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1723975_0 | Long Island has a garbage problem. It is producing trash in ever larger amounts, with no place to put it all -- not around here, anyway. We have no landfills, no more room at our incinerators and no realistic chance of ever building new ones. But the amount of waste we produce keeps rising, year by year, ton by ton. From one perspective, this problem is no problem at all, because landfills in other states have been happy to do business with us. We can still buy, eat and consume all we want, and pay to make whatever is left go away. But it is obvious, as John Rather explained in a perceptive Times article last Sunday, that this system is inherently unstable. We are buying our way out of trouble, but that may not always be the case. Somewhat less than half of Long Island's municipal solid waste goes to local incinerators. About one-third is recycled. The rest -- more than one million tons a year -- is trucked away. That is fine for now, but as Mr. Rather explained, the cost of transporting trash is rising, and space in private landfills in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia is becoming scarce. Trash-removal costs may rise for any number of reasons: for example, a bidding war for landfill space with New York City, which has been exporting trash since it closed the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, or higher fees and stricter truck inspections imposed by states that grow tired of being dumped on by out-of-state trash trucks. There is also the looming threat of competition for incinerator space. The Town of Hempstead sends its trash to a privately run trash-to-energy incinerator in Westbury under a contract that expires in 2009. The incinerator is licensed to burn more than 900,000 tons of trash a year -- all of it, for now, locally produced. But when the contract expires, the company will be free to accept garbage from other bidders, perhaps New York City. That could add even more trucks to the armada now pounding along our highways, laden heavily with the byproducts of our affluence. What is the solution? Recycling should be a big part of it, except that we are recycling less than ever. A study by the Rauch Foundation found that as Long Island's trash output has grown -- we are now tossing out 7 pounds | Taking Out the Trash |
1728171_2 | of Muslim women, like that of Western women before them, is often slow and sometimes deeply painful when women feel they must break with their families. But nowhere is this quiet new form of Islamic feminism more evident than in the realm of religion, the centuries-old domain of men. Young women are increasingly engaging in Islamic studies, a fast-growing field across Europe that offers a blend of theology, Koranic law, ethics and Arabic. Diplomas from the two-year courses allow women to teach in mosques and in Islamic schools, or to act as religious advisers. ''This is a big shift,'' said Amel Boubekeur, a social scientist at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, who is writing her doctoral thesis on Europe's ''new Islamic elites.'' ''Instead of having to be passive, women now become teachers,'' she said. ''It used to be taboo for women to recite the Koran.'' But now, she added, ''It offers them a new prestige, new jobs and, not least, it gives them a stronger voice in dealing with their parents, brothers and husbands.'' In fact, Ms. Boubekeur said, women found religious texts more effective than secular arguments. Today, Islamic studies courses, often taken on weekends and accessible to secondary school graduates, are expanding in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. In the six institutes for Islamic studies in France, almost 60 percent of this year's nearly 1,000 students are women. La Grande Mosquée in Paris, a large white and green compound from the 1920's with a finely chiseled minaret and students milling about under arcades, is France's leading religious institution. It has its own theological school, largely financed by Algeria. Abdelkrim Bekri, the director, said that the school started a program in 2002, unavailable elsewhere, to train young women as spiritual counselors for hospitals and prisons, much like the ministry of Christian chaplains. Twenty women had graduated, and others were in training, he said. ''There is a great need here,'' he said. Although women are not allowed to perform the most prestigious ritual of leading the mosque in Friday Prayer, Ms. Boubekeur said women were pushing to have a voice and participate in religious debates. ''What is new is that they want direct access to religion, without depending on the rigid views of the clergy,'' she said. Change can be measured in other small steps. At the Islamic University of Rotterdam, a small group of theology | Muslim Women in Europe Claim Rights and Keep Faith |
