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1372191_0 | IT is almost dinner time in Kendall Cottage at Children's Village, a sprawling residential treatment center for boys. Broccoli is bubbling on the stove, and a game of Scrabble is under way in the dining room. Jason, 14, who arrived more than two years ago after drifting through five foster homes and a psychiatric hospital, is showing visitors with evident pride how neatly the bookshelves in the living room are kept, how the sneakers in the mud room are lined up just so. The residential cottage, one of 21 on the Dobbs Ferry campus, is a study of order, routine and tranquillity -- the opposite of what many of the children here have known. Children's Village is one of a half-dozen treatment centers in Westchester County for troubled young people. Originally built as orphanages for New York City's poor, most of the centers date back to the turn of the century when Westchester was dominated by farms and woodland. ''The thinking was, send them to the country and they'll be good,'' said James J. Campbell, the executive director of Leake and Watts, a residential treatment center on 30 acres overlooking the Hudson River in Yonkers. Today, these centers are sophisticated, self-contained campuses that provide the most disturbed children in the foster care system with therapy, schooling, vocational services, recreation, basic medical care -- and hope. They work intensively with a child's family with the goal of reuniting them when possible. Westchester residents may not even be aware of the centers' presence. Spread out on large tracts of land and ringed by woods, they are known to many, even to neighbors, only as a large patch of orange on a Hagstrom map. Those who do know about them may have a vague notion that the centers are unsavory places for troubled children, and the brutal attack on a counselor a month ago at the Pleasantville Cottage School in Mount Pleasant certainly reinforced that idea. But for the most part, the boys and girls sent to treatment centers have been on the receiving end of violence. The large majority of the children come from New York City, and more than three quarters have suffered abuse or neglect. Their records offer staff members clinical descriptions of heartbreaking childhoods: a sexually abused boy who tried to kill himself by jumping from a roof at age 5; a 14-year-old who watched with his brother as | When There's No Place Else |
1372030_10 | by anglers in 1877, when an English aristocrat, Charles H. Akroyd, arrived by steamer from Edinburgh with two friends, three small boats and a nine-gallon cask of whiskey. According to Mr. Akroyd's memoir, the men rowed up to Nes and got the farmer's permission to fish, but struggled to find any salmon. Two of them then set out from opposite sides of the river, their lines joined in the middle and strung heavily with flies. They walked slowly down the river, dragging their line across its surface, until salmon stirred from the bottom. ''Our total bag was 103 fish, which averaged 18 pounds, which, considering that we had only two pools to fish, I think well repaid us for our trouble in going there,'' Akroyd wrote of his trip. For my own trouble, I was ready to settle for anything I could call a salmon. By the afternoon, the wind was up again, firing my fly back at me like an unguided missile. River weed floated onto our lines in great clumps. When I caught something that wasn't a weed, it turned out to be a parr, a young male barely six inches long. But a few hours later, my dad landed a feisty salmon that Ari weighed at eight pounds before releasing it back into the river, as was required. The family honor was saved. The next day I felt as if I'd actually started to fish. On Beat 4, I managed to raise what appeared to be a good-size salmon to the surface with my drifting fly. As instructed, I kept casting the same amount of line to the same general spot, fishing over it with different flies. The salmon rose once more, glinting in the light. But I was the only one provoked, and I covered the water again and again, doing no good but not quite able to quit. As night fell, I was back on the bank at Beat 3 when I started to take a step forward and felt my fly slowly dive. One of the basic challenges of salmon fishing is to resist the temptation to haul back one's rod at the first hint of a strike, thereby ripping the fly out of the fish's bony mouth. But when I set the hook, it held. The salmon weighed in at 10 pounds, and he fought nobly, hauling my line every which way and | In Iceland, Challenged By The Crafty Salmon |
1372171_1 | involved. ''At first, we were terrified that the meeting would be deathly dull,'' he said. He had reason to be concerned. Before Xerox turned to Web conferences, executive gatherings were held in convention center ballrooms and cost more than $1 million. An event in San Antonio in 1998, for example, featured Champagne, a band flown in from Chicago, an actor dressed as Uncle Sam and a Bill Clinton impersonator. But in January 2001, in response to faltering profits, the company restricted executive travel and replaced such meetings with Web conferences, leaving managers like Mr. Long to figure out how to keep executives engaged in conference rooms with nothing but a telephone and a computer screen to look at. More and more companies are facing this problem. In a January survey of corporate travel managers, the National Business Travel Association reported that 74 percent of companies were trimming travel costs through video, Web or telephone conferences, among other media possibilities. Executives accustomed to speaking face to face with underlings are now spreading their message in virtual settings, and many are finding that old-fashioned entertainment works wonders in keeping an audience's attention. ''The potential of such meetings to drag on and on is very high unless you keep them engaging,'' said John Cullen, the president of a consulting firm, ConferenceCall.com, in Carrollton, Tex. While some managers tell jokes or use games to enliven the pace, others serve food to foster camaraderie. At NeuStar, a company in Washington that allocates telephone numbers and area codes to telecommunications providers, all 400 employees dine simultaneously as the chairman, Jeffrey E. Ganek, makes monthly announcements by videoconference. Lunch is served in the company's three offices in the East and Midwest, breakfast at the West Coast branches and hors d'oeuvres in London. ''When people are breaking bread together with our leaders, it's more like the real thing,'' Bill Stern, a spokesman, said. Others have elaborate productions full of bells and whistles. In October, the Yellow Pages Publishers Association modeled its first-ever Webcast to members, including chief executives from companies like Verizon and Sprint, after a television talk show. John A. Greco Jr., the group's chief executive, served as anchor, and other executives provided sound bites. The show's ''hosts'' often paused to take questions from their remote audience. Not only did the executives stay tuned in, but many dared to ask questions they never would have at a | Make 'Em Laugh, Even From a Distance |
1372430_6 | an opportunity to address, if on a small scale, what many people are coming to see as one of the major shortcomings of the diminished waterfront project. ''I believe we should actually depress the highway someplace south of Canal Street,'' said Manfred Ohrenstein, a former Manhattan Democratic state senator and a Westway opponent. ''I think now, tragically, there probably is an opportunity to look at this again.'' Officials overseeing the Hudson River Park now say they are looking to untangle themselves from the legacy of Westway and move ahead. ''I'm from the church of what's-happening-right-now,'' said Robert P. Balachandran, president of the Hudson River Park Trust, which is developing the waterfront. ''And right now, we're building the Hudson River Park.'' Yet, even the relatively limited aspirations of this park are not assured. About $200 million has been allocated by the state and city for the planning and construction to date; but $200 million more is needed. Even before Sept. 11, no one was sure where the money was going to come from. By next spring, the first three piers and 13 blocks of the Hudson River Park should be finished, Mr. Balachandran said. State officials say the entire park should be finished within five years, but given the funding questions, that has turned into more of a goal. And some park advocates are worrying that the project will stop after only a small portion of it is completed. And as this park project on Manhattan's West Side moves slowly along, the debate of 20 years ago, and of what might have been, is starting up again. ''I know a lot of people see the demise of Westway as Exhibit No. 1 of why things can't happen in New York,'' said Gene Russianoff, a staff lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign. ''The reality is that $1.3 billion got traded in for mass transit. To me it's a huge success story.'' But Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former senator, said that New York had lost ''a chance to get our waterfront.'' The story of Westway, Mr. Moynihan said, was a reminder of a time in New York when civic activists were judged based on what they blocked -- not what they built. Perhaps, Mr. Moynihan said, that has changed in the wake of the destruction New York endured last fall. ''Let me raise your spirits,'' Mr. Moynihan said, perking up. ''Maybe we learned something.'' | A Ghost of Westway Rises Along the Hudson; An Old Idea for the Waterfront, Pared Down, Still Provokes Passions |
1372193_5 | Typically to study patterns of demographics: do we need a new store in some other area to better serve that area and make more money? Q. Where do you see this going? What kind of world are we moving into? A. Sept. 11 added a new dimension to the concern and debate about businesses and governments gathering information. There's much more of a realization that people want greater security. But how much privacy are they willing to give up to get security? More and more companies are going to need to start paying attention to this issue. It's kind of like in the late 1960's, we awakened as a country to environmental issues. Then in the 70's, some really proactive companies recognized the environmental movement and created leadership posts in that area and in the 80's and 90's it became part of the mainstream way businesses had to function. There were a whole set of laws that were enacted and you really had to pay attention to environmental issues. I think we're in the early stages of a similar trajectory. Q. Do you envision a day when every child in school will be aware of privacy the way they now know about, say, recycling? A. Yes, exactly. I predict it will be that way in about 25 years. So when your kids come back from fifth grade they're going to say, ''Hey, Mom, guess what we learned today? We learned the 10 things we ought to do to be smart information consumers on the Internet.'' You're going to have companies competing on the basis of trust. It's really a matter of what consumers start demanding. For More on Privacy Several online sites provide information on how individuals can safeguard privacy. For information on stopping unsolicited mail: www.understandingprivacy.org. It also reminds consumers to: shred credit card slips before discarding; always use a United States Postal Service box instead of leaving mail in office collection trays; refrain from disclosing a Social Security number over the telephone; and use an alternate screen name when entering a chat room. For tips written especially for parents, teachers and children: www.ftc.gov/ kidzprivacy to help protect young people on the Internet. For information about federal laws protecting children on the Internet: www.kidsprivacy.org. It also describes how certain sites entice young users to offer information about their homes, families, personal allowances, hobbies and even pet names. IN BUSINESS | Keeping It Confidential |
1372082_0 | THE D952. This is the most dreaded cliffside road in the high country of Provence. The narrow two-lane hairpin route is a 13-mile window on the vast natural wonders of the Gorges du Verdon, France's wild, rugged, remote Grand Canyon, 66 miles west of Nice. In travel books, the few descriptions of the D952 that we could find were hardly encouraging: ''Terrifying precipices'' (National Geographic Traveler); ''hair-raising views'' (The Rough Guide). But as we planned our trip, the allure of the Gorges overwhelmed any driver's angst. For years, we'd heard about the Wild West of the Côte d'Azur from French friends who suddenly became rhapsodic as they conjured up the otherworldly cliffs of the Gorges, the proud mountain villages, the intensely flavorful cuisine and the rich history. Not only were there deep blue skies and clean air at bargain prices, they insisted, but there was an Alain Ducasse inn and superb restaurants as well. And, for sporting types, the Gorges offer rafting, kayaking, canoeing and hiking. Not to mention go-for-broke sports like canyoning (hiking, climbing and rappelling down ravines) and aquatic hiking (which can include sliding down waterfalls and paddling through rapids). The list goes on: horseback riding, world-class trout fishing, hang gliding, parasailing, bungee jumping and hot-air ballooning. Moreover, gliders are perpetually visible, hugging the thermals above the canyon walls. The area is also a nationally designated region of geotourism, for people interested in landforms, fossils, rocks and minerals. And to those for whom the word vacation has nothing in common with working up a sweat, towns of the region offer shops, markets and museums, including a historic collection of the work of master faience artisans who created the famous finely decorated glazed earthenware of the region. Befitting their status as the grandest river cuts in Europe, the Gorges are actually labeled ''Grand Canyon'' on the Michelin regional map. If they don't have the CinemaScope sweep of that other great canyon in the American Southwest, the steep, jagged cliffs of the Gorges are cinematic enough, reaching 2,400 feet in depth and 5,000 feet in width. Beyond Provence, the Gorges were virtually unknown until 1905, when the canyon was explored by Édouard-Alfred Martel, the pioneer of speleology in France. Much of the Gorges are barely accessible. But the fierce torrent of the Verdon runs at a more sedate pace now in the region, thanks to upstream dams. From Nice, we | A Wild Road Follows A Wild River |
1377771_2 | directly control its fate -- the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission -- instead of Congress. The company, however, did set up an internal Web page that made it easy for employees to send e-mail messages to their congressmen, and Andersen employees began circulating long lists of e-mail addresses for hundreds of members of Congress and reporters. The messages sound variations on a single theme: it is wrong to punish all of Andersen for what they see as the misdeeds of a small number of rogue employees. In fact, grass-roots organizing is easier at Andersen than it is across industries or even in towns because of the company's heavy investment in Internet and telecommunications technology, said Dan Nottke, an executive in Andersen's internal technology services. Sitting in his Chicago office, Mr. Nottke said, he can dial seven digits on the telephone to reach any Andersen employee worldwide, and mass e-mail communication is even easier. ''Imagine having an 85,000-person discussion group,'' he said. As the emotion surrounding Andersen's plight has grown in recent weeks, the wires have burned with employee anger, he said. ''You can't believe the number of people who have been around me in the past couple of days saying we've got to do something here. The D.O.J. has indicted all of us. The family came together.'' E-mail messages describing how to contact members of Congress and the news media filled everyone's mailboxes; Mr. Nottke sent a message to hundreds of policy makers that said, in part: ''We have been shredded by the president, attacked by Buchwald, and leered at by Leno. And then we were indicted.'' Many of the e-mail messages have circulated throughout the firm to continue the internal drumbeat. One, sent to Michael Chertoff, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, asked: ''What are the lessons learned here? What kind of message are we sending to the young professionals of the world? Cooperate and be killed? Be a stand-up professional and get stabbed in the back?'' Another described an explanation given to a 9-year-old, comparing the government action to an entire school's being shut down over graffiti by a few students. ''That's not fair!'' the little girl said, and then asked, ''Did Daddy get expelled?'' ''We've been trying to come together as a company and fight -- We don't want to see our company go away,'' said Heather Beaty, a worker in Andersen's | Arthur Andersen Employees Circle the Wagons |
1377714_0 | RETRO, a hot design trend for several years, may be more than skin deep. To make niche models at reasonable prices, General Motors is reviving a car-building method -- bolting bodies onto solid frames -- that had almost disappeared. What's more, the change could revive the frequent restylings that gave pizazz to cars of the 1950's and 60's. Later this year, G.M. will begin selling the Chevrolet SSR, a sporty convertible pickup. A low-volume model, its manufacturing cost is reduced because the SSR's distinctive body will be attached to a version of the frame that supports G.M.'s midsize Envoy and TrailBlazer sport utilities. And a new G.M. design study for a four-passenger convertible, the Chevrolet Bel Air, is built on a frame that will be used for G.M.'s small future trucks. G.M. has not decided whether to build the Bel Air. ''We didn't use a frame just because the classic Bel Airs from the 50's did,'' said Ed Welburn, the designer responsible for the car. ''We did it because we wanted to explore utilizing an affordable chassis that we have at G.M., seeing if we could make an exciting, affordable car. For a large convertible, a frame is a good approach.'' G.M. uses body-on-frame construction for trucks, but the Chevrolet Corvette is the only G.M. car currently built this way. Other G.M. cars have unitized construction, with the body, floorpan and chassis forming a single structure. In frame construction, mechanical parts are attached to the frame, which is then attached to the body. Thus, ''the chassis is isolated from the frame, and there is a layer of mounts between the frame and body,'' said Hau Thai-Tang, chief engineer for North American cars at Ford. That isolation from potholes provides a smooth ride for big cars like the Ford Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car. G.M. is intrigued by the idea of flexible manufacturing, putting low-volume bodies onto a high-volume frame. Gene Stefanyshyn, a vehicle line executive, said frame construction could cut the ''cycle time'' between redesigns. ''How fast can you go?'' he said. ''In the old days, when we did body on frame, we could go very fast.'' | How Old Fashioned: Cars Built on Frames |
1377739_1 | being quarried near Carrara, Italy, then cut and polished in the town of Forte dei Marmi. ''They bring it to a high hone, then it'll be further polished in place,'' Ms. Kanner said. Stone setters are to install the first shipment on April 15. The quarry workers are toiling seven days a week to make a seemingly impossible deadline: a completed restoration by Sept. 11, 2002. ''It was a rush job to begin with, but now we have a gun to our head,'' Ms. Kanner said. Normally, Ms. Kanner said, there is tension on construction jobs between contractor, subcontractors and owner. ''But this job is different. Everyone is pulling together. It's very emotional. Instead of people saying 'no, no, no,' we're getting yes. It's the best project I've ever worked on because everybody says 'green light.' '' Which is not to say that forceful management is absent. The complex construction job is being coordinated by computers, by cellphone ''and by a lot of that,'' Ms. Kanner said, demonstrating a fist banging on a mythical desk. So far, deadlines are being met. ''This is a very big body-and-fender job,'' said Richard C. Bach, the operations manager at Turner Construction Company, the chief contractor. ''We've never before been in the repair business on such a large scale.'' Next on the agenda is the installation of new structural steel and 2,000 new glass skylight panes. The high-strength steel -- 150 tons of it, to be delivered during the next two months -- will be used to shore up the vault and to repair its structural spine. The upper dome is now a cathedral of scaffolding in preparation for the effort. ''It breaks my heart to see all of the original work that was destroyed,'' said Leonid B. Zborovsky, a structural engineer for a subcontractor, the Thornton-Tomasetti Group. He said he was originally project engineer for the steelwork in the 1980's. ''It's a unique challenge, to repair all this without doing additional damage,'' said Jim White, the on-site superintendent for Turner Construction. ''Reconstruction is always more complex than new construction.'' Little is left that would identify the space as the Winter Garden. Abandoned stores, which once were sickening time capsules from Sept. 11, have been cleaned out. The former Rizzoli bookstore is a staging area for hard-hat crews. A 40-foot chunk of steps on the ornamental staircase has been removed. A concrete stairway to | At the Winter Garden, The Rebuilding Begins |
1377735_1 | and public commitment to the proposals made at Taba, Egypt, in January, 2001, we might already have an agreement on a just peace. Unfortunately, Mr. Arafat, if he did not exactly choose violence, has accepted and used it. Ever since the second intifada began in September 2000, he has never truly led in seeking a meaningful cease-fire. He has reacted only opportunistically. That said, Mr. Arafat is only one of three failed leaders who must shoulder blame. The second is Benjamin Netanyahu. His effort to block progress toward fulfilling the Oslo Accords -- his tactic of renegotiating by delay and obstruction -- fueled Palestinian anger and hopelessness even before the start of the second intifada. He wasted the two most precious commodities in moving toward peace: hope and time. The third failed leader is Ariel Sharon, who may be a tactical genius but has always been a failure at strategy. He has never known when to stop or how to set realistic political and strategic goals. He dragged Israel into a war in Lebanon that it lost after nearly two decades but that led immediately to major acts of terrorism on both sides, with many civilian deaths. In the current violence, Mr. Sharon's demand, only recently withdrawn, for an impossible Palestinian effort to halt all violence as a precondition for a cease-fire, his willingness to escalate without meaningful strategic and tactical purpose, his carelessness in using violence in areas where civilians are present and his talk of forced separation and occupation all mirror Mr. Arafat's own narrow opportunism. No one can condone the loss of a single civilian life on either side, but we need to realize that the situation has essentially become asymmetric warfare rather than Palestinian terrorism and Israeli counterterrorism. Each side has escalated the violence using the methods available to it. For the Palestinians, this is suicide bombing and smuggled arms. For Israel, it is tanks and attack helicopters. In both cases, civilians die, hatreds grow and the level and sophistication of the fighting increases. Facing these realities goes against the grain of American domestic politics and against an international climate in which the United States takes the side of Israel while Europe and Arab moderates back the Palestinians. This dynamic has to change if America is to have an effective role in brokering a peace. It seems clear now that any move toward a cease-fire and | The Middle East's Failed Leaders |
1379364_2 | philosophy to architecture. Christian palaces and churches, like Jewish synagogues, were often built in the style of the Muslims, the walls often covered with Arabic writing; one synagogue in Toledo even includes inscriptions from the Koran. And it was throughout medieval Europe that men of unshakable faith, like Abelard and Maimonides and Averroes, saw no contradiction in pursuing the truth, whether philosophical or scientific or religious, across confessional lines. This was an approach to life -- and its artistic, intellectual and religious pursuits -- that was contested by many, sometimes violently, as it is today. Yet it remained a powerful force for hundreds of years. Whether it is because of our mistaken notions about the relative backwardness of the Middle Ages or our own contemporary expectations that culture, religion and political ideology will be roughly consistent, we are likely to be taken aback by many of the lasting monuments of this Andalusian culture. The tomb of St. Ferdinand, the king remembered as the Christian conqueror of the last of all the Islamic territories, save Granada, is matter-of-factly inscribed in Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and Castilian. The caliphate was not destroyed, as our clichés of the Middle Ages would have it, by Christian-Muslim warfare. It lasted for several hundred years -- roughly the lifespan of the American republic to date -- and its downfall was a series of terrible civil wars among Muslims. These wars were a struggle between the old ways of the caliphate -- with its libraries filled with Greek texts and its government staffed by non-Muslims -- and reactionary Muslims, many of them from Morocco, who believed the Cordobans were not proper Muslims. The palatine city just outside the capital, symbol of the wealth and the secular aesthetics of the caliph and his entourage, was destroyed by Muslim armies. But in the end, much of Europe far beyond the Andalusian world was shaped by the vision of complex and contradictory identities that was first made into an art form by the Andalusians. The enemies of this kind of cultural openness have always existed within each of our monotheistic religions, and often enough their visions of those faiths have triumphed. But at this time of year, and at this point in history, we should remember those moments when it was tolerance that won the day. María Rosa Menocal is director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale and author of | A Golden Reign of Tolerance |
