear encounters, the number of incidents has more than doubled this year from last year. No one has been hurt, but park officials are increasingly worried about that possibility. Two years ago, an elementary school teacher from Tennessee was killed by a black bear and her cub while the woman was hiking at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. With the stepped-up bear activity here, officials said, that mauling haunts them. ''Bears kill people,'' said David A. Mihalic, the Yosemite park superintendent. ''That is my fear. Part of our challenge is to get people to understand these bears are powerful wild animals.'' Over the Thanksgiving weekend, bears broke into four cars in parking lots, including three outside the Yosemite Lodge, a popular motel-style complex in the Yosemite Valley where no bear encounter had occurred in more than a year and a half. The bears did $1,900 in damage. In at least two of the incidents, visitors had left food in the cars, something that frustrated park officials said was a recurring problem despite repeated warnings. When people check into the Yosemite Lodge and other park accommodations, they must sign a document acknowledging that they have been advised of the bear danger. But with so many repeat visitors to the park, the warnings have lost their urgency, officials said. ''There have been problems on both sides with people becoming a little blasé about bear incidents,'' said Steve Thompson, the park's wildlife biologist, who issued new orders to employees of the Park Service and the lodges' concessionaire to step up enforcement. Mr. Mihalic said some visitors are beyond careless, intentionally leaving food outside to lure bears. ''They have become jaded to our message,'' he said. Though bear encounters this year at Yosemite are far fewer than in 1998, when a record 1,584 occurred, the recent break-ins bring the year's total to 546. That is 136 percent more than in the period in 2001, when the National Park Service recorded 231 ''human-bear incidents.'' Park officials are unsure how to interpret the surprisingly abrupt end to three years of progressively better results. ''It is going to take several more years of information to tell if we are on an upward or downward trend,'' Mr. Thompson | Doubling of Close Encounters Between Bears and Humans at Yosemite Worries Park Workers |
1450875_6 | then how can you be giving it to people? Get a grip.'' Dr. Livesey and Dr. Raffaele, at the Anti-Aging Medicine clinic in Manhattan, had expected most of their patients to be old people trying to gain enough strength to rise from a chair unassisted, or middle-aged people wanting to look young. Instead, they tend to be baby boomers, the doctors said, who are searching for something that other doctors did not provide. ''By the time they come here, they've already gone to places to look better,'' Dr. Raffaele said. ''They've had the Botox, the plastic surgery. The reason they're here is they want to have a good quality of life.'' Most keep their visits a secret, he said, adding: ''They don't even want to tell their close friends. It's kind of like plastic surgery.'' They are like a 50-year-old woman living in New York who arrived at the doctors' anti-aging clinic last February. ''I was feeling desperate,'' said the woman, who did not want to give her name because she is keeping the treatment secret from her friends. She was depressed, gaining weight, feeling old and fatigued. But, she said, when she began taking growth hormone, estrogen and progesterone, she noticed an immediate change in her mood and energy. It gave her the stamina and enthusiasm to start dieting and working out at a gym and she dropped 10 pounds. She said her libido returned, her hair grew, and even her bunions regressed so she could wear high heels again. Was it the drugs or the power of suggestion, the diet and exercise or the growth hormone that made the difference? Will she develop a serious disease as a result of taking the drugs or will she enter old age healthy and vigorous, younger than her years? It is impossible to know, researchers said, and that is why good studies are needed. ''Our concern is that the evidence is mostly based on personal testimonials rather than good data,'' Dr. Warner said. ''It's not hard to get people to believe something works, particularly if they are paying a lot of money for it.'' Dr. Alvin Matsumoto, a geriatrician at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, sounded a similar note of caution. ''For any particular patient, the trick is to determine who is the practitioner who has your best interests at heart. It is hard to distinguish that sometimes.'' | Chasing Youth, Many Gamble On Hormones |
