_id stringlengths 5 10 | text stringlengths 0 2.9k | title stringlengths 0 2.44k |
|---|---|---|
204266_0 | LEAD: Trade between the Soviet Union and Cuba grew tenfold over the last 15 years to reach more than $9 billion in 1987, the official Prensa Latina press agency said today. The Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, is scheduled to arrive here Friday for a three-day official visit, and trade relations between the two nations are expected to be high on the agenda of his talks with Fidel Castro. Trade between the Soviet Union and Cuba grew tenfold over the last 15 years to reach more than $9 billion in 1987, the official Prensa Latina press agency said today. The Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, is scheduled to arrive here Friday for a three-day official visit, and trade relations between the two nations are expected to be high on the agenda of his talks with Fidel Castro. Quoting official statistics, Prensa Latina said trade in 1987 totaled $9.36 billion, 10 times more than in 1972, when Cuba joined the Communist-bloc trade group, Comecon. | Soviet-Cuban Trade Up |
204292_0 | LEAD: A NEW computer-assisted way to look at brain scans is enabling researchers to determine whether tumors are changing in size much sooner than was previously possible. A NEW computer-assisted way to look at brain scans is enabling researchers to determine whether tumors are changing in size much sooner than was previously possible. The method, developed by David N. Kennedy, a medical physicist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, uses a computer to delineate abnormalities inside the brain by analyzing magnetic resonance images. The computer homes in on differences in brightness in the images and draws outlines of brain structures. MRI scanners, using powerful magnets to create images of the inside of living brains, can detect tumors and other unusual features, Dr. Kennedy said. But it can be difficult to compare MRI images that were made at different times. In general, Dr. Kennedy said, a tumor must change in volume by at least 30 percent before doctors can be certain that a change has taken place. The computer-assisted method allows doctors to be sure of changes when a tumor's volume has changed by only 10 percent. Increase in Accuracy The improved accuracy comes because the computer can analyze many more images than are usually studied, Dr. Kennedy said. Ordinarily, doctors piece together a picture of a tumor or other abnormality from pictures of the brain that represent 12 ''slices'' going across the brain. The new method allows doctors to piece together and analyze as many as 128 slices, Dr. Kennedy said. Dr. Kennedy, working with Dr. Pauline Filipek, a pediatric neurologist and Dr. Verne Caviness, a neuropathologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital, has spent the past year testing the new method to ascertain its accuracy. Dr. Filipek said that with their error rate of 10 percent, they do even better than pathologist looking at specimens in an autopsy. ''Even with pathological specimens on autopsy, there is a 15 percent error rate,'' she said. | Method Detects Tumor Growth Far Sooner |
204456_0 | LEAD: Moschino's Notoriety Moschino's Notoriety ''Fashion is the only place where I could be considered a real intellectual,'' said Franco Moschino, the Italian designer, who is in New York to promote his new book and to dress Bergdorf Goodman's Christmas windows, which will be unveiled tonight. ''Anywhere else, I'd be laughed at. Because the superficiality in fashion is so intense, it's really the best field to be in.'' His book, an oversized paperback entitled ''To Be, or Not to Be, That's Fashion'' (Idea Books, $65 at Rizzoli), features drawings and photographs from recent fashion shows. ''It's an experiment,'' he said. ''I was feeling frustrated trying to communicate my image.'' Like a number of modern designers, he says advertising embodies his design message more completely than do dresses on a store rack. ''Trademarks or labels in fashion need an image; we're not civilized enough all over the world to trust or be convinced by an anonymous garment,'' said Mr. Moschino, 38 years old, who tends to wax philosophical. Lately, he has had good reason. Just last week, his clothes were on the cover of Newsweek. Trouble was, they were on a model who held his pink jacket at arm's length beside the headline: ''The Fashion Revolt: Who Would Wear This Stuff?'' He found the Newsweek article amusing, he said, and not just because the jacket and skirt on the cover are two of his best sellers. The magazine printed photographs of extreme-looking clothes from the spring collections of various Italian designers - clothes that are not even in the stores. Women cannot rebel against designs not yet available, he pointed out, nor can designers anticipate customers' tastes. ''The business takes courage and a sense of risk,'' he said. ''Stores and designers have to think in terms of fashions a year ahead of time. How can I know what kind of jacket a lady in Dallas would wear? I don't know what I'm going to eat tomorrow.'' Mr. Moschino's designs play with the very idea of fashion: for instance, a blouse with earrings as buttons, a purse with a Chippendale desk handle or a leather jacket made out of the insides of wallets (a sellout at Saks Fifth Avenue). While admitting that his designs are very conceptual, sometimes ''too much,'' Mr. Moschino contended that ''choosing the right flannel'' or being ''a tailor with the greatest cut'' is not the point of fashion. | Patterns |
204374_2 | equipment like television sets and stereo equipment. The regulations also call for a 100 percent export fee on goods taken out with authorization. Under the new curbs, the total value of goods travelers can take from the country was cut by half, to 500 crowns, or about $50. Rigid Currency Exchange Economists attributed the drastic rules to the economy's inability to adjust quickly to shifts in consumer demand, as well as to the East bloc's rigid currency exchange system, which tends to favor buyers from some countries like Poland when they purchase goods elsewhere in the bloc. The Czechoslovak Government was evidently galvanized to action by growing outflows of consumer goods, particularly to East Germany, Poland and, increasingly, the Soviet Union. Mr. Pavel said that although it was difficult to give exact figures, Government planners felt the depletion of planned supplies acutely in areas in the northern part of the country, near the border with Poland, and in Prague. Travelers often encounter tourists returning to their homelands burdened with large quantities of food, clothing or household items. Shopkeepers have reported increasing numbers of Soviet tourists who arrive here with large amounts of Czechoslovak currency. In Poland, farmers have reportedly been selling more food, including basic items like potatoes, in eastern areas bordering the Soviet Union. Economists say the trade evidently reflects tighter food shortages in the Soviet lands. But the Warsaw Government has taken no steps to curb such traffic. 5-Hour Waits at Border Mr. Pavel said that East Germany, Poland and Hungary had retaliated against Prague's new restrictions by broadening existing curbs on what tourists from other countries can export. It was unclear whether the Soviet Union would follow suit. Czechoslovak state television, in an apparent effort to explain the need for the measures, recently broadcast scenes from border crossing points to Poland where trains and cars were held up for as much as five hours while customs officials searched departing tourists' baggage and processed requests for the export of personal items. In Warsaw last week a Czechoslovak diplomat was called to the Foreign Ministry to hear a protest against the measure. It was unclear whether other governments had taken similar steps. The Czechoslovak measures, and the retaliatory steps by other countries, come at a time when Austrian retailers are reporting increased sales as large numbers of Hungarians avail themselves of liberalized travel rules to shop in neighboring Vienna. | Prague Shuts Door on East Bloc Shoppers |
209819_1 | Project for his work in forest protection. His life had been threatened, he said recently, by local landowners, and yesterday the son of one of them claimed to have hired the killer. In the remote regions of the Amazon, such violence is not unusual, and Mr. Mendes had made enemies with his determined battle against further destruction of the tropical forest. He and his followers were credited with saving literally thousands of hectares from the bulldozer. (A hectare is about 2.5 acres.) But far more of Brazil's rich ''tropical moist forest'' is gone forever -lost not just to the rubber tappers who ''harvested'' it without damaging or exploiting it, but to the wildlife whose habitat and ecosystems have been destroyed, to the food and timber uses it might have served and to populations all over the world who depend on the chlorophyllic action of plants and trees to keep the earth's atmosphere from excessive pollution. That dependence is rapidly becoming precarious. Emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere have increased in recent years from about 1.5 billion tons annually to more than five billion tons. In the first half of the 21st century, carbon dioxide concentration in the air will be about double that of pre-industrial times; that will contribute heavily to the so-called ''greenhouse effect,'' expected to raise the earth's temperatures. Francisco Mendes thus fought not only the rubber tappers' battle, but the whole planet's. Moreover, the assault to which he responded in the far-off jungles of the Amazon was not merely the product of shortsighted Brazilian development policies. It resulted also from the rising demand in the United States for cheap beef to make the Big Macs and Whoppers on which the new fast-food industry was thriving. Pasture-fed cattle from Latin America were an economical alternative to grain-fed beef from North America. So Brazil embarked on a self-destructive course: tax credits, exemptions and deductions, as well as subsidized loans, for private entrepreneurs to invest in cattle ranching. Inevitably, these economic seductions led to the large-scale conversion of forest land to pasture - though the forest was far more valuable, inherently and perhaps even economically, than pasture. Between 1965 and 1983, 469 large cattle ranches, averaging 23,000 hectares each, were established in the Amazon region. Twenty-five percent of this land - by my calculation, about 10,517 square miles -actually was cleared by 1983. The result, through 1983, was a | A Death in Brazil |
209806_1 | get a message across. ''I don't make illustrations to hang on the wall,'' he said in an interview. ''My prime concern is to make drawings to work with words that will tell a story.'' Choosing the Familiar An economy of words and an abundance of detailed renderings are the secret to the 41-year-old illustrator's success, for both are done in a style comprehensible to children and adults. It also helps that he chooses the familiar over the unfamiliar. ''In the new book I wanted to avoid complicated machines whenever possible and to emphasize the more mundane things we live with,'' he said recently. ''It's more interesting to see in a new way something that we've all been using for 40 years, and it's fun being introduced to the connections between things.'' Readers apparently share that interest. The 100,000-copy first printing of ''The Way Things Work'' took only weeks to sell out. Now 50,000 more copies are on order, but because the book was printed in Spain, shipment is not expected before February. A shortage at this time of year would be crippling for most books, and it cannot help ''The Way Things Work'' with impulse buyers or those who wanted to give it as a gift at Christmas. ''But I expect this book to be around for the next 15 years,'' said Walter Lorraine, director of Houghton Mifflin's trade books for children. ''So maybe leaving the table hungry is better than leaving it overstuffed.'' Books With Staying Power There is precedent for that optimism. ''Cathedral,'' Mr. Macaulay's first book, has sold about 200,000 copies and continues to sell. A graphic stone-by-stone account of the construction of a great medieval church, it has been translated into a dozen languages and is one of the Macaulay books that have been adapted for public television. Other Macaulay books - including ''City'' (1974), ''Pyramid'' (1975) and ''Castle'' (1977) - have exhibited the same staying power. While the accent in most of his books is on humor, the Macaulay pen is sometimes dipped in acid as well as ink. In ''Unbuilding'' (1980), for example, the Empire State Building is sold and dismantled step by step. ''Motel of the Mysteries'' (1978) is a spoof of archeology set in the year 4022. And ''Great Moments in Architecture'' (1978) depicts the Tower of Pisa on a skewed drafting table, the Eiffel Tower tipped across the Seine and an | The Mysteries of the Familiar |
209734_0 | LEAD: THE mice, light brown females of a common laboratory variety, look ordinary. But they carry a trait that sets them apart from all other mice on earth: they produce milk that contains a human blood substance valuable in treating heart attacks. THE mice, light brown females of a common laboratory variety, look ordinary. But they carry a trait that sets them apart from all other mice on earth: they produce milk that contains a human blood substance valuable in treating heart attacks. These mice are among hundreds of varieties of rodents and other animals developed in recent years that are called transgenic because they possess foreign genes, often from humans. Over the past several years, the transplantation of genes from one species to another has moved from a laboratory tour de force to a scientific and industrial tool with potentially vast implications. Scientists are using transgenic animals as a versatile and powerful resource for a wide variety of studies. Industrialists hope to use transgenic animals to produce valuable drugs and other substances. Agricultural specialists hope to produce improved livestock with such traits as greater resistance to disease and higher quality meat. A wide range of transgenic animals has already been produced. By recent conservative counts, there may be more than 1,000 strains of transgenic mice, more than 12 varieties of transgenic pigs, several breeds of rabbits and fish, at least two breeds of rats and at least one transgenic cow with another still under development. Objections on Several Grounds Only a small proportion of attempts to transplant genes are successful, a problem that hardly slows research in mice because they breed rapidly and are inexpensive, but has hampered the production of transgenics in larger species. Many scientists see great promise in the research and its applications, but the work has also generated controversy. Some environmentalists, farmers and animal rights activists object to production of transgenic animals on any of several grounds: that use of the animals could upset agricultural economics, driving small farmers out of business, that some of the animals could upset the balance of nature and that the practice may cause suffering in animals. Some people are simply opposed philosophically to tinkering with the genetics of a species. The mice that produce milk with a slightly human tinge make tissue plasminogen activator, or TPA, a human substance that dissolves blood clots. Production in the milk is believed | Gene-Altered Animals Enter a Commercial Era |
209726_0 | LEAD: Cuba's economy will grow 1.5 to 2.5 percent in 1989, the head of the central planning board was quoted as saying today. Cuba's economy will grow 1.5 to 2.5 percent in 1989, the head of the central planning board was quoted as saying today. Antonio Rodriguez Maurell gave the forecast during a meeting of the National People's Assembly, Cuba's parliament, last Friday. The text of his speech was published in today's issue of the official daily newspaper Granma. Mr. Maurell said growth of the gross social product, the nation's equivalent of gross national product, would result from a bigger sugar crop and higher output of other agricultural products, improvements in the oil and nickel industries and better results in electronics, medical equipment and construction materials. Exports other than sugar are expected to increase 17 percent. The target for 1989 compared with growth of 2.3 percent reached in 1988, according to a figure provided by President Fidel Castro earlier this month. That result did not offset losses in 1987, when the economy shrank 3.2 percent after expanding an average 7.2 percent during 1981-85. | Cuba Expects Growth in '89 |
209812_0 | LEAD: A cattle rancher's son surrendered to the police today and said he arranged the killing of a labor leader who was an internationally recognized Amazon ecologist, the police said. A cattle rancher's son surrendered to the police today and said he arranged the killing of a labor leader who was an internationally recognized Amazon ecologist, the police said. A police officer who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from northwestern Brazil said that Darcy Pereira, 21 years old, told the police he hired a professional assassin to kill Francisco Mendes Filho, the union leader, who was shot Thursday as he stepped from his house in Xapuri. Mr. Mendes, 44, was widely known for leading a campaign against the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. Mr. Pereira turned himself in at Rio Branco, near the scene of the killing, accompanied by a lawyer, according to TV Globo, the nation's principal private network. It identified Mr. Pereira as the son of a cattle rancher, Darli Alves da Silva. Darli Alves and his brother, Alvarino Alves, have claimed as their land a part of a reserve in the Amazon for rubber-tappers. Under Brazilian custom, the son does not always use his father's name. Mr. Mendes said in recent press interviews that he received death threats from Darli Alves. About 250 people a year have died in land disputes in Brazil since 1985. Landless peasants, ecologists and Catholic Church progressives have suffered most in battles with landowners. | Man, 21, Held in Amazon Death |
206578_3 | decorators used much the same ingredients: yellow-painted walls, gilded Chippendale mirrors, chintz, benches and books in multiples and a lavish display of ceramics. The British room is just a touch shabby, and you know the owners slouch down in those saggy chairs. The American room is crisp and gleaming; woe to the client who might want to cuddle on the new-minted sofa! Holly Solomon is a contemporary art dealer in Manhattan, with strong ideas on how to cohabit with an art collection. Her book, ''Living With Art,'' written with Alexandra Anderson (Rizzoli, $35), takes on the problem admirably, showing comfortable, livable rooms, lofts and houses that incorporate such diverse art collections as Toulouse-Lautrec posters, Pop Art furniture, pre-Columbian artifacts and folk art (some rooms have the equivalent of all that and more). This is a book worth studying even if you collect only postcards. John Stefanidis is a top London decorator, and the book he has done with Mary Henderson, ''Rooms'' (Rizzoli, $45), displays some of his most winning commissions. Fans of royalty will like his redo of Edward VIII's favorite retreat, Fort Belvedere at Windsor. Celebrity fanciers will enjoy Ann Getty's London pied-a-terre, created from two ''small and dingy'' Victorian rooms. Mr. Stefanidis has lustrous clients, but his happiest moments seem to be on the Greek island of Patmos, where he has renovated 10 houses. He must have at his bidding the world's best supply of artisan hands. The results are stunning. For anyone tackling a primitive farmhouse or a cabin, ''Greek Style'' (Clarkson N. Potter, $35) by Suzanne Slesin, Stafford Cliff, Daniel Rozensztroch and Gilles de Chabaneix would be an interesting present. The photographs of Greek interiors are seductive, and if you can make the leap from the Aegean to, say, Vermont, there are fine examples of what the simple rural style should be. Ms. Slesin is an assistant editor of The Home Section of The New York Times. If they recently asked you who Gustav Stickley was, give them ''Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1920'' (Harry N. Abrams, $49.50), compiled by two New York gallery owners, Tod M. Volpe and Beth Cathers, with a text by Alastair Duncan of Christie's. This is a fine survey of exactly what the title says. The objects photographed are best-of-kind; the range includes the well known (Frank Lloyd Wright), the lesser known (Kalo's extraordinary silver shops in Chicago) | Any Coffee Table Would Be Uplifted |
206771_3 | so he acknowledged that the trade deficit remained ''very large'' and that its elimination ''poses a major challenge.'' Imports during October fell by about $650 million, or 1.7 percent, to $38 billion, reflecting lower purchases of capital, consumer and automotive goods and higher imports of industrial supplies and foods, feeds and beverages. Some analysts said they would not be surprised if imports rose again for November because an increasing proportion of fashion-sensitive and other Christmas merchandise was being brought in by air, undermining the seasonal adjustment factors. Exports, meanwhile, fell about $325 million, or 1.1 percent, during October, to $27.7 billion. This resulted from declines for industrial supplies, foods and other consumer goods and increases in ''other'' merchandise. Vehicles and capital goods were about unchanged, the Commerce Department reported. 28 Percent Export Surge Nearly half of the economic growth of the United States so far this year has resulted from a 28 percent surge in exports. Imports climbed 8 percent over the first 10 months, Mr. Verity also pointed out. The sharply higher October deficit with Japan was not considered alarming by itself, but some analysts were also noting that Japan reported earlier this week a swelling of its trade surplus for November. The correlation between the American deficit for one month and the Japanese surplus for another month, however, is not close. Imports of new Japanese cars, the American figures showed, climbed to $2.1 billion in October from $1.4 billion in September, accounting for about half the bilateral deterioration. The deficit with Western Europe, meanwhile, rebounded to $1.5 billion in October from about $900 million while the deficit with the four newly industrialized Asian areas edged down about $100 million, to $3 billion. The deficit with two of the four, Taiwan and South Korea, narrowed while that with Hong Kong and Singapore rose. Decline in Oil Costs The American oil bill eased to $3.1 bilion from $3.3 billion as an increase of seven million barrels of imports was more than offset by a decline in the average price per barrel to $13.46 from $14.60. Oil accounts for almost one-third of the trade deficit. The deficit in manufactured goods, not seasonally adjusted, widened to $13.6 billion in October from $11.4 billion in September, today's report also showed, while the surplus in agricultural commodities remained unchanged at the recent high level of $1.4 billion. The deficit with Canada, the nation's biggest | U.S. Trade Gap Narrows Again As Imports Fall |
206733_3 | Women Asked About Pregnancy A third of the companies that take a health history asked women whether they were pregnant at the time they were hired and 22 percent of the companies that take a health history asked about the outcome of prior pregnancies. Two companies reported conducting pregnancy tests at the time they hired women. Of all 198 companies, 43 percent asked women to report when they become pregnant. Companies that employed more men than women in production were more likely to ask about pregnancy status than companies with more women in the workforce. In most cases, the study said, the emphasis on excluding only pregnant women is misguided. ''Pregnant women are often looked at as being hypersusceptible, but when you look at the scientific evidence on any of these substances that have been studied in enough detail, you find that it is not only pregnant women, but nonpregnant women and men who are at risk,'' said Dr. Maureen Paul of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, one of the principal authors of the study. ''For example,'' she said, ''very low doses of glycol ethers have been found to cause toxic effects on sperm, and yet, of the 54 companies we surveyed that had glycol ethers in use, none excluded men from working with them.'' More Risk to Men In fact, she said, radiation and other substances that damage the genetic material in cells may pose more of a risk to men than to women, since sperm cells are continually dividing while the eggs in adult female ovaries are not. According to the study, 53 percent of the companies reported using at least one of four known reproductive hazards - lead, glycol ethers, mercury and radiation. But only 40 percent of the companies using a known hazard acknowledged that the substances might be harmful to the reproductive system. Fewer than half of all companies surveyed provided any information on potential reproductive risks to workers. The study, whose principal authors, along with Dr. Paul, were Cynthia Daniels and Robert Rosofsky of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, also examined the companies' policies on family care issues. It found that 92 percent had a maternity leave policy, with most offering at least some pay. Only 16 companies granted paternity leave, and of these, seven allowed five days or less. Fourteen of the 16 provided at least some pay for paternity leave. | COMPANIES IGNORE MEN'S HEALTH RISK |
205497_3 | trying to find a parking spot, getting out of your car on a sleeting day in winter and running the length of the platform, then failing to catch the train just as it's pulling out. It's got to count your discomfort as you huddle waiting for the next train. Then suppose you're a heavy smoker. It's got to count the costs of going all the way to work without having a cigarette. On the other hand, when you drive your car, you've got the luxury of listening to your own music, climate control, smoking if you wish, and let's not forget cellular telephones. This has drastically reduced the cost of taking your car to work because the one major cost was the time spent in traffic jams while you were missing phone calls. Now with a car phone you've got your office in your car. Thus by Connecticut's licensing cellular telephones, it gave people more of an incentive to drive to work instead using mass transit. When Metro-North banned smoking, it took away for smokers even more of the incentive for taking the train to work. You've got to take these things into consideration if you want to get people to take mass transit. So far that hasn't been done. Q. What kinds of incentives would encourage people to take mass transit? A. One of the first steps we can take to counter the costs of driving to work is to raise the price of gasoline. That done, all of the sudden mass transit is going to look a lot more attractive. With more people taking the train, perhaps that would motivate the railroads to add more cars and improve the services such as the air conditioning and heating. Other services might also be expanded like commuter vans that pick up people at their home and take them to and from the office. In other words, if we can change the demand by making mass transit more cost effective for the consumer, then new economies will naturally be created. What we're in fact doing is changing the incentive by raising the costs of doing things in an environmentally unsound way. I have faith that when we make our bad habits too expensive to continue, we will find ways to practice good habits. Q. How could economic incentives be applied to other environmental problems? A. The other thing we have to | ''We've Got To Stop Pollution Now'' |