1379455_2 | to be the last Arab state to recognize Israel. ''Allow me at this point to directly address the Israeli people, to say to them that the use of violence, for more than 50 years, has only resulted in more violence and destruction,'' he said. ''Israel, and the world, must understand that peace and the retention of the occupied territories are incompatible and impossible to reconcile or achieve,'' he said as he reached the heart of his message. ''I would further say to the Israeli people that if their government abandons the policy of force and oppression and embraces true peace, we will not hesitate to accept the right of the Israeli people to live in security with the people of the region.'' At one point the prince did finesse the difference between Arab and Western perceptions, saying the future capital should be Al Quds Al Sharif, or Holy Jerusalem, while the English text called it East Jerusalem. A Saudi official suggested that Arabs rarely refer to the geographic division of the city, but that the prince was in no way suggesting that the Palestinians should get anything more than Al Aksa Mosque. ''It's the mosque,'' this official said. ''Everything else is real estate. If you go to the lines of 1967, it's talking about East Jerusalem.'' Within hours of the prince's speech, however, another suicide bomber struck in Israel, killing 19 people at a hotel. Word of the attack came just as the early evening session closed and most of the leaders were sweeping off to dinner, so there was little reaction. Officials here said that given the frequency of such bombings, they did not believe this one was specifically intended to counter the Saudi's message. But the militant group Hamas was quoted in Israeli news media as saying that the attack was intended to disrupt the talks here. ''We all agree that civilians should be spared,'' said Hesham Youssef, the spokesman for the Arab League. ''The situation has been going from bad to worse, and that is why we need the peace initiative, why we need it now.'' Arab summits are supposed to be all about Arab unity and brotherhood. More often they reflect the reality, with endless squabbling and jockeying for position. Today was exceptional even by the Arab League standards. In February, when Abdullah first suggested his formula, he offered normalization with Israel. But Syria objected to | Saudi in Strong Plea to Israel and Arabs |
1379466_0 | The Indian government said it would allow commercial planting of genetically modified seeds under certain limits. Three varieties of disease-resistant cotton developed by Mahyco, an Indian affiliate of Monsanto, won approval for three years. Modified mustard seeds are also being considered. Farmers and environmentalists have resisted genetically modified crops in India, in part because they are usually engineered to be unreplantable, forcing farmers to buy new seed. Saritha Rai (NYT) | World Business Briefing | Asia: India: Modified Seeds Approved |
1379297_4 | is very encouraging for future use, especially with paralyzed people.'' Dr. Heetderks believes that the path to long-lasting implants in people would involve the recording of data from many electrodes. ''To get a rich signal that allows you to move a limb in three-dimensional space or move a cursor around on a screen will require the ability to record from at least 30 neurons,'' he said. Dr. Donoghue and colleagues have founded a company, Cyberkinetics, and they hope to test their prosthesis on a human within the year. Such testing requires the approval of the Food and Drug Administration. Only one of the pioneers of neural prostheses has tested his interface on people in the hope of adding to the range of their movements: Dr. Philip Kennedy, head of Neural Signals, a research and development company based in Atlanta. Dr. Kennedy said he was now training a nearly immobile person to use the cursor on a computer screen. He has modified his two-electrode system and plans to report the results soon, he said. ''The key thing is to have a robust signal that endures for the life of the patient and records sufficient signals to control the prosthetic,'' he said. Much of the research on brain-machine interfaces is going into systems that a human being could use for decades, said Dr. Richard A. Andersen, who leads a research team in neural prosthetics at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Andersen said that the longevity of such interfaces could be extended by planting chips directly in the brain that can do the necessary processing and transmit the results wirelessly so that people are no longer tethered to machines. Dr. Mohammad M. Mojarradi of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is one of the researchers working on miniaturizing the hardware that may find its way into implantable chips. Current electrode arrays, he said, can be jarred out of place and lose the signal. They can also gradually wear away the tissue on which they sit. He wants to eliminate the electrodes and their wires, replacing them with implanted wireless chips. Dr. Heetderks said that such devices would ultimately be essential for long-term use of neural prostheses. ''But the key thing to remember here is the potential of the brain itself to re-allot tasks,'' he said. ''The advances we are seeing are inherent in the way the brain is organized.'' WHAT'S NEXT | Don't Point, Just Think: The Brain Wave as Joystick |
1379302_0 | FOR all the sophisticated electronic tools the United States government has at its investigative disposal, tracking the activities of suspected terrorist groups online has proved to be not unlike the search for Osama bin Laden and his operatives on the ground. In essence, even against a superior arsenal of technology, there are still plenty of ways for terrorists to avoid detection. Although digital forensics has undoubtedly been useful in piecing together events since Sept. 11 -- leading, for example, to the arrests of three of the suspects in the abduction and murder of an American reporter in Pakistan -- information technology has significant limits in monitoring a widely dispersed terrorist network. Moreover, terrorist groups are taking advantage of their own knowledge of technology to evade surveillance through simple tactics, like moving from one Internet cafe to the next, and more sophisticated ones, like encryption. ''The Internet presents two main challenges,'' said David Lang, director of the computer forensics department at the Veridian Corporation, a company based in Arlington, Va., that provides systems for the Pentagon and United States intelligence. ''One is it's ubiquitous -- you can access it from just about anywhere in the world. The other thing is you can be easily hidden.'' Despite growing concerns about invasions of Internet users' privacy, it is still relatively simple to communicate anonymously online. Many services enable users to send e-mail or browse the Web without leaving a digital trail -- generally by disguising the unique number, known as an I.P. address, that links a specific computer to e-mail messages sent or Web sites visited. Some of those services have taken measures to prevent their technology from being put to ill use. Anonymizer.com, for instance, rejects subscribers from countries known for harboring terrorists, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. But individuals linked to terrorist groups appear to be relying on more low-tech methods to avoid detection. ''The interesting thing is there's no evidence that any of these people have ever used Anonymizer or any other privacy service,'' said Lance Cottrell, the company's president. ''What you see them doing is using Internet cafes and Yahoo and Hotmail and moving from cafe to cafe.'' In one of the few known cases in which suspected terrorists have been traced through e-mail, the kidnapping and slaying of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter working in Pakistan, the abductors used Hotmail, Microsoft's Web-based e-mail service, to announce their | Terror's Confounding Online Trail |
1379376_0 | Demographers from around the world met this month at the United Nations to discuss and celebrate the surprising finding that the world's population has not grown as fast as had been feared. Just a few years ago, the expectation was that the planet would have 10 billion people by the end of the 21st century. Now it looks as if the true figure will be nine billion, up from six billion today. It has long been known that the birth rate generally falls as a country gets richer and more urban. The surprising new development is that, from the late 1970's to the mid-1990's, women in countries that remained poor also had fewer and fewer children, even in rural areas. In the 1960's, virtually everywhere in the developing world women had six children. Today the rate is closer to three in Bangladesh, Egypt, the Philippines and Peru. There are three principal reasons for this sharp decline. One is improved levels of schooling -- educated families have fewer children. Another is that children are now more likely to survive than they were in the past, which allows families to have only the number they want. Finally, the countries in which fertility dropped most were those that provided easy access to contraceptives. But further gains will be difficult. Even with the decline, the world will add as many people over the next 25 years as it did over the last 25. The globe is so heavy with young people that there are 20 million more couples of reproductive age every year. Even if every family had only two children, the population would continue to grow, and it is very hard to get down to an average of two. A woman of 25 with two children needs a steady supply of contraception for the rest of her reproductive life if she is not to have another. The danger is that the good news about the drop in fertility may cause policy makers to relax their population efforts, when the reverse is necessary. Financing for family planning worldwide covers only about half of the $10 billion need. The world now knows that population growth can be checked. But a continued decline in fertility depends on maintaining a commitment to family planning. | The Population Slowdown |
1374860_1 | for most Americans, of the terrorist attacks six months ago on Monday. Many in the industry say that for all the visible security measures -- National Guard members with their rifles, the painstaking searches for nail files -- aviation is not yet secure enough. They say that a terrorist with a bomb or knife could still evade the net, laying bare the industry's continued fragility and devastating the confidence among travelers that has returned month by month. In fact, the security gaps that made the September attacks possible are proving much more difficult to close than had been initially hoped, government officials and safety experts say. Bags are still not matched to passengers on connecting flights. A terrorist could smuggle a ceramic knife past overwhelmed and undertrained security guards. But already there are signs that the national imperative to fly is so strong that people are accepting, and, in a sense, routing around their difficulties and fears. In the last three months, low fares have won back more than half the travelers who stopped flying in September and October. Regional airports like McGhee Tyson or John Wayne Airport south of Los Angeles are returning to normal much more quickly than the big international hubs, in part because their security lines are so much shorter. Travelers are now used to getting up earlier for morning flights, wearing shoes without metal shanks and packing bags in anticipation of emptying them out. This gulf of expectations, between increasingly confident passengers and nervous safety experts, emerged in interviews with travelers, airline executives and government officials who were asked to assess the state and experience of air travel six months after the events of Sept. 11. Most agree that while the balance between vigilance and convenience has hardly been perfected. The gap has narrowed more than anyone predicted just a few months ago. Security delays are shrinking, even at the hubs, and many airlines are telling passengers they can now arrive 90 minutes before departure, rather than two hours. (Northwest Airlines cut the time to 75 minutes after adding 19 security lanes; United Airlines added 30 lanes and cut the time to an hour.) As troubled private security companies are gradually replaced with better-paid federal workers, the pledge of 10-minute checkpoint lines made so often by government and airline officials no longer seems so far-fetched. ''Traffic will come back stronger than people think,'' said Jonathan | AIR TRAVEL REVIVES AS FEAR RECEDES |
1374577_4 | glasses, as they are now. Deb Belancik, chief health and safety representative for the union, said she believed trichloroethylene, which has been proven to cause cancer in laboratory animals and which the Environmental Protection Agency continues to study as a possible cancer-causing agent in humans, was one of the solvents. Mr. Coulom said the chemical had indeed been used, but the company stopped about 10 years ago. The challenge to the researchers will be to determine if a link exists between any chemicals and the brain tumors. The State Department of Health said that radiation exposure is the only known cause of brain cancer. Scores of studies have implicated chemicals in various cancers, but not with 100 percent certainty. ''If the study reveals that there is something in the Pratt processes that may have had some affect on this, we're obviously going to take steps,'' Mr. Coulom said. ''We haven't really made any changes in workplace conditions because we just don't know if there's any materials or processes that have had an impact on this. We may not come to a final conclusion. There are no steps for us to take because we have no data or conclusion with which to base them on.'' The two women are working to get some answers soon. Mrs. Greco, a team coordinator at the Waterbury branch of the Visiting Nurses Association, handles the health research and makes the phone calls. Mrs. Shea, a legal secretary in Meriden, researches the legal possibilities and writes the letters. They spend hours on the telephone and the Internet, and they talk to anyone willing to listen. If they find other Pratt families who lost someone to glioblastoma, they interview them and add them to the list. They found Lorraine Roussel of East Hartford, whose husband, Reno Gilman Roussel, died from glioblastoma in 1998. Mr. Roussel worked for Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford for almost 40 years before he took the company's offer of early retirement. He worked in a department formerly known as Experimental Machining, where new engine parts were created. ''I don't know what materials he used,'' said Mrs. Roussel, who before hearing of the study had never considered the possibility that working conditions may have played a role in her husband's death. ''But I've been thinking about it a lot more.'' Mr. Roussel often complained of the extreme heat at the East Hartford plant, | Rare Cancer Found in Workers |
1374736_1 | attorney in Manhattan, the four-month-old program is part of a federal effort to eliminate crime among juveniles. Working with the Police Department, Board of Education and the Bronx Y.M.C.A., the center operates in the basement of the Church of the Revelation on White Plains Road. Posters with Bible passages and illustrations of Noah's Ark decorate the walls, and police officers often remind truants that they are in church. Traditionally, the police simply pick up truants and ferry them to school. Lizette Ubides-Ruiz, the director of the new center, characterizes this practice as ''bring the kids in the front door and they leave through the back.'' Her program, she said, has much more follow-up. ''If you're going to change behavior,'' she explained, ''you've really got to put a support system in place.'' More than 700 truants age 16 and under -- 58 percent boys, 42 percent girls -- have been picked up since the center opened in November. Upon entry, students turn over their personal items and are searched for weapons and drugs. Board of Education officials then obtain the student's attendance record, and a parent or guardian is contacted. The students fill out questionnaires, which include an exercise for psychiatric evaluation, and receive counseling before their parents arrive or they are transported back to school. If a guardian picks up the child, which happens one-third of the time, a staff member meets with the parent to determine if issues at home are contributing to the problem. If no parent shows up, a letter is sent home. If the student is taken to the center three times, a staff member visits the home to make an assessment. ''Truancy is the gateway to crime,'' said Mrs. Ubides-Ruiz in explaining the extensive follow-ups. Mrs. Ubides-Ruiz, who admits she was once a truant herself, said the program was beginning to have an effect. ''We've had kids walk themselves in, and we've had kids bring friends,'' she said. ''They perceive that they're genuinely cared for.'' A parent, Percy Hicks, who picked up his daughter, Saundra, from the center, agreed. ''It's comforting to find my child in a safe setting with people who seemed concerned,'' he said. While some young people, like Anna Lazaro, end up having good things to say about the center. Others, like Mr. Hicks's 16-year-old daughter, are not impressed. ''I see no point in it,'' she said. MATT SEDENSKY NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: PARKCHESTER | If Truancy Is the 'Gateway to Crime,' An Attempt to Nip Problems in the Bud |
1374378_0 | Switzerland took a giant step away from its isolationist history when voters approved joining the United Nations. Switzerland will soon apply to become the 190th member and East Timor the 191st, leaving the Vatican the only nonmember state. Elizabeth Olson MARCH 3-9: INTERNATIONAL | SWISS YES |
1374604_1 | New York, whether they are official or personal landmarks. Sometimes we appreciate them unconsciously until they are not there. Then we realize how much they meant.'' Giorgio Cavaglieri, 90, an architect known for adapting old buildings to new uses, including the transformation in the 1960's of the Astor Library on Lafayette Street into the Public Theater, will receive the Lucy G. Moses Preservation Leadership Award. These are among the projects being honored: *Public School 157, a Collegiate Gothic style elementary school in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn. Dating to 1907, it was designed by Charles B. J. Snyder, superintendent of school buildings and a prolific architect. The school's exterior was restored with historical accuracy, including the replication of 6,000 terra cotta units from 310 molds. *The Hunts Point Regional Library in the South Bronx. Inspired by a Renaissance palace in Florence and designed by Carrère & Hastings in 1929, it was renovated to eliminate facade conditions that made it potentially hazardous to passers-by. *The Tweed Courthouse. The imposing structure in Lower Manhattan was built during the Civil War. Richly detailed, it was threatened with demolition numerous times before being restored to its old grandeur. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has yet to decide whether to proceed with plans to move the Museum of the City of New York there. *The Strecker Laboratory. A leading medical research center more than a century ago, the building, at the south end of Roosevelt Island, was damaged by fire and vandalism and left vacant for 44 years. Last year the Metropolitan Transportation Authority converted it into a substation to provide power to the subway tunnel running under the island. The other winners are Alwyn Court, an apartment building with an elaborate terra cotta facade, at Seventh Avenue and 58th Street; Central Synagogue, which was heavily damaged by fire in 1998; the Glass Factory on Avenue D between East 9th and 10th Streets, and the LESC House on East Sixth Street between Avenues B and C, residences for people with AIDS that will share a prize; Lever House at Park Avenue and 53rd Street; and the Neue Galerie, at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street. NADINE BROZAN Correction: March 12, 2002, Tuesday A report in the Postings column of the Real Estate section on Sunday about the New York Landmarks Conservancy's annual preservation awards misstated the day of the presentation ceremony. It is today, not Wednesday. | Postings: Landmarks Conservancy's Awards; Honoring Preservation Projects |
1374833_1 | that if they had control over their reproductive lives, lower fertility rates would be a given. Women's health organizations now say that is happening. ''From Delhi to Rio, women's health advocates have stood fast against top-down population policies, and have stood for women's rights -- and abilities -- to make decisions about their bodies,'' said Cynthia Steele, vice president for programs at the International Women's Health Coalition in New York. ''Whether they live in villages or high-rises, women have always known what's best for them and their families. Now we're seeing the results of their own choices to have fewer children.'' Joseph Chamie, the director of the United Nations population division, said: ''A woman in a village making a decision to have one or two or at most three children is a small decision in itself. But when these get compounded by millions and millions and millions of women in India and Brazil and Egypt, it has global consequences.'' Mr. Chamie said it had been assumed that the fertility rates in big developing countries -- the number of births, on average, per woman -- would fall at best only to what is known as replacement level. That number is 2.1, or a little more than one child for each parent. But in big countries, even that pace would add a huge number to an already large population base before the trend eventually moderates. Demographers may now be willing to go out on a limb and say that the fertility rates in the big developing countries may even drop below the replacement level, and sooner than most of them would have thought possible. That would follow the trend already established in industrial countries, where the population slowdown has caused concerns about shrinking labor forces and aging populations. Just as women are pushing for a larger role in economic life around the world, they are also apparently becoming more assertive within families. ''We're breaking both the fertility floor and the glass ceiling,'' Mr. Chamie said. In India, Gita Sen, professor of economics at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, said in a telephone interview that there were important cultural factors at work. ''Fertility in India is declining and it is declining faster than many people had expected,'' she said. One reason, she said, is ''that with increasing awareness on the part of women, they are being able to control their own | Population Estimates Fall as Poor Women Assert Control |
1376541_0 | The oldest seaport in Texas is getting a boost from a customer that has returned after a 40-year absence -- Cuba. About 5,000 tons of Texas rice from American Rice Inc. was shipped to Cuba last week from Freeport as part of a new trade agreement between the United States and Cuba for humanitarian food trade, exempt from the American embargo enforced on Cuba since 1962. ''We hope this is the first of many shipments to Cuba,'' said Pete Reixach, executive director of the seaport. Cuba was once the biggest customer for Texas rice. After the embargo started, rice production in Texas fell by two-thirds. Rick Gladstone BUSINESS: DIARY | Cuba Trade Helps Texas Port |
1376506_0 | To the Editor: In ''Population Estimates Fall as Poor Women Assert Control'' (news article, March 10), you say, ''A few demographers are venturing to say that the trend may have little to do with government policies on family planning or foreign aid.'' Yet the rest of your article demonstrates that stabilizing the world's population depends on the full availability of family planning information and services. President Bush has turned his back on these programs by holding up money for the United Nations Population Fund that Congress approved last year. When couples have choices, they choose smaller families. And when they choose smaller families, the future is brighter for their children and their children's children. Government policies can be helpful, notwithstanding the views held by a few demographers and the president of the United States. PETER H. KOSTMAYER President, Zero Population Growth Washington, March 11, 2002 | Holding Up Money For Family Planning |
1376525_3 | example of Ireland is compelling for another reason, as well. For generations, the Catholic Church in America was an immigrant church defined by the history of its largest ethnic group, the Irish, who often looked to their priests as political as well as spiritual leaders. Priests in Ireland suffered the same oppressions as their flock, and several were immortalized for taking part in rebellions against Protestant England. When the great wave of Irish immigrants began in 1845, deference to clerical authority crossed the Atlantic with them. THE American Catholic Church has experienced other crises since Vatican Council II in the early 1960's. For example, church attendance fell after Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical banning artificial birth control in 1968, and vocations for the priesthood fell from about 1,000 annually in the 1960's to about 600 in the mid-1990's, according to ''American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church,'' by Charles Morris. Nuns, who form the backbone of Catholic education, are also growing scarce. In the mid-1990's, according to Mr. Morris, about 300 women became nuns every year, while more than 2,000 retired, resigned or died. But these are organizational problems, however severe. The shock and anger provoked by the pedophilia cases is different: it is based on a feeling that the church itself has betrayed the faithful, siding with sexual predators against abused children. Historically, and with some reason, both the church and individual Catholics have often been quick to equate criticism with anti-Catholic bigotry. In 1992, for example, when a priest named James Porter was accused of serial rape, Cardinal Law called down ''God's power upon the media'' for bringing the accusations to light. Such defensiveness is rooted not only in the memory of anti-Catholic riots and church burnings in the 1840's, but in the more modern sense that American opinion-makers are as instinctively anti-Catholic as the mobs that harassed Alfred E. Smith during his presidential candidacy in 1928. This time, though, even the vigilant monitors of anti-Catholicism have found little to complain of in coverage of the Boston case. During previous crises, it was also possible for the church to characterize critics as dissident or even lapsed Catholics -- people the Rev. Andrew Greeley refers to as ''members of the Catholic pseudo-elite.'' But now it is the men and women who serve on parish councils, who administer the Eucharist at Mass, who run | The Nation: Calculation vs. Conscience; The Church Breaks Faith With the Faithful |
1376575_3 | few weeks, the coalition has become more aggressive about boarding the small fishing boats, known as dhows, that crowd the coastline and that are popular vehicles for smugglers. Since February, the coalition has also expanded its presence in the Gulf of Oman, which smugglers from Iran can cross in less than a day. American officials say this could become an escape route for leaders of Al Qaeda. Coalition ships also patrol as far south as the Horn of Africa, on the lookout for Qaeda fighters who might be trying to reach Somalia or Yemen by ship. The allied armada, though it has been likened to a blockade, is more like a traffic checkpoint on the lookout for drunken drivers. Allied ships hail passing merchant vessels by radio and ask them about their cargo, destination and registry. The answers are transmitted to a command center on the Stennis, where they are checked against a database. Incomplete or incorrect answers could lead to a search. So could refusal to answer, though Navy officials say virtually all of the 3,500 ships queried to date have cooperated. But even cooperative ships can be randomly boarded. ''It's like a cop on the beat,'' said Capt. James P. Wisecup, commander of Destroyer Squadron 21, who is managing the interdiction program. ''After a while, you figure out who belongs in the neighborhood and who doesn't.'' The Decatur, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, is one of those beat cops. From his captain's chair, Cmdr. Victorino G. Mercado can view radar tracks from across the Arabian Sea that show every ship and aircraft in the region. Infrared and night vision scopes also allow his crew to monitor distant ships in the dark. He has 24 sailors trained to board ships armed with shotguns and 9-millimeter pistols. ''If you just talk and don't board, there's not a deterrent,'' Captain Mercado said. On board the P-3 planes that help guide the coalition ships, each mission commander carries a thick three-ring binder marked ''secret'' that contains photographs and descriptions of the more than two dozen merchant vessels that have been linked to Al Qaeda. But not many of those ships have made recent appearances in the Arabian Sea. ''When we look back in 5 to 10 years, we'll know if we succeeded,'' Captain Wisecup said. ''All we can do now is try our best to keep the pressure on.'' A NATION CHALLENGED: FUGITIVES | Coalition Widens Its Ocean Manhunt |