1450688_2 | she said. ''This kitchen looked like it should have had a price tag on it,'' she said. ''It was gorgeous. It wasn't even soiled. I washed it down, of course, but I didn't really even have to. We wrapped it up and gave it to my daughter for her birthday the next day saying it was from our neighbor.'' The kitchen has a stove, a microwave, a dishwasher, a sink and a phone. It is about nine feet long, and takes up as much space as some kitchens in city apartments. Little Tikes toys are molded out of the same high-density plastic that forms milk jugs and detergent bottles. The plastic could be recycled, but the toys are too big and contain metal hinges or axles, so it is impractical to recycle them, said James J. Hogan, the county's Environmental Management director. ''These toys have to be put out on bulk pick-up day, not with the recycling,'' Mr. Hogan said. ''When they show up at the recycling center, we just put them in the garbage.'' As a result, the backyard slides and sand turtles, get passed on from generation to generation like a grandmother's best jewelry. ''We could design toys that don't last as long, but we don't think it's the right thing to do,'' said Rory Leyden, president of Little Tikes, a division of Newell Rubbermaid Inc. ''We think like the car makers. Some people like new cars and some like used.'' The lure of Little Tikes is strong. Teresa Bueti tries to keep her children's toys as simple as possible. ''I try to buy wooden toys,'' said Ms. Bueti, a children's librarian at the Chappaqua Library. ''I worry about buying too many plastic toys because of the impact on the environment.'' Still, there are joys a parent can't resist. She found her son a used Cozy Coupe. The foot-powered car quickly became his favorite toy. Ms. Bueti also has a play tool bench stuffed in her husband's office and a toy kitchen that she keeps at her mother's house. ''There's a good side to having things that last, but when they finally break you know all that plastic will end up in a landfill somewhere,'' Ms. Bueti said. Not in Westchester. The last stop for plastic toys here is the Charles Point Resource Recovery Facility, the county's electricity-generating incinerator. At least plastic burns, Mr. Hogan said. COUNTY LINES | Toys Afoot From Here to Eternity |
1450872_4 | the farm to a new nonprofit foundation, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, which will lease space to the restaurant. The Stone Barns plan was first broached to the Rockefeller families who live on the estate, then to a larger group of about 50 to 60 Rockefellers, said Ms. Dulany, who raises grass-fed cattle in Montana. ''Nobody put a foot down and said, 'Leave it as it is,' '' she said. ''Maybe some preferred it, but as we discussed it, people got interested in the idea. It's gone through a lot of iterations, based on family and community input. One cousin was particularly concerned that there be an environment program, and because of that it is more environmentally focused.'' The relative who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Mr. Rockefeller had presented the farm plan as ''a fait accompli.'' Some members, she said, preferred to have the land left as is, but were persuaded ''that there was merit to the environmental educational part of what they were planning.'' Through an intermediary, other family members who would not identify themselves said they objected to the proposal for a hotel on Bedford Road, the hilly two-lane road that leads into the estate, and opposed Mr. Rockefeller's turning 100 acres into housing. But, the intermediary said, ''if some development is inevitable,'' they would like it ''to be environmentally sensitive.'' They have been meeting with the developer to share their concerns. Other residents of Pocantico Hills, a hamlet within the town of Mount Pleasant, seem sanguine about the development, citing the family's devotion to the community. ''I'd rather that they didn't build on the 100 acres,'' said Joan Wilson, who is on the town's Board of Education, ''but I'm sure it will be to everyone's benefit. In the end, the Rockefellers manage to make it comfortable for everyone.'' The town supervisor, Robert F. Meehan, said he approved of the restaurant because ''the use of the road is minimal.'' ''Over all,'' he said, ''the preservation of open space mitigates other problems.'' The hotel proposal, however, is causing some concern. If it was built on Bedford Road, Mr. Meehan said, ''the traffic would be an immediate problem'' and the property would require rezoning. Dania Davey, who was born here, is satisfied with the project, but fears that further development could threaten the atmosphere. ''A spa and all, that sounds like it would be | A Rockefeller Cafe? Big Plans for Estate, And a Few Murmurs |
1451970_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Persistent Drop in Fertility Reshapes Europe's Future'' (front page, Dec. 26): The main problem is the woeful inadequacy of the ''science'' of economics to imagine a way for a society to decrease in population while increasing per capita income (or at least, through technology, providing a better life). The whole thrust of what economists offer is ''a rising tide lifts all ships.'' Well, someone had better find a way to thrive without overall growth all the time. The solution to many problems -- the environment, urban sprawl and so forth -- is population control. But the vested interests, from developers to religious fundamentalists, simply demand more growth, while politicians are helpless. One hopes Europe may yet show us the way. ED FISHER Scotts Valley, Calif., Dec. 26, 2002 | In Europe, No Room for the Kids |