205664_0 | LEAD: With the tourist season about to reach its peak in India, the country's domestic carrier, Indian Airlines, has been flying in disarray for weeks because of strikes and shortages of aircraft. With the tourist season about to reach its peak in India, the country's domestic carrier, Indian Airlines, has been flying in disarray for weeks because of strikes and shortages of aircraft. As flights are canceled, delayed or rerouted daily, tempers among passengers and airline workers are becoming volatile. On Friday, policemen wielding rattan clubs charged into Dum Dum airport in Calcutta to break up a dispute over a request that all employees wear identity cards. Airport staff members then turned out the passenger terminal and runway lights, closing the airport temporarily. The ruckus came on a day when seven flights out of Bombay, the country's busiest international hub, were rerouted or rescheduled. One of the victims of the confusion in Bombay was the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, who had planned to lecture on ''dharma in public life.'' His lecture, like his flight, was canceled. The Indian press, noting wryly that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is the only airline pilot ever to head the Government, has begun a campaign to expose the shortcomings of Indian Airlines and India's international carrier, Air India. Sunday magazine, quoting from Indian Airlines's company magazine, reported that in September, 2,914 of 8,137 departures were delayed significantly. In the same month, the most recent for which figures have been compiled, 270 flights, or nine every day, were canceled, often leaving passengers stranded at remote airports. Passengers' letters to newspapers have recounted hair-raising stories of delays - in one case, a tale of irate customers commandeering a truck to drive them over frozen mountains. Indian Airlines's former public relations director, Ajit S. Gopal, recently retired and joined the chorus of condemnation with a long article in the newspaper The Hindustan Times. He charged that Indian passengers and foreign tourists were paying the price of political interference in the running of the airline. Government ministers have denied the accusation. But the problems mount. In the last few weeks, a baggage handlers' walkout caused the airline to ask passengers to travel light and handle their own luggage for a few days. Pilots have begun to agitate for safer airports and better maintenance following several small accidents including the collapse two weeks ago of the | Indian Airline Hampered by Strikes and Shortages |
205587_1 | in spite of the fact that Siecor has half the world market outside of Japan. In 1985, the United States undertook two major initiatives to solve its growing trade problem. One was to encourage the fall of the dollar against other currencies. The other was the ''market-oriented sector-specific'' talks aimed at removing barriers in Japan's electronics, telecommunications, forest products and pharmaceutical markets. February will mark the fourth anniversary of the falling dollar. Now, with the dollar at only 120 yen and 1.73 Deutsche marks, most forecasters are predicting that the trade deficit will level off in the $100 to $120 billion range before it starts to climb once again in 1990. Indeed, the deficit with Japan is already starting to climb after several months of decline. Nor have the the market-oriented sector-specific talks and other negotiations had much more of an effect. To be sure, exports are up this year over last year. But the increase is largely from exports of agricultural goods, commodities and intermediate goods. Aside from aircraft, new exports of high-technology and high-value-added products into key overseas markets have been disappointing. Many economists are calling for yet another round of dollar devaluation to cope with the still-unsustainable trade deficit, but one must wonder if it will work. Supercomputers, to take just one example, were already competitive when the dollar was strong. But the fall of the dollar has not resulted in the sale of one extra machine to the Japanese. Of course, there is obviously some value of the dollar at which it will simply become prohibitive for Americans to buy imported goods. In that sense, devaluation will ultimately work. But there are two problems. The first is that at whatever level devaluation stops imports, the United States is likely to be a very poor country - after all, Bangladesh does not have a trade deficit. The second problem is that there is little difference between this solution and a high tariff that closes the market. The best way to solve America's trade problem is through increased exports, since a depression could result in other countries if America's imports were drastically cut. But because America's commodities industries are operating at full capacity, they cannot export more. That means if we are to increase our exports we must do it by shipping manufactured products like supercomputers, which are or have been the object of special consideration abroad. But | Set Guidelines for Export Market Share |
205742_3 | to put everything on hold for four months to give them a chance to break the farm stalemate. Washington is pressing Brussels on agriculture, American officials say, because of ''near chaos'' in global agriculture - a condition they trace largely to European policies. These policies, they say, stimulate overproduction, which in turn results in the unloading of surpluses on the world. The Americans say this undercuts the long-run ability of farmers in other countries to make a living. Argentina and Uruguay export wheat and beef and are regarded as being among the world's lowest-cost producers. Yet Barber B. Conable Jr., the World Bank president, noted in Montreal that their share of the world market dropped from 11 percent to 3 percent over the last 15 years while the European Community became one of the world's largest exporters. The United States also takes some blame, for example, for tighter American import quotas that have cost Caribbean islands $250 million in annual sugar exports. But freer trade in agriculture has become such an important goal for the United States that it has said it would drop its protection for sugar, dairy and other American farmers if other countries cut supports as well. On the other hand, the North American drought, by raising prices and thus reducing the cost of export subsidies, has curbed some of the pressure on Western Europe to restructure agriculture. Some experts argue that the effects of the drought were made more severe by the so-called greenhouse effect, described as a slow warming of the world that results particularly from the burning of fossil fuels. In this view, the effort to get rid of subsidies is misplaced because last summer's disaster will be repeated and the world needs to protect agriculture in the interests of preserving food security. ''The talks in Montreal were focused on surpluses that may no longer exist, or if they do exist are not real in the sense that they are being produced with the unsustainable use of land and water,'' said Lester R. Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute. Those who want farm trade policies restructured counter that the efficient exporters who are best able to respond to shortages are the ones who could be forced under by heavily subsidized competition. William M. Miner, a Canadian agricultural expert, put the argument this way: ''Bad weather is not an excuse for bad policies.'' THE WORLD | The World Debates How to Trade a Food Supply in Jeopardy |
205531_2 | back in 1957 I watched the grizzlies come in across the sage, scattering the innumerable black bears. I eventually counted 37 grizzlies in view at one time, sniffing at my old convertible, brawling, overturning burning barrels, in one of the most astonishing sights I have ever seen. For a hundred years, in summer and fall, garbage has been a favored item of bear diet. The sudden closing of this dump and others after 1967, as part of the park's attempt to restore Yellowstone to a ''natural'' state it had not known since the Indians first came, thousands of years ago, brought hungry bears into the tourist camps with drastic consequences, including human deaths. Since then, by the park's own count, at least 124 ''problem'' animals have been destroyed, with many others trapped and relocated. The respected field biologists John and Frank Craighead were driven out of Yellowstone by park restrictions before they could complete their 10-year grizzly study; completed instead was the Craigheads' book ''Track of the Grizzly,'' an eloquent and bitter denunciation of bureacratic arrogance and folly, which had my own strong endorsement on the jacket. On the mountain prairie by Alum Creek was a herd of several hundred bison, and beyond the creek, along the northwest side of Hayden Valley, the black wall of the North Fork fire. Accidentally started by a woodcutter in Idaho's Targhee Forest on July 22, it went on to become the largest of the fires and the only one not yet ''contained'' - surrounded by fire lines - by Oct. 19, the day of my arrival. On the west side of the road, to Canyon Village and beyond, most trees still standing were black limbless spires, with burned-out logs on bare black earth. A pervasive stench of rain-soaked ash was disagreeably sweet and harsh at the same time. Here in this scene of desolation, my assumption that the National Park Service must be at fault - whetted at the time of the grizzly controversy and intensified in recent years down in the Everglades -began to undergo a cautious change. I saw no sign of contented elk chomping new green shoots in the blackened forest, as suggested by recent news releases, but this stark scene seemed far less dreadful than press accounts of 200-foot-high flames, charred moonscapes and fleeing citizens had me prepared for. It looked as if high winds had caused the flames | The Case For Burning |
205502_2 | phones, which are replacing the older models called Mobile Telephone Service and then Improved Mobile Telephone Service, are much less expensive said Peter Kelley, vice president of operations for Metro Mobile, which has branches in Norwalk, New Haven and Windsor. Metro Mobile and Southern New England Telephone Corporation are the two utility providers in Connecticut for mobile phone service. They are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, which allows two mobile telephone carriers in each state. Both companies have stores around the state that sell and install telephones. In addition, some electronic retail stores, among them Radio Shack and Newmark & Lewis, carry cellular car phones. Cellular car phones, which were first sold in Connecticut in 1985, cost from $600 to $1,700, depending on the model and features desired. Metro Mobile charges a $150 monthly service charge, with all calls in Connecticut being toll free and an extra charge for calls placed out of state. The Linx service of Southern New England offers its customers several monthly service plans, among them a basic $38 a month service charge plus 38 cents a minute during peak hours and 26 cents a minute off peak. Like Metro Mobile, calls made in Connecticut are toll free. The decreased price coupled with a demand for more reliable, better quality phones, plus the trendiness of having a car phone, Mr. Kelley said, have led to the booming popularity. ''The growth in cellular is explosive,'' he said. Cellular phones, Mr. Kelley said, are superior to the older system. They use a much higher frequency range, resulting in a clearer, crisper sound at both ends. In addition, cellular phone owners can place calls to more cities than those with older phones. Although a car phone can receive calls from anywhere, they can be used to place calls only to cities where a compatible system is in place, usually in major cities. Lost Privacy in the Car In Connecticut, most municipalities, except those in Litchfield and Windham Counties, have the cellular phone system, which runs on frequency radio waves, in place. Mr. Kelley said service should be available in those two counties sometime next year. ''These phones are as reliable as the typical desk phone,'' he said. ''The only drawback I've heard is that people say they've lost the privacy of their car. And my answer is that's why there's an off button.'' While car phones remain popular | The Growth of Car Phones is Busy, Busy |
205576_1 | and debate. ''Aging in most developing countries has not yet emerged as a dominant social phenomenon,'' the report by Kevin Kinsella, a population researcher, said. But over the next 30 years, he said, the balance is expected to shift markedly, with some 72 percent of older people expected to be living in developing nations in the year 2020, compared to 58 percent today. Those countries have the opportunity to learn from the efforts and mistakes made by the industrialized nations, Mr. Kinsella said. ''These nations have time to assess demographic projections, consider structural changes in social institutions such as marriage and the family, compare and evaluate programmatic responses already attempted and, in short, debate issues before they are branded as crises,'' he concluded. Some Definitions The study defines ''older'' people as those 55 and above, terming those 65 and over as ''elderly'' and referring to the group 75 and over as the ''oldest old.'' He notes, however, that those are arbitrary labels and that biological, physical and psychological aging differ from person to person. Here are highlights of the study: * The Caribbean is the ''oldest'' developing area with 11.7 percent of its population aged 55 and over. Asia is next at 10.4 percent followed by Latin America at 9.4 percent and Africa, 7 percent. * In most developing areas those 75 and over are increasing faster than the older population in general. * Rural areas tend to have higher proportions of older people. * Women outlive men in virtually all areas of the world, regardless of the overall life expectancy. Thus, older women outnumber older men and widowhood is a fact of life for most women. * The nature of disease in developing countries is shifting from communicable to chronic as populations age. The number of disabled persons in the Third World is likely to grow rapidly, and changing disease patterns may require a re-evaluation of health services. * The balance between society's two dependent groups, the old and young, is shifting as declines in fertility reduce the number of children while longer lives increase the older segment. With improved medical care extending lifespans, the industrial nations of Europe and North America have already experienced a sharp growth in the proportion of elderly in their populations, and the needs of these groups for medical and social services. ''In many cases, however, countries have not aged gracefully,'' Mr. Kinsella said. | Census Study Looks at Aging in Third World |
205739_2 | small iceboxes and a stove with oven that operated on compressed natural gas. Lighter than air, C.N.G. is simple and safe. The sloop carried a spare freshwater pump. While charter companies will always send a mechanic at one's first radio call, there could still be a lost day. That spare pump was useful - we could have been without freshwater for drinking and showers or stuck with a wait for a mechanic. Navigation equipment included a depth sounder, VHF radio, distance log and speed indicator. Bareboats can be austere. Ours was well appointed and comfortable, with master stateroom, double and V-bunk cabins, pullout in the main saloon and two heads with hand-held showers. Our elected skipper chose to bunk in the padded cockpit. Light rains fell each night, but he grabbed the hood of his six-ounce nylon sleeping bag and stayed dry. The Virgins bask in the northeast tradewind belt so the weather is nearly perfect year round. On a midsummer afternoon, as high humidity slumps over tropical land and the mercury climbs to the low 90's, boaters play under a constantly working breeze. Winds begin to move to the east in February. By June and all summer long, the trades blow out of the southeast at a gentle, steady 10 to 15 knots. September and October are the hurricane times and then, from November to February, the winds stabilize at a reliable 15 to 20 knots. Sailors who favor scudding along under shortened sail delight in the Christmastime winds, which blow up to a breezy 25 or 30 knots for several days at a time. Winter temperatures linger in the 70's. East of Puerto Rico, at the top of the Lesser Antilles, which curve toward Venezuela, the United States Virgin Islands are a territory, with the free-port status of St. Thomas, originally declared in 1724, still in effect. Sailors have been discovering the pleasures of the Virgin Islands since Columbus voyaged up the Antilles in 1493 to discover the 100 islands, cays and rocks that make up the United States and British Virgin Islands. The islands' history is woven in a wild and twisted web strewn with ships, blackhearted sailors and the likes of Edward Teach (Blackbeard), Henry Morgan and Captain Kidd. Swooping out from sheltered bays, sailing ships cut a bloodied swath through the sparkling waters as scalawags, rogues and privateers with letters of marque - unofficial backing | The Caribbean Under Sail On One's Own |
205686_1 | other people, but as important.'' 'It Really Isn't' a Tragedy' Dr. Kopits, who is 52 years old, has been treating skeletal dysplasia, a congenital growth disorder, for 20 years. His patients come from the United States and 38 other countries, suffering limp spines, bowed legs, club feet, disjointed hips. Bent and twisted limbs make some appear to be sitting when they are standing. Others arrive unable to stand at all, because of abnormal alignment of bones and muscles. The condition can be painful, crippling and sometimes paralyzing. Dr. Kopits has about 1,800 patients undergoing treatment at the center, a few miles north of Baltimore. Patients range from infants to people in their 50's, but more than 90 percent are under 18 years old. ''The first doctor who breaks the news of dwarfism should tell the parents that it appears a tragedy, but it really isn't,'' he says. ''So I tell them, 'Your child will be able to walk and drive a car and keep a house and have a family.' '' Dr. Kopits did just that nine years ago when he diagnosed the condition in Leah Chorniak. At first ''we were devastated,'' said Leah's mother, Sheila Chorniak. ''You might as well have told us she was blind or deaf.'' Leah was 5 years old then, and had already had five operations that failed to correct her crippling bowed legs. Dr. Kopits told the girl's parents of the hardships to come: a series of operations and painful physical therapy that would span a decade. But he also showed the couple a photograph of one of his many patients who had undergone treatment and gone on to college. ''I didn't think I'd ever be mobile,'' Leah, now 14 years old, said on a recent day as she lay in a hospital bed at the center, ''and I probably would have had many useless surgeries that would have done nothing.'' Leah endured several operations and many months of physical therapy before adolescence and needs a few more to make post-puberty adjustments. She most recently underwent hip replacement surgery. She said she expected to be mobile and through with her surgery within a year. Seeking the Positive Tone Dr. Kopits resigned as chief of pediatric orthopedics at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1978 to work full time with dwarfs. In addition to the 18-hour days he typically puts in at the center, he is also | Maryland Site Offers Hope for Crippling Condition |
210198_0 | LEAD: The killing last week of a noted Brazilian environmentalist has focused attention on a turbulent struggle between rubber tappers trying to protect the Amazon rain forest and speculators and ranchers seeking fast fortunes by clearing the land. The killing last week of a noted Brazilian environmentalist has focused attention on a turbulent struggle between rubber tappers trying to protect the Amazon rain forest and speculators and ranchers seeking fast fortunes by clearing the land. In a tacit acknowledgment of growing international criticism of Brazil for failing to protect its rain forests, President Jose Sarney has demanded a rapid investigation of the slaying of the environmentalist, Francisco Mendes Jr., who was shot and killed at his home last Thursday night. Over the weekend the Government moved with dramatic effect as the federal police brought in reinforcements and ordered a search for weapons and a hunt for the killers throughout the region. The national head of the federal police, Romeo Tuma, visited the area of the crime in the state of Acre. A lawyer for the union headed by Mr. Mendes said that members were not impressed with the display of force or with the presence of Mr. Tuma. Last month, as the death threats to Mr. Mendes became known even to the police, the union sent telegrams to Mr. Tuma and other high Government officials but never received a reply. ''It was a death foretold,'' the lawyer said. ''It is too late now.'' A special investigator assigned to the case said today that the police were now holding four men in connection with the killing of Mr. Mendes, the 44-year-old leader of thousands of Amazonian rubber tappers. Threats by Ranchers Reported The four men are all either relatives or associates of Darli and Alvarino Alves, ranchers who had reportedly sworn to have Mr. Mendes killed. The Alves brothers, who are wanted on murder charges in two other Brazilian states, are said to have become infuriated with Mr. Mendes after he succeeded in having the Government declare a reserve for rubber tappers in a forest, part of which the two ranchers claimed as theirs. The police also said they did not believe the account of a fifth man, Darcy Alves Pereira, the son of Darli Alves, who turned himself over to the police on Monday, saying it was he who had shot and killed Mr. Mendes. A police official said the | In Amazon Rain Forest, a Vicious War Is Raging |
210208_2 | of the aircraft, rather than an explosion, had caused it to disintegrate. But earlier this week, after taking the remains of a suitcase and some wreckage to a laboratory to determine if they showed traces of an explosion, the investigators indicated they might have evidence that a bomb caused the crash. British newspaper reports said experts had found signs of heat damage in plastic lining from one of the airliner's cargo bays, which indicated that luggage had exploded in the hold. The reports said bodies of some victims contained pieces of metal, suggesting that a bomb caused the crash. Speculation about who would want to plant a bomb aboard the plane has included Palestinian terrorists loyal to Abu Nidal, who oppose the Palestine Liberation Organization's opening of a dialogue with the United States, and pro-Iranian groups seeking to avenge the accidental American downing of an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf in July. But American officials have discounted a phone tip to the United States Embassy in Finland on Dec. 5 that a bomb attack would be carried out a Pan Am airliner bound from Frankfurt, West Germany, to the United States. Some passengers and luggage on Flight 103 originated in Frankfurt, with the first leg of the flight on a smaller 727 aircraft. About half the passengers of the 727 ended their trip at Heathrow Airport outside London while the others transferred to the larger plane. After the announcement today that the plane had been destroyed by an explosive, David Wilshire, a Conservative Member of Parliament and an aviation expert, said the question to be asked now was ''how and where did a bomb get on board.'' Luggage Security Explained According to the Press Association, Britain's domestic news agency, the luggage of the transit passengers went through the security system at Heathrow, but the luggage of the Frankfurt passengers did not, although it was transferred under the supervision of Pan Am guards. Paul Wilkinson, a researcher on terrorism at Aberdeen University in Soctland, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying the bomb was most probably planted in the forward hold, blowing the nose section from the fuselage. David Learmount, of the respected aviation journal Flight International, told Independent Television News: ''It may have been a suitcase, but it may on the other hand have been planted by an airport employee who was under the pay of terrorists. It | POWERFUL BOMB DESTROYED PAN AM JET OVER SCOTLAND, BRITISH INVESTIGATION FINDS |
210120_7 | University School of Medicine reported last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Furthermore, Dr. Ross pointed out, the most dangerous drunken drivers are problem drinkers, and they are the least susceptible to deterrent threats. Probably nothing in our society will change until vast numbers of people decide that drinking and driving is antisocial behavior that cannot be tolerated. Such a change in attitude requires nationwide efforts to make people aware of the dangers. This would include persuasive education in schools and on the job. Safety efforts will require structural changes that thwart drinking and driving, like providing transportation to and from drinking sites. A THREAT TO PUBLIC SAFETY The effects of alcohol on mental and physical processes can quickly make it dangerous to drive. Among the effects, which may appear even at levels below legal intoxication, are these: * Poor judgment * Loss of concentration * Slowed reaction time * Visual impairment HOW MUCH DOES IT TAKE? How fast the percentage of alcohol in the blood rises varies with body weight. One drink is 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1 1/2 ounces of 80 proof liquor. While state laws vary, drivers with concentrations from 0.05 to 0.09 percent may be considered impaired, and those with levels of 0.10 percent are considered drunk in all states. ESCALATING IMPAIRMENT .05: Blood alcohol concentrations of 0.05 percent and above can mean lax thought, judgment and restraint. There may be a significant increase in mistakes in tasks requiring divided attention. Steering errors increase and vision is affected. .10: Around 0.10 percent, virtually all drivers are significantly impaired. Reaction to novel situations requiring choices is slowed, as are reactions to sounds or visual stimululation. Voluntary motor action is affected, with arm movements, walking and speech usually becoming noticeably clumsy. The likelihood of being involved in a crash is six times that of a sober driver. .20: At 0.20 percent, the entire motor area of the brain is significantly depressed, and the person is very drunk. Staggering is likely. Reaction time is even slower, especially in divided-attention tasks. Brain areas controlling emotional behavior are also affected, and the person may become loud, incoherent and emotionally unstable. The risk of a crash is 100 times that of a sober person. (Sources: Will Rogers Institute, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information, National Highway Safety Administration) HEALTH | Personal Health |