1376708_1 | colony. The book opens with vivid scenes of London lowlife. Rees conjures the squalor of three-in-a-bed boardinghouses, a world ''where people moved from job to job with their possessions in a box on their back, looking constantly for an extra sixpence a week, a warmer bed or better food.'' The supply of prostitutes swelled when Prime Minister William Pitt introduced a tax on maidservants over the age of 15. Many women were sentenced to transportation for petty theft, for as Rees writes, ''the penal code of the late 18th century was an inadequate and crude instrument.'' Not all belonged to the underclass. Some were girls ''of good family'' seduced and betrayed by cads. Often the parents of these tragic girls turned up at the dockside pleading fruitlessly for clemency. The Lady Julian, three-masted, two-decked and excessively leaky, sailed down the Thames in July 1789, the week the first refugees from the French Revolution landed in England. More than 220 female convicts were on board, their ages ranging from 11 to 68. Some had infants with them, though children over the age of 6 were left on the quayside. The only known firsthand account of the voyage is that of 34-year-old John Nicol, an unlettered Scottish steward and cooper. He dictated his memoirs to a journalist more than 30 years after the events (they were reissued in 1999 as ''The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner''). Rees is obliged to rely heavily on Nicol's account, even though it is known to be inaccurate, and as a result the reader is left wanting to hear the women speak for themselves. The paucity of source material inevitably weakens the story. Speculative sentences of the ''It is likely'' variety slow down the narrative drive, as does a plethora of words and phrases like ''perhaps,'' ''probably,'' ''unguessable,'' ''we cannot know'' and ''we enter the realm of pure hypothesis.'' Rees fleshes out the skeletal story line with plenty of imaginative re-creation, and over all she makes the book work, largely because even the bones of this exotic tale are gripping. Among the convicts, Sarah Whitelam was a 19-year-old Lincolnshire lass convicted of stealing a haul of clothes ''with force and arms,'' a charge she strenuously denied. When she was rowed out to the ship, at anchor in the Thames, she was manacled. (In March she had traveled for 36 hours strapped to the outside seat | Ship of Floozies |
1376502_2 | factories. Companies began using electric motors in production, replacing steam engines, in the 19th century. But the real breakthrough in productivity came only with Ford's managerial innovation in 1913 of organizing production in moving assembly lines. The Internet, Ms. Cairncross writes, still awaits the business innovations that will truly exploit its potential as a tool of economic efficiency and organizational change. But she has little doubt that the evolution will occur. ''The Internet may prove just as potent a force for reshaping companies in the 21st century as electricity and mass production did in the 20th,'' she writes. Unlike electricity, the Internet is primarily a low-cost and flexible communications technology. Yet implications extend well beyond now-ubiquitous e-mail. (The average American office worker receives 36 e-mail messages a day, seven times more than voicemail, Ms. Cairncross notes.) The Internet will greatly reduce the cost of finding information, staying connected to customers and suppliers and buying and selling. The payoff here comes in savings in customer service, purchasing and procurement. Much of this is the seemingly boring back office of the business, but these quotidian transactions represent a huge slice of the economy -- and the potential for sustained improvements in productivity. Promising anecdotal evidence abounds, and Ms. Cairncross cites many examples. General Electric calculates that a simple order costs $5 if it is taken by telephone, but only 20 cents if it comes online. Ryanair, the Irish budget airline, cut its sales, marketing and distribution costs 62 percent by selling more than 90 percent of tickets online. In corporate buying departments, the cost of a conventional purchase order is $100, compared with $10 online, according to the Boston Consulting Group. YET, returning to her theme, Ms. Cairncross stresses that capturing the cost savings broadly requires changes in management practices and corporate culture. Purchasing, she writes, might account for 50 percent to 80 percent of a company's spending, but the department has often been regarded as ''a corporate Siberia, one of life's dead ends.'' Closer, strategic links with suppliers -- promising big gains in efficiency -- are also made easier and less costly by the Internet. But that requires a culture of openness as well as careful monitoring of relationships with suppliers, Ms. Cairncross states. Dell Computer is her marquee example. ''In effect,'' she writes, ''Dell posts its actual manufacturing schedule on a private extranet -- a walled-off bit of the Internet | A Management Revolution Still in the Making |
1376602_1 | the circumstances. There're always a million things that can go wrong.'' McKeon, whose standard sailing gear includes a motorcycle helmet, knows what he is talking about. ''There's a risk every time we take the boat out that it's going to crash,'' he said. ''The only real issue is whether it's going to be a big one or a little one. But we're used to that. No worries.'' Longer, lighter and more powerful than its predecessor, Macquarie Innovation is essentially a 40-foot-long, 40-foot-wide tripod that weighs about 440 pounds and serves as the base for the boat's rig and power plant, a wing sail fashioned with heat-shrink material over a carbon-fiber frame. Small planing pods are affixed to the outer arm of each tripod. McKeon and Daddo's plexiglass-encased cockpit is stationed in the vessel's starboard pod. ''We used to have a little instrument in there telling us what the G-forces were,'' McKeon said. ''It's a sensation probably few yachtsmen ever experience,'' he added. ''Doing a 35- to 38-knot run is actually quite pleasant. At those speeds it's not that hard to sail. Once we're up into the 40's, though, it's a different kettle of fish. I've never concentrated as hard in my life as I have for those 20 intense seconds when you're thundering down the course at really high speeds.'' The wild ride begins when Macquarie Innovation goes from displacement mode to planing mode. McKeon said the boat is much harder to control at slow speeds. ''We actually struggle when it's making 4 or 5 knots because it's not designed for those speeds,'' he said. ''It's like maneuvering an oil tanker at 3 knots. They're not really designed to do that.'' That said, it does not take much wind to get Macquarie Innovation going. Really going. ''In 14 knots of breeze the boat's hard to control, but in 15 knots we're up and planing,'' McKeon said. ''There aren't too many boats in the world where at 14 knots the top speed is 4 knots and at 15 knots it'll do 44 knots. And there's nothing in between.'' With such efficiency, McKeon said he did not need a gale to approach record speeds. In fact, it is the last thing he wants. ''Our boat sails at a multiple of the windspeed,'' he said, meaning that in a given breeze they might sail at three times the speed of the wind. ''Anything | Going 50 Knots on a Wing and a Catamaran |
1376333_0 | THE Greeks (and their Roman interlocutors) are much among us. There is Mary Zimmerman's fanciful gloss on Ovid, ''Metamorphoses,'' newly on Broadway. There are, or have been, two versions of the Hippolytus and Phaedra legend, about the woman lusting after her stepson. One is Charles L. Mee's ''True Love,'' which ended its Off Broadway run on Jan. 27; the other is the Wooster Group's ''To You, the Birdie! (Phèdre),'' now in a warehouse near the Brooklyn waterfront. ''Metamorphoses'' is Greek myth filtered through the haute-Roman sensibility of Ovid and then through the haute-Chicago sensibility of Ms. Zimmerman. ''To You, the Birdie!'' is Euripides via the French Baroque of Racine. And of course there was Julie Taymor's vivid film ''Titus,'' which was Rome via Shakespeare via ''The Lion King.'' Novelists are not to be left out. In recent decades at least four of them have tackled the Ovid theme alone, so fascinating are the mysteries of his lost play ''Medea'' and his banishment in A.D. 8 to the outer barbarian borders of the empire on the Black Sea. David Malouf led the parade with his ''Imaginary Life'' in 1978. Then there was Christoph Ransmayr's ''Last World,'' which blended past and present and trickster-transformations in Ovid's place of exile. David Wishart's ''Ovid'' was a Roman political thriller. And last year Jane Alison's ''Love-Artist'' imagined Ovid bringing a seductive Black Sea seer back to Rome, using her as the model for his Medea, then falling victim to an Augustan conspiracy. Whenever a lot of one thing happens all at once, critics rush to pronounce a trend. These works were years in the making, and the plays just happened to appear at the same time. Western civilization is built upon a Greco-Roman base, and hence maybe there is nothing much new about a clutch of classical reinterpretations. But maybe there is something more to all of this than serendipity. Maybe in this era of a tenuous Pax Americana, we look back unwittingly to the stability of the Pax Romana. Maybe the Greeks and Romans represent a conservative bedrock of classical values, and our need for them reflects a Bushian yearning for stability amid confusing multiculturalism and post-Sept. 11 anxiety. Or maybe this is a search for sensuality in a too rational world: Ovid's slippery, mystical transformations (as well as his authorship of an erotic manual), the primal sexuality of the Greek myths, or, more | Theater; Revisiting The Ancients For Renewal |
1378694_1 | March 13. He was 102. A student of Martin Heidegger and the successor of Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg University, Dr. Gadamer was the author of ''Truth and Method'' (1960), one of the most influential works in the field of hermeneutics, the study of the understanding and meaning of texts. In the book, he confronted the scientific ideal of objectivity, arguing that personal experience, cultural tradition and prior understandings make unbiased interpretation of any perception of reality impossible. He also considered the related question of how ideas are transmitted, asserting that the meaning of a text is unfixed, and changes according to the interplay between the author's intentions and the reader's understanding. These views did not drive Dr. Gadamer to completely reject the notion of truth. He recognized the need for it in the social context and encouraged critical self-awareness as a way to limit biases and to move closer to objectivity. Dr. Gadamer received two doctorates for his work on Plato, from Marburg University in 1922 and from Heidelberg -- where he studied with Heidegger -- in 1929. He began his university teaching career in 1934 at Kiel, moving to Marburg in 1937 and then to Leipzig in 1939. Unlike his mentor Heidegger, he was never associated with Nazi efforts to remake German universities, and, as a result, Soviet authorities allowed him to keep his Leipzig post after World War II. His ability to avoid politics was due in part to his deep involvement in academic interests. He once remarked to a colleague, ''I basically only read books that are at least 2,000 years old.'' Allowed to move to West Germany in 1947, he received his appointment at Heidelberg in 1949, retiring in 1968. In the years that followed, he lectured at a number of American universities, including Boston College, Vanderbilt and Catholic University. He was the author of more than 15 books published in English, including an autobiography, ''Philosophical Apprenticeships'' (1985). Dr. Gadamer was born in Marburg on Feb. 11, 1900. He is survived by his wife, Käthe, and daughter, Andrea. Keenly interested in art and literature, Dr. Gadamer identified with the Greek philosophers throughout his life. Summarizing his connection to them and his contribution to this field in ''The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy'' (1986), he wrote, ''philosophy is a human experience that remains the same,'' adding, ''there is not progress in it, but only participation.'' | Hans-Georg Gadamer, 102, Who Questioned Fixed Truths |
1378664_0 | By almost any measure, the wave of pedophilia scandals sweeping through the country represents the greatest crisis ever to face the Catholic Church in the United States. Not surprisingly, the scandals have prompted widespread anguish among American Catholics. The discussions taking place around the country -- in homes, in schools, in parishes -- are necessary if the church is to emerge from this crisis healthier and more open. At the same time, commentators have frequently twisted together a number of distinct strands that need to be pulled apart in the discussion. Conservative observers frequently, and wrongly, link pedophilia with homosexuality and imply that being a gay priest means that one is ipso facto sexually active. Liberals declare that so many incidents of pedophilia show the need for the ordination of married men and women. Still others claim that only a celibate clergy could misunderstand the problem of pedophilia. At the heart of many of these misreadings, perhaps, is a fundamental misunderstanding of celibacy. In general, many Americans -- many American Catholics for that matter -- view celibacy as at best misguided and, at worst, masochistic. The unspoken question is: What kind of sick person would willingly give up sex? This is not a surprising reaction in a culture that prizes sex and sexuality and places such an emphasis on sexual expression. In this current crisis, however, the value of celibacy is not the issue. It seems odd to have to point this out, but the vast majority -- the overwhelming majority -- of priests, sisters and brothers who take vows of celibacy keep their vows. And the vast majority of these men and women lead healthy and productive lives in service to the church and the community. Celibacy is not only an ancient tradition of asceticism, but more important, it is an ancient tradition of love. Celibacy is, in short, about loving others. Those who opt for celibacy (or to use religious terminology, those who feel ''called'' to embrace it) choose it as a manner of loving many people deeply, in a way that they would be unable to if they were in a single relationship. It is certainly not for everyone. And it is not a better or a worse way of loving than being a married person, or being in an exclusive relationship with one person. The criminal acts of a few do not negate the value of | Choosing Celibacy |
1378735_1 | I was ordered to burn the identity cards and work documents of workers who I had last seen walking down the road, supposedly on their way out,'' he said. ''We also found heaps of bones out in the jungle, but none of us ever talked about it.'' Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888, and forced labor for both blacks and whites continued throughout the 20th century in some rural areas. But government authorities admit that despite a federal crackdown announced seven years ago, ''contemporary forms of slavery'' in which workers are held in unpaid, coerced labor continue to flourish. The reasons range from ranchers in cahoots with corrupt local authorities to ineffective land reform policies and high unemployment. Perhaps most important, though, is the growing pressure to exploit and develop the Amazon's vast agricultural frontier, in part to supply foreign markets with two prized goods: timber and beef. In the jungle west of here, fortunes are being made clearing the forest and harvesting mahogany and other tropical hardwoods, including jatoba and ipe. The United States is the main importer of Brazilian mahogany, and though logging has been permitted only in 13 designated areas, Greenpeace, the advocacy group, has listed nearly 100 companies it says deal in illegal mahogany to meet a growing demand from American furniture makers. Furniture companies like Ethan Allen and L. & J. G. Stickley say their mahogany comes only from ''suppliers that advise us that they comply with responsible forest practices,'' as Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. of Danbury, Conn., put it in a statement. But the companies also acknowledge that they do not have independent monitors and do not believe that they should have to determine the origin of imported wood. ''We cannot do the job of the Brazilian government,'' said Aminy Audi, an owner of Stickley, a big buyer of Brazilian mahogany in Manlius, N.Y., for its own stores and a manufacturer for other brands. ''We have to believe the certification, and we have had no reason to believe otherwise.'' Brazilian government statistics indicate that Aljoma Lumber of Medley, Fla., near Miami, was the largest importer of Brazilian mahogany in the United States in 2000. Asked about slave labor in the Amazon, the company's vice president for hardwoods, Romel Bezerra, said that ''there is no such thing these days,'' and insisted that his company's mahogany came from legal | Brazil's Prized Exports Rely On Slaves and Scorched Land |
1378658_0 | To the Editor: In your discussion of ''The Plagues of Poverty'' (editorial, March 19), you do not mention an underlying cause: the population explosion. There is scarcely a problem that is not affected -- directly or indirectly -- by ever more people producing ever more people on a finite planet. Physical and mental illnesses produced by overcrowding and malnourishment resulting from too many mouths to feed top the list. Yet the Bush administration withholds family planning money and penalizes countries with responsible population-control policies. Be fruitful and multiply? We've already done that. Now it's time to conserve and nurture. BEATRICE WILLIAMS-RUDE New York, March 20, 2002 | Poverty and Population |
1372894_3 | said today that as many as 1,000 fighters belonging to the Taliban and Al Qaeda took refuge in the town for about a month in late November and early December. Then, under pleas from the local population, who feared American bombing, the fugitives packed up and moved with their families into the mountains about 15 miles south of the town, the residents said. ''We don't have a good answer as to whether this was some prearranged congregation point before the war even started, or if they've been able to somehow communicate and gather together there,'' said Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, chief spokesman for the United States Central Command. ''This is a sizable pocket of Al Qaeda that needs to be dealt with,'' Admiral Quigley said. ''We have studied this place for some time.'' In conversations beside the town's bazaar, residents of Zormat did not recall seeing any of the highest echelon of Taliban and Qaeda leaders, or at least they were unwilling to say they had witnessed them. This appeared to leave the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, as much a mystery as ever. Capturing or killing these two was among America's highest priorities when the bombing began on Oct. 7. The most senior Taliban leader spotted in the town, according to a local militia commander, was Qudratullah Jamal, the Taliban's minister of information and culture, not considered among the top men on the American most-wanted list. Other Taliban officials known to have been in the town, the commander said, were Khalilullah Ferozi, head of the Muslim clergy in Kabul; Arifullah Arif, a deputy minister of Islamic affairs; and Mullah Saifur Rahman, commander of the Taliban's 8th military district at Qargha, west of Kabul. All four men appeared to have been part of the Taliban exodus from the Kabul district on the night of Nov. 13, when American bombing broke Taliban resistance north of the capital. Zormat residents said the men from Kabul were joined, in early December, by other Taliban and Qaeda men fleeing Kandahar, where Taliban rule collapsed on Dec. 7. They said the Qaeda men included Saudi Arabians, Sudanese, Yemenis and Egyptians, among other Arab nationalities, and that they were welcomed in the town because they came with money to shop in the bazaar, and otherwise kept mostly to themselves. ''They were very | U.S. PLANES POUND ENEMY AS TROOPS FACE TOUGH FIGHT |
1384214_5 | Venezuelan oil. He began a friendship with President Fidel Castro of Cuba, and in August 2000 visited countries like Libya and Iraq. ''It was the trip which gave him a first-hand view of how despots of all stripes manage to run their countries by virtual decree, and I think it affected him deeply,'' said Eric Ekvall, a political consultant here. ''When he returned he gave the first real indication, as far as I am concerned, of how raw his authoritarian leanings were going to get.'' Despite increased verbal lashings against opponents, though, Mr. Chávez's government was rarely repressive. The news media operated freely, and the police did not crack down on protesters. But some analysts said Mr. Chávez failed to heed the warning signs of a growing protest movement. He continually scoffed at the opposition, deriding it as a tiny, corrupt minority. In November, the government passed a series of economic laws with little or no consultation from business groups or opposition politicians. Mr. Carmona, the president of a powerful business owners' group, tried to prod Mr. Chávez to negotiate. He refused, ridiculing the entrepreneurs. That led to the first real blow to Mr. Chávez's government, a nationwide general strike organized by Mr. Carmona's group and the million-member Venezuelan Labor Confederation that paralyzed the country. Through it all, Mr. Chávez -- at least in public -- appeared unconcerned and played down the strike's effects, enraging a growing number of people. This year, the president aggravated the situation by firing the president of Petroleos de Venezuela and installing his own board of directors. Company executives embarked on a series of work slowdowns, which by early this week had started to curtail oil exports, which account for 80 percent of Venezuela's exports. On Tuesday, as the second general strike since Dec. 10 began, Mr. Chávez and his ministers continued to denigrate the organizers of the protests and assert that the work stoppage had no tangible effect. ''We are serene, the government is tranquil and is not altering its attitudes,'' José Vicente Rangel, the defense minister under Mr. Chávez, said at the time. ''We are responding to the millions of Venezuelans who put President Chávez in Miraflores,'' the presidential palace. But Mr. Chávez had lost much of his support. And when violence broke out, it appeared that he had broken a fundamental pledge -- that his forces would never fire on his people. | A Chávez Comeback More Astounding Than His Fall |
1383766_2 | educating a child with a disability. While we have made significant progress in recent years toward meeting this goal, the federal government still only provides approximately 17 percent of the cost, placing the balance of the financial burden on states and local school districts. This must be fixed. MR. BOLICK: The program represents a conceptual breakthrough on two fronts. First, unlike other public educational programs, it recognizes that children are individuals and that ''one size fits all'' does not work in education. Second, it is the first program to provide a guarantee of appropriate education, allowing children to exit the system if their needs are not met in the public system. What doesn't work? The program mixes truly disabled children with nondisabled children who have special needs. Sophisticated parents scam the system to secure preferential treatment for their children, such as untimed tests, reduced homework and grades that aren't commensurate with achievement relative to others. At the same time, the program creates an incentive for schools to warehouse poor, predominantly minority children. MR. MARCHAND: I think the most problematic issue facing special education today is the serious lack of qualified teachers and related services personnel. Today, 30,000 teachers are in special education without the appropriate certification or licensure. MS. EL-AMIN: Many nights I was brought to tears because my daughter just won't get it and I can't help her see the easiest answer. My grandson with A.D.H.D. (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is all over the place; his teacher has a very difficult time with him. Without special ed I fear my children may get lost to the streets. What most needs to be fixed is to have the stigma removed so that children are not ashamed that they may not learn the same way as most. DR. GOODEN: Many of us remember an earlier time in which children with mild disabilities received no assistance in schools and were excluded from educational opportunities because they were ''different.'' Those with serious disabilities were simply excluded from schools, and often from society. Despite the challenges, this makes IDEA America's educational ''success'' for the last quarter century. MS. BOUNDY: I hope we are permitted to be direct with each other. Mr. Bolick, while I would concede that you may be able to identify a parent or even a few who have sought to beat the system, your suggestion that they are representative is every | A Better IDEA |
1384015_1 | main concourse area, and he takes the worst of it. Dominick and I and the sarge just make it around the corner, but Antonio doesn't. Everything just starts hitting us, and then the wall comes down on top of me. I am flabbergasted. My friend Dominick is crushed down in the push-up position, and my legs are pinned completely by heavy concrete. Sergeant McLoughlin sees the walls breaking apart, and they are falling on him. And the ceiling falls on him, [pinning him] 20 feet away from me. I can't see him, but I can hear him. I keep calling out for Amoroso and Rodrigues, calling and calling for two minutes straight. But there is no response. The lights are flickering, but they don't go out. Dominick begins to wiggle himself out. Sergeant McLoughlin, being from ESU, does everything by the book, and so we are talking about what we have to do. I have an old pair of handcuffs and I begin to scratch at everything around me, trying to free up some of the concrete. The sarge is thinking Dominick will get free and work to get me out first, and then together we will work to dig Sergeant McLoughlin out. The sarge is hurt bad, and he has a few thousand pounds crushing down on him. But he keeps talking to us. . . . It takes about eight hours to dig Sergeant McLoughlin out. THE WORLD TRADE CENTER REMEMBERED Photographs by Sonja Bullaty and Angelo Lomeo Text by Paul Goldberger Abbeville Press ($19.95, paperback) Before Sept. 11, the skyline functioned in the spirit of Darwinian evolution. The bigger things drove out the smaller ones. You may not have believed that the biggest buildings were truly the fittest, or that they deserved to push aside the others, but that is how things had always worked in New York, and there was no reason to believe it was going to change. Nothing ever built in the history of New York had been as tall as the towers of the World Trade Center, and there was little expectation that anything as tall as the towers would be built again. They seemed to represent a kind of culmination of the principle of survival of the fittest. They would remain, if not forever, for our lifetimes and our children's lifetimes and their children's lifetimes, of that we were certain. We may | Recalling the Day The Towers Fell, In Words and Pictures |