1451972_0 | To the Editor: The flip side of Europe's low fertility rate (front page, Dec. 26) is the high fertility rate in developing countries. There are right now one billion people between the ages of 10 and 19 in these countries, and some demographers have settled on a human population estimate of nine billion by the year 2050. This will have profound implications for quality of life, for the environment, for peace and stability. Human numbers matter, whether it be too few or too many. JANE ROBERTS Redlands, Calif., Dec. 26, 2002 | In Europe, No Room for the Kids |
1451974_6 | call at 6 a.m. from Sefton, Blake's business manager. ''I thought nothing of it because I'm quite used to getting phone calls from boats on the other side of the world,'' she said. ''And then he said: 'Pippa, I'm downstairs. Can you let me in?' And I thought, 'Something's not right.' '' In a telephone interview from England, Sefton said: ''I didn't know any other way to tell her. I just said, 'Pete's dead.' '' Lady Blake, her eyes welling up, described it as ''the hardest day of my life really, having to tell the children their father was no longer alive, particularly James, because he just adored Peter.'' A thin, fit woman with sandy blond hair, Lady Blake wore a denim jacket and white cotton jeans while nursing a mug of coffee on a couch. ''I miss him, all the time,'' she said. ''Peter had a great sense of humor. He had these dreadful, banal sort of jokes. For instance, someone will say, 'I'm going to put the kettle on,' And he'll say, 'Will it fit?' Stupid jokes. Very dry humor.'' Last June, Ricardo Colares Tavares, 23, who admitted firing two shots into Blake's back, was sentenced to 36 years 9 months in prison. Five other members of the gang received sentences from 26 to 35 years. Sefton has been in charge of keeping blakexpeditions up and running. He is hoping to come up with about $2 million before its next voyage. ''Peter had achieved legendary status in his own lifetime, so, yes, it's been hard,'' Sefton said. ''When Sir Edmund conquered Everest, he was the quintessential Kiwi, an icon to four or five generations. Pete touched the same nerve ends. He was a figure to a whole new generation of Kiwis.'' Lady Blake said she cries often for the man she met in 1978 when he walked into the local sailing club in Emsworth, fresh from an around-the-world challenge. A month later, she accepted his invitation to meet him in the Caribbean and sail the world. ''So I ran off with a sailor and somehow became a Lady,'' she said, laughing. ''I pretty much loved the life right from the beginning. Our entire married life I quite often shared Peter with teams of people. But we coped with that. I must have met him at every port in the world.'' While watching the America's Cup races, Lady Blake | A Year Later, Blake's Widow Searches for Strength |
1447352_0 | Jakob Dylan ended his set on Thursday night at Irving Plaza by acknowledging the least enthusiastic members of the audience. ''We are the Wallflowers, if you got dragged along,'' he said. This wasn't a crowd full of drag-alongs: the concert had sold out long ago, even though it seemed as if the snowstorm had persuaded some ticket holders to stay home. Still, Mr. Dylan knows that mild diffidence is among his greatest assets, and it seemed that he neither expected nor much cared for the adulation he received. Between songs he often narrowed his eyes and surveyed the room, as if trying to think of something clever to say. The Wallflowers' music is mildly diffident, too. Mr. Dylan sings like a less truculent version of Tom Petty (who sings, in turn, like a less truculent version of Mr. Dylan's father, Bob). And the band tends toward midtempo songs built from loud guitars, simple chord progressions and whirring keyboard lines. These rock 'n' roll traditions (or, to put it less kindly, clichés) create a sense of stoicism, and listeners are tempted to imagine that Mr. Dylan is holding his true feelings in reserve. Last month the Wallflowers released their fourth album, ''Red Letter Days'' (Interscope), which includes a few unconvincing departures from the group's formula. Early on Thursday night, the band played ''Everybody Out of the Water,'' based on a snarling one-chord guitar riff. Mr. Dylan tried a vocal approach that he might have learned at the family dinner table, half-talking his way through the verses. The group sounded best when the focus was on the sturdy tunes and Mr. Dylan's nasal voice. One high point was an old song, ''Sixth Avenue Heartache,'' which may be the best (and most traditional) thing that Mr. Dylan has ever written; it could be a sequel to Bruce Springsteen's ''10th Avenue Freeze-Out.'' At the end of the night, after the belated introduction, the band played ''The Difference,'' which hinted at bitterness beneath the stoicism. ''You are exactly the same as you used to be,'' Mr. Dylan complained, as if he, too, were vulnerable to the lure of diffidence. ROCK REVIEW | Offering a Sense of Stoicism And Sounding a Bit Like Dad |