210152_0 | LEAD: Scientists have embarked on major efforts to determine why so many elderly people suffer devastating falls and to identify medical and social measures that can curb the disastrous toll. Scientists have embarked on major efforts to determine why so many elderly people suffer devastating falls and to identify medical and social measures that can curb the disastrous toll. While a fall is usually harmless for children and young adults, it can carry a heavy penalty for the elderly. Each year, it is estimated, more than 200,000 Americans over the age of 65 fracture their hips in falls, and 20,000 to 30,000 die of complications. Fewer than than 25 percent of the survivors ever regain their previous mobility, and experts say the cost of direct care is $7 billion or more a year. Until recently the falls were considered an intrinsic part of aging, like gray hair or wrinkles. Nothing much could be done to ward them off, or so it was thought. But in the last five years medical experts have dramatically altered their approach to falls, and far more resources have been devoted to seeking causes and preventive measures. The new research, which has not yet conclusively identified the causes, covers a variety of topics, including brain changes, cardiovascular conditions, degeneration of bone or muscle, and the role of drugs, living habits and home environment. Taken for Granted Commenting on the many questions now being raised in research centers around the country, Dr. T. Frank Williams, director of the National Institute on Aging, said: ''None of them were even looked at three years ago. Nobody had begun to look at falls as a major problem. We just used to assume it was old age and it was too bad, but old people fell.'' At the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for Aged in Boston, Dr. Louis Lipsitz is measuring how everyday activities like eating meals, changing posture and taking medication cause the sudden declines in blood pressure that can provoke fainting and falling. In South Miami Beach, the Dade County Health Department has been studying the health histories and living situations of people taken to emergency rooms because of falls to see what alterations in the home ought to be made. In San Francisco, Dr. Steven Cummings and Dr. Michael Nevitt, both assistant professors of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, are trying to define risk factors by | HEALTH: Aging; Finally, Doctors Ask if Brutal Falls Need Be a Fact of Life for the Elderly |
210177_0 | LEAD: Reacting to the British announcement that a bomb had destroyed the Pan Am jet that crashed in Scotland, the Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday that it was planning tougher security rules. Reacting to the British announcement that a bomb had destroyed the Pan Am jet that crashed in Scotland, the Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday that it was planning tougher security rules. The agency noted the British issued new security measures yesterday for United States airliners flying out of the country. And it called on ''all governments and airlines to immediately recognize the increased threat to aviation and join together to establish additional stringent security procedures around the globe.'' One new rule being given top consideration, an official said, would provide for much more stringent processing of checked baggage for international flights either at check-in counters, or as the baggage proceeds to an airliner's cargo hold, or both. Another rule would toughen processing steps for passengers and carry-on items when the passengers check in for overseas flights. The change in passenger processing may require asking the traveler more questions on matters like whether packages are being carried for others and whether carry-on parcels were packed by others. Both rules would have the inconveniencing effect of requiring international travelers to show up at the airport much earlier for such flights than they do now. Officials were reported working to put the new rules into final form, and it appeared likely that they would be announced today. Tne British rules, Federal Aviation Administration officials said, also stressed more thorough processing of passengers and luggage. They were imposed on United States carriers after F.A.A. consultation. Starting next summer, the agency plans to install the first of five recently ordered devices that can detect explosives in baggage or cargo that have been checked for shipment in an airliner's cargo hold. An $8 million contract for the devices was signed earlier this year, with an option for a second five-unit order. Government officials said the sabotage of the Pan American World Airways jumbo jet made it more than likely that the option would be quickly exercised. Many Such Devices An official suggested that it might be necessary to install 100 or 200 of these or other detectors at airports around the world where airliners of United States carriers operate. In its statement yesterday, the F.A.A. said it recognized that advancements in detection were ''a | F.A.A. to Toughen Check-In Security |
208935_0 | LEAD: Spain is rapidly turning into one of the American farmer's richest overseas markets, the Agriculture Department said today. In the fiscal year that ended Spain is rapidly turning into one of the American farmer's richest overseas markets, the Agriculture Department said today. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the value of American farm exports to Spain was $848 million, up 30 percent from $652 million in 1986-87, the department's Foreign Agricultural Service said in a report. Spain's gross national product, or the sum of the country's goods and services, grew 5.5 percent in 1987, the highest in Europe, and is expected to gain nearly that much in 1988, the report said. The surge in the last fiscal year put Spain among the world's top 10 markets for American agricultural exports. Leading commodities included soybeans and soybean meal, corn and corn gluten feed, tallow, hides, skins, walnuts, peas, beans, lentils, seeds, yellow grease, prunes and poultry meat. | Farm Exports To Spain Up |
208802_4 | bulletin, advising diplomatic travelers to decide for themselves about ''altering personal travel plans or changing to another American carrier.'' Government Defends Its Actions Government and airline officials said today that even though the Helsinki threat could not be fully assessed, it served as a basis for tightening security at European airports. Ray Salazar, the director of aviation security at the Federal Aviation Administration, said security bulletins like the one issued on Dec. 7 would become ineffective if they were widely publicized. ''If these became public knowledge, then people could circumvent the security measures,'' he said. ''We have a process that works.'' Jeffrey F. Kriendler, vice president for communications at Pan Am, said that when the bulletin was received by the airline ''immediate action was taken, and the steps that were implemented at that time are still in place.'' But Pan Am and the Federal Aviation Administration refused to say what security measures were adopted after the bomb threat this month. Aviation security experts cited three reasons not to warn the public of threats. First, they said such notice would undermine security by disclosing to terrorist groups how much the authorities know. Second, they said public notice might lead to ''copy cat'' threats, magnifying the problem. Third, the airlines would suffer cancellations by passengers even when the threats were not valid. #23 Bulletins This Year Mr. Kriendler of Pan Am said the airline supported the policy of keeping security risks secret, but only because this is the best way to enhance security. He said Pan Am's commercial interests had no influence on this view. Mr. Salazar said the aviation agency had issued 23 security bulletins this year, including one that was sent out today urging heightened vigilance after the Pan Am crash. The Dec. 7 security bulletin was sent not only to Pan Am and the airports it serves, including those in Frankfurt and London, but to other American air carriers and other European airports. The bulletin was also sent to embassies throughout Europe, primarily to help them coordinate security measures that might be adopted by governments in the region, Mr. Salazar said. Some Troubling Questions The bulletin, like all similar notices, stated specifically that ''the information is solely for the use of U.S. carriers and airport security personnel, and may not be further disseminated without the specific approval'' of the aviation agency. But the Government and the airline faced some | The Crash of Flight 103; PAN AM WAS TOLD OF TERROR THREAT |
208914_0 | LEAD: Leftist guerrillas ambushed a small navy vessel today, killing eight military men and wounding seven others, Colombian officials said. Leftist guerrillas ambushed a small navy vessel today, killing eight military men and wounding seven others, Colombian officials said. Two officers and six other members of a combined army and navy unit were killed when guerrillas opened fire on a navy motorboat on the Guayabero River about 120 miles southeast of Bogota, an official in the province of Guaviare said. A captain and six other members of the unit were seriously wounded, he said. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a pro-Moscow guerrilla group, are active in the area, the official said. | Eight Are Killed in Colombia As Rebels Attack Navy Boat |
204771_1 | said most of the security breaches were discovered between last April and September. He said the airlines, which operate airport security checkpoints, failed to detect test items that looked like weapons on X-ray screens or that triggered metal detectors. Penalties Were Toughened In September the department fined 32 airlines a total of more than $1 million for violations in late 1987 and early this year. Mr. Burnley said that since then the Federal Aviation Administration, an arm of the department, had increased the penalties. But he acknowledged that the airlines' success in detecting weapons in tests had risen. Mr. Burnley said the airline detection rate was 88.9 percent from last July to September, an increase from 85.6 percent over the first six months of the year. In the F.A.A. inspections, some objects are placed in the luggage of security inspectors for X-ray screening while other items are hidden on the inspectors to test metal detectors and the people operating them. ----On-Time Records Released WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (AP) - The airlines reported a better than 80 percent on-time record for the seventh straight month in October, despite increased delays in the Chicago area because of air traffic control problems, the Transportation Department said today. The 13 largest domestic air carriers reported 83.4 percent of their flights arrived on time in October, although the arrival rate at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport was only 73.4 percent because of restrictions on flights that were imposed for safety considerations. Eastern Airlines, which early this year was consistantly among the worst on-time performers, compiled the best record among the 13 airlines in October, with Eastern planes arriving within 15 minutes of schedule 90.3 percent of the time during the month. Eastern was followed by America West, 89.1 percent, and Delta Air Lines, 87.8 percent. Alaska Airlines had the worst record at 77.9 percent. USAir and United Airlines, which has a concentration of flights at Chicago, were not far ahead, each with a 79.1 percent on-time mark. The department also reported that consumer complaints against the airlines made to the Government continued to decline. The department said its consumer affairs office received 1,196 complaints in November, fewer than the previous month and 60 percent less than in November 1987. The most complaints to the department in November involved Trans World Airlines (8.12 complaints per 100,000 passengers) followed by Pan American World Airways (7.02 complaints per 100,000 passengers). | 29 AIRLINES FINED IN SECURITY CHECKS |
210387_2 | Ph.D.'s has gotten deeper into math,'' said Eugene Smolensky of the University of California at Berkeley. Rarely do the interviews wander from the candidate's thesis and training, although Debra Holt, a 36-year-old Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, said that at one of her 45-minute sessions the talk somehow turned to the size of galleries at art museums. The interviewer was annoyed that some rooms are too small and the paintings are crowded on the wall. $30,000 Salaries Whatever the hardships of interviewing, this is a seller's market. There are more job openings than candidates, and starting salaries are in the $30,000-to-$40,000 range, among the best in teaching. Nearly all the approximately 700 Ph.D. candidates seeking places at 300 or more interviewing schools will probably end up with jobs - as high on the scale of prestige schools as they can get. ''A good first job is very important,'' Mr. Hinshaw said, ''because it is very hard to move up the ladder later on from a lesser school.'' The convention, timed for the campus break between Christmas and New Year's, provides a low-cost setting to winnow out job candidates. Stanford, for example, interviewed 52 people during the two-and-a-half-day convention, which ends today. All came to New York at their own expense. In the next stage of the process, 9 or 10 of those 52 will get invitations to travel to Stanford - at Stanford's expense - for a final round of interviews to fill two or three jobs. The American Economic Association tried once to switch its meeting to a different time of year, with disastrous results. Delegates gathered in early September 1977 in Atlantic City, but attendance was way off and hasty arrangements had to be made for a second ''convention'' in late December, this one just for job interviews, without the seminars and other trimmings. It was held at an airport hotel in Chicago. ''That's when we discovered more about how our labor market functioned,'' Mr. Hinshaw said. Preparing for Interviews There is plenty of preparation for the interviews. Since early fall, many schools have been lining up candidates, basing their decisions partly on thesis summaries submitted by the applicants, but mostly on recommendations. To meet affirmative-action requirements, schools advertise job openings, and examine dozens of applications that come in over the transom. But at the best schools most interviews are arranged not by the students but | Their Economic Priority: A Job |
210398_2 | people had given them parcels to carry. In addition to examination of checked baggage and small shipped parcels, the new F.A.A. rules require that passengers be denied access to luggage after the additional scrutiny until arrival at their destination, that airlines match passengers and baggage to keep unaccompanied bags off planes and that airlines take steps to prevent unauthorized access to baggage. Saying the new measures far exceeded existing international standards, Mr. McArtor also announced two other longer-range steps. He said his agency would hasten the delivery of five bomb-detection units on order, so that the first will be in operation at an unidentified airport next summer and the rest by the end of the year. This means the units would be delivered six months earlier than planned. The detectors, which bombard checked luggage with neutrons and can detect the presence of all known military or chemical explosives, were said to cost from $750,000 to $1 million each. Mr. McArtor also said he would increase his agency's security inspectors by 35 percent over the next 20 months. There are 560 inspectors now. Trade Group Vows Compliance The Air Transport Association, the trade group of the nation's major scheduled airlines, said its members would comply with the measures. ''However, more must be done than simply placing additional security requirements on the airlines,'' Stephen Hayes, a spokesman, said. ''The Government itself must become more directly involved in meeting the threat that international terrorism presents. ''We believe the F.A.A. should assign more of its security personnel to Europe and the Middle East.'' It is common for airline disasters to cause at least a brief drop in passenger travel and bookings for future travel. But a sampling of United States carriers yesterday indicated that this had not occurred. Pamela Hanlon, a spokeswoman for Pan Am, said that since Saturday bookings for future flights had been above what they had been in the similar period a year ago. But she acknowledged that the holiday week was not typical. She also said any drop in current travel had been ''very minor.'' Mary O'Neill, a spokeswoman for American Airlines, said, ''We have not seen any flurry of cancellations or falloff in bookings.'' Airlines Welcome New Steps The imposition of additional security rules appeared to be welcomed by airline officials. They echoed Mr. McArtor in noting that many of the measures were already being followed. The procedure considered | U.S. IS TIGHTENING SECURITY CHECKS ON FLIGHTS ABROAD |
210473_0 | LEAD: No one yet knows the identities or motives of whoever destroyed a planeload of people aboard Pan Am flight 103 and took the lives of many others in a Scottish village. But there can be little doubt about what must be done to combat such massacres: The threat of infiltrating bombs onto airliners needs to be taken seriously and eliminated relentlessly, just as the threat of airplane hijackings began to be countered a decade ago. No one yet knows the identities or motives of whoever destroyed a planeload of people aboard Pan Am flight 103 and took the lives of many others in a Scottish village. But there can be little doubt about what must be done to combat such massacres: The threat of infiltrating bombs onto airliners needs to be taken seriously and eliminated relentlessly, just as the threat of airplane hijackings began to be countered a decade ago. The prospect is daunting. Means have to be developed for detecting, reliably and at tolerable cost, a few pounds of concealed explosive amid the thousands of pounds of baggage that are stowed on an airliner. But hijacking too once seemed a nearly intractable menace. As soon as aviation authorities and airlines became determined to deal with it, though, they developed search procedures, X-ray machines and metal detectors that have proved successful deterrents. There have been seven known air bombings since 1970, five of them in the last four years. There are likely to be more unless firm action is taken now. The F.A.A. has announced extra security measures for American carriers at airports in Europe and the Middle East. The U.S. airlines had already tightened procedures at airports in Britain by asking passengers whether they packed their bags themselves and if they carried items for others. The questioning of passengers has to become more widespread, and the practice can be instituted immediately. The metal-detecting devices that deter hijacking are of no use in detecting chemical explosives. But other machines are. Most explosives are rich in nitrogen, which gives off gamma rays of a characteristic frequency when bombarded with neutrons. A luggage-screening neutron machine has been devised under a contract from the Federal Aviation Administration and is ready for commercial production at a cost of $750,000 to $1 million each. Other devices, based on the laboratory gas chromatograph, which analyzes vapors, may prove useful for detecting explosives not hermetically sealed. | How to Defeat Plane Saboteurs |
210456_4 | keep the agency in the Transportation Department but seeks to minimize any unnecessary interference by making the F.A.A. Administrator an Under Secretary of Transportation. Numerous observers believe that structural changes are less important than the proposed measures affecting the F.A.A.'s budget, procurement rules, and personnel. For instance, billions of dollars have been collected from aviation taxes and earmarked in a trust fund for major projects like modernization of traffic control. But modernization has lagged because the budget process has squeezed appropriations. Upgrading the F.A.A.'s personnel requires changes in Civil Service rules, a difficult task. Secretary Burnley's spokeswoman did bring up an example of interaction between the aviation agency and the Transportation Department to support the department's view of the importance of overseeing F.A.A. operations and keeping the agency within the department. Mr. Burnley had given the F.A.A. a Dec. 7 deadline for moving the job of ''quality assurance'' of traffic control operations out of the traffic control division to a safety division that could report directly to the F.A.A. chief, she said and added: When the deadline passed, Mr. Burnley immediately drew up and signed an order decreeing the change. The creation of an independent quality assurance group had been strongly recommended by the safety board. The proposal grew out of the board's inquiry into a controller error in New York in mid-October that allowed a White House plane carrying President Reagan to fly too close to a commuter airliner. Another target of Mr. Ellett's criticism was Jim Burnett, a member of the safety board who was its chairman until last summer. Mr. Ellett said that Mr. Burnett had ''developed a reputation of his own for going out of his way to make headline-grabbing charges about aviation safety in circumstances where the board members for whom he purportedly speaks do not necessarily share his views.'' Mr. Burnett said that Mr. Ellett was echoing the views of the Air Transport Association, the trade group of the scheduled domestic airlines. Mr. Burnett, who has long agreed with Mr. Burnley in opposing an independent aviation agency, said he knew that ''the F.A.A. would like to have a less activist D.O.T. than they have had in recent years'' ''Though I've had my share of differences with the D.O.T.,'' he added, ''I think an active D.O.T. oversight is in the passengers' interest. I do not think they are well protected by the F.A.A., left alone.'' | Washington Talk: Federal Aviation Administration; Turf Battle Over an Agency's Future |
204064_1 | Palestinians say that as many as a dozen Arabs in the occupied territories have been killed in clashes with settlers. On Wednesday, a prosecutor rejected a police recommendation that another West Bank settler, Rabbi Moshe Levinger of Hebron, be charged with the shooting death of an Arab shopkeeper there in October. He cited insufficient evidence. Guilty of Manslaughter In today's sentencing, Yisrael Zeev, an American-born 38-year-old, had been convicted of manslaughter last week for the shooting death of Abdullah Awad outside the Jewish settlement of Shiloh on May 5. Judge Zvi Cohen suspended two years of his sentence and deducted the seven months he has already been in jail since the shooting. Mr. Zeev was on guard duty at the settlement when a woman resident alerted him to the presence of two Arab shepherds in a field outside the community. He said he approached the shepherds and shouted at them in Arabic to leave the area. When they did not respond, Mr. Zeev added, he fired into the air and then at the ground. Mr. Awad was killed and the second shepherd was wounded. Mr. Zeev was arrested and, after a police investigation, charged with the killing. But Judge Cohen rejected a prosecutor's request that Mr. Zeev be charged with murder, accepting the defense argument that he had not intended to hurt the shepherds. Today, he received the minimum sentence under Israeli law. The second shepherd was awarded $18,600 in damages. Tactic in Territories Over the weekend, Israeli authorities in the occupied territories used an apparently new tactic to counteract demonstrations expected next Saturday on the first anniversary of the Palestinian revolt. Residents of the Jabaliya refugee district in the Gaza Strip piled hundreds of automobile tires into trucks and along roadsides after Israeli troops told them that anyone caught with more than one spare tire would be heavily fined or jailed, Arabs said. Tire burning has been a frequent expression of Palestinian anger. The troops drove around the area Saturday and today, using megaphones to order residents to turn in surplus tires. The soldiers told residents that there would be searches later, and that possession of more than one tire would result in penalties of up to $700 or a jail sentence, the Arabs reported. An Israeli Army spokesman said he had no information about the confiscation of tires in Jabaliya. He said the Palestinian assertion was being checked. | Jewish Settler Sentenced for Killing Shepherd |
209098_5 | precautions in such cases would be to review the names of all passengers holding reservations, to increase the screening of passengers, baggage and cargo, and to add guards around aircraft that might be threatened. Mr. Crawford was once a pilot on Pan Am flights serving West Germany. Security Increased in 1986 According to Mr. Channon, the British official, it should have been impossible for a passenger to check luggage through to New York while leaving the flight in London. But he said luggage put aboard in Frankfurt had not been examined again in London, where passengers continuing to New York had to change from a Boeing 727 to a larger 747. ''It is thoroughly checked at Frankfurt and it would not be checked again at Heathrow,'' he said. In 1986, responding to a rise in terrorist acts against airlines, Pan Am reorganized its security services, and promised to ''screen passengers, employees, airport facilities, baggage and aircraft with unrelenting thoroughness.'' Passengers were urged to arrive earlier at airports because of consequent delays, and a $5 fee to pay for the added services was applied to international tickets. Aviation industry officials say that to some extent customers will put up with necessary disruptions brought on by added security. But too much disruption could deter flyers, the airlines believe. El Al's Exhaustive Searches Perhaps the most intrusive searches regularly performed at airports are those by El Al, the Israeli airline. Passengers are asked exhaustive questions by personnel trained to spot potential terrorists. Luggage is extensively searched by hand. In some cases, special equipment is used to look for bombs, for example low-pressure chambers that would detonate bombs set to explode at high altitudes. The procedures can require passengers to spend hours waiting at airports. Kenneth M. Mead, an associate director of the General Accounting Office who has supervised recent studies of airport security of the agency, said that ''it is difficult to conceive of a security system that is foolproof.'' Mr. Mead added that current security systems, which focus most heavily on personal screening of passengers, are a holdover from the era when hijacking was the terrorist's standard method. ''In recent years, we find new ways of conducting terrorism, and that is the saboteur,'' he said. ''The bomb issue is of recent vintage, and it has introduced a whole new host of problems. The challenge is to rise to the new terrorist technique.'' | Countering Threat of Airline Bombs: Experts Say Security Isn't Foolproof |
209093_0 | LEAD: A Brazilian union leader who received repeated death threats during a campaign to protect the Amazon rain forest was shot and killed Thursday at his home in northwestern Brazil. A Brazilian union leader who received repeated death threats during a campaign to protect the Amazon rain forest was shot and killed Thursday at his home in northwestern Brazil. The leader, Francisco Mendes Filho, 44 years old, had fought against the eviction of rubber tappers from their forest lands and the destruction of the jungle. In an interview two weeks ago, he said he was told by the police last month that local landowners had ''contracted three gunmen'' to kill him. The government in the state of Acre, where he lived, then assigned him permanent police protection. Two state policemen were in his home on Thursday night as Mr. Mendes walked toward the bathroom behind his house and a gunman shot him point-blank. Although essentially a union leader, Mr. Mendes had also become identified with the struggle to stop the destruction of Brazil's forests, and he was often sought out by environmental groups at home and abroad. He became known throughout Brazil because of his determined fight to preserve the traditional rights of freelance rubber tappers who live off the forest collecting latex and nuts and have a direct stake in protecting it. As the movement grew under Mr. Mendes, rubber tappers and their families became the only group in Brazil that physically prevented deforestation. At times, they and their wives and children would sit in front of the bulldozers to stop landowners from illegally knocking down trees. ''In the last 10 years, they managed to save thousands of hectares with their movement,'' said Alfredo Sirkis, leader of the newly formed Brazilian Green Party. Mr. Mendes's movement succeeded in obtaining reserves for rubber tappers in the Amazon. Two large landowners, the brothers Darli and Alvarino Alves, claim as their land a part of one such reserve, known as Cachoeira. Soon after the Government confirmed its status as a reserve in June, four rubber tappers were killed. Mr. Mendes's union, after finding out that the two landowners were wanted for murder in the state of Parana, brought a copy of the arrest warrant to Acre and gave it to the area's federal police chief, Mauro Sposito. Mr. Mendes said he had learned from other police officers that Mr. Sposito had warned | Brazilian Who Fought to Protect Amazon Is Killed |