1728189_3 | military exercises had already begun to pay off. Capt. Celvin Castro Alvarado, commander of Guatemala's Caribbean Naval Base at Puerto Santo Tomás de Castilla, said that on June 14, Guatemala captured about 3,300 pounds of cocaine after forcing a speedboat to run ashore. The capture, he said, was a result of a joint chase, first by Honduras and then by Belize, which forced the boat into Guatemalan waters. Capt. Manuel Salvador Mora Ortíz, chief of Nicaragua's Atlantic Naval Command, said his troops had seized nearly 2,000 pounds of cocaine in November from a boat whose captain had claimed to be fishing for lobster. Still, said Captain Castro, for every boat captured, at least four got away. ''This war is asymmetrical,'' he said. ''What drug traffickers have is a wealth of resources. They have a lot of money. They have advanced radios and guidance systems. ''We have very limited resources. And a lot of our equipment is antiquated.'' The traffickers' current boats of choice, authorities said, are known here as go-fasts, 800-horsepower, fiberglass vessels that authorities said can carry loads up to two tons at speeds that reach 70 miles an hour. ''It is a powerful little threat,'' Captain Leslie said, ''because they are fast and hard to see. You can't always see them from an airplane. You can't always see them on radar. And when they're running at top speeds, you can't always catch them.'' Mr. O'Brien, of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said, ''You may think it's harder to find an airplane, but it's actually much harder to find a boat.'' Joint exercises like the one involving the Gentian bring to life the difficulties of intercepting drugs at sea. When the Hondurans had their turn, it was feminine wiles, not weapons, that foiled their efforts. The captain of the Chupacabras came down from the bridge, pointing a fake automatic rifle. The sailors fired their fake guns. The captain fell. Another gunman approached from the stern. The sailors jumped on top of him, wrestled his gun away and handcuffed him. Then the sailors found a woman hiding in the engine room. They put cuffs on her, but did not close them tight. So she wiggled her hands free, grabbed her gun and shot the sailors. ''The woman always stumps them,'' Captain Pino said with a smile. ''They have a hard time learning that women can be just as dangerous as men.'' | Anti-Drug Forces Follow Traffickers to Sea |
1727076_0 | Japan's population declined this year for the first time since the country began keeping demographic records in 1899, according to preliminary figures released by the government this week. The decrease, which specialists say signals the start of an era of shrinking population, occurred two years earlier than had been expected. It poses serious challenges to the long-term economic vitality of Japan and its ability to care for one of the world's fastest-aging societies. The number of deaths outnumbered births by 10,000 this year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Excluding wartime figures, the number of births, at 1.067 million, was the lowest since records have been kept; births dropped 44,000 from the previous year. The number of deaths, 1.077 million, was higher than had been expected because of a flu epidemic early this year, the ministry said. ''Our country is now standing at a major turning point in terms of population,'' Jiro Kawasaki, the minister of health, labor and welfare, said at a news conference on Thursday. With government policies appearing to be ineffective in raising the birthrate, many young Japanese have stopped contributing to the national pension system because of doubts over its long-term health. Anxieties over the future are likely to deepen now that the long-dreaded demographic turning point, which specialists predicted would occur in 2007, has already been reached. ''The trend toward fewer children is becoming more and more significant,'' Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters. ''I once again feel we have to come up with policies to stop this trend.'' Japan's current population of 128 million is expected to fall to 100 million by 2050 and to 64 million by 2100 if current trends continue. There is no movement in Japan to open the door to widespread immigration. The Japanese workplace, more than those in other advanced countries, remains closed to women, in keeping with the belief among the country's male political and business leaders that married women belong at home. Japan has not only one of the world's lowest birthrates, currently 1.29 lifetime births per woman, but also the highest life expectancy. Those trends are particularly evident in rural areas, where graying Japanese dominate and schools are being shuttered. By 2025, nearly 30 percent of the population is expected to be older than 65. A pervasive pessimism about the future is believed to have led young Japanese to postpone | Japan's Population Fell This Year, Sooner Than Expected |