1384098_2 | list of 17 sponsoring countries on Friday. As an observer, Washington can still co-sponsor a resolution, although it cannot vote. For weeks before, Cuban officials accused the United States of behind-the-scenes maneuvering to craft a hostile resolution. Mr. Moley, who is also the American ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, denied that the Bush administration had coordinated the effort, led by Uruguay, saying that the resolution was a ''clear sign of disenchantment with Cuba'' by its neighbors. The resolution does not refer directly to the longstanding United States trade embargo of Cuba, but notes that Havana has made progress in ''fulfilling the social rights of its people,'' a reference to its health and education programs, ''despite an adverse international environment.'' But Cuba now needs to make ''similar advances'' in political rights, the resolution said. Cuba's one-party political system has been accused of denying citizens free speech and freedoms of press and assembly, and of jailing members of the opposition. Uruguay's ambassador, Carlos Perez del Castillo, said the Latin American countries had acted on their own, saying the resolution was ''a seriously thought-out product.'' ''We are not condemning Cuba,'' he said. ''We have been witness to the condemnation of Cuba with a lot of confrontation and without any effect. We want to try a different approach, but it is up to the government of Cuba to show willingness to cooperate.'' Peru, Guatemala, Argentina, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama were the other Latin American cosponsors that joined in calling for the government of Fidel Castro to permit a rights monitor to visit Cuba and assess the situation. The day after the resolution was introduced, it was lambasted by Cuba's foreign minister, Felipe Perez. At a news conference in Havana, he declared that his government would never agree to a visit by a human rights monitor, and he reiterated accusations of American pressure. ''They're dreaming if they think that Cuba would let an inspector in the service of the United States government come here under these conditions,'' he said. He said the resolution was meant to justify Washington's continuing trade embargo because earlier reasons, like Cuba's military presence in Africa and its support of left-wing guerrillas in Latin America, no longer existed. Last year, a resolution sponsored by the Czech Republic against Cuba was narrowly approved, 22 to 20, with 10 countries abstaining. A vote on the latest resolution | China Evades U.N. Criticism of Rights Abuses |
1383765_4 | at a prestigious place, be it the Central Intelligence Agency or the Culinary Institute of America, commands the attention of prospective employers and professional school admissions committees. It demonstrates that the applicant had the intellect, drive and maturity to win a much-coveted position. But on the whole, substantive work is more important than prestige. Many interns, alas, spend most of their time faxing, stapling, filing and delivering -- or surfing the Net as they wait for the next chore. Of his three internships (one with Capitol Records in New York) Mr. Wiseman rates his stint with Flying Colors as the most valuable. At glamorous Capitol, he updated his supervisor's contact list and sent recordings to disk jockeys; at Flying Colors he used the company's stock footage to adapt a short story for the screen and produced a music video. Prospective interns should ask supervisors to describe the projects to which they will be assigned and chat with previous interns before making a decision. One roadblock to a prized internship is the fact that, to minimize liability and comply with minimum wages laws, some companies require unpaid interns to get academic credit for their work. But many universities don't give credit for experiential learning -- Stanford, for example. Instead, Mr. Choy will write a letter certifying that the student is in good standing and endorsing the internship on behalf of the university. If this does not suffice, he acknowledges, applicants have been known to enroll for one credit as nonmatriculating, extramural students in inexpensive colleges that grant credit for such work. Students will not be able to apply the credit toward their degree. Which Foot Forward? As with any job application, a good résumé and cover letter highlight relevant qualifications and show that the applicant is familiar with the position; Web sites are a handy source for company information that can be dropped into the interview. Sloppiness, wordiness, spelling mistakes or grammatical errors can be fatal. And the candidate who stands out from the rest has a better chance. Prof. James Reese likes to recount how, a few years ago, a student in his sports industry program at Ohio University flashed a New York Yankees tattoo on his leg during an interview with the Bronx Bombers. Extreme, but he was hired that day. The 'In' Box While on the job, assigned tasks should be mastered first. Once interns demonstrate that they | A Tryout for the Real World |
1384063_2 | screen passengers and luggage before they reach the counter. As a result, passengers wait in snaking queues, often outdoors, just to get into the building. New airports are already being designed to accommodate such preliminary inspection stations and older airports reconfigured for this reproportioning of activity -- alleviating crowding not through the grandeur of the train station, sized to bustle, but through new orders of regimentation and squeeze. This architecture will have far stronger affinities with an A.T.M. anteroom than the Gare du Nord. Everything about the airport of the future will be designed to scrutinize passengers and map their location in real time. The new architecture of travel might be aligned with a set of switches for screening and sorting of large flows of people and baggage. Increasingly, this may mean the creation of a space of gauntlets and gates, where passengers are screened by profilers, sniffed by dogs, zapped by magnetometers and analyzed by spectrographs for any untoward residue. Airports will act as giant filtration machines, designed to deliver ''clean'' passengers and luggage to the aircraft. For some this lock-step rationality will be reassuring, for others it will only magnify the fear. Perhaps, Disneyland-style, buskers will entertain those waiting in this series of endless lines, and clocks -- in that ultimate psychological ruse -- will let passengers know they have a half-hour to wait from a given point, creating delight when they discover the actual time served was, say, only 25 minutes. As airlines try to provide better service for regular customers, several carriers have suggested that special identification be offered to frequent fliers, precertifying them for quick passage. An Israeli firm is trying to sell airlines a biometric screening device that it says is used to ''expedite'' the movement of 80,000 Palestinian workers across the Israeli border every day. AT the airport, use of iris scanners, handprint readers and huge databases might well be required to marshall the movement of passengers through the new universe of virtual borders. In fact, the surrender of privacy will be the currency of privilege in the new system. With a biometric profile, platinum card and perhaps a company-issue G.P.S., frequent fliers' locations (and that of their luggage) will be known within feet at all times. For their own security, of course. When at the airport recently, I placed my bag on the conveyer belt to be X-rayed, emptied my pockets into | Ideas & Trends; The Architecture of Air Travel |
1383998_0 | A robust new communications tool is transforming city business. It promises to cut waste, shorten menial tasks, and make City Hall more nimble. ''It's cheaper, it's faster, and it saves us money,'' said Judy Duffy, the assistant district manager for Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan. ''The only downside is that a lot of people still don't have it.'' Ms. Duffy's office is among the recent converts to e-mail. Despite the fact that the rest of the planet has been well wired for some time, it was not until this year that the 80 staff members for the Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, could send messages only to one another, and not between offices. Now staffers in the borough president's office can actually e-mail press releases instead of faxing them. Computers have also been turning up beside the rusty staplers, including those at City Hall, where the mayor has had a bank of wireless terminals installed. Workers swear by e-mail -- when it works. ''We have a D.S.L. line,'' said Dirk McCall, chief of staff for Councilman Alan J. Gerson. ''But it's down more often than up.'' That e-mail was a novelty took some by surprise. ''It was like stepping into the dinosaur age,'' said one new civil servant. Of 250,000 city workers, 40,000 have e-mail addresses, said Gino P. Menchini, commissioner of the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. But in many agencies, there is a digital divide between wired and unwired. ''It is insane,'' said Anthony Townsend, a researcher at the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University. ''Municipal government is at the end of the chain.'' But Arthur Strickler. district manager of Community Board 2 in Manhattan, is the only e-mail user there for a reason: ''I don't want the staff to be on e-mail all day and play games.'' DENNY LEE NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: NEW YORK UP CLOSE | You Can Toss Away That Quill Pen, Sir. E-Mail Arrives for the City's Workers. |
1387347_0 | A federally appointed panel has approved a risky experiment that would flood part of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon in an effort to save an endangered fish, rebuild beaches and kill part of a trout population that many experts contend is out of control. The panel, composed of representatives of every major interest group with a stake in how that part of the river should be used and protected, voted 17 to 1 in favor of the experiment at a two-day meeting in Phoenix that ended yesterday. One member abstained. If the experiment is approved by Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton, dam operators will reduce flows through the Glen Canyon Dam in September, or as soon afterward as monsoon rains dump sediment into the river below the dam. Such low flows are designed to prevent new sand from moving downstream. Rafting company operators, wildlife officials and archaeologists favor creating beaches along the river. Under the plan, dam managers will release flood-level flows on Jan. 1 for 48 hours to lift the sand and deposit it on beaches. Then, for three months, the managers will alternate high and low flows each day to dry spawning grounds and destroy trout eggs. Finally, scientists plan to electrocute and grind thousands of trout in a five-mile stretch of river where an endangered fish, the humpback chub, spawns and where its young are disappearing for reasons that are not well understood. Trout may be eating them, some scientists say. The new experiment will be the fourth effort by scientists at the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center in Flagstaff, Ariz., to alter river conditions by manipulating water flows from the dam. A 1996 experiment, which involved a weeklong release of flood waters, was hailed a success in building beaches, but most of the sand washed away the next year. Experiments in 1997 and 2000 had mixed results and, some experts say, may even have reduced the size of some beaches. Rod Kuharic, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, said, ''My concern is that flow modification has resulted in significantly less sediment in the system'' than was there five or six years ago. Mr. Kuharic is the only member of Glen Canyon Adaptive Management Group to vote against the experiment. ''I'm not opposed to managing sediment,'' he said, ''but I don't think their decision is based on enough scientific knowledge.'' Terry | U.S. Panel Backs a Risky Effort to Save a Grand Canyon Fish |
1387302_1 | failed operations. ''This is a 100 percent preventable problem,'' Dr. Abdullah Kannan, a gynecologist in Khartoum, said of fistula. ''It has disappeared completely from Western countries.'' New York's hospital for fistula patients closed in 1895 because of diminishing cases and now the condition is almost unknown in America -- yet Khartoum has 10 to 20 new patients arriving from the countryside each week because of poor midwifery. The United Nations Population Fund supports precisely the kind of third-world maternal health care programs that can save women's lives in childbirth and avoid medical complications like fistula. Yet the White House for now is crippling the fund by withholding the 13 percent of its budget that the United States provides. President Bush is responding to concerns of a group of 55 congressmen led by Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican; they complained in a letter to the White House that the fund's program in China ''supports coercive abortion and sterilization and therefore is in violation of our conscience and our law.'' I was always impressed by Mr. Smith's sincerity during his visits to China when I lived there, and I'm sure he genuinely wants to protect peasant women in China from forced abortion. But unfortunately his approach is catastrophic for poor women. The critics are right that the Chinese one-child policy is sometimes monstrous, but wrong about the United Nations' being complicit: while the population fund is active in China, it has been a voice for restraint there. It is, for example, behind Beijing's recent experiments with voluntary family planning rather than forced sterilization. Moreover, it was the population fund that persuaded China to replace its catastrophic old IUD, a steel ring, with much safer and more effective IUD's made of copper. This won no headlines or applause, yet it was a triumph for the health and welfare of 60 million Chinese women with IUD's, and the decline in accidental pregnancies has also meant about 20 million fewer abortions over the last 10 years. The critics falsely portray the issue as one of abortion. In fact, the population fund does not support abortion services; on the contrary, the cutoff of $34 million could result in an additional 800,000 abortions per year because of less contraception available. The reality is that the population fund is active not only in providing contraception but also in waging a lonely struggle to oppose female genital mutilation, | Devastated Women |
1382094_2 | functional growth option is a merger. Q. Which companies would make the best fit with Bristol-Myers? A. Bristol-Myers Squibb will get taken out, but as a merger of equals. I would be shocked if most of the potential partners don't already have a model of the combined companies up and running right now. Pharmacia is the most likely partner. They need cardiovascular marketing and sales capacity. Novartis is the second most likely. They want more scale in the United States before they launch their new arthritis drug. Q. What advice do you have for shareholders of Bristol-Myers Squibb? A. The stock has a very high dividend yield, but we don't know if the dividend is in trouble. And there are some important issues we don't know, like a complete explanation for the earnings shortfall and for the shortfalls in projected revenue growth. I am not in the position to say from the revenue line down to the earnings line that there is a lot of clarity. That makes me more than a little nervous. I would have a hard time telling people to sell the shares right now. But we are leaning more negatively than positively. Q. What would you do if Bristol-Myers merged with another drug company? A. The only value from a merger would be a very small premium to the shares. Once you get that you should sell. There has only been one drug company merger, the one that created Aventis, that outperformed its peer group. Q. It doesn't sound like you much care for the prospects of big drug companies. A. I have no buy recommendations on any of the stocks. We are neutral on the drug companies. We see a significant deceleration in earnings growth, and the earnings stream will be riskier. Q. But doesn't the aging of the population work in the industry's favor? A. The demographic effects are not what people think they are. If you do the math, and we have, the effect of population aging on unit demand growth is about 0.36 percentage points a year. By 2020, it is about 0.72 percentage points a year. It changes glacially. As the population gets older, more drugs get consumed. But the population also dies. Demographics is not a reason to buy drug stocks. The only area where demographic trends make sense are those companies that sell purely to the aged. MARKET INSIGHT | Drug Makers' New Reality: 'Innovate Or Die' |
1381874_0 | ATTEMPTS to improve airport security with new technology have led to tools for identifying people using iris scans, handprints and even cellphones to track movements of passengers and airport personnel. Some innovations also promise customer-service improvements, such as notifying passengers of changes in departure times or gates by cellphone or pager instead of an unintelligible public address speaker. At Billund Airport, Denmark's second busiest gateway, a wireless network was tested for several weeks in February using a voluntary database containing passengers' names, addresses, passport numbers and mobile telephone numbers. Large blue tags that passengers either carried or attached to their carry-on luggage and then surrendered at boarding allowed them to be tracked by airport security. The system, developed by Red-M, a British company, and BlueTags of Denmark, uses Bluetooth computing technology to track sensors. It allows security personnel to see if a tagged bag is somewhere suspicious or if someone entered the wrong terminal or gate, said Laura Cleveland, a Red-M spokeswoman. A handprint identification system used in some airports in the United States, and in Canada and Israel has sped volunteers through passport control since the mid-1990's. At Heathrow Airport, Virgin Atlantic Airways and British Airways are testing an iris-scan device that stores a similar database of enrolled passengers' unique eye characteristics. The five-month trial, which ends in June, may attract up to 2,000 frequent fliers, said Wendy Buck, a Virgin Atlantic spokeswoman. ''There may be security implications later on, but the goal for Virgin Atlantic was really to improve the customer experience, and this should speed people's travels through Heathrow,'' she said. Other airports are testing facial recognition software or equipping law enforcement personnel with encrypted e-mail systems to supplement walkie-talkies or cellphones. IPix, a computer-assisted system of 360-degree image viewing developed for the Department of Energy and NASA and first commercialized in part for real-estate virtual tours on the Web, is being tested as a means of providing improved security video of concourses and passenger areas. Internet Pictures Corporation, the company that sells iPix, is testing a series of cameras at the Knoxville, Tenn., airport that provide 360-degree by 180-degree views with no blind spots for live and archival viewing of the airport, said Stu Roberson, the company's senior vice president for worldwide marketing. IPix cameras can also be teamed with pattern-recognition software to alert guards to unusual occurrences. There are limitations to the way technology is | High-Tech Identity Checks |
1381983_2 | be ''out of context.'' In an e-mail message to the forester the next day the mayor wrote, ''I toured Douglas Park early this morning and found absolutely no erosion of any kind.'' But by 8 that same morning, I had taken photographs of a new mud slide. The village had stripped vegetation from a ridge and covered it with a truckload of strange gray dirt. Light rain had collapsed it in three places and took a swath of it down about 50 yards. On March 29 I received a 70-page forestry guide from the state Environmental Conservation Department. I sent it to Mr. Zegarelli by certified mail. On March 31 I reviewed the new mudslide photographs with an environmental lawyer and law professor, Nick Robinson, who's with Pace University . He said the slide might contain contaminants, a violation of state and federal law if or when it reaches the river. Next I delivered them to the homes of the mayor and the trustees. I spoke with three of them, urging them to stop the project and listen to the Environmental Conservation Department. They had now had the forester's March 26 report for six days. It had warned of ''potentially catastrophic runoff.'' On April 1 I went back to the park. I photographed buds in the canopy of an 80-foot American beech tree. The Department of Environmental Conservation said the buds meant the tree was alive. But the canopy now lies in the river. The stump is 4 feet wide and has 160 growth rings. On its way down, it snapped a smaller beech tree in two. I called the Army Corps of Engineers in New York City. They said it's not a federal violation unless the pollutant is placed directly into the river; mudslides don't count. They said call the Department of Environmental Conservation. The commissioner, Erin M. Crotty, wasn't there, so we sent her an envelope by express mail with all the photographs and some fliers we've been distributing as members of the Friends of Douglas Park and the Pocantico. We asked her please to persuade the village to stop the project and get Department of Environmental Conservation guidance while there's still time. It's April 2 and we're hoping to hear from someone. Someone who understands forests and rivers. Someone with the power, and the will, to protect them. SOAPBOX Patrick Munroe is a resident of Sleepy Hollow. | Can We Just Save the Trees? |
1382057_2 | Mr. Akerlof said. Arthur Andersen's undoing is evidence of the pressure that top executives applied to accountants to approve books that raised profits in false or misleading ways. They had the asymmetric advantage, and their apparent goal was to drive up a company's stock price. Enron's chieftains offered more evidence of this behavior. ''When you realize that stock prices can be manipulated, then stock options become an incentive to do this,'' said Sandhil Mullainathan, a behavioral economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thomas R. Horton, a retired I.B.M. vice president and a former chairman of the National Association of Corporate Directors, describes a deeper malfunction in the stock option incentive. ''I have known C.E.O.'s who reported a healthy quarterly increase in net income of, say, 11.2 cents a share, which was good, but some Wall Street analyst said it should have been 13 cents and the stock price dropped, '' he said. ''So the C.E.O. pushes to get the stock price up. His options gave him a stake in this endeavor. He cut back hiring and R.& D. and postponed investment spending for a couple of years, thereby postponing the potential profit from that investment.'' THAT is quite an indictment. Efficient markets, the goal in America, are supposed to produce optimal results. But that is not happening at the company run by the chief executive in Mr. Horton's example. Multiply his behavior by that of hundreds of others across America and you have a corporate sector that is less than optimal, at the very least, in capital spending, research and staffing. Clearly, stock options have distorted the incentives that should be embedded in an open market system. The knee-jerk reaction is to scrap stock options. That is not the best solution; it is like outlawing used-car salesmen because the supposedly efficient market furnishes them with a perverse incentive to hoodwink buyers. Government-mandated warranties put the incentive back on track, in effect preserving the market by balancing the interests of buyers and sellers. That balance is the sort of optimal outcome that open markets promise but seldom deliver without government rule-making, Mr. Akerlof finds. A better incentive would emerge, hopefully, from rules that restrict the number of options awarded and regulate how they can be exercised. ''Asymmetric information, unregulated, is driving out an incentive that we need,'' Mr. Akerlof said. ''That does not have to be.'' ECONOMIC VIEW: EXECUTIVE PAY | Will a Deck Of Options Always Be Stacked? |
1382148_2 | December charging that the population fund acquiesced in Chinese birth control policies that include forced abortions and involuntary sterilization. The accusation that United Nations money was supporting these Chinese policies was made by the Population Research Institute, an organization that was founded by Human Life International, an anti-abortion group with branches in dozens of countries. The research institute said a team of its investigators had evidence that American money was being used ''illegally'' by the population fund for forced abortions, forced contraception and forced sterilization. The population fund has long responded to these criticisms by arguing that its work in China is limited to counties where the one-child family policy is no longer enforced. It also says that it does not use American money for Chinese programs. Ms. Obaid went to Washington in January to ask the Bush administration to reconsider its freeze on the $34 million. After that, fund officials say, the administration said it would send a fact-finding delegation to China to settle once and for all the recurrent questions about United Nations family planning work there. That delegation has not yet been formed, officials here have been told. Amy Coen, the president of Population Action International, a private organization in Washington that focuses on voluntary population planning and related health issues, criticized the freeze as motivated by domestic politics. ''When the most powerful president in the world will not release money already allocated to prevent unwanted pregnancy, to stop the spread of H.I.V./AIDS, for the poorest citizens in the world,'' she said, ''where is the morality in that? This is pure politics.'' The population fund has programs that supply condoms to men in groups at high risk for H.I.V./AIDS, and these expenditures may also be cut, fund officials say. Supplies are already scarce. ''Last year in sub-Saharan Africa, there were just three condoms for every man,'' Ms. Obaid said in her speech on Monday. Patrick Friel, the fund's expert on contraceptive services, said in an interview on Thursday that demands for condoms for use outside marriage amounted to $297 million this year. If condoms dispensed within family planning programs for married couples are added to that, there would be a need worth $954 million. Female condoms are also being distributed as widely as possible to women who can use them as both a contraceptive and a second line of defense against sexually transmitted diseases, Mr. Friel said. | U.N. Agency On Population Blames U.S. For Cutbacks |