1447360_4 | Goddard Space Flight Center, Dr. H. Jay Zwally, said the measurements would help determine the effects of global warming on the ice sheets and their role in rising sea levels. Historically, he said, about three inches of ocean surface water is transferred to the ice sheets as snowfall every 10 years, and the same amount comes out as icebergs and melting along the sheet edges. ''The mass of the two actions should balance,'' he said. But over the last decade, Dr. Zwally said, sea levels have been rising 0.08 inches a year, or eight inches a century, and no one is certain where the added water comes from. Satellite and aircraft observations have measured the changing areas of ice sheets, but researchers need data on the changing heights, or elevations, to calculate their mass. ''IceSat should help us reduce the uncertainty of ice-melt estimates,'' he said. The SeaWinds instrument on the Japanese satellite will map wind speed and direction across 90 percent of the Earth's ice-free oceans every two days. Winds play a major role in weather and climate, affecting the exchange of moisture, heat and greenhouse gases between the atmosphere and the oceans. In addition to aiding long-term research, up to 15 times a day, SeaWinds will beam data for use by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies in improving forecasting and storm warnings, as well as helping generate ice maps to protect shipping lanes. SeaWinds, which cost NASA $138 million to develop and build and will cost $16 million more to operate over its life of three to five years, is the third in a series of instruments that sense ripples caused by winds near the ocean surface, which scientists use to calculate wind speed and direction. The 441-pound instrument will make 400,000 measurements a day by transmitting high-frequency microwave pulses to the ocean surface. They are to be echoed back to the satellite 500 miles above. Measurements from an earlier SeaWinds instrument now operating aboard the NASA Quikscat satellite, launched in 1999, were instrumental in findings on typhoons' role in generating ocean life, reported on Saturday in San Francisco at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Scientists from Taiwan and the United States said typhoons that swept over the South China Sea generated upwellings of nutrient-rich water from the deep ocean, stimulating vast blooms of algae, an important food for marine life. | Flurry of Satellites to Monitor Earth and Examine Galaxy |
1447442_0 | The Transportation Security Administration will require nearly all airline passengers to obtain boarding passes before they arrive at the security checkpoint rather than at the gate, the agency said today. The goal is to free workers to screen checked bags rather than screen passengers. Under the current system, travelers who are identified by a government-approved computer system are searched a second time, and more thoroughly, at the gate. Under the new system those more thorough searches will be carried out earlier, at the main screening point. Screeners need the boarding pass at the main screening point, rather than the gate, because the pass indicates whether travelers have been selected for more scrutiny. ''We're going to reduce the hassle factor by reducing the amount of gate screening we are doing,'' said Michael Jackson, the deputy transportation secretary. Some travelers are selected at random for extra scrutiny; others because the government's computer program decides there is not enough information about them. In addition, some travelers are on a government watch list. Adm. James M. Loy, the under secretary of transportation for security, said some gate screening would continue to make sure that terrorists were not able to predict the challenges they would face. ''We believe random gate screening is an imperative part of a continuous deterrent exercise,'' Admiral Loy said. The new system is already in place at a handful of airports around the country, and the Transportation Security Administration hopes to add a few more by the end of next week. The system is in place at the Jet Blue terminals at Long Beach, Calif., and Kennedy International in New York; the American Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International; the Delta and Northwest concourse at La Guardia, the Continental terminal at Newark; the American and international carrier terminals at Miami; all concourses at St. Louis except for Southwest's; and all of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit and Rock Island, Ill. The system is to be added soon in Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Colorado Springs, as well as the US Airways concourses at La Guardia and Logan, in Boston, and the Continental, Northwest and international carrier areas at Houston. ''It's a coordination with the airlines,'' said Robert Johnson, a spokesman for the agency. The airlines need to install automated kiosks to allow passengers to obtain boarding passes, Mr. Johnson said. Passengers who do not have bags to check have for years been able to bypass | New Rule to Limit Boarding Passes From Gate |