1727060_1 | of cerebral palsy, a condition that results from faulty development of or damage to the brain and includes impaired mobility, spasticity and, in many cases, seizures, hindered mental development and difficulty swallowing. Either way, ''They said he would be like a baby all his life,'' Ms. Borbon said. Physically, though, Emmanuel grew into a man, and his grunts and cries are carried in a man's voice as he makes his pleasure and displeasure known. Ms. Borbon, 51, who went through college while working as a schoolteacher in the Dominican Republic, gave birth to Emmanuel in 1984, two years after she and her husband had their first child, Jose. Jose, now 23, lives in the Bronx and works for a printing company. Speaking of Emmanuel, Ms. Borbon said, ''I don't care what I have to do to take care of him.'' She referred to him as Peque -- the Little One -- his nickname in the family. Ms. Borbon's life would have been difficult in any case, but was even tougher because she and her husband divorced when Emmanuel was 2, and he has not contributed to the boys' support since, she said. That year, 1986, she moved with the children to New York, where they first stayed with her cousin but left when the cousin's boyfriend moved in. Ms. Borbon found a furnished room in Upper Manhattan -- but not before what she called an ''awful two weeks'' in a hotel for homeless families where she and the boys were placed by the city. To pay for the furnished room, she cleaned apartments and ''picked up cans in the park,'' with her earnings supplemented by contributions from friends, she said. But then her situation improved; while taking Emmanuel to Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan for physical therapy in a program for children with severe disabilities, she was hired to be the program's parent coordinator. The job, which enabled her to move into an apartment, lasted eight years, until financing for it ended. A year and a half of struggle followed, of trying to get along on unemployment insurance, welfare checks and help from a nonprofit group, Sinergia, which helps disabled people, she said. Finally, she got a job with Sinergia as a Medicaid service coordinator, and is now similarly employed by another organization. Though she earns $21,000 a year and Medicaid pays for Emmanuel's medical needs and home care attendants, Ms. | The Neediest Cases; Keeping Her Son Going, Through Music and Love |
1727052_1 | Troubles, which have claimed 3,500 lives on all sides. This year, Robert McCartney, a 33-year-old Belfast Catholic, was killed in a barroom Tattack blamed partly on members of the Irish Republican Army. Rival Protestant gangs fought battles in which four people died last summer. The sectarian strife has touched Mr. Mitchell in increasingly dramatic ways. He was forced to move two years ago from the hard-line Unionist Rathcoole area, where he grew up and where he learned the harsh cadences that have made him what some critics consider the most authentic dramatic voice of working-class Unionism. Since then, he and his family have lived in the Glengormley district, a mixed area populated by middle-class Protestants and Catholics. But, he said in the telephone interview, the volume of criticism about his plays -- like ''Loyal Women,'' performed at the Royal Court Theater in London in 2003 -- and of personal threat intensified this year, culminating in a warning to leave within four hours, or every member of his family would be killed. ''I have had threats, people saying they were going to get me,'' Mr. Mitchell said. ''The police have told me to alter my routine, not to frequent certain pubs and clubs. There's a playground-bully mentality that I have lived with.'' Since the latest attack, he added, ''my whole family and extended family are scattered around secret locations.'' Unlike the novelist Salman Rushdie, who was protected by British government bodyguards after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa against him in 1989 following publication of ''The Satanic Verses,'' Mr. Mitchell said he had no police protection. ''We asked for police protection,'' he said. ''They said they were too busy.'' On Nov. 23, he said, men with their faces covered and wielding baseball bats came to his home and blew up his car, forcing him, his wife, Alison, and their 8-year-old son, Harry, to flee. ''My car was bombed in my driveway,'' he said. Simultaneously, the home of an uncle was also attacked. His parents had already been forced to leave their home. ''It's very disruptive to watch a family struggle through it and see a little boy being frightened all the time,'' Mr. Mitchell said. His son, he said, has been so disturbed by the bombing that he is afraid of every small noise. But he said he is determined to continue to work: ''It's not going to stop | Irish Playwright Speaks From Hideout |