1381823_1 | suddenly home. The setting could almost be dreamtime, although Antunes, trained as a psychiatrist, is famously uninterested in psychoanalytic chic; it does accommodate the odd man-eating plant and a few superannuated river nymphs. It could be the literary time that makes good jokes out of anachronism -- like a 15th-century admiral with a pile of Agatha Christies at his bunkside. It is certainly the time of collective memory, of shared mental bric-a-brac like hero kings and famous explorers and national poets, the time occupied by myths that can make people go out and acquire empires. But it is also a very specific time: 1974. As the book opens, the Portuguese empire is finished. The Army has broken the seemingly interminable rightist dictatorship, ''socialism'' and ''democracy'' are the new catchwords and the colonial wars are over. The Portuguese are backing out of their territories in Africa, the ones they once considered limbs of the nation. Colonists take the boats to Portugal if they can't get visas for Brazil or France. It is their only possible destination, but not quite their home. This isn't empire as metaphor, theoretical construct or convenient setting; this is empire as it was lived, in the getting and the losing. Antunes understands the desolation that prevails when duty evaporates, when you no longer live off legends like Henry the Navigator's great school for explorers at Sagres. Now ''sailors sit around scratching themselves, out of work, in pool rooms, in pornographic movie houses and cafe terraces, waiting for the prince to write from Sagres and send them off in search of nonexistent archipelagos, drifting on the broad expanse of the sea.'' One man's wife will end up a prostitute to pay for somewhere to live. Another will go back to being a musical child and ship out for America in the certainty she'll be a star in her dying days, although she brings along a sewing machine just in case, so she can make shawls out of curtains in the concert intermissions. A man will open the door on his retirement home and discover that it is inhabited by squatters. An old man finds ''employment as an unemployed person,'' occupied almost full time by his encounters with clerks. The pain tears at your heart, but Antunes never lets you forget that these people are feeling nostalgic for a nightmare they themselves helped to create. All of them end | Afloat on the Seas of the Past |
1381952_3 | more and take those experiences back with me to get a better job.'' Uchechukwu Obianyo-agu, a sophomore at Adelphi from Lagos, Nigeria, believes that an American university can provide valuable contacts and an up-to-the-minute curriculum. ''Computer science is a field that changes all the time,'' she said. ''Going to school here, I get to meet people working in the area, and I get to learn what's new as soon as it happens. That'll help qualify me for work when I graduate.'' For Mr. Spoestra, what he learns about the United States is as important as what he learns in class. ''To get a job in an American bank, I have to know everything I can about American culture,'' he said. ''Like when kids say, 'Hey, how are you? What's up?' they don't expect a long-winded reply. I didn't know that at first, but I do now.'' Last year, the 550,000 foreign students in the United States constituted 3.9 percent of the total college enrollment, up from 2.8 percent 10 years ago, according to the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit group that administers the Fulbright scholars and other foreign-exchange programs. On Long Island, there were about 4,000 foreign students, or 4.7 percent of the total student population of 86,000. Stony Brook, the largest of the Island's universities, also has the largest number of foreign students, about 10 percent of its 18,000 students. During the 2000-2001 academic year in the United States, New York University had the largest number of foreign students (5,399), followed by the University of Southern California, Columbia, Boston University and Purdue. The top three countries of origin for foreign students were China, India and Japan. The institute says that almost half of the foreign undergraduates concentrate their studies in four fields: business and management, engineering, math and computer science. Although no national figures are yet available on applications from foreign students for the next academic year, John Beckman, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said that applications there were running about the same as last year. Foreign students are not eligible for state or federal financial aid, of course, but they are eligible for scholarships from private sources. ''International students here who are qualified are eligible to receive the same merit scholarships as domestic students,'' said Rory Shaffer, the admissions director at Adelphi. But at C. W. Post, Mr. Bergman pointed out that the scholarship issue was often more complex | Foreign Applications Soar at Universities |
1381918_0 | To the Editor: Regarding Robert O. Paxton's ''The Parrots of the Pantanal'' (Feb. 24): In 1999 we traveled with International Expeditions to this interesting area and stayed at Refúgio Ecológico Caiman, on the Web at www.caiman.com.br. It is a private ranch that now includes a wildlife preserve, four small comfortable lodges and a research station. It is owned by Roberto Klabin, a São Paulo businessman. If one wants to see and learn about the hyacinth macaws, this is the place to be. The macaws, mating for life, build their nests in hollows of manguvi trees. The declining number of these trees has been a problem. Researchers for the Blue Macaw Project, at the University for the Development of the State of Mato Grosso do Sul and the Pantanal Region, have designed and installed wooden boxes that the macaws can use as replacement nests. Visitors are invited to observe as scientists climb the trees -- those with natural nests and those with artificial box nests. The chicks are removed and brought down to be inspected, weighed, measured and returned to the nest, while the parents look on from a nearby treetop, noisy but apparently not too perturbed. Although not that well known in the United States, the Pantanal apparently is well publicized elsewhere. Aside from our small group of 10 Americans, all the other visitors were from Europe. International Expeditions can be reached at 1 Environs Park, Helena, Ala., (800) 633-4734. SAUL RICKLIN LOIS RICKLIN Bristol, R.I. | The Pantanal |
1385988_1 | Switzerland, France and Denmark and published this week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the species of ant involved. It is the Argentine, an invasive bully of an insect, famous for aggressively taking over territory once it is introduced. Argentine ants are cut-throat -- and cut-thorax and cut-abdomen. They like to rip their enemies limb from limb from limb, and as often as not, those enemies are the Argentine ants in the next nest over. But the researchers tested ants from 33 nests around Europe, and found that when two from different nests were pitted against each other, about all that occurred was a little antenna-tapping -- which is as close as Argentine ants get to being friendly. The results showed that in the 80 or so years since their introduction into Europe, the ants had managed to get over their aggressiveness toward their neighboring ants. This was true no matter how far apart the nests were. Exactly why this happened is something of a puzzle. It is not as if the ants had permanently lost their aggressiveness -- the researchers in fact discovered a second supercolony (though far smaller than the first) in Catalonia, and ants from the two supercolonies dutifully fought, usually to the death. Some scientists have suggested that supercolonies develop when an organism goes through a genetic bottleneck, losing the inheritable cues that allow one ant to recognize another as a foreigner. Introduced species often do go through such a bottleneck, but for the ants in this study, the loss of genetic diversity was not great. INSTEAD, the researchers suggest that the ants' newfound mellowness may be a function of their very aggressiveness and their ability to prosper when introduced into an area. This quickly leads to more nests, closer together, which means more unfriendly encounters with the neighbors. The costs of defending a nest from all these fights may get to the point where it is no longer worth it. Instead, those nests that cooperate -- that have more members genetically disposed to accept outsiders as their own -- will flourish. That genetic disposition becomes dominant over time. Of course, a genetic disposition to accept outsiders is not quite the same thing as trust. Perhaps it might better be described as a loss of the ability to distrust. Either way, it's better than what is going on above ground these days. | Ideas & Trends: United We Expand; A Lesson in Détente From the Insect World |
1385733_13 | were some strokes of lead white on the head of the infant Jesus and a few more on the head of one of the kings bowing down before the child. Only those marks are contemporaneous with Leonardo's sketch. Throughout the months of testing on the ''Adoration,'' the pressure from both sides of the debate over restoration was intense. Though Guinness was picking up the tab, the Uffizi officials constantly pressed Seracini for results that could settle the fight their way. Both Natali and the director of the museum, Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, were adamant that the restoration should go forward. On the other side was a group of Renaissance scholars led by James Beck, an art history professor at Columbia University and founder of a group that crusades against the dangers of restoration. Seracini heard from him, too. Finally, in January, Seracini called Petrioli and Natali to his office to share the results. Antonio Paolucci, the superintendent of fine arts in Florence and all the state museums in Tuscany, was also there, as was the restorer who was to have done the job. Seracini remembers that he himself was uncharacteristically nervous that night. In Natali's office in the Uffizi, where he displays a huge oil painting of some flowers -- a work that his daughter did at age 4 -- he describes the meeting in Seracini's office as ''hardly peaceful.'' First, there was the usual tension because Petrioli and her boss, Paolucci, have been at each other's throats for years. But also, Natali says, ''we were doubting the challenges to what people had for ages taken for granted.'' According to Seracini, Paolucci left the session first, quietly, saying that he had just learned the bitterest lesson of his life. What he and the others seem not to have noticed is that Seracini's tests had failed to answer the central question they were supposed to resolve: to restore or not to restore? While Seracini took no position, saying he hadn't had enough time to analyze the results, both sides seized on his findings to buttress their positions. Those opposed to restoration said there was no urgent need to proceed. Those in favor said that the underdrawing revealed so clearly by Seracini cried out in favor of at least a light cleaning. In January, Paolucci, a former Italian culture minister, sided with the opponents of restoration, saying that it was simply ''not the | The Leonardo Cover-Up |
1386003_1 | fewer allegations of pedophilia among priests in most European countries than in America. But it is impossible to know how much of that is due to differences in reporting the problem, rather than in the extent of the problem itself. Pedophilia, like rape, can confer shame on the victim as well as the accused. So cultural differences about handling such shame can account for differences in the numbers of offenses reported. On the other hand, students of the American church's history have noted that enthusiasm for entering the priesthood has fallen off drastically in recent decades, leading them to think that lower recruitment standards may allow for the admission of more people susceptible to sexual lapses. In Dublin, The Irish Times suggested in a recent commentary that Irish Catholic puritanism and clerical authoritarianism may have left the Irish church, in particular, feeling invulnerable and unaccountable, opening the door to abuse. That kind of reasoning is another effort to account for the high numbers of cases reported in the United States and Australia, where the Roman Catholic church has a strong Irish strain, as well as in Ireland itself. This is not to say the problem does not also exist elsewhere. In France, 30 priests have been convicted of sexual abuse since 1995; Britain had 21 such cases from 1995 to 1999, and in Germany, there were 13 in the last eight years. Yet Peter Wensierski, a religion writer for the German weekly Der Spiegel, says, ''Even if you consider a certain number of unreported cases, the number is probably not considerably higher.'' Some analysts suggest that Europe's Catholic leaders reacted more quickly to the problem than did America's. England's bishops, for instance, issued strict rules two years ago for dealing with pedophilia that are not unlike those being discussed only now by America's bishops. In France, the bishop published a severe formal condemnation of pedophilia at about the same time. In addition, many Europeans point to the more litigious culture and feistier news media across the Atlantic as a way of accounting for the uproar that reports of pedophilia have provoked. ''There are different traditions in the media and in the judiciary in the United States,'' said Austen Ivereigh, assistant editor of the British Catholic paper The Tablet. American news organizations pour larger sums into investigative reporting than their European counterparts, he said, and American courts allow the disclosure of | Ideas & Trends: Priests and Sex; Europe Has Problems, But Not Like America's. Maybe. |
1385785_1 | half-million wait in Algeria's Tassili region and as many more in the Sinai peninsula and the Negev Desert. Other sites are awaiting study in Central Asia, Siberia, China, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Malawi. Today, however, with economic development shaping the landscape everywhere, many graphemes are being destroyed before anyone can record or study them. Mr. Anati, who has traveled to rock sites throughout the world, cites instances of such destruction in all latitudes and, to begin with, in his own precious Val Camonica (a World Heritage Site since 1979). There, a high-tension pylon was recently anchored directly on an engraved prehistoric surface. Destruction has also taken place in the Dra Valley in Morocco, where a rock-art site has been turned into a stone quarry, and in the Matred Hills in the Negev in Israel, where another site was destroyed to create a training field for tanks. The same sort of thing also occurred not far away, at Ein Kuderat in Egypt. Farther east, a site was recently annihilated by a new road in Helan Shan in China, and a number of 20,000-year-old rock paintings in Kimberley, Australia, are being painted over by aborigines, who are thus destroying a vestige of their own prehistoric past. With sites at risk on all continents, an international protocol, a legal framework, a body of regulations and an established routine are needed to ensure that the data is gathered, transmitted and recorded properly, Mr. Anati said. Last year he sounded the alarm in a letter to Koichiro Matsuura, the director general of Unesco. Immediate action must be taken, he argued, to protect important sites and allow scientists to, at the very least, record and study lesser sites before they are blasted away to build roads, airports, dams or warehouses. This is the purpose of the World Archives of Rock Art Project. To date, in five rooms in his offices in Capo di Ponte, Mr. Anati and his staff of three have assembled a library of 40,000 books and reprints, 16,400 feet of rolls with tracings of graphemes, several thousand reports from various parts of the world, and a collection of 300,000 slides, representing about one-150th of all known material. But his long-term ambition is to create a computerized database recording all graphemes everywhere, classifying them geographically, chronologically and typologically on the basis of his method of structural analysis. Such a database would provide a | Reading the Mind Before It Could Read |
1385832_2 | cell-phone towers across Long Island is often fraught with contention. Some people worry about the high-frequency radio waves. Others object on aesthetic grounds and worry about what a tower will do to property values. Such controversies are largely a suburban phenomenon, since there is no shortage of tall buildings in cities, where antennas go virtually unnoticed. But in the suburbs, in a quest to provide uninterrupted cell-phone coverage, providers often have no choice but to build freestanding towers. That's where the tree tower in North Hills began. Mayor Lentini said that Sprint had been searching for a tower site in North Hills for some time, so village officials decided last year to negotiate a lease on village property, thinking that this plan would at least give the village control over the location and appearance of the tower. He noted that federal law says that phone companies must provide adequate coverage in all locations and that local governments cannot prohibit towers that carriers deem necessary. Plus, there was that $9 million. ''That's a very hefty sum to go into the village coffers,'' he said, money that could help North Hills buy the land for a municipal golf course. The village had already leased a site for a cell tower near the Long Island Expressway about a mile away from the tree tower. That tower is a much more conventional one, a gray pole with flat panels hanging from the top, and it has not drawn any opposition, the mayor said. But then it is not near any $1 million homes like those at the Links. North Hills is a village of about 4,000, with an average household income of more than $245,000, well above the $92,000 average for all of Nassau County. For the tree tower, village officials signed a lease with Sprint last August, and construction started in February. ''We were looking at the income part of the thing, and we thought we were being very careful with the aesthetics,'' Mayor Lentini said. ''Nobody expected it would look the way it looks.'' About 100 residents crowded into a Village Board meeting last month to demand that the tree tower be taken down. They disdainfully likened it to a hairbrush, a brush used to clean baby bottles, and a very, very tall coat rack. ''If I put an elephant in your living room, would you see it?'' Stanley Keller, a homeowner | If a Tall Pine Tree Answers, Hang Up |
1385762_3 | sweet potatoes and yams are not. Hawaiian coconuts are permitted unless you are going to Florida, and breadfruits, chayotes and citrus can be imported from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. As for that great local wine, if you're over 21, you can return with up to one liter of alcoholic beverage for your personal use without paying tax or duty. Most states allow additional alcohol, provided it is for personal use, not resale. In New York State there is no set definition of ''personal use.'' ''A person can bring in a couple of gallons, easily, of extra alcoholic beverages without running into any major problems,'' said John Henry, a United States Customs passenger service representative at Kennedy International airport. Some states -- Utah, for example -- forbid extra alcohol altogether, but Customs officials use their discretion. If you're flying into Salt Lake City but catching a connecting flight to California, where the limit is $1,950 worth, you should be able to take your extra bottles with you. Contact your state's alcoholic beverage control office for more information. If your state allows it, the cost of bringing in extra alcohol is minimal. The Internal Revenue Service tax on additional liters of still wine is just 28 cents a liter or $1.07 a gallon. Champagne and sparkling wines are taxed at 89 cents a liter, and a liter of 80-proof hard liquor would be subject to a tax of $2.85. You pay duty only if your total purchases (including alcohol and other goods) exceed your normal duty-free exemption. Fines for Smuggling Some items are prohibited for reasons other than food safety. The United States embargo on trade with Cuba means that Cuban cigars are forbidden even if purchased outside Cuba. Items derived from endangered species are also restricted, including most ivory, tortoise-shell and whalebone products. Details are available in the United States Customs brochure ''Know Before You Go'' (available at www.customs.us treas.gov/travel/travel.htm or by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to Customs Service, Post Office Box 7407, Washington, D.C. 20044). If you're caught trying to sneak food or wine into the country you could face on-the-spot fines of up to $1,000. Inspectors for the Department of Agriculture catch more than 3,000 offenders every month. Some are found through questioning, baggage inspection and X-rays, but an increasing number are sniffed out by the Beagle Brigade, a dog-and-officer force patrolling many of the | Bringing Home The Bacon. Not. |
1385411_0 | A top Vatican official said today that next week's meetings with American cardinals about the sexual abuse scandals in the church would cover controversial issues like celibacy, the screening of gay candidates for the priesthood and the role of women in the church. The official, Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, an American who heads the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Laity, gave a preview of the agenda as cardinals in the United States prepared to travel to Rome for what experts say is an extraordinary meeting reflecting the Vatican's realization of the crisis in the American church. Another American cardinal, Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, said in an interview today that he would be pushing Pope John Paul II and other top church officials to consider changing centuries of church doctrine to permit priests to marry and women to be ordained. Cardinal Mahony stopped short of endorsing the changes, saying only that he felt the time was ripe for an open discussion of the issues at the highest levels of the church. ''It's not a panacea that you have married clergy or women clergy,'' he said. ''At this point, I'm a proponent of the discussion. I want to hear a lot more.'' The pope summoned his American cardinals here, for meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, after a contingent of American bishops who met with him last week convinced him that the problem was grave -- and specifically asked for the Vatican's guidance, Cardinal Stafford said. ''The American bishops indicated it would be helpful to have the wisdom of the Holy Father,'' he said. ''So the response was, 'Let's have a conversation.' '' They want the Vatican to clarify what changes the pope would favor before a June meeting in which American bishops intend to come up with national protocols to prevent sexual abuse by priests. Asked if how gay candidates for the priesthood are screened would be a particular focus, Cardinal Stafford said, ''Without question, it does have to be looked at.'' He added, ''We'll definitely be talking about that.'' The meetings will be led by Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who leads the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy. But the marathon, 14-hour sessions bear the earmarks of an American-style affair, including plans for daily and perhaps twice-daily press briefings that are certainly not the norm at the Vatican. Now that the Vatican has been convinced of the severity of the problem, it | Vatican Meeting on Abuse Issue Is Set to Confront Thorny Topics |
1383558_3 | the Bank for International Settlements, an organization that works with central banks, have suspended regular transactions with Madagascar and are only processing the rare request submitted by both governors, said Mr. Ravalomanana's minister of finance. Most exports, particularly from the capital's textile factories, have been halted; thousands of people are being laid off; and the country's economy, which had grown impressively the last few years, is unlikely to grow much at all this year. No one seems to know how long the blockade, which began in late February, will go on, or how it will end. Some think it could indeed end in a matter of days with a clash between army factions loyal to each man. Others say it could drag on for weeks more and end with a whimper. In an interview this week at his heavily guarded home in the hilltop neighborhood of Faravohitra, Mr. Ravalomanana was elliptical when asked how this would all be resolved. ''This is like a revolution, only peacefully,'' he said. ''If you want change, you must suffer first.'' Mr. Ravalomanana came to politics just over two years ago, when he was elected mayor of Antananarivo. He said Mr. Ratsiraka has had his chance and failed -- first for 18 years, after being installed as military ruler, and then since 1997, when he was returned to power with just under 51 percent of the vote. The most pressing concerns here now are: Will I find a way home tonight? Will my family have sugar this week? Will I have a job next week? ''It's a very big problem,'' Nirina Rakotovao, 29, said this week as she waited with her 5-year-old daughter Henintsoa for a bus. ''The Malagasy need these foods like sugar, like salt, like rice, and the Malagasy haven't the possibility to buy them because the salaries are too low and the prices are too expensive.'' When shops, like the Conquête supermarket in the Antanimena neighborhood here, do receive staple goods, the customers come by the hundreds, said the store manager, Tsiresy Andriamiarisatrana. A few days earlier the store had received a shipment of sugar, which was sold out in a matter of hours. Fearing destruction of the store, Mr. Andriamiarisatrana reduced prices. ''We didn't make money,'' he said, ''but honestly, what is one ton of sugar compared to the value of the store? And we can't blame them. Things are bad.'' | Competing Presidents Worsen The Hardships in Madagascar |
1386940_0 | Q. I have an e-mail address that I have never given to anyone but I get junk mail nonetheless. How did the spammer find me? A. Spammers, or those who send mass amounts of unsolicited e-mail, have many tricks at their disposal to find working e-mail addresses. Many popular methods involve guessing. If a junk mailer has a list of real names but not e-mail addresses, he or she can use software that tries variations on the names, like combining first and last names or first initials with last names, in an attempt to hit on a working address. This method, which can swamp a mail server with mail for both working and nonworking addresses, is commonly called e-pending. Dictionary attacks, another method, aim at a big e-mail provider like America Online or Hotmail. These attacks use software to generate huge lists of possible word and number combinations that might be in use on the mail system, for instance, troutfisher33@aol.com. A third method, the alphabet attack, is similar but broader in scope. The spam-addressing software starts with the letter A and generates all kinds of potential e-mail addresses. You should check the privacy policy of your Internet service provider to determine whether the company makes the e-mail addresses of its members available to advertisers. Even if you read the company's statement when you signed up, you may want to check occasionally to make sure the company has not changed its position. For example, Yahoo recently changed the privacy policy for its millions of members: people with Yahoo e-mail accounts who do not wish to receive unsolicited mail and marketing offers will need to go to edit.my.yahoo.com/config/eval_profile and change their marketing preferences. Q. What does it mean when a Web site says it is ''powered by Apache''? A. That means that Apache is the software program that runs the server, usually a Unix or Linux machine, where the Web site is located. Apache is free and widely used, and many system administrators favor it for its reliability. Information on the Apache Software Foundation, which provides support for Apache projects, is available at www.apache.org. Mac OS X, the latest version of the Macintosh operating system, is based on Unix and has a free Apache Web server built into its system software. This allows the Mac to be used as a public Web server if its owner so chooses. To find the Apache | Alphabetic Roulette: Tricks of the Spammer |