207014_0 | Setting Sail | |
206944_1 | times the world market level. But some domestic users immediately warned that the quota increase was not sufficient to forestall higher prices in the coming year. Shortages Feared ''We're fearful we may see some very high prices and even potential shortages in 1989,'' said Tom Hammer, president of the Sweetener Users Association, which represents big food processing companies that use sugar. Wholesale refined sugar prices have already risen more than 20 percent during 1988, from around 22 cents a pound at the start of the year to the present level of 27.5 cents. Domestic sugar stocks are at their lowest level in more than a decade. Representatives of the sugar-supplier nations also had reservations. ''While welcome, it's so small as to hardly be significant and in no way compensates sugar exporters for what we took away from them since the mid-1980's,'' said Stephen L. Lande, a consultant to five Caribbean sugar exporters. Quotas Cut 25% in 1987 By law the Department of Agriculture must announce sugar quotas for the coming year no later than Dec. 15. A year ago the department cut the quota by 25 percent, to 758,000 short tons, the lowest level in more than a hundred years - since 1875. For example, since 1985 American sugar import cutbacks have cost the Philippine economy about $150 million a year. Last summer, while the effects of the drought were chiefly being felt on the upper midcontinent sugar beet crop, the Department announced an emergency quota increase to allow 1.06 million tons into the United States. The quota for 1989 was set today at 1,240,380 tons. Behind the cuts are 1981 and 1985 farm bills designed to stimulate domestic beet and sugar cane production by insulating American sugar growers from the world market. Yet, in world trade talks with 95 other trading nations, most of them from the third world, the United States has offered to wind up sugar and other domestic commodity support programs if other nations will end their farm protection as well. The talks became deadlocked at a Montreal trade conference last week after the 12-nation European Community refused to go along with an American proposal to eliminate measures in the next century that distort trade in agriculture. Because of generally higher American agricultural productivity, Washington officials believe that the American farmer, given free market conditions, could increase sales sufficiently to help redress the American trade deficit. | U.S. Raises Sugar Quota 17%; Action Called Insufficient |
206950_1 | to ship cocaine and marijuana through Cuban airspace and waters. The Cubans insist that they have been halting most of this traffic, but the United States alleges that the Cubans, at times, have aided it. ''Castro told the delegation that Cuba wants very much to work with both the United States and Latin America on narcotics control,'' Mr. Rangel said in a statement released here shortly after his delegation left Havana. ''Castro said he recognizes that the problem is shared by the region, and it needs to be addressed regionally.'' Mr. Rangel, chairman of the House select committee on narcotics abuse and control, added, ''It is time to depoliticize narcotics efforts with Cuba.'' Sharing of Information Mr. Rangel's spokesman, Bob Weiner, said that in his conversations with Mr. Rangel's delegation Mr. Castro had agreed to share information gathered by Cuban officials from arrested drug smugglers and from aerial and coastal surveillance. Currently, Mr. Weiner said, the Cubans do not even have a process for notifying the State Department or the Drug Enforcemnt Administration if they become aware of a drug shipment heading for the United States. A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, Cornelius Dougherty, said there was ''potential'' in greater cooperation with Cuba ''becuase it's so strategically located'' along the major air and sea routes from the cocaine-producing nations of South America to the United States. But a Reagan Administration official, who asked not to be named, said Mr. Castro's comments were part of a larger public relations campaign to ''nudge us into a closer, warmer relationship'' and end the economic and political isolation that the United States has maintained against Cuba. Evidence of Complicity The official said there was ''pretty strong evidence'' that drug traffickers had been operating through Cuba with at least ''some official complicity.'' In a 1987 report the State Department quoted ''several witnesses'' as reporting that a member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party was involved in the drug trade. ''The witnesses stated that the Cuban Government utilizes the drug traffic to acquire hard currency and to subvert Latin American governments friendly to the United States,'' the report said. But a September update report from the State Department said that ''recently the Cubans have indicated through informal channels greater willingness to develop narcotics cooperation in a nonpolitical environment. The seriousness of this interest has not yet been put to a practical test.'' | Castro Tells Group From Congress He Wants to Assist in Drug Fight |
209627_0 | LEAD: Brazil's Roman Catholic Church has accused the Government of President Jose Sarney of adopting policies that could lead to the extinction of the Yanomami, one of the country's largest Indian tribes. Brazil's Roman Catholic Church has accused the Government of President Jose Sarney of adopting policies that could lead to the extinction of the Yanomami, one of the country's largest Indian tribes. In a statement, the Conference of Brazilian Bishops charged that the Government had allowed as many as 100,000 freelance gold prospectors into the homeland of the 9,000-member Yanomami in the northwestern state of Roraima bordering on Venezuela. As a result, it said, more and more Yanomami were becoming victims of both violence and disease brought into the region by the prospectors. ''The Yanomami are being massacred as if they were not human beings,'' it added. The church also said the Government had recently reduced the tribe's lands by 70 percent in violation of a new Constitution, which recognized the ''original rights'' of Brazil's 220,000 or so surviving Indians ''over the lands they traditionally occupy.'' 'Danger of Extermination' ''The Yanomami are in extreme danger of extermination,'' the statement said. ''Economic, political and military interests, backed by a state that should be defending the Indians, are taking precedence over the rights of the Yanomami, whose only aspiration is to live in dignity.'' Ovidio Martins de Araujo, legal counsel for the National Indian Foundation, said the Government was also alarmed by the invasion of prospectors in the Yanomami region and was planning to evict them. But he rejected the charge that the Government had violated the Constitution in defining tribal lands. Although Brazil's Indians have been fighting a losing battle for survival since Portuguese colonizers arrived here in 1500, the Yanomami have long been regarded as a special case because contact with them was only established in 1950 and, in contrast to many other tribes, they still retain most of their traditional customs. Over the last 15 years, they have nonetheless come under increasing encroachment by the outside world. After work began in 1973 on a highway between Manaus and Boa Vista that cut through the southeastern edge of their lands, many Yanomami fell ill with malaria, tuberculosis, influenza and venereal diseases brought in by construction workers. Pollution of Waters When the Government identified gold, uranium and cassiterite reserves in the Yanomami region in 1975, freelance prospectors then began moving | CHURCH CRITICIZES BRAZIL ON INDIANS |
209678_1 | now sells imported toys and hair dryers from her sidewalk stand. ''Everybody has got imported goods now, so the prices have been forced way down.'' Both the stalls of Tepito and top-of-the-line department stores that advertise in Sunday-newspaper color supplements are now filled with goods that just a few months ago qualified as ''fayuca,'' or contraband. The available goods include not only fairly costly items like Japanese-made videocassette recorders, large portable stereos and microwave ovens, but also novelties like French perfume and American beer, candy bars and disposable diapers. Manufacturers Complain ''It's now easier to import a product in Mexico than to make one,'' complained Eduardo Guajardo, director of the National Chamber of the Electronic and Electric Communications Industries, a trade group representing one of the domestic industries that has been most affected. ''We feel that fair competition is healthy, and we do not advocate a return to protectionism, but we think there is a need to restore some sort of balance.'' This boom in consumer goods is one of the factors that has contributed to a more than 50 percent increase this year in Mexico's imports, about two-thirds of which come from the United States. According to Government statistics released Dec. 15, imports have jumped to $18.6 billion in 1988, from $12 billion in 1987, with consumer goods accounting for more than $1 billion of that increase. Indeed, imports of consumer goods are estimated to have tripled during the last year. As a result of the consumer- and capital-goods import boom, Mexico's trade surplus is expected to shrink sharply this year, to slightly more than $1 billion, from $8.5 billion. Foreign reserves are also down considerably, to less than $9 billion, from a record $16.2 billion in the spring, according to estimates by economists. In an effort to halt these declines, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari announced Dec. 12 that beginning next month the Government ''will modify the structure of tariffs to diminish the current dispersion'' and eliminate ''the distortions occasioned by current differentials.'' Fears that tariffs will go up again and put imported goods out of reach has thus led to a certain desperation among consumers shopping for the Christmas and Epiphany holidays. ''There is no way of knowing what they are going to do after Jan. 1, so I might as well take advantage of this while it lasts,'' said Leticia Andrade de Garcia , a 22-year-old | Mexico Opens Its Economy And the Imports Flood In |
209608_0 | LEAD: A prominent Brazilian enviromental advocate, Francisco Mendes Filho, murdered last week, was buried today as his colleagues began a campaign to block foreign loans until his killers are brought to justice. A prominent Brazilian enviromental advocate, Francisco Mendes Filho, murdered last week, was buried today as his colleagues began a campaign to block foreign loans until his killers are brought to justice. Mr. Mendes, a rubber tapper, had won an international reputation for his campaigning against the destruction of Amazon rain forests, and his death on Thursday provoked outrage in Brazil and abroad. The police in Xapuri, a town close to the Bolivian border, said the funeral took place without incident. | Murdered Environmentalist Buried in the Amazon Region |
209580_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: It is difficult to believe that the rosy predictions Robert Whelan of Britain offers on the benefits of continued population growth (''Population and Prosperity Often Grow Together,'' letter, Dec. 13) take into consideration facts with which he is familiar. In particular, he must be aware that the prosperity England and the European Continent developed during the 19th century is believed by a number of historians to have been made possible in part by the departure of many millions of people to North and South America and Australia. Today, Ireland's economy is deteriorating because there is no longer enough emigration to relieve serious unemployment. Britain cannot supply jobs for all its people, especially in Scotland, despite the prosperity of its steel industry. A recent report says that its health care system has a backlog of more than 600,000 discretionary surgical procedures. And it is only a matter of relatively few years before Britain's drain on its nonrenewable resources of oil and gas will finish the country off, placing it at the mercy of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Population experts in 1945-47 forecast that we would be able to feed five billion people, but they warned that the cost in overworking farmlands, using up nonrenewable resources and otherwise impinging harmfully on the earth's support system would be excessive. They did not take into account the ''greenhouse effect,'' which can be expected, according to a very recent computer analysis, to increase the chances of drought four or five times, and raise maximum hurricane winds to 225 miles an hour over the next 40 years. Changes in energy technology can moderate the greenhouse effect, but the benefits will be swamped if population growth isn't slowed down and then reversed to reduce the use of fuel. FREDERICK S. LIGHTFOOT Greenport, L.I., Dec. 13, 1988 | Overpopulation Strains Earth's Resources |
206354_3 | challenged them. 'What can we do to see that it never happens to another child like Andrea?' '' To her surprise, the university agreed to act and asked her help. Andrea's situation has since been straightened out. After taking a year off, she returned to Boston University in January, took only three courses and was supplied with special tutors and allowed to take untimed tests. Her marks at the end of the semester were two A's and a B-plus. One result of Andrea's initial experience is the university's commitment to set up the new office of learning disabled support services. These students will be encouraged to let the university know that they are learning disabled. Recently an advisory board made up of specialists in learning disability, psychiatrists, professors and parents met at the university to help set up the new office. One of the first steps was was to establish a six-week summer course for credit. It will enable learning-disabled students to take special skills workshops that will familiarize them with the campus procedures. Operation of New Office The new office, which will be financed by $223,000 raised mostly from private sources, will provide general tutors to help with study skills, organization of time, note-taking and subject matter. Students will be taught how to be self-advocates and how to explain their learning disabilities to department heads, faculty members and others who will have to make accommodations for them. Psychological and vocational counseling will also be provided. The office will conduct research on learning-disabled students, tracking them, sharing its findings with other institutions and publishing a journal. One main purpose will be to heighten campus awareness of the needs of these students - ''that these kids are not looking for favors but for the opportunity to tell teachers what they know,'' Mrs. Schneider says. Many of the experts who attended the Boston conference say teachers need to become more sensitive to the needs of the learning-disabled. These students are often characterized by ''excruciating slowness'' of performance, Sally E. Shaywitz of the Yale University School of Medicine and Robert Shaw of Brown University write in a paper on intellectually gifted learning-disabled students. ''We're walking a fine line here between providing support and providing independence,'' said at the conference. Dr. Margaret Jo Shepard of Teachers College at Columbia University. ''We are talking about young adults and we don't want to overprotect them.'' EDUCATON | Boston U. Aids Those With Learning Disability |
206506_0 | LEAD: The Energy Department's plan for restarting a crippled reactor at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina overlooked crucial safeguards needed to make the nation's largest nuclear weapons plant operate safely, the department's principal scientific advisory committee said today. The Energy Department's plan for restarting a crippled reactor at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina overlooked crucial safeguards needed to make the nation's largest nuclear weapons plant operate safely, the department's principal scientific advisory committee said today. The committee, consisting of 12 engineers and scientists, said the reactor at Savannah River, designated the K Reactor, should not be allowed to restart until more complete inspections and analyses were made about its ability to withstand severe earthquakes. The studies could take months to complete, committee members said. One committee member also said the steel vessel containing the K Reactor needed to be inspected with advanced diagnostic equipment before it is restarted. Marks and blemishes have been discovered on the surface of the vessel. They are similar to marks on another reactor that were later shown to be cracks and that caused that reactor to be shut down permanently in 1984. Delay Beyond Summer Possible The committee's recommendations mean that reopening the Savannah River Plant and resuming the production of tritium, a perishable radioactive gas vital to nuclear warheads, could be delayed beyond the ''spring, summer'' projection made two weeks ago by Energy Secretary John S. Herrington. Tritium, a form of hydrogen, decays gradually and must be periodically replenished in most of the nation's nuclear warheads. The K Reactor is one of three at Savannah River that provide the nation's only source of tritium. In another development today, the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental group, filed suit in Federal District Court here to compel the Energy Department to complete a thorough assessment of what effect restarting the K Reactor would have on the environment and public health. Such reviews frequently take two years to complete. The council won a similar suit in 1983. Both developments put more pressure on President-elect Bush, who has not yet announced whom he will nominate as Secretary of Energy or made any public comments about the deepening problems in the nation's crippled nuclear weapons industry. Moreover, it is now clear that Mr. Bush's nominee for Energy Secretary will be taking over an agency racked by deep conflict between safety experts and managers | U.S. Plan to Restart Reactor Is Unsafe, Expert Panel Says |
206424_1 | the status quo. The deal on steel also undercuts American trade negotiators, who have been clinging to the high moral ground in pressing for a dramatic opening in world markets for farm products and services. Big Steel persuaded President Reagan to tame foreign competitors just before the 1984 election, when some 27 percent of the metal sold in this country was imported. The Administration set a ceiling on imports of 20 percent of the 100-million-ton market for some 40 varieties of steel. Then, under threat of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy suits (some of which would probably have stood up in court), it persuaded 29 exporters to accept quotas roughly proportional to their historical share of total United States sales. Voluntary restraint agreements grow like weeds: they now cover autos, semiconductors, machine tools, textiles, clothing and sugar, as well as steel. And no wonder: trade officials think of them as the no-fuss alternative to messy court fights and hostile questioning by Congress. But they typically cost consumers far more than formal remedies. Unlike ordinary trade sanctions, V.R.A.'s limit imports from low-cost as well as high-cost producers. South Korea, probably the world's most efficient steelmaker today, is stuck with a much smaller share of the United States market than it could win in a fair fight. Once in place, moreover, V.R.A.'s are especially hard to uproot because trade partners soon stop worrying and learn to love the cartel-like arrangements. Without its no-questions-asked quota, a high-cost producer like Brazil probably wouldn't be able to sell any steel legally in America. Japan, able to compete in virtually all manufactured goods, initially opposed the 1981 V.R.A. on autos. But Tokyo stopped complaining after it discovered that the agreement inhibited competition among Japanese car exporters, guaranteeing extra profits at the expense of American buyers. Mr. Bush's timing was understandable but hardly auspicious. Many steel plants are running flat out, and total industry earnings in 1988 are likely to exceed $2 billion. Deliveries of semifinished slabs used to make refined steel products have been delayed for up to six months. California Steel, a finisher with no in-plant capacity to produce the crude material, has been forced to close periodically at the whim of suppliers - some of whom also compete with it in specialized markets. Lone Star, another finisher dependent on suppliers, has had to absorb a 50 percent cost increase for slab steel this year. Since the | Economic Scene; That Disturbing Deal on Steel |
206537_1 | marketed now. Along with other companies, Kellogg was responding to increased consumer awareness of the health hazards of tropical oils - including coconut and palm oils - in food products. In particular, the company acknowledged that recent newspaper advertisements criticizing the use of tropical oils prompted it to step up its efforts. Among those companies whose products were singled out in the ads were the Kellogg Company and Sunshine Biscuits Inc., owned by GF Industries. ''I can't deny the time relationship to the ad,'' Mr. Stewart said, ''but you can't reformulate a product overnight. ''Because of the hype and visibility and because of the ad, there was a sense of urgency,'' he said, to market the reformulated cereal. Two slightly different full-page advertisements, headlined ''The Poisoning of America,'' appeared in five newspapers, including one on Nov. 1 in The New York Times. The advertisements criticized several companies for using tropical oils. The advertisements said: ''A large number of food processors use the most highly saturated fats - coconut and palm oil, in their products, knowing the negative health ramifications.'' The advertisements were paid for by Phil Sokolof, who provides financial support for a non-profit group called National Heart Savers Association in Omaha. The purpose of the organization is to make people aware of their cholesterol levels and of the saturated fats and cholesterol in various foods. Even before the advertisements appeared, Kellogg and Sunshine Biscuits, like a number of other manufacturers, including RJR Nabisco, General Mills and General Foods, had become increasingly concerned about the negative image projected by their products containing tropical oils, beef tallow or lard. The amount ranges from a light spraying to as much as 15 grams per serving, the equivalent of one tablespoon. Unfortunately, most people assume that all vegetable oils, including the tropical oils, are preferable to animal fats, but they are not. For their part, the companies say shelf life, flavor, texture and, of course, price are among the reasons it takes a long time to change to nontropical oils. ''First and foremost the products have to taste good,'' said Joseph P. Simrany, the vice president of marketing at Sunshine, but he acknowledged that ''cost is a major factor.'' Generally, tropical oils are less expensive than other vegetable oils like soybean, corn, cottonseed or canola. Health professionals have been warning about the hazards of consuming saturated fats for a generation. ''Dietary Guidelines for | Prepared Foods Without 'Bad' Fats |
207931_1 | and local pollution control officials in Washington. Drastic Curbs Possible At issue is a sweeping three-tier plan aimed at reducing air pollution here to permissible Federal health levels by 2007. The plan was devised by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, a regional agency with broad powers over the 6,600-square-mile basin, and the Southern California Association of Governments. The district expects to vote on the plan March 10. If approved, it must be accepted by the state Air Resources Board and by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency. The first provisions could go into effect within six months to a year, and others much later. All here agree that the region, after years of delay, must begin soon to clean its air or face drastic curbs on industry and automobile use under the Federal Clean Air Act. Already, under court order, the E.P.A. is drawing up its own plans should local agencies fail to reach agreement. But the sweeping and intensely personal dictates embodied in the 141 measures of the local plan have produced sharp political debate and unease. ''Prior actions never affected people's lives so directly,'' said a top aide to Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles. ''It was go out and deal with that smokestack. It's never been that you and I have to ride share or get rid of our gas lawn mower or not cook with gas.'' Relentless Growth Indeed the 10-member board of the air quality district was subjected to fierce lobbying by industry over the last week to delay the final vote on the plan, which had been scheduled for Dec. 16. The vote was postponed after district lawyers found technical legal deficiencies in part of the plan. Relentless population growth has begun to reverse marked gains in air quality made in recent years under California's pollution controls such as those on vehicle emissions. Already the strictest in the nation, the controls have been credited with reducing the health hazards linked to ozone in Los Angeles by half, the state Air Resources Board says. By the year 2010, the population is expected to swell by 37 percent to 15.4 million and the number of vehicle trips by 72 percent to 48.9 million a day. Indeed, 1988 has been one of the worst years of this decade for smog, with the basin having broken the Federal ozone standard nearly half the year, 172 days, the | Los Angeles Weighs Change to Cut Smog |
207901_0 | LEAD: * Australian Government ministers said the nation's latest trade figures were alarming and far worse than anticipated. The country posted a November trade deficit of $1.55 billion Australian, or $1.3 billion American. The Government said the 3 percent rise in imports was mainly caused by increased demand for machinery. * Australian Government ministers said the nation's latest trade figures were alarming and far worse than anticipated. The country posted a November trade deficit of $1.55 billion Australian, or $1.3 billion American. The Government said the 3 percent rise in imports was mainly caused by increased demand for machinery. For the fiscal year that began July 1, Australia has a trade deficit of $7.3 billion Australian, or about $6.2 billion American, well above the Government's projections. * Cuba will have another extremely difficult year in 1989, President Fidel Castro said. In an article in the official newspaper Granma, Mr. Castro emphasized the need to increase Cuba's hard-currency revenues. ''But we shall nevertheless continue to grow and develop like we did this year, when growth reached 2.3 percent,'' he said. * Hungary plans to build a $50 million leisure park called Fanni-World, now that its hopes to build Eastern Europe's first Disneyland have fallen flat. The project, which will be on a site just west of Budapest, was announced at a news conference Friday by Hungarian officials and a new Austrian company, Fanni-Welt Vergnuegungspark. The Vienna-based company will raise capital and build and run the park and associated hotels on the 250-acre site. Hungarian companies will have the right to take up to 30 percent in related joint ventures. * Iran said it had discovered two major oilfields, including one that Oil Minister Gholam Reza Aghazadeh described as among the richest in the country. Mr. Aghazadeh, quoted by the Iranian press agency IRNA, said the 550-square-mile field southeast of Bushehr had reserves of very heavy crude estimated at 10 billion barrels. The agency said the second field, east of Behbahan, contained at least 200 million barrels of very light quality crude in the first of its three layers. | GLOBAL BRIEFS (NYT COLUMN)GLOBAL BRIEFS |