1727097_0 | In a setback for a controversial area of biotechnology, the company that led the way in trying to produce pharmaceuticals in genetically modified crops ran out of money and shut its doors yesterday. The company, the Large Scale Biology Corporation, based in Vacaville, Calif., said in a statement Thursday that all of its approximately 70 employees had been let go. Large Scale was founded in 1987 as Biosource Genetics and was apparently the first company to try to produce protein-based drugs and industrial chemicals in genetically engineered plants. Such production, it argued, would be faster and far less expensive than using genetically engineered bacteria or animal cells, which is the usual method of producing pharmaceutical proteins like insulin and growth hormone. But environmental groups and food companies have expressed opposition to pharmaceutical-producing crops, saying that drugs might accidentally end up in the food supply, causing health problems and forcing costly product recalls. Large Scale used tobacco, a nonfood crop, so its technology was somewhat less controversial than that of companies using corn or rice. And under the method used by the company, the genes put into the tobacco plant could not be spread by pollen. Still, controversy over agricultural biotechnology in general has made it difficult for small companies in that business to raise money. Robert L. Erwin, a founder and the chairman of Large Scale, said the bigger problem for his company was the reluctance of drug companies to have their products developed in crops. Since there are no crop-produced pharmaceuticals on the market yet, he said, drug companies do not know how easy it will be to win approval for such drugs from the Food and Drug Administration. ''Everybody wants to be the second one out,'' Mr. Erwin said. ''There are very few corporate executives willing to bet on an unproven process.'' Moreover, he said, pharmaceutical crop developers are wrong in assuming that lower production costs are an important consideration for drug companies. With high prices for their drugs, Mr. Erwin said, ''cost is not really an issue for them.'' Large Scale's demise is a blow to Owensboro, Ky., in the heart of tobacco country, where Large Scale has a factory to extract drugs from the tobacco. Some civic leaders in Owensboro had been hoping that pharmaceutical production would be a source of income for tobacco farmers and the basis for a local biotechnology industry. A recent study | Biotech Company Closes After Running Out of Cash |
1725361_0 | After decades of drug addiction, Adriane Allen believes she has finally grown too old to smoke crack. At 57, she has chest pains, has lost most of her teeth and has trouble moving her arms. Lately, she worries about how her grandchildren will remember her when she is gone. ''I definitely do not want them mourning me as an addict, that I died as an addict,'' said Ms. Allen, shaking her head, covered with gray hair and fidgeting uncontrollably during an interview at a New York City needle-exchange center. ''You get tired of being tired,'' she continued. ''They say that is a drug addict's saying, but it is true, you do get tired of being tired. I am tired of walking around in a daze. I am tired of walking around with sunglasses on. Blocking out real life. I am ready to face my demons and just say I don't want it anymore.'' As the first of the baby boomers approach 60, addiction treatment centers are bracing for a growing population of older drug addicts. Many aging users, veterans of the counterculture 60's, started using drugs as teenagers and have progressed to harder substances and addiction, while others turned to illicit drugs, abuse of prescription medications or increased alcohol intake later in life, with the loss of jobs or spouses. Since, traditionally, substance-abuse- treatment programs and research have focused on teenagers and young adults, doctors, social workers, therapists and researchers say that new approaches need to be developed for the ballooning number of boomer addicts. ''In treatment of people 55 and older, we are starting to see much more cocaine addiction, which we never saw before,'' said Frederic C. Blow, an associate professor in the University of Michigan's psychiatry department, who has developed policy recommendations for the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. ''In fact, in some treatment programs, we are starting to see more problems related to stimulant abuse: cocaine, crack and marijuana use.'' The federal government's 2004 survey of substance abuse, released in September, estimated that more than three million adults 50 and older had used marijuana, hashish, cocaine or crack, heroin, hallucinogens or inhalants or had misused prescription drugs during the previous year. That number could more than double by 2020, said Joseph C. Gfroerer, director of the substance abuse agency's population surveys. Willard L. Mays, a delegate to the White House Conference on Aging | Old Habits |