1381188_0 | Disarmament and human rights experts say in a report to be published on Thursday that the United States' rejection or disregard of a range of treaties is undercutting efforts by many other countries to strengthen the international rule of law. From nuclear testing and proliferation accords to the land mines ban to agreements on climate change or protecting the rights of women and children, over the last decade Washington has moved steadily away from accepting treaties that would be binding on the United States, ''despite its widely admired and emulated commitment to the rule of law within its society,'' the report says. The report, ''The Rule of Power or the Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties,'' is published by two independent organizations, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy. In some cases, it says, the United States, sometimes with its closest allies, may be violating agreements. One case it cites is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty barring all nuclear testing and explosions even for peaceful uses. The treaty was signed by the Clinton administration in 1996, which then did not fight hard enough to save it from defeat in the Senate ratification process in 1999, disarmament experts say. The report says that the United States and France are each building laser fusion laboratories -- at Livermore, Calif., and near Bordeaux, France -- ''planning to use these devices to carry out explosions of magnitudes that are greater than four pounds of TNT equivalent.'' The four-pound TNT equivalent, enough explosive to blow up a car and kill people, is a widely accepted (though not specifically stated) limit of testing under the treaty to ascertain the condition of nuclear stocks. The Clinton administration said it would adhere to the test ban even though the Senate voted against ratification. The treaty has not yet entered into force worldwide because 44 nuclear-capable countries must ratify it first. Among those that have not ratified the pact aside from the United States are India, Pakistan, China, Israel and North Korea. The Bush administration is not expected to seek the treaty's ratification. The authors of the new report have taken a broad definition of security in selecting treaties for study. One is the treaty setting up the International Criminal Court, which is expected to come into force this year. Not only is the Bush | Washington Is Criticized for Growing Reluctance to Sign Treaties |
1381156_0 | To the Editor: Re ''In the Northwest, a Fight to Deepen a Ship Channel'' (news article, April 1): The Army Corps of Engineers' experiment in redesigning the Columbia River is showing its age. The dams, reservoirs and dredging on the Columbia and Snake Rivers have provided benefits. They have also put a dozen salmon species near extinction, cost thousands of fishing jobs, violated national treaties, polluted clean waters and disrupted the ecology and health of America's fourth-largest river system in ways that will be difficult and expensive to remedy. We who are working to restore the Columbia's wild salmon, and the economies and communities once built upon them, have a modest request of Americans outside the Northwest: tell the Northwest states that, from now on, the costs of maintaining the Rube Goldberg system the Army Corps has built on the Columbia will be paid for by the Northwest states. PAT FORD Executive Director Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition Seattle, April 3, 2002 | Tampering With Rivers |
1381242_1 | be built, and the security agency ordered an additional 100 kits today. The assembly and the new kits will cost $148.6 million, the company said. The Analogic Corporation of Peabody, Mass., which builds most of the InVision machine, meanwhile, said today that it had ''received an open-ended order for up to 1,000'' of its units. Analogic builds computerized tomography units, primarily for medical use, and it sells a version to InVision to which the company adds an operator workstation and other components. Analogic said its work for InVision would be worth about $100 million. The company said it also provided some components to L-3. The technique of ordering parts first and their assembly later permits the security agency to get the production line started before it has money in hand to pay for all the machines it thinks it will need. Like the security system itself, the agency's budget is a work in progress. InVision said it had agreed to give the security agency a two-year license to let another manufacturer make the screening units ''to meet the national emergency.'' L-3 said it had agreed to let a third party make 500 or more of its machines. The two companies' machines are of different design, but both meet the Federal Aviation Administration requirements for being able to detect specified quantities of explosives. Other companies are trying to have their machines certified by the F.A.A. The details of those requirements are secret. The security agency has ''more than 176'' machines now in service, a spokesman said. Congress gave the agency until Dec. 31 to have a system in place for screening all checked bags for explosives and said its preferred method was the type of machine that the agency ordered today. When Congress set that requirement last November, government officials estimated that the job would require 2,200 machines. Now some think it will take thousands more. The Transportation Department, though, is not headed toward buying more than 2,200 at this time. It plans to use the explosive detection systems in coordination with trace detection units. These involve having a screener run a gauze pad over a bag and feed the pad into a machine that checks for traces of explosives. Such procedures are familiar to passengers because they are used to check carry-on bags. About 1,100 such units are now in use. Officials have not made clear how they will use | With Deadline in Mind, an Agency Orders More Bomb-Screening Machines |
1381155_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Improving Aviation Security'' (editorial, April 1): The question always asked at airports is ''Has your luggage been in your possession since you packed it?'' A serious security lapse occurs before luggage reaches the airports. It begins in the hotels used by tour operators all over the world. I have just returned with my two grandchildren from a trip to London. My older grandson noted the breach in security when participants in the tour were instructed to leave their luggage outside their hotel rooms to be collected for transfer to the airport. The luggage is unattended for several hours. Anyone in the hotel -- guests, visitors or employees -- would have easy access to the luggage during this time. This is a common practice among tour companies. Indeed, this is a serious security risk and should be changed. Participants on tours can easily transfer their own luggage to hotel lobbies and would probably be happy to do so to assure a more secure trip. ARLENE AUGENBRAUN Roslyn Heights, N.Y., April 2, 2002 | At Hotels, Who's Minding the Luggage? |
1382536_1 | that women and their doctors study the issues and decide for themselves, a course of action that others say is confusing. But as the debate over mammography and over other tests, like the one for prostate cancer, burn on, the childhood cancer test is giving some experts pause. The cancer was neuroblastoma, an attack on the nervous system that is one of the most common, and most lethal, tumors in children. Researchers in Japan had found that a urine test could find signs of the cancers long before symptoms appeared. A large screening program started in Japan, while studies of the test began in Quebec and Germany. At first, the results looked spectacular. Many more cancers were found, and they were found early. Children underwent surgery, usually of the adrenal gland, where the tumors tend to lodge, and their cancers went away. But to the investigators' shock, there was no decline in the number of toddlers who developed advanced cancers, and the death rates from the disease stayed unchanged. ''It was an absolutely stone cold negative outcome,'' said Dr. Steven Goodman, an associate professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who was not associated with the study. The scientists had to declare that the screening test, seemingly so promising, should be abandoned. Their finding thrust them into the debate over a growing assortment of screening tests used to search for disease in adults and children. In an editorial with the neuroblastoma papers in The New England Journal of Medicine last week, Dr. George Cunningham of the California Department of Health Services wrote: ''As these studies illustrate, the decision about whether or not to screen should be driven not by the availability of a laboratory screening test, but by careful analysis of outcomes, including saving the lives of the screened newborns or improving the quality of their lives.'' The screening debate is far from settled. Although he agrees with Dr. Cunningham on the need to evaluate tests, Dr. Larry Norton, a specialist on breast cancer at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the president of the American Society for Clinical Oncology, said he still strongly believed that early diagnosis made biological sense. The theory behind early diagnosis, Dr. Norton added, comes from years of work with animals that repeatedly shows that cancers treated early can be cured and that if they are left | A New View of Malignancy |
1382560_0 | The Irish Republican Army has for a second time put a batch of weapons, ammunition and explosives from its illegal arsenal out of action, the international commission charged with guerrilla disarmament in Northern Ireland said today. Gen. John de Chastelain, the Canadian who runs the Belfast-based panel, said his group had witnessed and inventoried the decommissioning of what he described as a ''substantial and varied'' amount of matériel. He said confidentiality rules barred him from going into any details beyond saying that it occurred ''very recently,'' but he noted that critics had dismissed the first act of I.R.A. disarmament last October as a one-time token gesture, and he asserted, ''I believe they are on the path to peace.'' Britain's Northern Ireland secretary, John Reid, said: ''This is very welcome news. It shows that last October's action by the I.R.A. was not an isolated event.'' The British and Irish governments greeted the move announced today as one reinforcing the Northern Ireland peace agreement. Aimed at ending three decades of sectarian war waged by guerrilla armies using terror tactics that cost more than 3,600 lives, the accord of April 10, 1998, established a new government and institutions for the province that apportion power equally between the majority Protestant community, which wants to retain links with Britain, and the Catholic minority, which favors a united Ireland. The I.R.A.'s refusal over three years to begin dismantling Europe's largest guerrilla arsenal continually blocked progress in putting into effect the various steps of the wide-ranging agreement, and General de Chastelain said today that more actions were needed to dispel lingering doubts about the I.R.A.'s commitment to abandon its guns. ''It's been more than five months since the last event,'' he said. ''Clearly we need something that's regular, convincing and has an end in mind.'' According to the terms under which the commission functions, the sites of the arms dumps remain secret, as does the method of putting the weapons beyond use. The arsenal, reported by security officials to include plastic explosives, mortars and assault rifles, is thought to be buried in locations around the Irish republic. Hard-line Protestant politicians belittled the new move as a stunt of no significance, but David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionists and the first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, said the new action showed that the party's Catholic rivals were involved in the process of putting their weapons beyond | I.R.A.'s Illegal Arsenal Reduced In a 2nd Act of Disarmament |
1382502_1 | to be at least as safe if not safer and at least as effective if not more,'' said Dr. Clifford A. Hudis, chief of breast cancer medicine service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He was not involved in the study. Aromatase inhibitors, like tamoxifen, are directed at the hormone estrogen, which is known to stimulate tumor growth in most breast cancer patients. Aromatase is a vital enzyme in estrogen production, converting androgens into estrogens. By blocking the enzyme's action, these drugs reduce levels of estrogen that can reach breast tissue. Tamoxifen, on the other hand, blocks estrogen from binding to receptors in breast cells. Aromatase inhibitors are not effective in premenopausal women, whose ovaries churn out too much estrogen for the inhibitors to overcome. ''They work entirely differently but the end result is the same, that you're trying to stop the estrogen from stimulating the tumor,'' said Dr. Angela Brodie, professor of pharmacology at the University of Maryland at Baltimore. Experts warn oncologists against rushing to switch their patients to anastrazole, though some doctors already have. ''What remains to be seen is whether other studies will confirm this result and whether it will bear out in the long term,'' said Dr. Hudis. ''If it does, it represents a small but significant advance.'' ''This study can have implications for tens of thousands of women over the course of even a year,'' said Dr. Eric Winer, chairman of a panel convened by the American Society of Clinical Oncology to review the research on aromatase inhibitors and recommend whether oncologists should switch patients to them. These guidelines are expected to be released next month. Aromatase inhibitors have not been compared with tamoxifen for the prevention of breast cancer, and doctors are advising healthy women against using them preventively until large studies are conducted for effectiveness and safety. Some concern has been expressed about lower levels of estrogen harming bones, which estrogen protects. Other advances are being made in surgery. As smaller and smaller tumors are being discovered in women, surgeons have been compelled to search for techniques to remove the tiny tumors with less surgery and better cosmetic results than even the breast-conserving lumpectomy. ''If you're picking up smaller tumors, you will be able to treat them with less invasive technologies,'' said Dr. Eva Singletary, professor of surgery at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. These minimally invasive surgeries can | Treatments in the Wings: New Drugs Could Replace Even Tamoxifen |
1382545_0 | The idea seemed simple: figure out who the good guys are, give them easy-to-recognize and hard-to-counterfeit ID cards and let them breeze past airport security. Everybody would win, advocates say. Holders of the ''trusted traveler'' cards would save time. Screeners would have fewer bodies to inspect -- there were 1.8 billion in 2000, according to the Transportation Department -- and could concentrate on identifying potential terrorists. And passengers would feel safer. There is only one problem: It is proving extraordinarily difficult to figure out who would qualify for a card that would work as advertised. ''What makes a trusted traveler?'' asked Richard P. Eastman, who writes software for airlines and travel agencies. ''The guy who travels all the time; who travels on business; who has a reason to travel. Does that mean the terrorist can't penetrate that group? Of course he can.'' For weeks the new Transportation Security Administration has focused on more pressing problems, like taking over the screening points, and officials have equivocated on whether such a card is feasible. Now, though, with the summer travel season approaching, lines will grow longer if the normal pattern holds and millions of vacationers flood the airports. That will take frequent fliers' frustration back up to the boiling point. Pressures on politicians to do something are rising, and some experts say the only feasible solution will be some sort of travel card. Probably the biggest obstacle to creating the airport equivalent of an E-Z Pass is doubt about its effectiveness. After all, terrorists can be adept at blending into the society they plan to attack, so who can guarantee they won't fool the gatekeepers? ''The guys who did this exercise on Sept. 11 spent the better part of four years becoming nondescript,'' Mr. Eastman pointed out. The federal government seems to be of two minds. Tom Ridge, director of homeland security, said the proposed cards would help reduce bottlenecks. And Norman Y. Mineta, the secretary of transportation, said his department was open to some type of trusted-traveler ID card system. Yet John Magaw, the under secretary of transportation who is the head of the new Transportation Security Administration, worries that the card might not be smart enough to thwart hijackers.''Terrorists are not in any hurry,'' he said. ''For them, the soup of revenge is best served cold.'' Even if a risk-free card could be devised, civil libertarians would probably fight it. | ID Cards for 'Trusted Travelers' Run Into Some Thorny Questions |
1382516_6 | markers at once by examining patterns for the genes that are turned off and on in tumors, hoping to find genetic signatures. This is what was done in the breast cancer and infant leukemia studies. They use a new tool called a DNA chip, a small glass slide with pieces of the DNA of thousands of genes. When a gene is active, the gene's DNA is used to create a corresponding string of RNA as part of the process of making a protein from the gene. So to find out what genes are active, the tumor's RNA is poured over the DNA chip, and each different RNA binds to its matching DNA. The result is usually displayed as a grid of colored dots, with red corresponding to genes that are on and green to those that are off. The level of activity of each gene can also be measured. Powerful computers then try to discern patterns from this mind-numbingly complex jungle of dots. The Winship center has lined up an extremely powerful supercomputer to try to find such patterns. The Merck breast cancer study, conducted by a subsidiary that makes DNA chips, looked at 78 tumor samples that were collected and frozen years ago, so that it was already known whether the cancer had spread elsewhere in the body within five years. The computer found genetic signatures that allowed it to correctly predict the outcome of 65 of the 78 patients. Then the computer was fed genetic patterns from 19 patients without being told what had happened to those patients. Using the signatures it had developed, the computer predicted the outcome correctly in 17 cases. Similar studies with various cancers have been done at Stanford and the National Institutes of Health and by scientists in Boston working with Dr. Golub, who is receiving an award today for his work by the American Association for Cancer Research. In one study, Dr. Golub and colleagues found gene patterns that correlated with various outcomes for medulloblastoma, a childhood brain cancer. The disease is now treated with brain surgery to remove the tumor, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. But while many children survive, the radiation often leaves them with learning disabilities and loss of hearing. ''If we can identify some of the tumors that have a better prognosis we can cut back on the radiation we give,'' said Dr. Scott L. Pomeroy, associate professor | Telling the Threatening Tumors From the Harmless Ones |
1380985_2 | Arafat's office by more than 40 foreigners took the protests to a new level, because it broke a tightening Israeli ring of armor and gunfire that appeared perilously close to reaching Mr. Arafat himself. The Israelis responded by banning foreigners, including journalists, from Ramallah, and by arresting and deporting a group of French protesters who had left the compound, among them José Bové, the union leader and antiglobalization protester. Like the rest of Ramallah, Mr. Arafat's offices have been hit by power blackouts and disruption of water supply after electric cables and water pipes were damaged by the Israeli tanks, and the foreigners have been rationing food supplies with the office staff and guards. A shipment of food, water and medicine was allowed in today by the Israelis. An army statement said the food included 66 containers of yellow cheese, 600 pieces of pita bread, 40 cans of halva, 23 cans of tuna, 13 cans of hummus, 34 crates of mineral water, more than 140 pounds of coffee and 55 cans of sardines. Caoimhe Butterly, an activist from Ireland who helped collect the supplies, said Israeli soldiers filmed her and Ms. Leostic as they stepped out of the office, and called them over for a chat in an area where there were waiting police vehicles, an apparent attempt to lure them into arrest. The two women refused to go. Ms. Butterly said that despite the persistent tension and siege, morale at Mr. Arafat's offices had improved greatly and the Israeli assault had abated after the arrival of the international group on Sunday. On Saturday night, she said, Palestinians in the building were readying themselves to die in an Israeli attack after they refused an ultimatum to surrender. The foreigners have also appeared in other West Bank locations that are targets of the Israelis. One group defied an Israeli checkpoint and walked into Bethlehem on Saturday; another marched through the neighboring town of Beit Jala on Monday after it had been invaded by Israeli troops, drawing gunfire that wounded seven demonstrators. Other foreigners have gone to homes of Palestinians in neighboring refugee camps in an effort to offer protection and support. At Mr. Arafat's compound, the foreigners say they will stay as long as it takes for the Israelis to withdraw. ''It makes a difference,'' said Miriam Ferrier, from Paris. ''We are a voice for the Palestinian people.'' MIDEAST TURMOIL: DOVES | Peace Advocates in Arafat Compound Hope to Deter Israeli Troops |
1386241_1 | has so far been largely theoretical in the United States. The movement, known as product stewardship, places shared responsibility for recycling products on manufacturers, government, retailers and consumers. ''The message to the consumer when they are buying the product is that responsibility of it is not only in the use, but also in the after-use,'' said Scott Cassel, the director of the Product Stewardship Institute, which is taking part in the recycling discussions. Disposal of obsolete computers has become an increasing financial and logistical headache for local governments over the last several years. The toxic materials and the intricate designs make environmentally sound disposal expensive. For example, cathode-ray tube devices like monitors and television sets have four to eight pounds of lead each. Massachusetts has already banned cathode-ray tubes in local dumps. ''Our local governments are in a real bind because they have such demand for recycling,'' said Maureen Hickman, a policy analyst with the Minnesota Office of Environment Assistance. ''But some won't even start collecting because they are afraid if they open that door they won't be able to afford it.'' Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, has one of the most advanced electronics recycling programs in the country. The volume of electronics recycling in Hennepin County has increased about 30 percent a year for the last 10 years. The county, which has a population of 1.2 million, spent $1.1 million on electronics recycling last year. As a result of pressure from local governments, more than 20 state legislatures have introduced bills on computer recycling. Many of these would place responsibility for disposal on the manufacturers. Environmental agencies in California, Massachusetts and Minnesota in particular have been aggressive in pressing for recycling legislation. The electronics companies are also facing legislation in Europe and Japan that places responsibility on the manufacturers. Computer disposal has attracted public attention because of a recent report by environmental groups that 50 to 80 percent of American high-technology trash was exported to developing countries. The report described the hazards experienced by residents of China, India and Pakistan who are exposed to the hazards of electronic recycling. Manufacturers want to pre-empt a patchwork of state laws. ''The reason we are looking at a national solution is because it's the only way it can work,'' said Kerry Fennelly, spokeswoman for the Electronics Industry Alliance, a group that represents manufacturers. ''We have to develop a system where everyone plays.'' | An Agreement in Principle To Recycle Old Computers |
1386298_0 | A right hand, a forearm and a clavicle, and the DNA they carried, were all investigators had to identify the remains of Timothy Stout, who worked on the 103rd floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center. Two fingerprints and a dental pattern proved key to confirming the death of David Suarez, who worked a few floors below. A genetic analysis of a bone fragment determined the final fate of John C. Hartz, who was on the phone with his wife describing the horror of the first attack when the south tower, where he worked, was struck by a second hijacked plane. ''I have never been able to understand why people have been so intent on recovering bodies,'' said Mr. Hartz's widow, Ellie. ''Now I understand. It is a basic human need. We are tactile.'' These confirmations, achieved in the last month, are each scientific miracles made possible by the largest forensic investigation in United States history, one that is pressing the limits of biomedical research even as it brings a painful mixture of relief and fresh grieving to families. But these are just 3 out of 972 identifications that investigators have made as of Friday. A third of the 2,824 victims of the World Trade Center attack have now been identified, a number far beyond what many had thought would be possible. The goal now, experts involved in the effort say, is to use new scientific techniques to identify half or even two-thirds of the victims, despite the miserably deteriorated state of many of the remains being pulled from ground zero. The endeavor spans the nation, from genetics laboratories in Utah, Texas, Maryland and Virginia to law enforcement bureaus in Washington and Albany; even a California forensic statistician is helping. But the federally financed job, of course, is centered in New York City, at the World Trade Center site, where remains have been meticulously collected, and at the medical examiner's office, at 520 First Avenue in Manhattan, where 18 refrigerated trailers hold the evidence. To date, 18,937 body parts have been recovered, along with 287 whole bodies. Most of the first successes in identifying victims have come through traditional resources like fingerprints and dental records, and those techniques are still yielding results. But because of the extraordinary trauma involved in the towers' collapse, DNA is often the only hope of matching remains to a name, a family, | DNA Science Pushed to the Limit In Identifying the Dead of Sept. 11 |