206301_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: I am enjoying your letters about the prospect, or the need for, a global die-back of the human infestation to save whatever may be left of the planet. Allow me to add my 5 cents of sniping from the fringes. Donald Mann of Negative Population Growth defines the problem as one of an exploding human population inescapably ravaging the earth and thus bringing doom upon itself (letter, Oct. 31). Robert A. Manners, in response (letter, Nov. 21), expresses his horror at the thought of yet another ''final solution'' or the ''shockingly fanciful'' population crash envisioned by Paul Ehrlich and others in the scientific community. Both writers are bravely struggling with the unthinkable, without quite bringing themselves to acknowledge that their forebodings have repeatedly come to pass throughout human history - both in the physical realm of any number of successful civilizations that multiplied beyond control, ravaged their local environment and then vanished as a result, as well as in the religious-mythical realm of end-of-the-world tales and apocalyptic calamities periodically and inexorably visiting the human entity: the wave of fundamentalist Christian literature being a good case in point. I believe that far from implying some atrocious, racist, elitist scheme for murdering billions of people while preserving a few chosen ones, Mr. Mann and Mr. Manners are simply compelling us to look at the horror of global devastation in progress, wreaked by this evolutionary miscarriage that mankind has become, and draw our own conclusions - choosing perhaps between some kind of philosophical resignation and acceptance of our collective fate, engaging in some mini-salvationist fancy such as building a biological ark of sorts, or else going whole hog with the ultimate biological redress of culling this parasitic biomass down to some minuscule and therefore sustainable size, in a biodegradable fashion. Humankind is proliferating beyond any chance of timely control and reversal of its numbers, beyond anything the planet has ever seen. Vast masses of wretchedly poor and ignorant people all over the world have little or no understanding of the phenomenon they are creating and no inclination to do anything about it; governments, institutions and educational systems have only negligible impact on this momentous, unprecedented, accelerating trend, tangled as they are in all sorts of conflicting economic and political imperatives. All our protestations to the contrary, the human species has become a threat to itself and | Population and Prosperity Often Grow Together; Cutting Back |
206156_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: Donald Mann, president of Negative Population Growth, seems to think the day of doom is nigh (letter, Oct. 31). He fears the direst consequences for the world unless global population can be reduced from 5 billion to 1.5 billion or 2 billion and warns that all environmental problems will intensify if population continues to grow. No one could seriously maintain that the world of today is not cleaner, healthier and more pleasant to live in than the world of 100 years ago, when the global population was about 1.5 billion. Our long and ever-growing life span testifies to this, in the developing and the developed world. It is just because the increase in the world's population has been accompanied by such a rapid rise in the quality of life on earth that the population of the planet is larger than ever before. The modern world supports more people living longer, healthier lives, than in the past. Hence the ''population explosion.'' Mr. Mann states that the greatest lesson of the Industrial Revolution ''is that vast numbers of people are simply incompatible with an industrial society.'' I don't know which history books Mr. Mann has been reading, but here in the cradle of the Industrial Revolution we have a saying that population growth made the Industrial Revolution necessary, and the Industrial Revolution made population growth possible. Had the British population not increased almost fourfold during the 19th century we would not have had the manpower to create the industrial society that made Britain the hub of world trade. Mr. Mann speaks of ''optimum population size'' as if this were a valid scientific concept. It is as meaningless as an attempt to determine the optimum length of a piece of string. The number of people who can live in a society at a given level of consumption is related to that society's state of economic development and level of technological advance, both of which are constantly in flux. Nor is it true to say that ''man's impact on the environment is the product of two factors: the number of people multiplied by per capita consumption of resources, and per capita production of pollution.'' Pollution levels are not related to consumption, but to the state of technology that is applied. As the United Nations Brundtland Report pointed out, a peasant woman cooking a meal in earthenware vessels | Population and Prosperity Often Grow Together |
206304_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: In response to ''Amazon Tree Cutting Better Than Burning'' (letter, Nov. 14): Why not encourage the Brazilians to keep their rain forests intact as a way to repay their debts? A great portion of the earth's oxygen is created by rain forests, and Brazil, as well as other countries with rain forests, could use this asset, much as the Middle East successfully generates income from oil. The thought of paying for oxygen may be disturbing to us, but without effective preservation and management of this rapidly disappearing resource, life may become impossible for us, no matter how much money we have. It takes 1,000 years to grow a rain forest that can be wiped out by one day of logging. Brazil won't be able to buy its way out of debt with cheap lumber. THOMAS BROWN Brooklyn, Nov. 29, 1988 | Forests for Debt |
206082_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: In ''Guns Do Kill People'' (editorial, Nov. 18) you summarized the most salient points of our study of the relationship between gun control and rates of homicide in Seattle and in Vancouver, British Columbia. We found that while these remarkably similar cities experienced nearly identical rates of burglary, robbery and assault during the seven-year study interval, the rate of homicide in Vancouver (where citizen access to handguns is modestly restricted) was 40 percent less than Seattle's. Virtually all of this difference was explained by Seattle's nearly fivefold higher rate of handgun homicides. You suggest that we made too little of racial differences between these cities. Research has shown that high rates of assault and victimization among blacks in the United States are due more to the effects of crowding and poverty than to any increased tendency toward violence. The median income of Vancouver's small black minority is actually higher than that for the entire city, while in Seattle, the median income of black families is substantially less than that of the city at large. In comparable socioeconomic conditions, whites are as likely to commit violent acts as blacks. Our study suggests that when handguns are more readily available, a higher proportion of crimes or attacks directed at a person, of whatever race, will end in death. ARTHUR L. KELLERMANN Memphis, Nov. 29, 1988< The writer is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Tennessee. | Crime Fatalities Rise With Gun Availability |
208328_1 | the skeet-shooting tournaments that were once the pride of Tiro, as the club is commonly called. It has been five years since a quorum could be assembled for the annual boar shoot; Tiro's membership in the National Rifle Association has lapsed, and Fusileers turns out to be just the name of Tiro's golf team. The big news at Tiro is an upcoming renovation of the dining room. Vibrantly colorful frescoes of the Tower of Pisa and Naples's harbor will yield to a large wooden fireplace and Roman columns. ''Some think it has looked like a pizzeria - but don't print that,'' Mr. Augenti said of the present decor. Mr. Augenti speaks with the authority of 85 years of living - more than 60 years as a member of Tiro and his present position as the club historian. The enthusiasm the veteran of the Italian submarine service feels for his native land is indicated by the full-size gondola he keeps on the small lake near his country home. Tiro is in three adjoining brownstones in Greenwich Village, 73, 75 and 77 MacDougal Street. Though the boccie court is long gone, there remain a bust of da Vinci and many, many espresso machines. There is the sense of a history that began in eighth century Italy with the formation of bow-and-arrow marksmen's groups, the first Tiros, and gained force after the unification of Italy. One of the new government's first acts was to pick up the tab for the Tiros' guns. But there seem to be limits to the passion for history of New York's Tiro, specifically as it regards the place Mussolini's portrait once hung. ''Don't print anything about that,'' Mr. Augenti said. ''Nobody wants to read that.'' What Tiro stands for is earned success -growing out of education and hard work, and then evidencing itself in good deeds. The club began as a collection of artists, architects, industrialists, doctors and other success stories, and to this day is a place Lee Iacocca likes to dine. But there are clear standards: Convicted politicians Mario Biaggi and Meade Esposito are no longer welcome in their former club, although it is not entirely clear whose idea their leave-taking was. ''Don't think about that,'' Mr. Augenti said. ''It is not important.'' What is important, he and other members say, is the club's strong denunciation of anti-Italian attacks, its hospitality to the crews of Italy's | About New York; For 100 Years, Providing a Tie To Italian Culture |
209559_4 | endnotes, but the authors do admit in the next paragraph that Jesus was even more famous than this illustrious compatriot.) The treatment of Jesus and Paul that follows is a caricature both of their own thought and that of modern critics, who, we are told, do agree that the ''outlook'' of Jesus was ''purely religious.'' The chief authority cited for the life of Jesus is Ernest Renan, the 19th-century French writer. The authors might have done as well to consult Martin Scorsese, for they believe, oddly, that Jesus ''remained . . . alien to an ideal of family and domesticity.'' The central issues - whether Christianity is world-rejecting or world-affirming and whether body and soul can be separated - pass quickly by in a blur, as does the debate between Gnosticism and the orthodox Christian community. A GOOD study would address the influence of Neoplatonism and Stoicism on the church fathers. The great Hellenistic Jewish theologian Philo of Alexandria does get a lengthy treatment, but the Stoics are ignored, and Plotinus and his fellow Neoplatonists, whose ontological hierarchy is the most important blueprint for the Christian heaven, are tossed away almost as quickly as Plato himself. After a garbled look at Philo, the authors ignore Philo's fellow Alexandrians Clement and Origen. Origen did as much as any church father to shape the Christian idea of heaven except possibly Dionysius the Areopagite, whom the authors evenhandedly also ignore. Pope St. Gregory the Great, who fixed the standard view of heaven in Western Christendom, and St. John Climacus, who did much the same for the East, are also beyond the authors' range. The section on the Middle Ages does Eastern Orthodox theology the favor of ignoring it entirely, as opposed to Western theology and literature, about which the authors offer strange generalizations, such as the statement that in the 12th and 13th centuries ''an optimistic spirit prevailed.'' Although the treatment of the Renaissance and later periods improves, the authors do not understand the foundations of modern thought, and the level of discourse remains painfully low. ''Liberal Protestants and Catholics attempt to acknowledge the full biblical richness of heavenly descriptions while at the same time supporting the skeptical mind which strives to defend its integrity.'' This is not the worst sentence in the book; it is typical of hundreds that leave the reader saying, ''What?'' Like Homer, even the Yale University Press nods. | THE MAKING OF PARADISE |
209198_0 | LEAD: AN $847 million plan developed by the Army Corps of Engineers to eliminate flooding in the Passaic River Basin has given rise to a dispute that threatens to doom the project before it has even begun. AN $847 million plan developed by the Army Corps of Engineers to eliminate flooding in the Passaic River Basin has given rise to a dispute that threatens to doom the project before it has even begun. Since implementation of the plan requires state and Federal funds, the support of both the local Congressional delegation and the State of New Jersey is essential. At this point, however, neither is certain. Representatives Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of Englewood, and Robert A. Roe, Democrat of Pompton Lakes, said they would not support the current proposal by the corps and have proposed an alternate plan. Mr. Torricelli said their opposition would make Congressional approval of the corps' plan unlikely. ''The Federal Government,'' he said, ''is not going to spend money for a project that is opposed by the area's representatives.'' Studying Alternatives And while Governor Kean has indicated through a spokesman that he has taken ''no formal position'' on the project, State Senator Gabriel M. Ambrosio, Democrat of Lyndhurst, and 23 co-sponsors have introduced a Senate resolution that authorizes the corps to study alternatives to the plan. Although the resolution has no binding effect, it does indicate the sentiment of the Senate regarding the project. The corps, however, is proceeding with the original plan and has forwarded it to Washington for a 90-day ''state and agency review.'' The purpose of the review, said Edward Greene, public affairs officer of the corps, is to obtain comment from the state and interested agencies before the plan is submitted to Congress. The original 90-day period expired on Nov. 7 without any comment from state officials, he said. The review period has since been extended to Jan. 17. ''We don't know what the state's official position is,'' Mr. Greene said, ''but New Jersey is aware that we are awaiting their comments.'' The Passaic River Basin is a 935-square mile watershed in northern New Jersey and southern New York State containing nearly 2.5 million residents. In New Jersey, it encompasses 117 municipalities in 8 counties, including almost al l of Bergen and Passaic and large portions of Morris and Essex. Extending as far south as Warren Township and as far north as | Passaic Basin Flood Plan Faces Opposition |
209560_0 | LEAD: SAFARI A Chronicle of Adventure. By Bartle Bull. Illustrated. 383 pp. New York: Viking. $40. AFRICAN LIVES White Lies, Tropical Truth, Darkest Gossip, and Rumblings of Rumor - From Chinese Gordon to Beryl Markham, and Beyond. By Denis Boyles. Illustrated. 225 pp. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. SAFARI A Chronicle of Adventure. By Bartle Bull. Illustrated. 383 pp. New York: Viking. $40. AFRICAN LIVES White Lies, Tropical Truth, Darkest Gossip, and Rumblings of Rumor - From Chinese Gordon to Beryl Markham, and Beyond. By Denis Boyles. Illustrated. 225 pp. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. $18.95. BARTLE BULL and Denis Boyles are fascinated by whites in Africa. But while Mr. Bull, a New York lawyer, wants to recall a white man's Africa of romance, drama and the hunt, Mr. Boyles, an American journalist, wants to tell another story - about the underside of white lives on the Dark Continent, their obsessions and eccentricities, of times and places where white men could and still can perpetrate and get away with the most amazing things. Mr. Bull's book is for the coffee table, full of pictures and lore, from descriptions of the wagons that took the first hunters into the interiors of South Africa to his own account of stalking kudu in Tanzania in 1986. One learns what hunters wore, what guns they preferred, what they ate - baked elephant foot, dried giraffe tongue, raw hippo liver dipped in the fermenting contents of the beast's stomach. One learns the rudiments of bush medicine: that tea and champagne cure all, that a polstice of crushed scorpion cures scorpion bite. One learns a good deal of natural history. In ''Safari'' Mr. Bull has collected art work, not often seen, from the era before photography when there was a long tradition of naturalist hunters who were also artists, and who, like William Cornwallis Harris (1807-48), came to draw and paint in what seemed to be the Garden of Eden. Their works, plentifully scattered throughout the text, are charming, full of life, sometimes exquisite, and give the book a special edge on mostly familiar material. Mr. Bull tells stories of famous safaris - Livingstone, Roosevelt, Hemingway. He includes astonishing women, like Margaret Trappe, the first female to earn her living as a ''white hunter.'' The stuff of legend: it was said that Trappe could milk female elephant and coax hippo from the water. Mr. Bull tells | IT BROUGHT OUT THE WORST IN EVERYONE |
209250_0 | LEAD: THE street sign, which identifies the intersection as Beach 69th Street and Story Road, is perhaps the only indication that civilization still has designs on the forlorn stretch of sand and weeds in the Arverne section of Queens. THE street sign, which identifies the intersection as Beach 69th Street and Story Road, is perhaps the only indication that civilization still has designs on the forlorn stretch of sand and weeds in the Arverne section of Queens. A six-story apartment building with boarded-up windows stands abandoned in a vast vacant lot, two miles long and a few blocks wide, that was created more than 20 years ago when the city bulldozed several thousand rundown bungalows in the name of urban renewal. Now the weeds are strewn with broken glass, cartons of trash, automobile tires. A Manhattan-bound A train rumbles by on elevated tracks two blocks to the north. A block south, the Atlantic Ocean washes a clean, empty beach. Largely because the subway and the beach converge here in the Rockaways, 16 miles from midtown Manhattan, the 300-acre lot has tremendous value. The largest vacant site left in New York City, it is a prize sought by some of the city's largest developers, as well as by a nonprofit group advocating working-class housing. Arverne is the latest battleground in a fundamental debate over how to use the city's resources, and particularly its land, to combat an acute shortage of housing. Proponents of low-income housing think the city's land and money should be concentrated on building housing for those most desperately in need - the poor and the working class. Others, including the Koch administration, contend that the city's approach should be more balanced, addressing the needs of middle-income as well as low-income people. The Koch administration, after weighing the matter for more than two years, has decided that Arverne should be the site for as many as 10,000 units of high-rise housing that will sell at market rates, $160,000 at a minimum, far beyond the means of most households. The city said it will select a developer for the project in February from among a half-dozen who have made proposals. But the nonprofit group, the Queens Citizens Organization, says it is likely to challenge that plan before the City Planning Commission and the Board of Estimate. The organization would like to use the site for 3,200 single-family or two-family houses, | THE REGION: In the Rockaways; A Queens Beachfront Is Ground for a Fight Over Housing Goals |
209324_0 | LEAD: WHILE investigators were still trying to determine what caused Pan American World Airways Flight 103 to explode over a Scottish village last week, killing at least 275 people, the suspicion of sabotage gave fresh impetus to the search for ways to keep terrorists from endangering the skies. WHILE investigators were still trying to determine what caused Pan American World Airways Flight 103 to explode over a Scottish village last week, killing at least 275 people, the suspicion of sabotage gave fresh impetus to the search for ways to keep terrorists from endangering the skies. Metal detectors, X-ray machines and beefed up security have made airports less hospitable to hijackers in recent years. But passenger planes remain vulnerable to explosives, whether hidden inside suitcases or other cargo, or underneath a passenger's clothing. New technology aimed at detecting such threats is now being developed, however, and could be in routine use at airports within a few years, counterterrorism experts said. Israel's El Al Airlines is regarded as the world most security-conscious carrier. But El Al relies on highly labor-intensive methods - including hand-searching bags and questioning passengers at length - that are generally considered impractical for large airlines. Security personnel may also be fallible. To bring down a jumbo jet requires less than a pound of plastic explosives, which can be molded into shapes that are inconspicuous and relatively easy to conceal. The work being financed by the Federal Aviation Administration is taking a different approach. ''We want the human being out of the loop,'' said Fred Farrar, an F.A.A. spokesman. ''People get tired, people get distracted. Instead, we want to find a way to automatically set off an alarm any time a bomb is headed for a plane.'' Two techniques show promise. The first is called thermal neutron activation, or TNA. Baggage passes through a chamber in which it is showered with neutrons. The neutrons react with nitrogen, a component of virtually all common explosives, producing a scattering of gamma rays that are analyzed by computer to determine whether an explosive is indeed present. ''We've tested TNA at two airports in San Francisco, and we're pleased with the results,'' said Mr. Farrar. Used on 40,000 pieces of luggage, the detection rate was 95 percent and the false alarm rate was 4 percent. Mr. Farrar said that the F.A.A. has issued a contract for five models that will be tested at | New Devices May Stop More Bombs At the Gate |
209251_0 | LEAD: AFTER decades of neglect, environmental issues are moving from the periphery of geopolitics toward center stage. Several recent events demonstrate that the superpowers and other nations are starting to address problems like the greenhouse effect, acid rain and the thinning of the ozone shield with some of the same seriousness once reserved for international security and economic affairs. AFTER decades of neglect, environmental issues are moving from the periphery of geopolitics toward center stage. Several recent events demonstrate that the superpowers and other nations are starting to address problems like the greenhouse effect, acid rain and the thinning of the ozone shield with some of the same seriousness once reserved for international security and economic affairs. ''We are seeing a greening of geopolitics,'' said Rafe Pomerance of the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based research and policy group. Frederick M. Bernthal, the Assistant Secretary of State who handles environmental matters, said that issues like global climate change and the ozone hole over the Antarctic are producing a growing ''international consensus on viewing the planet as a single ecosystem.'' These kinds of concerns, Mr. Bernthal said, ''used to be the backwater of diplomacy.'' Because of the dawning recognition that air pollution does not respect national boundaries and that the destruction of tropical forests threatens the ecological health of the entire world, environmental issues once relegated to low-level bureaucrats are now appearing on the agendas of summit meetings. Secretary of State George P. Shultz recently spent an hour discussing global warming with a State Department advisory group, Mr. Bernthal noted. ''That indicates the level of attention that issue is now getting,'' he said. If scientists confirm that the earth is warming rapidly because of industrial gases accumulating in the atmosphere, he said, ''The potential is there for this to become a major if not the major issue in the 21st century.'' Third World Polluters To many leaders of third world nations, environmentalism used to be regarded as a luxury that could be afforded by only wealthier countries. Some of today's worst environmental offenders are developing countries coming of age in a world that is growing much less forgiving of abuse. Increasingly, leaders of these countries are accepting that development cannot be sustained without protecting natural resources. In the Soviet bloc, large stretches of ecological wasteland created by the crash industrialization drives of state socialism have led to a grassroots environmental movement that | Suddenly, the World Itself Is a World Issue |
209413_3 | is a major reason for men to leave the priesthood and for loneliness among those who stay, the bishops said. They added that the church had not helped priests deal with their sexual feelings as it should. The bishops recommended that a priest's sexuality be recognized as an ''essential component of human existence'' and that better methods, including encouraging close friendships with men and women, be found to help priests lead a celibate life. ''There's just no support for that kind of life now,'' Bishop McRaith said. ''They are surrounded by a culture that is incredibly promiscuous.'' Another result of the shortage of priests is that where they could once look forward to a graceful retirement, they now face heavier workloads, ''long and painful battles over consolidation and closure of parishes, and less probability of retirement at all,'' the report said. Fewer Priests, More Congregants A dwindling of priests are ministering to a larger flock. The Catholic population of the United States rose to 53.5 million in 1988 from 48 million in 1970. In reaction, the bishops said, many priests have chosen to ''drop out quietly,'' adding: ''This is particularly true of those in the 45 to 60 age group who are willing to go through the necessary minimum of motions but whose hearts and energies are elsewhere.'' In a speech to American priests last fall, John Paul told them to bear their hardship with faith. ''The spirit God has given us is no cowardly spirit,'' he said.Father McNulty said the bishops' committee was saying: ''You have to do more than tough it out. There are things that might be done.'' The Vatican's closing off of discussion on issues such as celibacy and ordination of women results in priests being ''caught in the middle,'' the panel said. It went on, ''Some priests feel that at times they are passing on to parishioners, who clearly disagree, pastoral decisions which they sense their bishops do not fully endorse and which they themselves personally question.'' The committee recommended giving priests greater authority in making decisions that affect their lives, including participation in the selection of bishops. But Bishop McRaith minimized the differences between United States priests and the Vatican. ''There are some things that are not resolvable, and that may be one,'' he said, referring to celibacy. He then referred to priests: tp''So they have to be careful how they ask those questions.'' | U.S. Bishops Assess Loneliness of Priests |