1447530_0 | Despite a sharp increase in the amount of unsolicited e-mail flooding in-boxes on home computers this year, many American workers say they receive few of the messages on their office computers, according to a report released Sunday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in Washington. Most of those surveyed said they used e-mail to do their jobs. They said it saved them time and improved teamwork and communication among colleagues and business associates. But more than half of the respondents who said they regularly send and receive e-mail messages at work, said they never received spam there; about 19 percent said that fewer than 1 in 10 messages were spam. Companies and businesses often take defensive measures against these messages, the report found, installing junk mail filters and other services that kick out or divert spam. Pew surveyed 2,447 Internet users around the nation by phone from April 9 to May 17, 2002. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. | Technology Briefing | Internet: Study Focuses On Unsolicited E-Mail At Work |
1447375_6 | control available over the counter. High-dose birth control pills, sold under the names Preven and Plan B, offer immediate backup for women who have had unprotected sex. As an interim measure, Dr. Finer said, California, Washington and Alaska already allow pharmacists to provide the pills to women without a prescription. The long-term effects of the birth control hormones, which are similar to those used for hormone replacement therapy, continue to be studied. The Women's Health Initiative, which this summer revealed the risks of a widely used hormone replacement regimen, is continuing to look at the possible cumulative effect of estrogen plus progestin on women who first take them to prevent pregnancy and then at menopause as hormone replacement therapy. Those data are still being analyzed, said Dr. Margery Gass, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Cincinnati and a principal investigator in the hormone replacement study. Results should be released in the next several months, Dr. Gass said. The eight-year government study of more than 16,000 women over 50 was stopped after five years, when researchers concluded that hormone replacement therapy slightly increased the incidence of breast cancer, heart attacks and strokes. Still another large government study, Women's CARE, published a month before the hormone replacement report, found that women who took birth control pills at some point in their lives were no more likely to develop breast cancer from ages 35 to 64 than women who had never used oral contraceptives. The researchers are still trying to determine whether women who took both birth control pills and hormone replacements are at greater risk. The first generation of women who took the pill in the 1960's are just getting to the age for hormone replacement therapy, ''so the jury is still out,'' said Dr. Robert Spirtas, chief of the National Institutes of Health's contraception and reproductive health branch. The trend away from barrier methods and toward hormonal contraceptives, which offer no protection against AIDS or other diseases, is a cause for concern but is unlikely to change, said Amy Allina, program and policy director for the National Women's Health Network. One new hormone-free barrier device is the Lea's Shield, a new cervical cap by Yama Inc., which can be washed and reused for about a year. The caps, approved by the F.D.A. in March, should be available through private doctors in the next two months for about | After Long Hiatus, New Contraceptives Emerge |
1452890_0 | Deadline at Hand For Baggage Screening When the ball drops at midnight tonight, a new era in air travel will begin. That is the deadline for the Transportation Security Administration to begin screening all checked bags for explosives at all 429 domestic commercial airports. The bag-screening law imposed by Congress was modified as tonight's deadline approached and adequate bomb-detecting machines were not in place at most big airports. The new rules, patched together to prevent chaotic backups that had been predicted if full electronic screening were required immediately, allow T.S.A. employees at a number of major airports to inspect checked bags using a combination of electronic scanning machines, bomb-sniffing dogs and hand searches. The T.S.A. will not say which airports will be unable to screen all bags electronically, and the agency has told airports not to discuss specific security measures. With air travel light anyway in January, major disruptions are not being forecast from the more lax interim security procedures. Passengers are, however, being advised to anticipate some scattered delays at airports as the new system starts. The T.S.A. has urged passengers not to lock checked bags to speed hand inspections in baggage areas. It is not yet clear how the agency, the airports and the airlines will handle any claims of damage or theft. Airlines Wrangle Over Agreements Airline cat fights intensify. While denouncing America West Airlines' charge that they are engaged in anticompetitive strategies in proposing a three-way code-share partnership, Delta Air Lines, Continental Airlines and Northwest Airlines have been lobbying hard for quick approval of the marketing alliance by the Transportation Department. The department has extended until Jan. 20 its review of the proposed alliance, which would enable the carriers to sell tickets on one another's flights on certain routes and allow reciprocity in frequent-flier mileage programs and airport lounge access. United Airlines and US Airways already operate in a similar alliance, as do Continental and Northwest. America West stunned competitors early this year when it sharply cut business fares across the board. It has said that the proposed three-way alliance constitutes an antitrust action to thwart competition. JOE SHARKEY BUSINESS TRAVEL | MEMO PAD |