1386285_2 | divorce. As a result, the rate of marriage here is declining, the number of children born outside marriage is rising rapidly and women abandoned by their husbands have no practical way to obtain alimony or child support. In addition, during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet 1973 to 1990, abortion laws were actually toughened. Legislators have been unable to remove those restrictions since the return of democracy in 1990, and as a result therapeutic abortions are prohibited without exception, even to save the life of a pregnant woman. Sex education in public schools and legalization of the ''morning after pill'' have been additional points of contention, with the church opposing both. At the moment, the church is also vigorously fighting a bill that would remove the property tax exemption of any private school that charges more than $75 a month in tuition. ''This is a country with an authoritarian, patriarchal culture, and the church reinforces that,'' said María Antonieta Saa, a member of Congress who has sponsored divorce legislation. ''It does not hesitate to exercise its power boldly, openly pressuring the government and political parties.'' The longstanding tensions have also spilled over into relations between the Chilean government and the Vatican. During a nine-day trip to Europe in February, Mr. Lagos, who favors a liberalization of social legislation, was unable to meet with Pope John Paul II, ostensibly because the pope could not find room in his schedule. ''If this continues, I'm going to freeze relations with the Vatican,'' Mr. Lagos said when he learned of the snub, according to Chilean press reports. But at the same time, government leaders acknowledge that they have a moral debt to the church, or at least its progressive wing. During the Pinochet years, several members of Mr. Lagos's cabinet and advisory staff benefited from efforts by the Vicarate of Solidarity, a church organization, to prevent their arrest or to free them after they had been arrested. ''There is a respect for the Catholic Church because of the role it played on human rights during the dictatorship,'' said Ms. Saa, a former president of a national Catholic student group who is no longer a practicing Catholic. Even without the e-mail campaign, the percentage of the population that is Roman Catholic had been expected to decline, just as it has in every census over the past half century. Only 77 percent of Chileans described themselves | Yes, Catholics Count. Stand Up, Everybody. |
1388058_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Trade Center Plans Are Speeded Up After Criticism'' (news article, April 24): I was happy to hear that a final plan for the World Trade Center site would be reached by fall. Yet an engineering study has recommended that no building on the site be over 60 stories tall. This would give us a false sense of security by saying that if we don't build tall, we won't be attacked again. One of the best decisions that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey could make would be to restore the twin towers with a memorial, or a memorial and office buildings, some 100 stories tall, some less. Why? To psychologically heal those who now fear tall buildings; to keep moving forward; to not live in constant fear of being attacked; to never forget how our way of life was challenged on Sept. 11; and to show terrorists that they cannot win. LEMARR WILLIAMS Chicago, April 24, 2002 | A Fitting Tribute to the Victims |
1387985_0 | At least 100,000 demonstrators streamed through the streets of Paris and a string of other cities today in a further protest against the strong showing of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of French presidential elections last weekend. The Paris demonstrations drew in an impromptu alliance of human rights groups and antiracism, student and labor organizations opposed to Mr. Le Pen's anti-immigrant policies and his proposals for the mass deportation of foreigners without legal residence rights in France. Many of the protesters were young people who said they had been driven to protest by a sense of shame. Mr. Le Pen's strong first-round showing pushed the Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, out of the race and left President Jacques Chirac, a conservative, to face Mr. Le Pen in a runoff vote on May 5. The latest opinion survey published in the newspaper Le Parisien today forecast that Mr. Chirac would win a landslide 81 percent victory in the runoff. Opinion surveys had underestimated Mr. Le Pen's showing in the first-round vote, however, and Mr. Chirac cautioned demonstrators today to avoid violent or unruly protests that could strengthen the right-wing, law-and-order vote. At a campaign meeting Mr. Chirac said the protesters should ensure that their action ''does not produce the opposite result of that desired.'' Some 2,000 police officers patrolled the French capital, but by early evening there had been no reports of violence at the demonstrations, which drew an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people onto the streets of Paris alone, according to the Interior Ministry. Up to 300,000 people have joined in daily protest marches throughout France this week. ''No place for Nazis,'' read one banner held up by protesters snaking through Paris along a two-mile route, beating drums and playing music blending European and North African rhythms. Interestingly, the demonstrations drew a strong turnout in areas that registered support for Mr. Le Pen last Sunday in what the newspaper Le Monde described as an unparalleled protest vote benefiting Mr. Le Pen. A commentary on the front page said the bulk of people who voted for Mr. Le Pen had been aiming to embarrass the entrenched political class rather than to propel him to the presidency. Even in the southern port of Marseille, a stronghold of Mr. Le Pen's xenophobic and anti-European followers, 15,000 to 20,000 people joined protests today, the Interior Ministry said. Le Monde quoted | At Least 100,000 in France Protest Far Rightist |
1387948_0 | To the Editor: In the column, Mr. Redburn mentioned academic research suggesting that being surrounded by intelligent, motivated students offers a great advantage. As a student who transferred from the University of Colorado at Boulder to an Ivy League school -- Cornell -- I am evidence of this fact. As an English major, I have found that my classes at Boulder and my classes at Cornell have much the same content. The only consistent difference is that the competition among students in my classes at Cornell far exceeds that at Boulder. At Boulder, I could spend an hour writing a paper and feel confident that I would get a high grade. At Cornell, spending an hour on a paper will most certainly earn me a lower grade, since it is undoubtedly being graded on how it compares to the work of other students, all of whom are highly motivated. The level of motivation among students makes a world of difference. HILLARY PROFITA Tenafly, N.J., April 21 The writer is a junior at Cornell University. | Of College and Status |
1387950_1 | when the men who usually urge redemption angled for their own. But the leaders of a church built on symbols could not even manage the symbolism. The empty chairs sent an unequivocal message: They hadn't learned a thing. The cardinals chose defiance over deference to the expectations of their devastated flock, which thought that celibacy, women priests and married priests might be discussed. The shepherds opted for arcane legalisms over actual remorse, meaningless distinctions over meaningful changes: An abusive priest might or might not be ejected from the club, depending on the age of his victims and the frequency of his transgressions, and how long ago the abuse occurred. Was he a ''serial'' offender or a hobbyist, intent on abusing or inebriated? To the hair-splitting cardinals, these variables still seemed to matter. To enraged American Catholics, they no longer do. We are angry that these spiritual arbiters are unyielding when the ''sins'' belong to us, not to them. We have relatives whose lives were choked because they could not get annulments -- and thus remarry in the church -- after their spouses betrayed and abandoned them. We know faithfully married women who are forced to violate the Vatican stricture against birth control if they don't want 13 babies. We are friends with gay Catholics who are expected to sacrifice intimacy to maintain their faith. Rome has resisted modernity, clinging to black and white. But -- astonishingly, disgustingly -- on the matter of molestation, which any sane person does see in black and white, the cardinals divine shades of gray. It took them three days and a deafening chorus of disapproval before they ostensibly agreed on a one-grope-and-you're-out policy. They can still water that down at the bishops conference in June. And it will be a miracle if they don't, given the increasing evidence that church leaders in America, and perhaps even the Holy See, have engaged in a huge conspiracy, spurred by fear of blackmail. They knowingly put children in harm's way because they did not want the priests they should have punished to divulge the church's hypocrisy. Even as the cardinals were making their way back from Rome, the Archdiocese of Boston released new documents in the case of the Rev. Paul Shanley, an unabashed molester who made a speech in 1977 asserting that no sexual act in and of itself causes damage to children, not even incest or | Ire And Brimstone |
1387954_0 | The latest verdict on hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women raises disturbing questions, not only for millions of women who have been taking the drugs but also for doctors who have been recommending their use for purposes that now appear inappropriate. Hormones have long been prescribed to relieve symptoms of menopause like hot flashes and night sweats, for which they are undeniably effective. But doctors have also prescribed estrogen, either alone or in combination with progestin, to prevent or mitigate heart disease, Alzheimer's, severe depression, bone fractures from osteoporosis and urinary incontinence. These other presumed benefits have sometimes been critical in women's decisions on whether to undergo hormone replacement therapy, and for how long. Prolonged use of hormone therapy is thought to increase the risk of breast cancer, so it was comforting to think that this risk was more than offset by a wide range of benefits. That, alas, has now been called into question by an international panel of experts whose findings were recently reported by The Times's Denise Grady. Their report, financed by the National Institutes of Health and a private foundation in Italy, found some clear benefits from hormone therapy. Hormone replacement remains the most effective pharmacological treatment for menopause's symptoms, and it has been shown to prevent the bone loss associated with osteoporosis, though no trials have determined whether it also reduces fractures. But the panel concluded that many other presumed benefits did not hold up when examined in rigorous clinical trials. The group found no evidence so far that the hormones protected against heart disease. In fact, some trials have shown an increase in the risk of heart attacks, strokes and blood clots. Nor did hormone replacement therapy slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease, ease the symptoms of major depression or counter urinary incontinence. The main lesson from this turnaround is the importance of conducting clinical trials of medical treatments whenever feasible. Most of the evidence suggesting wide benefits from hormone replacement therapy came from observational studies, in which large numbers of women were followed for years, and those who chose hormone therapy were compared with those who did not. But such studies have an inherent weakness. One can never be sure that the women who choose a treatment and stick with it are not inherently healthier than those who shun the treatment. Far more certain results can be obtained from controlled clinical trials in | Rethinking Hormone Therapies |
1387740_4 | campaigns have brought him half the publicity that he has received since he started his petition campaign last year to become a member of Yale's board, known as the Yale Corporation. ''With this candidacy, it's taken it to a whole other level,'' Mr. Lee said. Mr. Lee, who grew up in Ansonia, is the 14th candidate in Yale history to run for a corporation seat via petitioning. In most years a committee of Yale alumni nominate a slate of candidates and then alumni choose by mail-in ballot among the nominees to fill openings. But this year the alumni committee nominated only one person, the architect Maya Lin, who submitted the winning design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington when she was a senior at Yale in the class of 1981. The campaign has been particularly contentious because some alumni have faulted Mr. Lee for using funds from Yale's unions to send out mailings. Others have criticized the university for appearing to endorse Ms. Lin's candidacy. Mr. Lee has said he would have no agenda if elected, besides fostering better relations among the university, its unions and the city. Nor has Mr. Lee emphasized during the campaign his advocacy work in New Haven over the last four years. But this social justice work has often brought his church to prominence and perhaps demonstrates what his priorities might be if elected to Yale's board. Even though Mayor John DeStefano Jr. endorsed Mr. Lee for the Yale post this month he did not want to discuss him. The mayor has avoided discussing the campaign publicly since Mr. Lee made what the mayor considered critical remarks about the New Haven schools during a sermon. The Rev. Boise Kimber of the First Calvary Baptist Church, the president of the Greater New Haven Clergy Association and a close ally of Mayor DeStefano, did not return phone calls about Mr. Lee this month. But this month, Mr. Lee appeared to be attempting a reconciliation with the mayor and the school superintendent, Reginald Mayo. ''I'm so proud of what the mayor and Dr. Mayo have done for the children,'' Mr. Lee said. But Mr. Lee said he was committed to doing what he could to improve education, even as he continued to skirt specific statements about what he would do as a Yale trustee. ''This is what this is all about, working for positive change,'' he said. | Looking to Be a New Voice on the Yale Board |
1387914_1 | recent classified ads: CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER. M.B.A., C.P.A. Must be able to report one earnings figure while simultaneously looking at another; massage numbers; lobby; move debt off books; rally stockholders; defer income to a later quarter till the end of time. Ability to name holding companies after birds of prey and action figures a plus. Should be on intimate terms with at least one cabinet member, reachable in one phone call or less and known to you as ''sweetie.'' 5-10 yrs. experience in keeping two sets of books. OLYMPIC JUDGE. B.A., N.H.L. Requires working knowledge of international relations and ice-skating contortions, ability to distinguish a triple axel from falling on the floor sideways, a firm grasp of the numbers 1 through 6. Demonstrated fluency in decimal system and in much higher math, where two gold medals can equal one. Fees and kickbacks negotiable. CORPORATE SALES, TELECOMMUNICATIONS. B.A. in literature preferred. Creativity essential. Ability to book profits to invented companies, create swaps for imaginary services, hire fictional characters. Proficiency in arranging Illusory Public Offerings (I.P.O.'s) required. PROFESSOR. University seeks Ph.D. aware of national grade inflation, able to give ''C'' paper an ''A-'' without grumbling. Compensation: educating new generation of number-crunchers. ELECTION OFFICIAL. Why not use your counting talents where it counts? Background in voting booth arcana, indecipherable handwriting, mediation. In case of electoral dispute between two political candidates, official should be able to show in rigorous detail that either one was victorious, but not until months later. FINANCIAL ANALYST. B.A. or B.S. Investment bank seeks individual able to perform business with a company in the morning, recommend said company's stock that afternoon and have a nice chat with New York's attorney general that evening. CHILD MENSA PERFORMER. Needed: High-I.Q. moppet to go on talk shows, attend graduate seminars and perform math tricks at parties. Child should appear utterly childlike, with wan expression and working knowledge of Fermat's theorem. Preferably conversant in Schopenhauer, with mussed hair and the vague light of genius in eyes. Parent should show that child scored 145 or higher on I.Q. test. Barring that, parent may add I.Q. scores of whole family and pretend that sum is child's I.Q. Mental health insurance not available for child or parent. AUCTION HOUSE DIRECTOR. M.F.A. Should possess wide-ranging knowledge of paintings and antiquities, and of people at other auction houses. No ex-convicts please. Jenny Lyn Bader is a playwright and essayist. | Where the Jobs Are |
1382827_1 | airline maintenance is not working properly because the government has too few inspectors, manages them badly and has not trained them properly, a report by the Transportation Department's inspector general has found. The new method, the Air Transportation Oversight System, is an outgrowth of the 1996 ValuJet Airlines crash and plays an important role in the aviation agency's plan to reduce the accident rate by 80 percent. It is supposed to identify areas of high risk and concentrate on them, rather than simply assuring compliance with all regulations. Continuous analysis of inspection findings is supposed to help inspectors refocus when problems are found. But the inspector general found that among the managers who supervise inspection at a given airline, called principal inspectors, 83 percent said data were inadequate to help with these retargeting efforts. Half the inspectors interviewed by the inspector general's auditors said they did not understand the checklist questions they were supposed to answer, raising questions about the quality of data they gather. Among the inspectors, 71 percent said their training was inadequate. A copy of the report, which is scheduled for release on Wednesday, was provided to The New York Times. USA Today and The Wall Street Journal reported some of its contents today. The aviation agency has been scrambling to rebut the report. On Monday it held a background briefing for reporters on the progress it has made and circulated a copy of the inspector general's study, and a rebuttal, on Capitol Hill, people involved with the report said. Aviation agency officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the new oversight system was much more detailed than the old one. For example, it determines whether an airline employee with responsibility for a certain area has the authority to make the required decisions. The system is in place for the 10 largest airlines, the agency said, with the inspectors checking every aspect of those airlines' operations. It is also used at smaller airlines whenever they want to make changes in their F.A.A.-approved procedures. The inspector general found some simple problems. For example, among the principal inspectors, 68 percent said that aviation agency inspectors were not assigned to the places they were most needed. The agency kept the inspectors for one large carrier in Boise, Idaho, where the airline had 8 flights a day, rather than Chicago and Denver, where the carrier had 738 flights a day. | Report Finds Fault in Airline Maintenance System |
1382862_0 | The sales pitch to major corporations went something like this: Having trouble with cash flow or meeting profit forecasts? We can help you manage the numbers, and even put a little cash in your pocket. The financial expert was the Enron Corporation, which until its sudden collapse last year had been widely admired in financial circles for the innovative techniques -- like off-balance-sheet partnerships -- that it used to enhance its performance. But Enron did not just find creative ways to manage its own cash flow and profits. It marketed that expertise to other major corporations, including AT&T, Eli Lilly & Company, Owens-Illinois, Lockheed Martin and Qwest Communications, according to documents and interviews with more than a dozen former Enron executives. It is unclear exactly how many corporations hired Enron explicitly to provide financial management services. But at least six big companies signed complicated deals, intended to enhance their results with financing and accounting ploys. Most of the deals involved purchasing other Enron services. Scores of smaller companies may also have participated, executives said. Enron and a customer might, for instance, agree to swap telecommunications services, use shell corporations or take advantage of accounting loopholes to improve each other's balance sheet or income statement, former Enron officials said. Few of the companies that signed major deals with Enron would talk about them, while some that rejected Enron's proposals termed them peculiar. But former Enron employees who marketed the services said that their mission was clear: to sell a form of ''structured finance'' that could accelerate a customer's earnings or otherwise dress up the corporate books. ''Ultimately, that was my job -- to help companies make earnings,'' said one former executive of Enron's broadband services unit who insisted on not being identified for fear of being drawn into litigation. ''This was one of the secrets of Enron.'' One internal training document for the sales staff of the Enron Energy Services unit described the financial advantages to be offered prospective clients, including ''acceleration of earnings/cash from outsourcing for both EES and our customer'' and the promise to ''unlock benefits from a difficult tax position that the customer may have.'' None of this would be unusual for Wall Street investment banks like Merrill Lynch or J. P. Morgan Chase, which in recent years have used a wide range of derivatives and other structured finance products to help big corporations reduce their taxes and | Enron Offered Management Aid To Companies |
1382880_0 | To the Editor: Re ''Sins of the Church'' (news analysis, front page, April 8): I am saddened but not surprised by the response of many Catholic officials and theologians to recent revelations of longtime abuse and cover-ups. Many would prefer to debate restrictions that apply to all Catholics (celibacy outside of marriage) rather than consider the specter of women as partners in marriage or as equals in the clergy. ANNA MARIA ORTIZ Ann Arbor, Mich., April 8, 2002 | A Path to Change in the Church |
1382863_3 | wrong, a crime has not been committed if those involved honestly believed the advice to be correct. However, if information was withheld from the accountants, prosecutors can use that as potential evidence of an intent to deceive. That, in turn, would weaken the defense, known as ''professional reliance.'' Regardless of how Mr. Duncan's information is ultimately used, legal experts said today, there is little doubt the government has accomplished a significant advance in its inquiry by securing his cooperation. That is because Mr. Duncan will not only be able to guide the government through Enron's complex finances but will also be able to provide an inside view of many critical meetings and discussions that are being examined by prosecutors. ''Duncan is the perfect witness, and he is the perfect person to give a plea deal,'' said John J. Fahy, a certified public accountant and former federal prosecutor in New Jersey. ''This will greatly speed up the investigative process.'' In his court appearance today, before Judge Melinda Harmon of Federal District Court, Mr. Duncan made clear that the efforts undertaken last October in the Houston office of Andersen to destroy records were done with the intent of impeding an S.E.C. inquiry. In his statements, Mr. Duncan said that he directed document shredding and destroyed records himself ''with the knowledge and intent'' that his actions would make sure that ''the documents would not be available to the S.E.C.'' Such intent makes the document destruction a crime. ''I accept that my conduct violated federal law,'' Mr. Duncan said. ''I accept the responsibility for my acts.'' In a written statement, Mr. Hardin, the lawyer for Andersen, responded to Mr. Duncan's comments in court with a sharp attack on Mr. Duncan. ''We are surprised and disappointed by Mr. Duncan's statement in court as it completely contradicts what he has stated up until this point,'' Mr. Hardin said, adding that the auditor's previous contention that he had no intent to commit a crime ''served as the basis for our public statements on this matter and our discussions with the Department of Justice.'' The document destruction and resulting criminal prosecution has been a blow to Andersen, causing the firm to lose more than 100 clients and begin to break up worldwide. That trend continued this week as Andersen's tax advisory business attracted at least one new bidder, a San Francisco-based leveraged buyout firm. Patrick Dorton, an Andersen | A Guilty Plea From Andersen's Enron Auditor |
1385511_0 | To the Editor: The study reported in ''Scientists Question Hormone Therapies for Menopause Ills'' (front page, April 18) points to the dangers of adopting medical interventions without scientifically proven evidence of their benefits or balanced assessment of their risks. These interventions become standard practice and lucrative industries before their value for a patient's health is truly determined. Perhaps women need to change the prevailing bias of medical care. In the 19th century, puberty was thought to put young women at risk for neurological disorders. In the 20th century, women's childbearing was treated as dangerous and potentially pathological. In the 21st century, we should acknowledge that aging is not pathology. Before we routinely treat normal aging functions, we should at least address the risks of the very medications meant to help. MARSHA HURST Bronxville, N.Y., April 19, 2002 The writer is director, health advocacy graduate program, Sarah Lawrence College. | Aging Is Not an Illness |
1383446_3 | the eyes of state security officials is investigating the backgrounds of people working in shops and restaurants. A terrorist might not be able to smuggle explosives through a checkpoint, but a confederate at one of the shops could do so easily, state officials said. Even a knife used to cut meat at a restaurant might be passed on to a potential hijacker. The lack of legal grounds to investigate the backgrounds of these employees, many of whom do not work for the airport, but for a contractor, has frustrated many airport managers across the country, said Todd Hauptli, a spokesman for the American Association of Airport Executives. So far, however, the federal regulations have left out such workers and the states have not passed laws requiring them to undergo the same scrutiny as pilots, mechanics, baggage handlers, ticket agents and other workers more directly involved with flights, he said. ''There are a bunch of airport people who would like to be able to do background checks on virtually any employee at their facility but the authority doesn't currently exist,'' Mr. Hauptli said. In November, Congress passed legislation requiring the federal government to take over the screening of passengers from private security companies. The legislation provided for a federal security director at each airport and the training of 28,000 screeners. It also required the hiring of marshals to ride on commercial flights, the screening of all bags for bombs and fortified cockpit doors. Congress did call for background checks for all employees who had unfettered access to ''secured areas'' of the airport, which were defined through regulations as the tarmac, ramps, baggage-handling areas and hangars. Later, Mr. Mineta made a regulation adding ticket agents and skycaps to the list of people that can be investigated by airport officials. The federal law also encouraged airport operators to invest in new screening technologies to keep unauthorized intruders out, like scanners and locks that read fingerprints or retinas. But the program envisioned by Mr. Pataki and Mr. McGreevey would put the three major New York area airports at the forefront of security. The scanners have already been developed. They use a mechanism similar to a medical sonogram to read fingerprints even through gloves or some other substance, he said. A test project could begin in a matter of months, Mr. Kallstrom said, and Mr. Pataki's aides said that he would like to see the | AIRPORT WORKERS FACE NEW SCRUTINY |