209380_0 | LEAD: A state study says researchers cannot determine if a high rate of Down's syndrome births in Vernon Township during the late 1970's can be attributed to the concentration of satellite communications towers in the rural area of northwestern New Jersey. A state study says researchers cannot determine if a high rate of Down's syndrome births in Vernon Township during the late 1970's can be attributed to the concentration of satellite communications towers in the rural area of northwestern New Jersey. Citing the decline in the rate of birth defects to normal levels in the Sussex County township during the last six years, the State Department of Health said last week that it will cease its study. ''The study cannot pinpoint the cause for the earlier elevated number of Down's syndrome cases,'' said Dr. Leah Z. Ziskin, assistant commissioner of the department's Division of Community Health Services. ''All we can say is that we know it has not continued and the number is now what would be expected in the general population.'' The rate of Down's syndrome births was above the national average in Vernon Township, which has a population of about 22,000, from 1975 to 1982. The rate has subsequently dropped to the national average. The study grew out of complaints by a local parents' group, Citizens Against the Towers, which said it found 8 children with Down's syndrome and 30 with severe neurological, muscular or other birth defects, as well as 24 miscarriages. Down's syndrome is a congenital condition characterized by mental retardation. Dr. Ziskin said ''it was technically unfeasible'' for researchers to determine whether the earlier birth defects could be attributed to the microwave transmitters in Sussex County. The industry maintains that radiation from the transmitters is too low to cause health problems. The report said researchers could not determine the levels of possible microwave exposure to township residents during the late 1970's. | Down's Syndrome Study Ends Inconclusively |
207281_0 | LEAD: UC Systems A/S, a Norwegian company, has won patent approval for an anti-skid device that coats automobile tires with an adhesive liquid when a driver encounters slippery roads. A reservoir of the liquid, which is not specified by the patent, is in the front of the car and is connected by hoses to nozzles over each wheel. UC Systems A/S, a Norwegian company, has won patent approval for an anti-skid device that coats automobile tires with an adhesive liquid when a driver encounters slippery roads. A reservoir of the liquid, which is not specified by the patent, is in the front of the car and is connected by hoses to nozzles over each wheel. An air compressor can be activated from the driver's seat to pump the liquid onto the tires when needed. UC Systems received patent 4,789,190. | Patents; Anti-Skid Device |
207271_3 | a San Francisco engineering company, said several methods can greatly improve the quake resistance of existing houses built from the unreinforced masonry common throughout the third world or the precast-concrete walls widely used in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. ''One of the first steps is to fasten floors and roofs securely to the walls,'' he said. ''This can be done using steel anchors and bolts, or by encircling the walls with steel straps to keep the masonry in tight contact with the floors. This helps to keep the walls from flying apart in a shake, and holds the building together.'' All structural components must be as securely fastened to each other as possible, he said. To that end, the masonry walls of many potentially dangerous houses in California are being sprayed with liquid concrete and reinforced with steel bracing. Similar techniques are now starting to be used in Central America. Avoiding Heavy Roofs In Nicaragua and some other countries, advisory teams supported by American experts distribute booklets showing how simple buildings made of adobe and similar materials can be improved. Techniques include the mixing of bamboo reinforcing strips in the adobe, bracing door frames and other weak points, and avoiding the use of heavy concrete roofs. ''The problem,'' Mr. Poland said, ''is essentially financial. Building well-braced, earthquake-resistant houses from scratch is relatively cheap. Reinforcing existing houses is relatively expensive, especially for poor home owners. There's a lot of resistance to doing it even in California. In poor countries it is often impossible to persuade people to take steps that may save their lives. I've seen families in Central America recover the bricks and adobe from their wrecked homes and rebuild them in the same old dangerous way.'' In a small building, a sturdy wooden frame is far safer during an earthquake than simple brick-and-mortar or concrete-block walls that directly support the floors and ceiling. In a strong tremor, unreinforced masonry walls buckle, and the floors they support ''pancake'' into a crush of rubble, killing or trapping those who live there. News photographs of Leninakan and other stricken Armenian cities have suggested that unsupported masonry and precast-concrete structures suffered the bulk of the devastation, American experts say. Similar houses are all too common in the world. Large Cranes Are Sought ''That kind of building, which in Leninakan apparently was built up to nine stories high, has killed countless | Quake-Proof Buildings: Many Lands Take a Risk |
207145_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: In your Dec. 6 United Nations Journal, you state that Mexico, Cuba, Syria and Bangladesh insisted that a ''new information and communications order'' must not diminish national sovereignty, and that the West ''considers that wording a code phrase for censorship.'' Although it is certain that my country and the other three countries you mention stood out in that debate for affirming the concept of national sovereignty with respect to the new information order, that position was assumed by all the Group of the 77, formed by more than 120 developing countries. For us that concept does not mean censorship at all, neither does it oppose the right of free speech or information, which all of us recognize. It is opposed to the monopoly that the information enterprises and agencies of the principal power centers practice over the world information system, deepening the imbalance between the industrialized and developing countries and giving a one-sided orientation to the news. MARIO MOYA PALENCIA Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations New York, Dec. 8, 1988 | News for Third World |
207194_1 | operation since 1972 under an agreement signed by the Italian Government but never sent to Parliament for approval. Few Anti-Base Protests If Sardinians were unhappy about the arrangement, they kept their feelings largely to themselves. There have been only a few anti-base protests over the years, and the Americans seemed to be treated as no more or less a nuisance than the Italian air base, missile-testing area and two radar stations that were already strewn across the gnarled Sardinian hills. But the American presence has begun to nettle this Mediterranean outpost. Post-Chernobyl, some here are wondering what exactly is on board those submarines, and how much they should trust Italian Government assertions that there are no dangerous levels of radioactivity. Concerns deepened recently after the Italian branch of the environmental group Greenpeace reported having found evidence of the radioactive isotope cesium 137 in the waters near La Maddalena. For some, the fact that the 1972 agreement was never discussed with them, or even with Parliament, is taken as a sign of bad faith. Why, they also complain, has no one ever given them an emergency plan in case something goes wrong? ''We have absolutely no confidence in the Government testing that's been done,'' said Giovanna Sotgiu, local representative of Italia Nostra, an environmental group. ''It has to be slanted. Plus, a lot of it falls under the category of military secrecy.'' A few Sardinians, although a distinct minority, go so far as to describe the 2,000 American sailors and their families as an occupying force. They seem an improbable band of occupiers, however, huddled as they are in their own villages, staying out of local politics and socializing mostly with each other. A Nonbinding Referendum But there were enough doubts, mixed with a formidable sense here of apartness from the rest of Italy, for an issue to crystallize and to be seized by a loose alliance of Communists, Radicals, Greens and a sizable autonomist force called the Sardinian Action Party. Together, they arranged for a nonbinding referendum to be held Dec. 11 in which Sardinians could say yes or no to the naval station. Polls indicated that the Americans would lose handily. In Rome, United States officials agreed with that judgment, although they argued that the referendum was loaded against them. Indeed, the main question was not a model of neutral wording. It asked: ''Are you against the presence in | Sardinia Catches the Nuclear Jitters |
207260_2 | three assistant secretaries and several other high-ranking officials to today's meeting to stress its good intentions. To emphasize the national security implications of the issue, the Federal officials conducted a classified briefing in a windowless conference room watched over by guards armed with piles of electronic anti-bugging equipment. The Governors and Joseph F. Salgado, the Deputy Secretary, ended the session with an announcement that progress had been made toward an end to the impasse over the waste from Rocky Flats. But the Governors made it clear that as far as they were concerned, the Federal Government would no longer wield the exclusive authority in the issue. ''I said I would not accept the old statement of 'trust me,' '' Governor Andrus told reporters. Governor Andrus wants the department to commit itself to an expensive program of digging up, repackaging and removing chemical and radioactive wastes that are improperly buried and threatening the Snake River aquifer beneath the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. The department is considering merely ''stabilizing'' the wastes without removing them, but said it would discuss removal. ''They didn't do it because it was the holiday season and St. Nick was about to appear,'' Mr. Andrus told reporters. He said that in January he would ''possibly reassess'' his ban on additional wastes from Rocky Flats, depending on progress in cleaning up the laboratory site and in opening the New Mexico storage facility at Carlsbad. In New Mexico, Gov. Garrey Carruthers wants Washington to procure a grant of $250 million to $300 million for new highway bypasses on which the wastes would be carried. The department promised today to seek the money from Congress and to pursue an administrative alternative. The department also said today that the New Mexico waste site would not be ready until August at the earliest because the Government had decided to complete a new environmental study. It had said earlier that the $700 million site would open in June, a delay from the original plan for an opening last fall. With the delay in New Mexico and the refusal by Mr. Andrus to accept more waste in Idaho, it is expected that by May 1, the Rocky Flats plant will hold 1,600 cubic yards of waste, the limit it is allowed under an agreement with Colorado. The plant, like each of 17 major sites in the weapon program, performs a function without which the production | 3 States Ask Waste Cleanup As Price of Atomic Operation |
203653_0 | LEAD: Production of a perishable and increasingly scarce gas vital for nuclear weapons could be delayed far longer than officials have predicted because of problems involved in reopening the South Carolina plant that makes it. Production of a perishable and increasingly scarce gas vital for nuclear weapons could be delayed far longer than officials have predicted because of problems involved in reopening the South Carolina plant that makes it. The Energy Department's blueprint for resuming production, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, calls for a complete overhaul of all training, safety, management, operating and inspection procedures at the crippled manufacturing complex, the Savannah River Plant near Aiken, S.C. Engineers who worked on the plan said the number and the complexity of the tasks involved were almost certain to delay the reopening beyond a startup next spring or summer that was projected earlier this week by Secretary of Energy John S. Herrington. Sole Source of Tritium Several engineers said delays in restarting the first of three reactors at Savannah River could reach to the end of 1989, raising further concerns about the readiness of the American nuclear arsenal. Savannah River is the country's sole source of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen used in the manufacture of most American nuclear weapons. The gas decays rapidly and must be periodically replenished, and none has been produced since April. Pentagon experts said in October that if Savannah River did not have all three of its tritium production reactors operating by next summer, extraordinary steps might be needed to safeguard the arsenal, including deactivating warheads to recover tritium for use in weapons of highest priority. Political Impact The plan is also likely to have important political significance, top officials of the Energy Department agreed. The department has proposed building two new tritium production reactors - one in Idaho, the other at Savannah River - at a cost that it puts at $6.8 billion, in terms of the dollar's current purchasing power. How the agency performs in the restarting at Savannah River will be closely watched by Congressional leaders, who are apprehensive about the expense involved in building two such new plants instead of just one. Top officials of the Energy Department said today that the startup plan, having been made the subject of a final agreement between the department and Savannah River contractors, should not be affected by the | MORE DELAY SEEN IN THE REOPENING OF A-BOMB PLANT |
203677_0 | LEAD: Margaret Mee, a botanical artist and explorer of Amazonian rain forests, died in a car accident, her family said Friday. Margaret Mee, a botanical artist and explorer of Amazonian rain forests, died in a car accident, her family said Friday. Mrs. Mee was 79 years old. She was killed Wednesday in an auto crash near Seagrave in central England, her family said. In 1952, she and her second husband, Greville Mee, went to live in Rio de Janeiro. She had recently returned to Britain to open an exhibition of her paintings at the Royal Botanic Gardens in west London. Mrs. Mee was also in Britain for the publication last month of her diaries, ''In Search of the Flowers of the Amazon Forests,'' and a lecture tour. Mrs. Mee was born near London and studied art as a child. She made the first of her 15 Amazon expeditions in 1956 to observe, collect and paint flowers. Her last trip there was in May when she traveled to the Igapo forest on Brazil's Rio Negro to paint the rare, night-blooming Amazonian moonflower. ''As I stood there with the dim outline of the forest all around, I was spellbound, '' she wrote in her diaries. ''Then the first petal began to move and then another as the flower burst into life,'' Mrs. Mee became a leader in the campaign to conserve the rain forests and protect the forest Indians. The recently established Margaret Mee Amazon Trust provides scholarships to help Brazilian botanists study in Britain. She is survived by her husband. | Margaret Mee Dies; Amazon Artist Was 79 |
203969_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: Unlike Marilyn Fitterman, president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, I am not troubled by the recent scientific findings that a woman's ability to perform certain tasks fluctuates with the monthly changes in her hormone levels (news article, Nov. 18). On high-estrogen days, she is best - in fact, better than men - at tasks involving verbal skills or muscular coordination. When her estrogen levels are at their lowest ebb, she does not perform tasks involving spatial relationships as well as men. Ms. Fitterman is concerned that these findings could be misused as evidence that a woman shouldn't be President. I think a closer examination of the scientific data suggests quite the opposite. More and more it is verbal skills that win on Election Day. This means that at least on a hormonal level, a woman is likely to be a greater communicator than even the Great Communicator himself, at least on her high-estrogen days. How much more reliable to have the President's schedule of personal appearances dominated by her menstrual cycle than by his astrological charts. A male's superiority with spatial relations seems insignificant by comparison. So what if he can locate Nicaragua blindfolded. Even on her highest-estrogen days, she can still read a map. MARY-LOU WEISMAN Westport, Conn., Nov. 19, 1988 | The Case for a High-Estrogen President |
203814_3 | a pack of cigarettes.'' He added that such miniaturized computers are well within the realm of possibility. If there is a drawback to such a setup, Mr. Dvorak said, it is that ''you'd look kind of like an alien,'' staring off into space, fingering a keyboard with an odd contraption strapped to your head. Mr. Becker said Private Eye would use a simple serial interface to the computer. It is expected to be produced in volume and sell for about $100. Its sharp monochrome resolution is the equivalent of 720 by 280 picture elements. The company is now seeking 100 companies to develop applications for the device. Mr. Becker envisions these: * Pocket computers. There are handheld computers on the market already, but they are of limited use because the keyboards and the displays are too large to be practical. The Private Eye would solve the display problem. Other companies are working on full-size keyboards that could fold in half like a book to fit into a large pocket. And because the device draws less than half a watt of electrical power, far less than other high-resolution portable displays, battery life on laptops would be extended and the machines could be made much smaller. * Remote information displays. In situations in which it is impractical to have a full-size PC display nearby, like a surgical operating room, Private Eye might be an unobtrusive substitute. A workman needing wiring diagrams atop a telephone pole would find the tiny monitor very handy - ''Look, Ma, no hands!'' - as would a technician working in the cockpit of a 747. A Private Eye connected to a laptop equipped with a half-height CD-ROM drive would give the 747 mechanic easy access to the equivalent of thousands of pounds of technical documentation on paper. A worker could enter inventory information and view a full screen of data while walking through a warehouse. * Telephone displays. Coupled with a facsimile machine or certain modems, the tiny display would make it convenient for a real estate agent to receive facsimile images of new listings while cruising with a client. A salesman might phone the office to pull up a customer file from the computer. * Remote retrieval of records. Those few doctors who still make house calls would be able to call up and view patient records at a patient's home or on their way there. Lost | Like Having Another Set of Eyes |
203659_2 | in the private sector, as well as his experience in Congress rebuilding our nation's defenses, will serve the President well in cleaning up the Pentagon.'' Mr. Tower did acknowledge through Mr. Billmire that he called Congress and the Pentagon about programs in which clients were involved. But Mr. Billmire insisted that Mr. Tower was simply checking on the programs' progress and that no lobbying was done, although one of Mr. Tower's calls was to a senior Pentagon official who is a close friend and former Senate aide. Mr. Billmire said Mr. Tower offers his clients information on such subjects as what military programs Congress is likely to support or cut, and how arms control talks will affect the demand for particular weapons. Two of Mr. Tower's major clients, LTV Aerospace and Defense and the Martin Marietta Corporation, have been subpoenaed in connection with the investigation. Investigators have said the companies are not necessarily targets of the investigation. A Thin, Important Line Although some of those involved in the effort to reform military procurement say there can be a fine and, at times, indistinguishable line between information gathering and lobbying, the law recognizes such a difference. ''I think there is a fair distinction between collecting information and advocating a position on an issue,'' said Alan R. Yuspeh, a Washington attorney specializing in Government contracts. Mr. Tower's supporters maintain that only someone with his kind of experience can hope to master the intricacies of the Pentagon. ''For someone to come in and, within 90 days, advise the President on his military budget and then defend it before Congress, he has to have extensive contacts not only with the inner workings of the Department of Defense but also with the private sector,'' said Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican who is a former Secretary of the Navy. The issue of procurement reform has been central to Mr. Tower's efforts to promote himself for a post he has sought since retiring from the Senate in January 1985. Was Chief Arms Negotiator Mr. Tower has discussed his views on military matters widely. Articles reflecting those positions have appeared, most recently in Friday's issue of The Washington Post, in which Tower associates stress his commitment to budget cutting and reform. Mr. Tower has been a consultant since he resigned in March 1986 as chief negotiator on strategic nuclear weapons at the arms control talks in Geneva. | Tower's Links to Contractors Factor in Choice for Pentagon |
203562_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: In reference to your article on female hormones: May I assume that since verbal skills and muscular coordination are linked to high estrogen levels, men can perform such tasks only as well as the least able female, since men lack estrogen? A more interesting angle for me in this story is that researchers are still pondering the link between female hormones and mental/physical abilities while no similar research has been conducted about male hormones. Aren't researchers interested in that? NINA J. BAIRD Chicago, Nov. 18, 1988 | The Case for a High-Estrogen President |
203981_4 | in Asia,'' the political analyst Greg Sheridan wrote in 1984 in The Australian, one of the country's largest daily newspapers. ''The first task for all of us,'' he continued, is ''to know much more about the nations and the peoples who are our neighbors.'' Older Australians, however, find all this quite bewildering. Most were raised on a myth of white superiority dating back to the heyday of British power. When the shiploads of British convict-settlers lapped against this uncharted continent in 1788, they gave short shrift to the nomadic people who had been roaming Australia unchallenged for nigh on 40,000 years, brutally driving them off ancient hunting grounds. The next target was the Chinese (described by an Australian rabble-rouser as ''pig-tailed, moon-faced barbarians''), thousands of whom had been lured by the discovery of gold in southeastern Australia in 1851. Friction was inevitable, culminating in the 1861 massacre in New South Wales of hundreds of defenseless Chinese miners by white prospectors. Legislation to stem the influx of Chinese was one of the first measures passed by the Aus-tralian Parliament after the national articles of federation were signed in 1901. The nonaboriginal population then was 95 percent British and 99 percent white and, for decades, preservation of racial purity remained a national obsession. In the 1930's, the combination of immigration curbs and worldwide economic depression kept Australia dangerously underpopulated. When World War II ended, the population had scarcely topped 7.5 million. No sooner had hostilities ceased than the country's first Minister for Immigration, Arthur (Populate or Perish) Calwell, introduced a scheme of subsidized passage to Australia. More than a million Europeans arrived between 1945 and 1955. The majority came from the British Isles, although increasing numbers were drawn from central and southern Europe. Asians continued to be barred. Nonetheless, the postwar years saw a steady undermining of the country's all-white policy. The painless assimilation of so many immigrants into a booming economy helped the Government discard many of its more outrageous racial prejudices. And with the demise of the British Empire, Australians - long used to basking in Britain's reflected glory -were forced to readjust to a humbler regional role and to a more equable relationship with a revived Japan, a reviving China and a host of newly free, fast-developing countries sprouting around the Pacific rim. In 1972, the Labor Party swept into power after 23 years of coalition rule by the | Australia Goes Asian |
203961_1 | Association for a Better New York. About 450,000 students are enrolled in institutions in the city. Students may take a quick ''tour'' of the campuses by viewing promotional videos of the schools, complete with students talking with professors, mixing colorful liquids in chemistry laboratories and mingling misty eyed at graduation ceremonies. Tuition Information ''I think it's great,'' said Vincent Jhingor, one of about 30 high school students who previewed the new addition to the four-year-old career center, which offers its services free. ''It's easy. Instead of sending for information, all you have to do is push the computer.'' Bernardo Pillot, a high school junior who is interested in engineering, took a look at his computer screen and winced. ''It's a lot of money,'' said the 16-year-old from the Bronx, who was scanning tuition rates. ''Instead of carrying around all those pamphlets, you can find what you want without wasting time,'' said Kishia Woodall, 15 years old, who is a sophomore at Murry Bergtraum High School for Business Careers, in Manhattan. The center is a nonprofit corporation supported by government agencies, foundations, businesses and private individuals where businesses advise and interview young people looking for part-time and full-time work, in addition to the information about colleges. 'An Electronic Counselor' ''The kids can come here and in a couple of hours can visit 87 colleges and universities,'' said Lewis Rudin, chairman of the Association for a Better New York, which created and sponsored the addition, along with the Samuel and May Rudin Foundation and the New York State Department of Labor. The computers will be particularly helpful to disadvantaged students, who might not have considered college as an option, Mrs. Holloway said. The seven I.B.M. Infowindow touch-screen computers sit in a renovated room within the career center. Students begin the program by choosing the size of a school, from less than 1,000 students to 25,000 or more. They are offered the choice of public or private schools, and two- or four-year options. Once the type of college is narrowed down, students choose areas of interest, ranging from fashion design to electrical engineering, and are shown which colleges offer the programs they are interested in. Once they have chosen three or four colleges, they receive a computer printout with the information. Next, they get a peek at the school's classrooms, professors, equipment, students and campuses through videos that many of the schools provide. | New York Students Can Pick College by Using a Computer |