1452973_2 | and access to conveyors. The ad hoc arrangements have strained already cluttered airport lobbies and required travelers to wait in as many as three lines before boarding. Officials acknowledge, moreover, that the screening machines can generate false positive readings for explosives up to 30 percent of the time. In such cases, transportation security officials inspect the bags by hand. Admiral Loy declined to say which airports had received waivers that give them more time to install the screening devices, which are similar to the equipment used for CT scans in hospitals, or to use a combination of other screening techniques. He said ''a handful of airports,'' including five of the largest, would finish construction by March at the latest. Whatever the shortcomings, the full baggage screening is the culmination of a harried and ambitious year for the agency, which grew from just 13 employees in January to about 64,000 full- and part-time workers, of whom about 56,000 screen passengers and baggage. The agency has placed thousands of federal air marshals on daily flights, stiffened the rules for perimeter security at airports and fortified cockpit doors. In November, the agency cleared a major hurdle by announcing that it had hired, trained and deployed federal screeners at all of the nation's airports. The agency had received more than 1.3 million applications for the jobs, which were coveted for their federal benefits. The agency turned to the private sector for help with the baggage screening mandate. Boeing-Siemens mobilized as many as 30,000 employees, producing engineering and construction plans for more than 400 airports in less than six months, officials said. Underscoring the urgency of the deadline, scores of trucks carrying screening equipment rushed to various airports as recently as Christmas Day, they said. Passengers can help the new system work smoothly by leaving their bags unlocked, avoiding overpacking and not packing food or drinks. Security agents will break into a locked bag or locate its owner if it raises suspicions, officials said. Bob Harrell, a New York travel consultant, said the agency had done well, considering its tight deadlines and the complexity of its mission. And where it falls short, Mr. Harrell said, travelers have been remarkably patient. ''I'm personally surprised to see how tolerant the passengers are,'' he said. ''It's hard to see when they're standing in long lines, but they know their safety is at stake.'' THREATS AND RESPONSES: AIRPORT SECURITY | By Midnight, All Will Be Set For Screening Checked Bags |
1452951_2 | to others' suffering in a society where a vast majority of people have been reduced to penury by two decades of war and sanctions. The sanctions, requiring United Nations approval for Iraq's imports of medicines and other goods, were imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and have continued until now, pending resolution of the dispute over Iraq's banned-weapons programs. For any visitor spending a few weeks in Iraq, it is this contrast in lifestyles between Mr. Hussein's elite and other Iraqis that seems as telling a characteristic of the society as any other, besides a pervasive climate of fear with no obvious counterpart in any country, except possibly North Korea. In this atmosphere of dread, with Iraqis forever terrified that their dissident thoughts will attract the attention of Mr. Hussein's secret police, the self-indulgence of those with favored positions has echoes, for an outsider, of Bob Fosse's 1972 movie ''Cabaret,'' with its depiction of the decadence in mid-1930's Berlin that accompanied the rise of Hitler. Much of the decadence in Iraq is out of sight, or, at best, barely glimpsed by those not within the elite. Those inside the country who speak of it do so in anxious whispers, and those outside who tell of it are mostly people who have taken flight from Mr. Hussein's rule. In these circumstances, sorting fact from rumor is all but impossible. Still, there has been little variance over the years in the accounts of sinister goings-on -- many of them involving coerced women, sexual excess and violence -- that filter out of the villas and palaces of those who have the protection of Mr. Hussein. But even taken on the evidence visible to all Iraqis, what has developed in Mr. Hussein's 23 years in power is a society of social and economic extremes. If any incident in recent weeks captured this more powerfully than others, it was on the day in October when the Iraqi leader staged a one-candidate referendum, featuring himself, that was officially announced as having produced a 100 percent ''yes'' vote among the 11 million Iraqis who turned out to endorse a new seven-year term. On referendum day, Iraqi state television showed the president's eldest son, Uday Saddam Hussein, who is the focus of many of the more lurid stories circulating in Baghdad about excessive behavior within the ruling elite, casting his ballot. The younger Mr. Hussein, 38, | Amid Brutal Poverty in Iraq, A Favored Few Enjoy Riches |