1383342_0 | A United Nations conference in Madrid has been grappling all week with the implications of a startling demographic development -- a world where there will be more elderly people than youngsters in coming decades. The developed nations passed through that transition a few years ago, prompting today's concerns over the adequacy of social security retirement programs and of health care for the aged in the world's richest nations. But now the developing world, poorer and less prepared to cope, is heading in the same direction. By the year 2050, demographers estimate, the world as a whole will contain more people aged 60 and older than children under the age of 15. It will be one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in history. From one perspective, the graying of the planet is a huge success story, brought about by social and medical advances that are allowing people to live much longer and by population control programs that have cut birth rates not only in the rich countries but in poorer nations as well. But from another perspective, the transition will bring problems that will need urgent attention. Delegates to this week's World Assembly on Aging are focusing, quite rightly, on the need to reduce the overwhelming poverty that is the main threat to older people in developing nations. They need the basics: nourishing food, clean water, clothing and housing. Once those are provided, there is the problem in all societies of subsidizing health care and retirement benefits for the elderly when there are proportionately fewer workers to support them. Older people will need to remain active, healthy and economically productive, especially in poor nations with no social safety net. On the darker side, delegates are seeking ways to curtail physical, sexual and psychological abuse of the elderly, as well as the looting of their property. But perhaps the most needed change is attitudinal. The world will have to start thinking of its older citizens less as a burden on society and more as a resource whose experience and knowledge can be tapped, for the benefit of themselves and the societies they live in. | The Graying of the Globe |
1385013_3 | mission should be considered either desirable or inevitable, except insofar as it enables the private sector to reap a windfall after an international tragedy. It would be useful to go down the list of principles and unpack them one by one. Each represents a significant crisis in the way cities are made. A historical view of these crises could yield constructive results. What forces, for example, have diminished the capacity of New York's Department of City Planning to implement these worthy goals? For that matter, it is not clear whether even the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has the authority to implement them. Last week, the corporation was forced to withdraw a request for proposals for comprehensive master plans, issued to 24 architecture and planning firms, when the Port Authority determined that the state agency had no right to build on the 16-acre ground zero site. This conflict should be seen not just as the usual bureaucratic comedy of errors, but as a potential topic for cultural study and creative exploration. We are, after all, dealing with a heavily contested site. History has different claims upon it, as well as organized special-interest groups, and little effort has been made thus far to sort out those claims, or even identify them. Until such an effort is made, I see scant reason to hope that a modern equivalent of Brunelleschi's dome will arise in Lower Manhattan. And to judge from the record of recent accomplishment, I see little evidence of historical awareness on the part of the city's corporate architecture firms. In fact, these firms have been alarmingly out of touch with the evolving needs of the contemporary city in the globalizing world. This could change. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation could be an instrument for such a change. The blueprint, however, does not go far in that direction. What it offers, instead, is a parade of platitudes entirely consistent with the world view of a rigid status quo. That status quo revolves around a single unstated assumption: it is ultimately not possible to discriminate good from bad. One thing is just as valuable as another thing: that is the consensus. Everything is a matter of taste, opinion, stylistic preference or the roll of the dice: that is the world view. Every problem is a design problem, and all designers are equally capable of solving a design problem. What a wonderful world it | Rich Firms, Poor Ideas for Towers Site |
1384990_0 | To the Editor: Re ''In Morning Sky, Seamless Exit for Twin Beams'' (news article, April 15): You report that there has been a groundswell of public interest in extending the ''Tribute in Light'' and that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has voiced support for incorporating shafts of light into the memorial ultimately constructed at the World Trade Center site. Many have also expressed interest in restoring the skyline of Lower Manhattan, destroyed in the terrorist attack. All of this could effectively be achieved by requiring that one or two of the buildings eventually constructed at ground zero be topped with tower extensions lighted internally. They might be as tall as, or taller than, the original twin towers and could contain an observation deck or restaurant. These beacons of light would be a spectacular sight against the Lower Manhattan skyline and would echo the original buildings and the ''Tribute in Light,'' in perpetuity. KENNETH A. RAITEN New York, April 16, 2002 | A Memorial of Light |
1385101_0 | A new report by a panel of international experts casts doubt on longstanding claims that hormone replacement can prevent or treat a variety of ills in postmenopausal women, including heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, severe depression, urinary incontinence and broken bones caused by osteoporosis. While hormone therapy is the most effective way to relieve menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats, there is not enough scientific evidence to support its use for the other problems, says the report, which is to be published in June. The hormone treatments have well-documented drawbacks, including an increased risk of blood clots and gall bladder disease and breast cancer with prolonged use. More than 40 million American women are 50 or older, and 20 million more will reach menopause within the next decade. About 20 percent of women who reach menopause naturally use hormone replacement at least temporarily, according to the North American Menopause Society. The figure is higher among women who reach menopause early because their ovaries have been surgically removed. Hormone replacement usually consists of estrogen with another hormone, progestin, or -- for women who have had hysterectomies -- estrogen alone. Given the known risks and limited benefits of hormone treatments, the report says, each woman and her doctor should weigh her medical history carefully when deciding whether she really needs it. Drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure are a better way to cut the risk of heart disease for many women, and other nonhormonal drugs may be a better way to prevent fractures. That advice is a departure from decades of medical practice in which many women and their doctors assumed that taking estrogen at menopause was a way to preserve youth and health. American women spent $2.75 billion on hormone replacement in 2001, according to IMS Health, a company that tracks drug sales. Premarin, a form of estrogen replacement therapy sold by Wyeth, was the third most commonly prescribed drug in the United States last year, with more than 45 million prescriptions dispensed. The new report, called the International Position Paper on Women's Health and Menopause, was financed by the National Institutes of Health and the private Giovanni Loren Zini Medical Science Foundation of Italy. It reviews existing studies and was compiled by 28 doctors and scientists from the United States, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Australia. Dr. Nanette K. Wenger, chief of cardiology at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, | Scientists Question Hormone Therapies For Menopause Ills |
1380554_0 | Six months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, public confidence in the nation's aviation system is rebounding. With the economy recovering as well, air travel is picking up and airlines are reinstating flights and furloughed workers. It's just the sort of moment when a sense of complacency could take hold. That would be a grievous mistake. Federal authorities have just begun to consolidate their control over airport security and a staggering amount of work remains to be done. Just how much was shown by a security audit conducted by government inspectors last fall, before the federal takeover. USA Today reported last week that in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, it remained disturbingly easy to carry knives, guns and simulated explosives past security screeners. The audit, conducted by the office of Kenneth Mead, the Department of Transportation's inspector general, took place before formal control over airport security passed from the airlines to the new Transportation Security Administration on Feb. 17. Mr. Mead plans more audits to gauge the new agency's initial performance. The difficulty in making a clean break with the past is highlighted by the rash of terminal shutdowns triggered by security lapses in recent weeks. Though highly disruptive to travelers, these incidents rightly signal the T.S.A.'s determination that security take precedence over convenience. The T.S.A. was created by the aviation security law passed last November and is run by John Magaw, a former Secret Service director. By Nov. 19, the anniversary of the law's signing, he must have between 30,000 and 40,000 federal security agents in place at 429 airports. In May, they will start replacing the notoriously low-paid private guards hired by the airlines, who are working under federal supervisors during the transition. The law enforcement agency just started training 1,200 screening supervisors in Oklahoma, and will be steadily deploying them nationwide. The year-end deadline for all baggage to be checked by sophisticated bomb-detection machines poses the most daunting challenge for the Transportation Security Administration. Only 10 percent of the 2,000 or so costly machines that will be needed are in place. The T.S.A. says it will meet the deadline. It has ordered several hundred more of the machines that use CT-scan technology from the two licensed manufacturers, and has arranged to have larger industrial conglomerates bid as subcontractors to build many more. The T.S.A. plans to meet the deadline by deploying a mix of the | Improving Aviation Security |
1380476_0 | To the Editor: ''The Population Slowdown'' (editorial, March 28) emphasized the importance of sustained funding for family planning. But equally fundamental to any declines in fertility is the right of women to determine when and under what conditions they bear children. ELLEN SWEET New York, March 29, 2002 The writer is a vice president for public affairs of the International Women's Health Coalition. | To Control Fertility |
1381770_0 | In a private e-mail message, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles called the church's failure to report to the police the names of priests accused of sexual abuse ''a huge mistake.'' He also harshly criticized the church's lawyer for dragging her feet on providing the information. Cardinal Mahony wrote that the church had to reverse course and provide the names of the sex offenders, even long after the offenses were committed, or the consequences for the archdiocese ''are going to be incredible: charges of cover-up, concealing criminals, etc. etc.'' In dozens of other mail messages, including some to lawyers, church officials discussed numerous cases of abuse or accusations of abuse and debated how best to handle them and how to handle the police. In response to these disclosures, the district attorney, Steve Cooley, issued a statement saying he was prepared to prosecute those who appear to have stolen a sheaf of the e-mail messages from the archdiocese, as well as church officials who might have failed to report sexual offenses as the law requires. It is the first time in the church scandal in Los Angeles that prosecutors have threatened action against church officials for concealing crimes. Late tonight, Cardinal Mahony released a statement in response to an accusation, referred to obliquely in the e-mails, that he had molested a Catholic high school student in Fresno 32 years ago. The woman, Flora Mae Hickman, made the claim to a priest last month in Fresno, the statement said. Cardinal Mahony denied the accusation. ''I categorically denied ever having molested anyone either before or after my ordination as a priest and as a bishop,'' the cardinal said. ''To the best of my knowledge, I have never met anyone named Flora Mae Hickman.'' The cardinal added that he had personally contacted the police to report the accusations and had cooperated with investigations. The e-mail messages were first reported on a local radio station, KFI, which has refused to say how it obtained them. In a midnight court session on Thursday, lawyers for the archdiocese tried to prevent publication of an article by The Los Angeles Times about one message, but a judge refused to issue an injunction. In that e-mail message, the cardinal appeared to be trying to deflect criticism from himself for withholding the information and laying it at the feet of the archdiocese's general counsel, Sister Judith Murphy, to whom | Cardinal Argued for Slipping Names to Police |
1384307_0 | To the Editor: Any method of separating travelers for security based on identity is subject to compromise (''ID Cards for 'Trusted Travelers' Run Into Some Thorny Questions,'' Business Day, April 9). A separation based on behavior might be better. For example, having security ''express lanes'' for travelers carrying only a purse or small briefcase might help. More people would check bags, reducing delays. Airlines could establish priority baggage handling for coveted business travelers. KEN NOVAK Palo Alto, Calif., April 9, 2002 | Faster, Safer Flying |
1384371_3 | by the spread of mad cow disease, genetically modified crops and industrial accidents like an explosion in September at a chemical plant in Toulouse that left dozens dead. The party's traditional strength has been in big cities among the better educated, he said, but it is spreading fast to the countryside. Mr. Mamére, who served as an anchor of programs that dealt with issues ranging from human rights to the environment, found supporters for his Greens among the visitors to the retirement fair. Not all of them were older people, to whom he pledged that he would secure pensions and better health care. ''I think all politicians should be like the Greens,'' said Didier Salwa, 36, who runs an organization that helps find jobs for retirees. But he added, ''In words they're good; now we have to see deeds.'' Indeed, Mr. Mamère's own candidacy illustrates the Greens' fragility. Their original presidential candidate was Alain Lipietz, a former Maoist economics professor, who was nominated in primaries in July. But Mr. Lipietz, a careless campaigner, alienated large sectors of the electorate with injudicious proposals, like one to hold a referendum on the future of Corsica, the Mediterranean island where separatists seek autonomy from France. So he was unable to get the 500 endorsements from elected officials that candidates need to be placed on the ballot. Enter Mr. Mamère. After gaining the party's backing in October and gathering the endorsements, he staked out the Greens' platform by distancing himself from Mr. Jospin, notably on the issue of nuclear energy. In the developed world, France stands out by relying on nuclear power for 80 percent of its electricity. Mr. Mamère, inspired by Germany's Greens, who have pressed Berlin to phase out the country's 19 nuclear reactors, proposed that France too gradually shut down its atomic power plants over the next 25 years. Mr. Jospin's other big leftist ally, the Communists, backed by powerful labor unions, view the nuclear industry as an important employer, and he demurred. Nuclear energy, he said, cements French economic independence. His coalition, he acknowledges, remains split on the issue. At first, Mr. Mamère called Mr. Jospin's refusal a ''provocation, a declaration of war.'' But now, he is conciliatory. ''The principal weakness of the left in France,'' he said with a kind of tenderness reserved for an ailing colleague, ''is that it has not yet endorsed the principle of sustainable development.'' | Candidate Sees Green Party As French President-Maker |
1384320_1 | and monitoring instant messages, but over the last several months, scores of companies have taken a similar tack. They are discovering that instant messaging -- once the province of chatty teenagers -- has invaded the work place. Jupiter Media Metrix says more than 15.6 million people send instant messages at work. To visualize instant messaging, think of a typed conversation, in which snippets of text are rapidly exchanged over the Internet, with each snippet appearing on the recipient's screen as soon as it is sent. Unlike e-mail messages, which are automatically stored in servers and in-boxes, instant messages disappear when a messaging session is closed. The software was originally designed not to store anything -- a boon to users who are overwhelmed by accumulating e-mail messages. ''The I.T. people don't realize that this whole instant-messaging community is spreading like crab grass,'' said Glen Vondrick, president and chief executive of FaceTime Communications, in Foster City, Calif., which makes a product called the IM Auditor. Free services like America Online's Instant Messenger give companies the most grief, analysts say, because they are not designed to be controlled by anyone but end users. Ignoring their impact is like ''playing with a loaded gun,'' reads the headline of a report by Gartner, the market research company in Stamford, Conn. Some companies and government offices have simply banned the software. But many others have concluded that real-time messaging is here to stay and that just as e-mail and Web monitoring became common in the work place, instant-message monitoring will, too. Some have invested in systems like Lotus SameTime, from I.B.M., and Communicator Hub IM, from Communicator Inc., which run from central servers. Others rely on the free systems that are already so popular, and have installed software that intercepts messages. That software includes products from FaceTime, Vericept and ICaughtYou, in Bonita Springs, Fla. Either way, the nature of instant messaging could change drastically. Those who use it compare the specter of being spied on to someone's tapping phone conversations. Now, they say, they may have to go back to playing phone tag. But in regulated industries, like finance and health care, the monitoring may not cause much of an uproar because it is a given that companies must archive and review all written correspondence. Although the Securities and Exchange Commission has said nothing about instant messaging, many compliance officers at financial institutions have started to | Keeping Watch Over Instant Messages |
1384314_4 | (but not buy) artifacts in trust, waiting for the day when they could return to Afghanistan. Other collectors -- in Japan, for instance, where Buddhist art from Afghanistan found a ready market -- may also eventually return some artifacts. ''It is too early to ask for the return of objects,'' Mrs. Dupree said, ''but certainly not too early to talk about it.'' As the wars recede and the reconstruction of Afghanistan begins, offers of help for that country's cultural legacy have begun to trickle in. Unesco officials say pledges have already been received from Greece, Italy and the United Nations, as well as from private groups. Some projects, like the reconstruction of Babur's Garden in Kabul, designed by a 16th-century Mogul emperor, are expected to begin soon, with support pledged by international agencies and the interim Afghan government. Three teams have been dispatched to Afghanistan by Unesco to assess damage to monuments in Kabul, Bamiyan and Herat, and at more remote sites, like the 12th-century minaret at Jam and the ancient city at Balkh. Unesco has organized a conference next month in Kabul at which specialists are to draw up a plan and, more critically, a budget for additional work that is likely to come under the Unesco aegis with help from private groups. Of all the cultural projects under discussion in Afghanistan, the most spectacular, ambitious and controversial is the one to rebuild the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Just last week, Hamid Karzai, the interim president of Afghanistan, visited the remote Bamiyan Valley and repeated his government's support of the plan. Speaking at the foot of one of the the two ruined Buddhas, which once stood 120 and 170 feet tall, he said the project should be begin ''as soon as possible.'' The plan, born on the Internet, was the brainchild of Bernard Weber, the Swiss-born director of the New Seven Wonders Foundation, which has used its Web site, www.new7wonders.org, to solicit nominations for a list of the seven wonders of the modern world. The Bamiyan Buddhas emerged as a popular favorite, and since their destruction Mr. Weber has been marshaling support for their reconstruction. Meanwhile other projects to rebuild the Buddhas have sprung up, mainly in countries where Buddha is sacred. Mr. Weber's plan calls for recreating a three-dimensional image of the statues in cyberspace, based on meticulous photographs taken in the 1970's, and later for the construction of | Cultural Salvage in Wake of Afghan War |
1387441_1 | bleak Black Gorge, connecting Arizona and Nevada, there are restrictions on trucks, buses and motor homes. Officials here are striving to reopen as much as possible by summer, but they are constrained by the security concerns. Visitors usually dance around use of the word ''disappointment,'' but those who are familiar with the former sense of openness here, and the raw power of the dam's streamlined beauty, find ways to describe the diminished experience. ''I'm a guy who likes going into manufacturing plants, and this is the mother of them all,'' said Gregory George Ciotti, a visitor who is the project manager for the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, in Washington, D.C. ''I'm now on the other side, since we're often closing things off for our work at the Capitol. But it is disappointing.'' Wendy Walker, who coordinates special events at the dam, said bluntly, ''They say it's the same, but it's not.'' The number of visitors has plummeted. The government expects 900,000 visitors in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, a significant drop from the 1.3 million of the year before. The federal Bureau of Reclamation, which built the dam in the Depression and operates the visitor center, with its photographs of muscled workers hammering solid rock, was not sure it could permit visitors at all. Even the slim chance that an attack could unleash Lake Mead, the largest man-made freshwater lake in the Western Hemisphere, down the Colorado River gorge has officials nervous. The larger Grand Coulee Dam, in Washington State, remains closed to visitors, and the Shasta Dam in California has been reopened only to small groups, like schoolchildren. Before the attacks, visitors could wander through the guts of the Hoover Dam, ogle the enormous water pipes, stand next to the whirring turbines of one of the country's largest power stations and, as Mr. Goldberg recalled, stand at the bottom, crane their necks and take in the visual poetry of what looks like a gigantic Brancusi sculpture. There used to be what was called a hard-hat tour, for viewing the dam's many secrets. ''I had a guy offer me $60 once just to see the seepage gallery,'' said Richard Belding, a guide who is a third-generation employee of the bureau. ''I mean, people just want to see for themselves.'' The hard-hat tour has been discontinued, perhaps permanently. The inner sections of Hoover Dam were closed to | The Big Old Dam Still Thrills, but From Fewer Angles |
1387443_0 | A rogue computer program that is the online equivalent of a quick-change artist is infecting computers around the world via e-mail and clogging computer networks. The program, W32/KLEZ.H, is a ''blended threat,'' combining elements of a virus, which infects machines, and a worm, which transports itself from machine to machine. It also tries to disable some antivirus programs. It makes itself hard for users to spot by changing its e-mail subject line, message and name of the attachment at random, drawing from a database that includes, for example, such subject lines as ''Hello, honey,'' and ''A very funny website.'' The program has grown increasingly common as users unknowingly activate it -- sometimes without even opening the e-mail attachment that carries the virus -- and allow it to send copies of itself to those in the victim's e-mail address file. ''It is exploding,'' said Keith Peer, chief executive of Central Command, a computer security company. The rapid spread of the program caused Symantec and McAfee.com, two prominent computer protection companies, to upgrade their warnings about it in recent days; Symantec said on its Web site that it now considered the program a ''category 4'' risk, its second-highest ranking. The program exploits vulnerable spots in computer programs, most notably a problem in earlier versions of Microsoft's mail programs, Outlook and Outlook Express, which allows some types of computer programs to be activated even if they are in the ''preview pane.'' The program can also grab files randomly from victims' hard drives and send them out, but it does little damage to the machines themselves, antivirus companies said. Microsoft has had patches available to fix these problems for more than a year, but many people do not keep their software up to date, said Vincent Weafer, the director of research at Symantec Security Response. Although most antivirus software programs already provided protection against the Klez family, the new variant has enough new wrinkles to trick some of the digital sentries. The latest versions of software have been updated to block the worm, and the companies offer free online tools to cleanse infected machines. | A New Risk To Computers Worldwide |
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