204010_5 | the classical period for the ''Dead or Sleeping Youth'' of around 470 B.C. in the Cleveland show. It is without precedent, sui generis, and has a poignancy peculiar to itself. Once again, it is tiny; but among all the elegies that art has brought forth on the subject of fallen young manhood, this sprawling little figure may well be the finest. Tiny pieces of this order are as much a part of Greek art as the epigrams of Callimachus are a part of Greek literature. Pseudo-controversy may attach itself to such lifesized Greek sculptures as have come to light in our own day, but the place in high art of ''Dead or Sleeping Youth'' will never be disputed. The role of energy in elegy in art is further exemplified in ''The Gods Delight'' by the Etruscan group of ''Sleep and Death Carrying Off the Dead Sarpedon,'' an early-fourth-century piece that relates to a passage in the 16th book of ''The Iliad.'' As the winged brothers in their huge helmets carry the slain warrior to his last resting place in the rich countryside of Lykia we are conscious of a broad, grand, friezelike effect that is a tour de force of bronze casting. Intimacy it has not, but the Etruscans' delight in liveliness of silhouette could hardly be more vividly brought home to us. On less solemn occasions within the present show the Etruscan penchant for a frisky, jumpy, sharply pointed and implicitly anti-classical idiom finds many an energized outlet. As has already been said, this is not a classroom exhibition. Jumps in time are allowed, therefore, as when the draped figure of an early Hellenistic dancing woman from the Met is shown next to the Met's standing figure of Hermes. The fact that the Hermes may well be 300 or more years later than the dancing woman is less important than the cognate use of drapery in both figures. (The Met's dancing woman was, by the way, voted the best-loved piece in the show in a poll taken among visitors to the opening.) Thanks to an esthetic that ranks quality and delight above academic point-making, visitors end the show with an impression of almost overwhelming diversity. What is this great subject that embraces gods and beggars, philosophers and prizefighters, coin banks and comic actors, emperors and naked boy riders, incense burners and a striking instance of Egyptian folk art in | Classical Bronzes Speak of More Than Art |
203608_1 | U.S. Intelligence Community.'' Verifying Arms Control William E. Burrows, director of scientific and environmental reporting at New York University, is the author of ''Deep Black,'' a book about military satellites and space espionage. He said military officials consider the satellite crucial to policing the treaty recently signed by the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, most of which are mobile. ''At this time of year, clouds cover Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union about 70 percent of the time,'' he said. ''The intelligence types have to be able to see under them.'' The satellite was deployed on a shuttle mission cloaked in secrecy. As a rule, the Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency make no comment about the capacities or missions of spy satellites. Despite the secrecy, the payload is widely reported by space analysts, Congressional experts and trade publications to be a reconnaissance satellite equipped with imaging radar. That conclusion was strongly reinforced Friday when the Atlantis blasted off the launching pad in an unusual flight path that took it directly over the Soviet Union. Moreover, much is known about space radars in general because they were pioneered by civilians, in particular the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In interviews, civilian experts said the satellite's quickness in gathering images will give the military a powerful tool to police arms treaties and to wage conventional and nuclear wars. Seeing Through Camouflage The satellite, they added, also promises to be able to peer beneath some types of foliage and camouflage, opening up exotic new realms for surveillance from space. They note that in 1981 an experimental radar aboard the space shuttle unexpectedly penetrated up to 16 feet into the dry sands of the Sahara desert, revealing traces of ancient sub-Saharan rivers that had carved out valleys as broad as those of the present Nile. Experts said the power of the new satellite comes from an imaging radar that constantly bounces radio waves off the Earth, in effect providing the satellite with a built-in illuminator. After an antenna picks up echoes from these radar beams, the signals are quickly processed by powerful computers on the ground to create the equivalent of photographs. Thus, the satellite can ''see'' at night as well as day. Moreover, radio waves from the powerful radar can cut through clouds and fog, quickly spotting targets formerly hidden for days, weeks and | New Satellite Is the First in a Class Of All-Weather Spies, Experts Say |
203625_0 | LEAD: Fed up with a downtown building boom that has remade this city's skyline, irate residents have forced a moratorium on all construction while officials consider permanent steps to curb skyscrapers. Fed up with a downtown building boom that has remade this city's skyline, irate residents have forced a moratorium on all construction while officials consider permanent steps to curb skyscrapers. Following the lead set two years ago when San Francisco voters approved the most sweeping limits on growth of any major city in the United States, Seattle officials are considering two measures that would drastically limit the size and design of new downtown office towers. Behind the protests against what some call the ''Manhattanization'' of the West Coast is a perception that the quality of life has declined. While Seattle has experienced record growth in jobs, construction and the migration of newcomers, many residents say the price has been too high: traffic gridlock, soaring real estate prices and a drain on government services. Seattle has the tallest building on the West Coast, the 76-story Columbia Center, and several projects in the 60-story range are being completed. The pace of construction, coming when the city has been torn up by a 1.3-mile ditch for an underground bus tunnel, has irritated longtime residents, who say they do not like or recognize their new city. 'Just Out of Control' ''There's a sense that things are just out of control,'' says Ted Inkley, leader of a petition drive that produced a measure that will appear on the ballot next spring. The measure, similar to the San Francisco law, would limit new construction to the equivalent of one 40-story building a year. ''Our initiative is somewhat of a blunt instrument, but we felt we didn't have any other choice,'' said Mr. Inkley. While acknowledging that the measure can only restrain the city's growth but not stop it, Mr. Inkley said, ''The shock value will be very effective.'' Some critics say restrictions on skyscrapers can have disastrous effects on growing cities, sending rent prices up and keeping new businesses out. In addition, they say downtown zoning decisions are too complex to be placed before a vote of the people. Seattle's Mayor, Charles Royer, one of those who argues that the citizen measure is too severe, offered his own plan this week. His proposal would slow the pace of construction and place a limit of 550 | Some Say 'Enough' to Seattle Boom |
203722_1 | the director of the Institute of Inter-American Studies at the University of Miami. The simple explanation is that the Soviet Union needs Cuba as much as Cuba needs its benefactor. For nearly 30 years, Cuba has provided the Soviet Union with a military and political foothold just off the coast of Florida. The Soviet Union has a brigade of 2,600 soldiers and as many as 12,000 civilian and military advisers on the island. With billions of dollars in Soviet military assistance, Cuba has built one of the strongest armed forces in Latin America. The Soviets operate an electronic eavesdropping center near Havana that can monitor telephone conversations along the East Coast of the United States, and their reconnaissance aircraft and warships sometimes operate from Cuba. Cuban troops and advisers serve as Soviet proxies in Nicaragua and Angola. At home, Mr. Castro has had little success in diversifying the Cuban economy in his nearly 30 years in power. The country remains heavily dependent on sugar, which brings less on the world market these days than it costs to produce. The Soviet Union buys Cuba's sugar at three or four times the world price and also provides petroleum that Cuba sells on the world market. The proceeds have become Cuba's second most important source of income. Mr. Castro has come to represent the old thinking and the hard-line school. Initially, Mr. Castro seemed to ignore the changes in the Soviet Union under Mr. Gorbachev. But last July he declared that Cuba and the Soviet Union faced different problems that required different remedies. He castigated Cuban admirers of Mr. Gorbachev's restructuring as ''two-bit imitators,'' and then added, ''If someone has a toothache, why should he look for a cure for corns?'' Mr. Castro insists that his relations with Mr. Gorbachev are excellent and that the Soviet Union accepts his decision to go his own way. But Soviet officials often joke derisively about Cuba's economy and Mr. Castro privately snipes at the Soviet leader. Little to Gain Though Leonid I. Brezhnev's visit to Cuba in early 1974 was the last by a Soviet leader, Mr. Castro goes to Moscow nearly every year and has met several times with Mr. Gorbachev. The Soviet advisers in Cuba concentrate on technical matters rather than on policy. The Soviets and the Cubans seem to have an arms'-length business relationship and rarely socialize. Several American experts say they believe | Moscow And Havana Still Can't Differ Much |
205218_4 | years from then until 1980, the budget increased to just about five times what it had been 15 years before. And the deficit increased to 58 times what it had been. So we came in inheriting literally deficit spending built in to the structure of government. Now, with regard to the tax cuts, yes, the rates were cut, but since 1981, our revenue from those taxes has increased by $375 billion and our projection - and we've been very accurate on our projections - our projection for 1990 and the budget we're working on now calls for another $80 billion increase in our revenues with the rates as they presently are. If you look back beyond us to Coolidge and his tax cuts, if you look to the Kennedy tax cut in his Administration which was very similar to the one that we later put in, in every case it did not reduce the Government revenues. It raised them. So it is maintaining this and continuing to get back to a reduced spending. Because the spending increase, while the revenue was increasing $375 billion, the spending increase was close to $100 billion more than that increase in revenues. Deficit and Spending Q. Some of your former associates claim that you deliberately created the larger deficit in order to dismantle the compassionate social programs for the poor, the sick, the needy, the handicapped, the elderly, which you didn't like. Is that true? A. No, Helen, it is not true and that is, I guess, political propaganda also. Actually, the reductions that we have made have not been made in the actual basic spending. I have cut the increases that were asked for. But also, we have taken action to vastly improve the business management of government. When I came here, there was a program, one program - I found out about it when I was Governor a program in which the administrative overhead was so great that it cost $2 to deliver $1 to a needy person. Now this is the thing - one of the things that we've been trying to correct. But actually there has been an ongoing increase in the college - the aid to college students. There has been an -an ongoing increase in housing. With all of the talk about the need for housing, that has been increased. And I can go on about all the | Presidents News Conference on Foriegn and Domestic Issues |
203327_0 | LEAD: *3*** COMPANY REPORTS ** *3* Aifs Inc (AMEX) Qtr to Sept 30 1988 1987 Revenue 33,223,000 28,754,000 Net inc 1,787,000 1,189,000 Share earns .53 .33 Yr rev 95,604,000 66,259,000 Net inc 536,000 1,875,000 Share earns .16 .55 The company said results for its first quarter ending Dec. *3*** COMPANY REPORTS ** *3* Aifs Inc (AMEX) Qtr to Sept 30 1988 1987 Revenue 33,223,000 28,754,000 Net inc 1,787,000 1,189,000 Share earns .53 .33 Yr rev 95,604,000 66,259,000 Net inc 536,000 1,875,000 Share earns .16 .55 The company said results for its first quarter ending Dec. 31 will include a non-recurring gain of about $864,000 as the result of the settlement of a lawsuit. | Aifs Inc reports earnings for Qtr to Sept 30 |
205406_0 | LEAD: The Procter & Gamble Company received patent approval this week for new uses of olestra, the company's potentially revolutionary fat substitute made from nondigestible, calorie-free sucrose polyester. The patent also covers a dietary program for lowering a person's level of cholesterol. The Procter & Gamble Company received patent approval this week for new uses of olestra, the company's potentially revolutionary fat substitute made from nondigestible, calorie-free sucrose polyester. The patent also covers a dietary program for lowering a person's level of cholesterol. Olestra, first patented in 1971, is said to taste and cook like animal fat. Because the compound passes through the body without being digested, however, it adds no calories or cholesterol. Procter & Gamble is currently petitioning the Federal Food and Drug Administration to allow olestra as a partial replacement in cooking oil and shortening and for use in salted snacks like potato chips. The new patent suggests far more elaborate uses, however, ranging from spaghetti and meatballs to sandwich meat, hamburgers, pizza, desserts and even baby food. The dietary regiment calls for using olestra to substitute for the fat in such foods and using vegetable protein to substitute for the animal protein. The patent states that people should be able to lower their cholesterol if the sucrose polyester amounts to five-tenths of 1 percent of their daily diet and the balance of animal and vegetable proteins is roughly equivalent. A company spokesman cautioned that most of the uses of olestra were still experimental, and had not been submitted for Federal approval. Procter & Gamble received patent 4,789,664. PATENTS | Spaghetti and Meatballs From a Fat Substitute |
205301_0 | LEAD: Sugar futures prices soared to four-month highs yesterday on expectations of reduced availabilty of sugar from Brazil, analysts said. Sugar futures prices soared to four-month highs yesterday on expectations of reduced availabilty of sugar from Brazil, analysts said. On the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange in New York, sugar for delivery in March settled 0.55 cent higher at 11.86 cents a pound, the highest daily settlement since Aug. 5. It was rumored that the Brazilian Alcohol and Sugar Institute was preparing to announce a diversion of substantially more sugar cane from sugar-making to alcohol production. Brazil has embraced the use of gasohol - an automobile fuel made from gasoline and alcohol - like no other country. A recent OPEC agreement to limit crude-oil production has pushed oil and gasoline prices higher, which in turn has led to speculation that Brazil will renew its efforts to encourage gasohol use, analysts said. If the Government-run Alcohol and Sugar Institute does indeed announce a greater diversion of sugar cane to alcohol production, ''obviously that would mean less sugar would be available for exporting purposes,'' said Arthur Stevenson, an analyst with Prudential-Bache Securities Inc. in New York. Fell Earlier in Week Sugar prices had fallen earlier in the week on speculation that Brazil would soon emerge as a large-volume seller of sugar on the world market. ''This has really turned that situation upside down,'' Mr. Stevenson said. Brazilian concerns also spurred a strong rally in the coffee market. It has been a dry spring so far in Brazil, the world's largest coffee producer, and fears of drought damage to the 1988-89 Brazilian coffee crop have begun to arise. Meanwhile, the weather in Colombia, the No. 2 coffee producer, has been extremely wet, hampering the harvest of the 1987-88 coffee crop, said Sandra Kaul, an analyst with Shearson Lehman Hutton Inc. in New York. Coffee settled 0.29 cent to 1.60 cent higher, with March at $1.2727 a pound. Livestock and Meat Gain Livestock and meat futures posted strong gains on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on bullish signals from the cash markets, including the first signs of a significant drop in hog slaughters since early 1987. Hog kills for the day totaled 337,000 compared with 339,000 a year ago, and kills for the week totaled 1.881 million, up from 1.879 million a year ago. The current figures were closer to figures a year ago than | Sugar Hits 4-Month Highs; Brazil Export Cut Foreseen |
209944_0 | LEAD: Brazilian governments commonly shrug off criticism of the cowboy strand in their society. That strand is evident in the environmental holocaust sweeping the Amazon rain forest and the cold-blooded murder of a trade unionist who dared to challenge slash-and-burn land developers. Brazilian governments commonly shrug off criticism of the cowboy strand in their society. That strand is evident in the environmental holocaust sweeping the Amazon rain forest and the cold-blooded murder of a trade unionist who dared to challenge slash-and-burn land developers. If Brazil wants the world's sympathy on matters of debt and democracy, it cannot ignore the international outrage at assaults on the environment and those who defend it. The World Bank now places environmental conditions on its lending. Others who would help Brazil are also right to insist on respect for the common planetary heritage. Little has come so far from President Jose Sarney's public pledge to halt the calamitous burning by cattle ranchers of the heavily forested western Amazon, where 170,000 fires were counted last year. Rondonia, endowed with one of the world's richest ecosystems, is now 17 percent deforested. Nor is there much confidence in the Sarney regime's capacity to vigorously prosecute the killing of Francisco Mendes Filho, or adequately protect others who follow in his path. Mr. Mendes, a trade unionist, defended the traditional rights of freelance rubber tappers who have literally fought to save their forests from bulldozers. A few weeks ago he was warned that local landowners had hired gunmen to kill him; he was shot last Thursday even as police guards sat in his kitchen. The 30,000 tappers Mr. Mendes helped organize were, like himself, descended from migrants who were drawn by the great rubber boom that peaked before World War I. From 1890 to 1911, Brazil and its rubber barons dominated production of ''black gold,'' driving prices so high that the jungle city of Manaus became a byword for extravagance. But those same high prices led the British to sneak rubber tree seedlings to Ceylon and Malaya, breaking Brazil's monopoly. Brazil was abruptly undone by the planters' shortsighted greed. History repeats. In a calamitous cycle, burning rain forests adds to the greenhouse effect, disrupts the process that transforms carbon dioxide into oxygen, kills a profusion of species and devastates the homes of Amerindians. Stripped of a nurturing canopy, jungle soils are soon infertile. Cattle ranches are thus inherently uneconomic without | Brazil Burns the Future |
199509_0 | LEAD: Young people who do not attend college have a high chance of facing unemployment or jobs with poverty-level income and little hope for advancement, said a report released Thursday. Young people who do not attend college have a high chance of facing unemployment or jobs with poverty-level income and little hope for advancement, said a report released Thursday. ''Many of them never break free'' of the cycle of unemployment and low-paying jobs, concluded the 198-page document, based on a two-year study involving the 20 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the United States who were not attending college. America's highly competitive technological society places great emphasis on educational attainment, the report said, adding, ''Those with less education must scramble for good jobs in a sea of part-time, low-paying, limited-future employment opportunities.'' 'The Forgotten Half' The study by the Washington-based Commission on Youth and America's Future was made public at a news conference. The commission was established by the William T. Grant Foundation, a private organization that finances research on issues concerning young people. The report, ''The Forgotten Half: Pathways to Success for America's Youth and Young Families,'' recommended that state and national leaders encourage local governments, business associations and employers to expand education, training and employment opportunities for young people. In 1986 almost 33 of every 100 families headed by a person under 25 years old had income below the poverty level, according to the report, which said that rate was more than double the rate of 1967. The poverty level in 1986 was $7,240 for a family of two, according to Federal income guidelines. Schools were faulted in the study for ignoring young people who are not college-bound. ''Educators have become so preoccupied with those who go on to college that they have lost sight of those who do not,'' the report says. 'Youths Often Unprepared' Students enrolled in college can expect to receive $5,000 a year in public and private scholarships and grants, the report said. The report compared this with the 5 percent of non-college-bound young people who receive Federal funds for job training. Typically, these funds are only given for about four months, at a level of $1,800 to $2,300 a student, the report said. ''Whether they graduate from high school or drop out, these youth are often unprepared to take their places as responsible citizens, to start new families, or to work in anything but | MANY IN U.S. FACE BLEAK JOB OUTLOOK |
197441_5 | pre-menopause. They needed much more intense sensations. We treated these women with either a placebo or with estrogen for six months and we found the women who got estrogen, their levels of feeling came back to where they were before menopause. And the women who got placebos didn't change at all. Q. How does menopause affect a woman's sex drive? A. Well, 50 to 60 percent of women who are seen in menopause clinics describe a loss of interest in sex. Now, probably the most important background factor to that is vaginal dryness and painful intercourse. There are also issues with desire. What we have found is that when you restore the estrogen level you restore blood flow to the vagina and increase secretion and the problem with pain disappears. The woman is more interested in having sex. Another finding is that over 30 percent of the women lose clitoral sensation. So the clitoris is touched and they don't feel anything. By using hormone replacement, in 50 percent of the women within four to six months, all of that feeling returned. So something that was lost - and the woman thought was gone forever - comes back. Q. Estrogen seems to be the main treatment. Why has it caused so much controversy? A. In the 1970's, it became very clear that if women were just given estrogen they would have an increased risk of cancer of the lining of the uterus. What has been learned since then is that if estrogen and progesterone are given in a cycle the same way the woman produced these hormones all her life, that by mimicking her normal cycle, you do not have an increased risk of cancer. And note, women who take estrogen after menopause compared to women who don't, have half the risk of dying from a stroke and about 40 percent less chance of dying from a heart attack. Q. Can anyone take estrogen? A. No. Women with breast cancer, for example, cannot be given estrogen. Ways of treating them include different kinds of medications to deal with symptoms like sleep disturbances and hot flashes. You can also get some benefit from exercise and calcium in terms of preventing osteoporosis, which frequently occurs during menopause, but you really can't depend on that because it's been well demonstrated that the benefits are not very substantial without estrogen. Q. Since the female body | 'This Is a Quality of Life Issue' |
197491_1 | large group of plants, including rapeseed and crambe, is not recommended as part of the human diet because it can severely damage the liver. But scientists have devised ways to chemically rearrange it into something resembling crude oil. From that state it can be further refined into plastics and other useful products. Rapeseed and crambe, which grow in several areas including the Great Plains, are among the plants that researchers and farmers are increasingly viewing as possible new sources of industrial raw materials and other products. Agriculture Department officials predict that some five million acres could be turned over to these crops in the years ahead. ''There isn't going to be a single wonder crop,'' said Melvin G. Blase, professor of agriculture economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia. ''But we do see a number that have significant industrial potential.'' Mr. Blase was a member of the Secretary of Agriculture's New Farm and Forest Products Task Force, which urged last year that greater attention be paid to such crops, both for economic and strategic reasons. Not only would farmers benefit, the report said, but national security would be enhanced. Defense officials, for example, are concerned about the supply of natural rubber, which is used in aircraft tires among many other products. All of it is now imported. The Departments of Defense and Agriculture are currently sponsoring a pilot project in Arizona to grow and process guayule, from which they will extract natural rubber and other materials. Hevea trees, found mostly in Southeast Asia, now account for the vast majority of the world's natural rubber. Guayule, a drought-tolerant, latex-producing shrub that grows well in the American Southwest, is not yet cost-competitive with hevea, said Richard Wheaton, director of the Agriculture Department's Critical Materials Office. But that may change in a few years, especially if other useful substances can be derived from guayule. Mr. Wheaton estimates that if the United States were to supply 25 percent of domestic natural rubber needs with guayule, it would require nearly 1.5 million acres of production. Still another promising plant is kenaf, a fiber product that grows best in the South. Kenaf already has been used to produce newsprint, and a newsprint mill that will convert kenaf to paper is now being built in Texas. ''These are all non-food products,'' Mr. Wheaton noted. ''It's a different way of looking at agriculture's role.'' WHAT'S NEW IN SPECIALTY FARMING | Need Aircraft Tires? How To Grow Them Yourself |