1452949_1 | panels clamored throughout the 1990's, to little avail, for all checked bags to be screened. Only after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was the call heeded. The T.S.A. deserves credit for making up for years of inactivity by hastening the production and installation of more than 1,000 of the million-dollar CT-scan-like devices that test the molecular composition of a bag's contents. The 1.5 billion bags checked each year by passengers will be put through these machines, or screened by a different system for traces of bomb residue. At roughly two dozen airports machines are not yet fully installed; Congress recently granted an extension to its original deadline because of airport pressure, but the T.S.A. has rightly persevered to meet it as best it can. Canine units and hand searches will be used in the interim. For travelers, the introduction of this procedure promises to be more disruptive than earlier ones in the yearlong federal assumption of airport security. The bulky screening machines at most airports have not yet been integrated into luggage conveyor belts but are temporarily set up to one side in terminals, making their use more time-consuming. They also have high false-alarm rates. Passengers must become accustomed to the idea that any flight is now akin to an international trip, in that their luggage may be searched. The T.S.A. is desperately trying to get the word out that passengers should not lock their bags, stack books together or pack film or food. Items that travelers would rather not have others touch, such as toiletries, should be wrapped in transparent plastic bags. Some airports might suffer from gridlock in coming days, as the government and the airlines master this vast new undertaking. With all those bags being opened, locked ones forcibly, airlines are worried about a possible surge in damage and theft claims, and the T.S.A. must clarify its liability policies. Over time, however, the glitches should be worked out, and Americans, justifiably worried about the possibility of more terrorist attacks, should be thankful for the enhanced security. Having scrambled to meet this and other deadlines, the T.S.A., one of the federal agencies that is to become part of the larger Department of Homeland Security, now must address itself to other priorities. One is to strengthen its intelligence capability, namely its computerized passenger profiling system. Another is to start devoting more attention to port, railroad and trucking security concerns. | Peering Into a Billion Bags |
1447212_2 | Anne P. Mitchell, chief executive of Habeas. ''We're helping you pick out the good mail.'' The company, which introduced its products just 13 weeks ago, said it expected to have 20 customers by today, including Harris Interactive, which performs online polling. Another concept, equally new, comes from IronPort, a company based in San Bruno, Calif., that helps e-mail marketers distribute their newsletters. For its core business, the company assists its clients, which include such big names as MTV, Nasdaq and PayPal, in distributing one million messages an hour, but the process is not seamless. The company said roughly 1 percent of its messages -- 10,000 an hour -- were wrongly identified as unsolicited messages by spam filters and never delivered to their intended recipients. Mr. Gillis of IronPort said the messages could range in significance from a newsletter to confirmation of a transaction on PayPal, which allows people to make payments to each other over the Internet. Under the IronPort solution, e-mail marketers will sign a contract asserting that they are sending e-mail only to people interested in receiving it. In exchange, IronPort will work with Internet access providers to make sure that the messages get through the increasingly tight filters. At present, the company has struck deals with 700 Internet access providers, but they are small providers, not major deliverers of e-mail like AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail. There is a cost with this solution, too. IronPort's customers, as part of the contract, must agree to pay a fine for each recipient who complains. The fees are on a scale: if a company's e-mail elicits 10 complaints per million messages, they will pay 50 cents per complaint; if they elicit 10 to 20 complaints, they will pay $1 for each. But after a warning, they would pay $1,000 per message if they elicited 30 to 40 complaints per million messages. And there is no burden of proof: if a person complains just to be vindictive, that will be recorded as a complaint. Proceeds would be donated to nonprofit organizations that work to reduce spam on the Internet. This latest proposition of identifying and ''guaranteeing'' desired e-mail has raised questions among Internet analysts, who wonder whether, and how much money, companies would be willing to risk to send legitimate messages. Moreover, they say the handful of new solutions will not solve the real problem of spam: the flood of tens of | In Spam Fight, the Opposite of a Filter |
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