197702_1 | Bank, there was a 53 percent decrease in the stock of Atlantic cod. At the same time, increased competition and more efficient fishing techniques caused the annual catch to rise from 27.4 tons to 34 tons. As with the cod, stocks of haddock, flounder and pollock also declined significantly, according to Vaughn C. Anthony, chief of conservation at the Northeast Fisheries Center at Woods Hole, Mass. The dearth has come as a shock to New England fishermen, who thought their problems were over when a law was enacted in 1977 that extended the country's exclusive fishing rights to 200 miles off the coast and set up regional councils to organize the industry. The 200-mile limit silenced complaints from fishermen that Russian, Polish and Canadian boats were greatly depleting their fish stocks, and temporarily eased fears that New England's lobsters, herring and halibut would be fished to extinction. With foreign boats banished, high expectations for American fishing drew an infusion of private capital. Some people in the industry believed the Northeast's fishing fleet could be built up to rival the fleets of countries like Canada and Japan. Processing plants were built and modernized, and steel boats replaced rickety wooden trawlers. The new boats hold more fish and use electronic systems to navigate and locate fish. The newest fishing gear was on display last month at an exposition in Boston, where manufacturers showed off video plotters that generate navigational charts, electronic monitors that tell how many fish have been caught and ship facsimile machines. Fish finders can now display not only sections of the ocean but water temperature and boat position as well. Futuristic Fleets ''The rapid growth and modernization of the fleet on the East Coast just simply was too much too soon,'' said Guy Marchesseault, head of the New England Fisheries Management Council. None of the conservation tactics the council has used - from trying to promote less popular fish species to limiting the amount of fish that can be caught on a single trip - has been able to counteract the effects of technical improvements. Industry experts say that radical measures are needed to reverse the trend. One Federal official suggested that the only way to restock the waters would be for the Commerce Department to close the fisheries temporarily. A more realistic option now under consideration is a stricter limit on the number of fishing permits states can | IDEAS & TRENDS: Intensifying Competition; Northeast Fishermen Catch Everything, And That's a Problem |
197482_0 | LEAD: IT'S one thing to produce an alternative crop. It's another to sell it. IT'S one thing to produce an alternative crop. It's another to sell it. Local grain elevators and cooperatives, futures trading and other components are all part of a well-tuned, international marketing infrastructure that takes grains from the farm to the market. But with the exception of farmers' markets in towns and cities, no such framework exists for small growers of fruits, vegetables and other edible alternative crops to get to market. Because of this, public and private groups, including governments at every level and a growing number of businesses and foundations, are beginning to devise ways to bring crops and consumers together. States, in particular, are promoting home-grown crops. Among the most successful are fresh fruits and vegetables. Take tomatoes, for example: Consumers, long resigned to the pulpy baseballs called tomatoes that arrive from California, gleefully scoop up the fresher local tomatoes - even if they do cost more. States along the East Coast - Massachusetts and New Jersey, in particular - boast some of the most ambitious programs designed to link local farmers with consumers. Providing market information is a vital task for the state and local agencies. ''People have to ask first whether they've got a market before they start growing things,'' said Chris Carlson, county agent in Madison County, Neb. This information includes projected demand for a particular crop, transportation costs and potential sales outlets. Missouri's program, like most others, started small, but has experienced steady growth. AgriMissouri, which began in 1985 and now receives about $200,000 a year in funding, is a state program to make consumers more aware of Missouri products and help growers find markets. This still, however, is small when compared to programs for traditional crops. The Erdmans, the Missouri family that grows berries and tomatoes, contacted AgriMissouri when they began selling their tomatoes, said Mark Russell, program coordinator of domestic marketing at the Missouri Department of Agriculture. AgriMissouri helped set up a promotional display of the Erdmans' tomatoes and another farmer's bacon at a Kansas City-area supermarket that now sells the tomatoes. By the end of the year, Mr. Russell said, some 200 grocery stores and supermarkets will be promoting Missouri products. ''Quality, value and freshness are the terms we want to be linked to Missouri products,'' he said. Michigan and Nebraska, among others, have broadened their focus. | To Market, To Market to Sell Microwave Popcorn |
197629_0 | LEAD: A coup attempt by Tamil mercenaries led by local rebels in the Maldives has aroused public anger against the attackers, according to reports from the Indian Ocean island nation. A coup attempt by Tamil mercenaries led by local rebels in the Maldives has aroused public anger against the attackers, according to reports from the Indian Ocean island nation. Witnesses said a crowd of Maldivians shouted that they wanted to be given the mercenaries so they could ''kill them here,'' as the first group was taken off an Indian frigate on Thursday. Indian and Maldivian troops held the crowd at bay but some managed to get close enough to grab the hair of the rebels. About 70 mercenaries have been detained. The coup attempt was directed at President Maumoon Gayoom, who was inaugurated for a third term on Friday. News reports said he told those attending the ceremony that the intruders had brought ''international terrorism'' to the tropical nation that has rarely seen violence of any kind in years. ''The Nov. 3 episode of high treason against the constitutional Government of this country is unparalleled in our recent history,'' President Gayoom reportedly told the gathering of more than 1,000 people who observed a minute's silence to honor those who had died in the violence. Although Mr. Gayoom did not name the group involved in the attack by mercenaries and rebels on the capital, Male, Maldivian officials have defined it as a Sri Lankan Tamil insurgent faction known as the Peoples Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam. The men were captured after Indian frigates chased a hijacked ship across the Indian Ocean for three days. Indian troops then boarded the hijacked ship, freeing at least 22 hostages. According to the captain of the hijacked ship, five hostages, four mercenaries and three crew members were killed in the capture of the vessel and in earlier shootings on board by the rebels. The ship, the Progress Light, sank soon after the capture after suffering heavy damage during its flight from Male from Indian gunners firing from the shore. Details of the aborted coup are being given in Indian newspapers by reporters who have spoken to the detained men, but much is still unknown. Interviews with the captured Tamils, and their conspirators, two Maldivian businessmen, Abdulla Luthfee and Sagar Nasir, have shown that contacts between the two groups developed several months ago. According to The | Maldivians Threaten Captive Tamil Mercenaries |
200271_0 | LEAD: Many dreadful sounds have reverberated through the yawning rotunda of the old Octagon on Roosevelt Island, the heart of New York City's first municipal insane asylum. But the noises that now shatter its silence are the final ones - as floors, walls and ceilings come crashing down. Many dreadful sounds have reverberated through the yawning rotunda of the old Octagon on Roosevelt Island, the heart of New York City's first municipal insane asylum. But the noises that now shatter its silence are the final ones - as floors, walls and ceilings come crashing down. A few months shy of its 150th anniversary, the Octagon is not just in need of restoration. It needs to be stabilized and shored up so it does not collapse while restoration plans are being made. Harsh, pearly daylight floods the 62-foot-high, five-story rotunda. The domed roof was lost to a fire six years ago and the spacious circular well has been exposed ever since. The wood surfaces of the 10-foot-tall Ionic columns on each landing have weathered to the consistency of elephant's hide. Most Spectacular Feature A chaotic mound of charred timbers, upended furniture, broken balusters and crumpled sections of glass-block floors is growing at the rotunda's base. A whole wall, with a doorway and rows of coat hooks, recently dropped from the second floor to the first. Remarkably, the Octagon's most spectacular feature is still in place, even if it is no longer navigable. This is a flying staircase that spirals through the rotunda almost without visible support, still graceful in its ravaged state. ''It is a stairway that goes up to the heavens - which is why it's deteriorating,'' said Rosina K. Abramson, president of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation. The state corporation is trying to raise $54,000 to match a $200,000 stabilization grant made under the state's Environmental Quality Bond Act. It already has $146,000, the insurance proceeds from the 1982 fire. Completed in Stages ''There are a lot of historic buildings in the city that need a lot of money,'' Ms. Abramson said. ''We have to build a constituency that goes beyond the typical constituencies.'' Specifically, she said she hoped the medical profession would take particular interest in the abandoned landmark. The New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island (as Roosevelt was once called) was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis and completed in stages from 1839 to 1848. The | A Historic Asylum Needs Urgent Care |
200177_0 | LEAD: To the Editor: To the Editor: Donald Mann's formula for resolving the problems posed by pollution and other forms of global defilement inevitably reminds one of another final solution (''Population Size Can't Be Overlooked as an Environmental Danger,'' letter Oct. 31). But Mr. Mann's analysis implies the application of even more drastic measures than those involved in execution of the earlier horror. There are more than 5 billion people in the world, 245 million of them in the United States. Mr. Mann believes that world population should be stabilized at around 1.5 billion to 2 billion and the population of the United States at between 100 million and 150 million. If the ''environmental dangers that now threaten the earth's natural systems'' are already out of control, we cannot hope that even the most effective programs of birth control will bring Mr. Mann's scheme into ''optimal'' balance. Not now, not 50 or even 100 years from now. It is far more likely, in the absence of some horrendous natural or man-made catastrophe, that global population in the year 2075 will be at least as high as it is now. Mr. Mann's desired 1.5 billion to 2 billion people worldwide is an even more fanciful (ominous) proposal than the shockingly fanciful die-back totals recommended by Paul Ehrlich in 1968 and 1972. Only one possible conclusion can flow from Mr. Mann's analysis: We will die of environmental destruction and assorted pollutions no matter what we may or may not do because ''too many people'' is the source of each. We have no time either to slow down or to reverse population growth. Put in the form of a syllogism, Mr. Mann's argument looks something like this: Our planet is fast becoming uninhabitable because of pollution and environmental degradation. Vastly excessive numbers of people are responsible for these developments. Therefore we must get rid of the excess people - some 3 billion plus. So runs the syllogism, leading to a resolution for which, understandably, Mr. Mann suggests no blueprint. ROBERT A. MANNERS Waltham, Mass., Nov. 2, 1988 | Too Many People - Global Pollution - X |
200230_1 | no Ivorian cocoa will be sold for less than $2 a kilogram and on Oct. 6, the start of the new cocoa season, he reaffirmed his position. The prices of chocolate bars in the United States and Europe have not gone down, the President reasoned, so why should the Ivory Coast's one million cocoa growers earn less for their cocoa? ''He is trying to affect cocoa prices the way Saudi Arabia affects oil prices,'' one Western diplomat here said. While the comparison to Saudi Arabia does not fit perfectly, there are similarities. The Ivory Coast has not tried to undercut the other cocoa producers, but it has, encouraged them to join the $2 embargo. There will be a meeting later this month in Lome of the Cocoa Producers Alliance. Its members are Brazil, Cameroon, Ecuador, Gabon, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Sao Tome Principe, Togo, and Trinidad and Tobago. So far most of them have quietly taken advantage of the Ivorian embargo, increasing their share of the market. The Ivory Coast's action is generally seen as having prevented even greater price drops. Largest Producer of Cocoa If any third world nation can successfully fight back against declining commodity prices, it may be the Ivory Coast. The world's largest producer of cocoa, it last year accounted for almost one-third of the world's 2.1-million-ton cocoa bean crop. But in interviews here, several British cocoa traders said prices are dropping because the bushy trees were overplanted in the late 1970's and the melon-shaped cocoa pods were overharvested in the 1980's. In the last decade, the Ivory Coast doubled its annual crop, to 635,000 tons last year. Brazil and Indonesia have also seen similar increases. World cocoa production is expected to increase by 7 percent this year, but consumption of cocoa products will increase by only 4 percent, the traders predict. Cocoa-consuming nations say they have 700,000 tons in stock, or enough for four months of world consumption, although Ivorians argue that chocolate companies use this unsubstantiated figure to depress market prices. ''The price of cocoa in the Ivory Coast today is the same that it was five years ago, while the price of chocolate in your country has not stopped growing,'' Denis Bra Kanon, the Minister of Agriculture, said during a visit to Washington last July. ''There is then someone between us who takes the big profits, and who doesn't worry | Ivory Coast Gambles to Prop Up Cocoa Prices |
200286_1 | daughter, Athena, one of the world's richest people, family business associates in Athens said yesterday. A Dramatic Story Like the tumultuous saga of the Onassis family itself, the story of Christina Onassis's death on Saturday was a dramatic, controversial and global affair, with implications in Europe and North and South America for governments, businesses and ordinary people touched by the family. Not least were the implications for the infant, destined some day to control fleets of ships, skyscrapers in the capitals of the world, islands in the Ionian Sea and power beyond the dreams of all but a few people whose enterprise, or good fortune, sets them apart. In Buenos Aires, authorities yesterday said they were investigating the cause of Ms. Onassis' death, which a judge called questionable, even though an aunt, Mary Onassis, insisted that she had died of a heart attack and ruled out suicide. ''She was at the best stage of her life,'' Mary Onassis said as she entered a Greek Orthodox bishopric, where the body was taken for a vigil after a mass. Other friends said, however, that Ms. Onassis had been undergoing an intensive weight-loss course, part of a constant fight against obesity that sometimes left her in excess of 200 pounds. Judge Orders an Autopsy Ms. Onassis was found unconscious at a friend's mansion outside Buenos Aires and was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital, where officials said she had apparently died of a heart attack. But a local judge ruled the death suspicious and ordered an autopsy after a box of pills was found near her. Forensic experts were to analyze the pills. In Athens, a half-dozen of the 14 members of the board of the Onassis Foundation gathered yesterday - and conferred by telephone with the other members around the world - to discuss funeral arrangements and the future of the business founded by Aristotle Socrates Onassis, a Greek maverick who immigrated penniless into Argentina in the 1920's and became one of the world's richest men. A family spokesman in Piraeus said that the body of Ms. Onassis would be returned to Greece and buried beside her father and brother on the Ionian island of Skorpios, which is owned by the family. ''Christina's death was a complete shock to all of us,'' said Stelios Papadimitriou, secretary general of the Onassis Group, the family holding company, as well as a member of | Few Changes Are Expected in the Onassis Empire |
195715_0 | LEAD: International A3-11 International A3-11 Andrei Sakharov arrived in Boston yesterday, beginning his first trip to the West. He said he was ''a freer man'' because he had finally been given permission to travel abroad. Page A1 A Jordanian austerity campaign was initiated as the Government announced laws against the import of goods like automobiles and microwave ovens. The measures were caused by a ''catastrophic'' economic crisis, a diplomat said. A3 In Canada's election campaign, John Turner has been a new man since last month's debates gave him an edge over his opponents for Prime Minister. The Liberal candidate has stumped fiercely since recent polls showed him ahead. A10 Afghan rebels say their advances will not be stopped by the Soviet deployment of new missiles and aircraft in Afghanistan. But the guerrillas say they may have to ask the United States for more sophisticated weapons. A10 Koreans are angrily denouncing former President, Chun Doo Hwan, less than a year after he left office. Demonstrations across the nation have called for the arrest of Mr. Chun, who ruled as a widely feared autocrat. A9 New laws forbid aid from the U.S. to rebels in Nicaragua, the Sandinista Government has announced. Violators of the ban will be charged with treason, according to Nicaragua's Vice President. A6 A national strike threat in Poland was made by the leader of Solidarity, Lech Walesa. His outlawed union said it would call for strikes if the Government does not reopen the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk. A3 French leaders were embarrassed when only 37 percent of all voters casted ballots on the future of New Caledonia. President Francois Mitterrand had made an urgent televised appeal for a strong turnout. A8 Indians rescue Maldivian hostages on high seas A5 National A12-14, B8-17 The Energy Department disregarded warnings that the nuclear weapon industry was beset by flaws in management and safety, and rejected recommendations to overhaul safety programs at weapon plants, reports and interviews show. A1 A bill regulating children's TV, overwhelmingly approved by Congress, was vetoed by President Reagan, who said the bill obstructed freedom of expression. A1 A physician went on trial for murder in Florida, two years after he disclosed on television that he had helped kill his terminally ill wife after her suicide attempt failed. The prosecution says the 47-year-old doctor deserves life in prison. A12 Mississippi voters will decide whether to replace a 100-year-old | NEWS SUMMARY |
195639_3 | glass extending into a narrow, diamond-bearing stem, or is it the top of a deposit that extends straight down for hundreds of miles? ''The only way to tell is to test,'' Mr. Morgan said. ''And the only way to test is to dig.'' There has been talk of doing exactly that since the state first bought the park in 1972, but few took it seriously until business in town turned sour. Last year the Arkansas Legislature passed a bill that would allow the state to lease the Crater of Diamonds property to a commercial mining operation. A study group was established to evaluate the proposal, and debate has raged loudly in Murfreesboro ever since. ''We need the jobs,'' said Tammy White who has been looking for one for a year and a half. ''I read somewhere that there would be 400 new jobs with the mine.'' ''Is Arkansas so hard up for a few temporary jobs and a bit of additional short-term revenue that we would sacrifice the one thing that Arkansas has unique in the world?'' Kay Killgore asked at one of the nearly dozen task force public hearings in the past 10 months. ''We can't just sit and hope that tourism will pick up,'' said Clifton Crews, owner of the Ka-Do-Ha Indian Village, Murfreesboro's other major tourist attraction. Ticket sales there are dropping by $200 each month, he said, in a trend that could be reversed if the mining contractor was required to build elevated walkways around the mine and offer public tours. Current state proposals include such a provision and suggest that several feet of soil from the current pit be moved elsewhere so that the tourists could continue to sift for diamonds. Now the question is out of the residents' hands. The study group has recommended to the Parks Department preliminary testing on the park to determine the shape and value of the diamond deposits. The department's decision is expected at the end of the month. The fact that the choice is no longer theirs to make has not stopped the debate among the residents of Murfreesboro. ''Diamonds are just diamonds,'' said Howard Kidd, who would like a mining company to come into town. Mr. Kidd owns the Mauney House Petting Farm across the street from the park entrance and says the business would bring more tourists. ''What we're talking about is more important than diamonds.'' | Murfreesboro Journal; Agonizing Over Worth of Diamonds |
195646_0 | LEAD: President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Michel Rocard were rebuffed today when only 37 percent of France's registered voters heeded appeals to cast ballots on the future of the South Pacific territory of New Caledonia. President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Michel Rocard were rebuffed today when only 37 percent of France's registered voters heeded appeals to cast ballots on the future of the South Pacific territory of New Caledonia. Although the referendum was approved by almost 80 percent of those who bothered to vote, the anemic turnout - the lowest in a referendum since World War II - was a severe embarrassment to the two Socialist leaders. On Friday night, President Mitterrand made an urgent televised appeal for a strong turnout from 38 million registered voters. There was never any doubt that the plan would be approved, but in the New Caledonia archipelago the ''yes'' vote triumphed by only 57 percent, with many French settlers rejecting a statute that they fear will lead to independence in a decade. Thirty-seven percent of the territory's 145,000 inhabitants are French. New Caledonia has been troubled by sometimes violent confrontations involving the French settlers and the archipelago's indigenous Melanesian people, who are 43 percent of the population. The statute approved today will decentralize the territory into three zones and provide for a referendum on self-determination in 1998. Investment and Job Training The statute also provides for a major investment and job-training effort in the archipelago, which is rich in nickel, to raise the professional and economic situations of the Melanesian population. It restricts the electorate for the 1998 self-determination vote to current inhabitants of New Caledonia, which might give a slight edge to partisans of independence. Mr. Rocard, who became Prime Minister in May after President Mitterrand was elected to a second seven-year term, invested a great deal of energy in negotiating the New Caledonia accord between Jacques Lafleur, the local French settler leader, who is a neo-Gaullist, and Jean-Marie Tjibaou, leader of the Melanesian separatist movement. The Prime Minister regards the New Caledonia agreement as his major achievement so far. The New Caledonia issue had been thrust to the forefront of Mr. Rocard's concerns because of a spasm of violence there on the eve of France's presidential election that some regarded as part of a desperate, last-minute effort by Jacques Chirac, the neo-Gaullist candidate, to defeat Mr. Mitterrand. On May 5, | Voters Approve New Caledonia Plan |
195735_0 | LEAD: New York, like other cities, must decide between two approaches to controlling vicious dogs. One, sponsored by the Koch administration, focuses on a dog: the Mayor would ban the American pit bull terrier. A far better approach, supported by dog-owner and animal-protection groups, focuses on canine behavior. New York, like other cities, must decide between two approaches to controlling vicious dogs. One, sponsored by the Koch administration, focuses on a dog: the Mayor would ban the American pit bull terrier. A far better approach, supported by dog-owner and animal-protection groups, focuses on canine behavior. There's no gainsaying that American pit bull terriers are generally identified by the public as vicious - some correctly. Yet the United Kennel Club, which registers the dogs, does not find them to be universally vicious, nor to possess in common dangerous physical or psychological traits. The American Kennel Club does not recognize such a breed, though its American Staffordshire terriers closely resemble the United Kennel Club's pit bulls. The Mayor's law would ban more pit bulls in the city and require registration of those already here. That leaves much room for mischief: would a dog whose owner describes it as a Staffordshire be excludable? Could an owner claim exemption for a dog on the grounds that his ancestry includes other breeds? How could the city be protected from lawsuits if a policeman killed a dog he misidentified as a pit bull? These issues have arisen in other cities that sought to identify dog behavior by breed. An expert dog show judge needs bright light and ample time to measure a dog's resemblance to the ideal. A policeman may have neither when responding to a complaint of canine viciousness. What the officer can respond to with assurance is evidence of viciousness. Thus a bill sponsored by Councilwoman Carolyn Maloney of Manhattan would impose appropriate restraints - up to euthanasia -against dogs of any breed or mixture trained to fight or found to have attacked without provocation. Since 86 percent of the dog attacks in New York City last year were not ascribed to pit bulls, the behavior standard is a better basis than breeding on which to protect both people and pets. | A Good Law for Bad Dogs |
195616_0 | LEAD: An intelligence-gathering satellite capable of spying on 80 percent of the Soviet Union will be carried by the secret space shuttle mission scheduled for late this month, a magazine reports. An intelligence-gathering satellite capable of spying on 80 percent of the Soviet Union will be carried by the secret space shuttle mission scheduled for late this month, a magazine reports. ''When fully deployed, the spacecraft will have a span as large as 150 feet,'' Aviation Week and Space Technology reports in its current issue. ''It has the characteristics of an imaging radar or optical reconnaissance involving digital imaging, or both.'' ''The radar transmission is designed to penetrate cloud cover and would be valuable in both ocean and land surveillance,'' the article said. The space shuttle Atlantis and its five-man crew will be flying the third classified Defense Department shuttle mission. The Pentagon and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have cloaked most details about it in secrecy. NASA's processing director, Conrad Nagel, said the agency was aiming for a launching on Nov. 28 or 29. Robot Arm to Be Used Aviation Week said the satellite would be launched into an orbit that will enable it to look down on 80 percent of the Soviet Union. At least three of the 27 earlier shuttle missions flew over the same Soviet territory. The magazine said the satellite would be dropped out of the cargo bay by an astronaut using the craft's 50-foot robot arm. Two astronauts are prepared to take a space walk in case there is trouble deploying the satellite. Aviation Week said estimates of the cost of the satellite, filled with advanced-technology equipment, range as high as $500 million. It said the satellite could be retrieved on a later shuttle mission and returned to earth for improvements. Sources insisting on anonymity earlier told The Associated Press that the Atlantis would carry an intelligence-gathering satellite that would help United States intelligence officials verify that the Soviets were complying with arms control treaties. The sources also said the astronauts would conduct several experiments aimed at defining man's role as a military observer in space. The tests would involve coordination with troop and ship movements and missile launchings on earth. | Likely Shuttle Cargo Detailed |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.