576417_1 | several points: *Neither force can achieve victory in the field. *There is no serious public or parliamentary pressure on either the British or Irish Government to arrange a peaceful settlement. *The peace talks, which collapsed last month, are unlikely to make any progress until after local elections here next spring. The elections involve the majority Protestant politicians, who want to remain part of Britain, and the minority Catholics, who are divided between support for the I.R.A. and its political wing, Sinn Fein, and the moderates of the Social Democratic and Labor Party. More Violence or Negotiations? The question no one can answer is whether the I.R.A. will expand its military action, or, through Sinn Fein, move toward negotiations after a decrease in terrorist attacks, or even a cease-fire. Protestant paramilitary groups have also increased violence in recent years. But the Protestants are not as well armed or trained as the I.R.A. They kill suspected I.R.A. guerrillas and sympathizers, but do not detonate bombs that kill civilians. As I.R.A. violence increased at the end of November and the start of December, about 100 people were injured in bombings in Belfast and Manchester, England. After a bomb explosion in a crowded Belfast shopping street on Dec. 2, the British Secretary for Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, said: "It looks as though the I.R.A. are continuing with a policy which they believe, incredibly, will yield them some support, some success. They have no support and they will get no success. They hope to achieve a political result by violence. They're never going to succeed like this." Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, which refuses to renounce I.R.A. violence, said after the bombing: "I want to see it ended. I don't want to see people either bombing or being bombed." But Mr. Adams said the bombings, "can't be wished away," and added that Sinn Fein policy was still that while the party does not advocate armed struggle, it recognizes it as part of "the right to resist British occupation of our country." No Military Solution Michael Mates, a Conservative Member of Parliament who is British security minister in the province, said: "There's no military solution. We must hold our ground, contain the terrorists, until the politicians find the way forward." One of the politicians is John Alderdice, a psychiatrist and head of the Alliance Party, which is a 60-40 mix of Protestants and | For All the Bombs, the I.R.A. Is No Closer to Goals |
576290_2 | England, the first World Congress of Herpetology was taking place. On the agenda were esoteric and, to the non-herpetologist, faintly ridiculous-sounding presentations like "Belly Pattern of Triturus Carnifex and Triturus Vulgaris in Two Ponds of Ligurian Apennines, Northern Italy." But to many of the 1,300 participants from around the world, it was as if there were another conference taking place in the hallways and over meals, during breaks and at talks late into the night. The subject of this impromptu conference could be summed up in one ominous question: Where have all the frogs gone? "A bunch of us got together and started comparing notes," recalls Jay M. Savage, a professor of biology at the University of Miami. "People were struck by the fact it seemed to be occurring on a worldwide basis." Savage has spent much of the last 40 years studying the evolution and ecology of amphibians, mostly in Central America. In 1964, he and a colleague discovered a species of toad native to Costa Rica, in what is now called the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. The toad's Latin name is Bufo periglenes, but it is better known as the golden toad -- the male a Day-Glo orange. The golden toad lives underground, and emerges for an annual, explosive, breeding season. Since 1964, scientists have watched as thousands of these tiny, vivid animals gathered for their yearly ritual. That was until 1988. That year, at the primary breeding site, only one adult male was found. Two years later, there were none -- and none have been seen since. The apparent disaster is being repeated among other Cloud Forest species. The exquisite glass frogs, small lime-green animals with see-through undersides and large quizzical eyes, were abundant until the late 80's; now they can hardly be found. "Jewels in the night we called them," Savage recalls. "You used to see hundreds." The black, yellow and red patterned harlequin frog, an amorous creature that can spend days clamped in a breeding embrace, also virtually disappeared in the late 80's. "Human beings are great at rationalization," Savage says. "We said, it must be local damage; if we just went over the hill, we'd find them. Most herpetologists were trying to explain things that way. What was striking was we found it was happening on such a broad basis." At the meeting, Michael J. Tyler, an associate professor of zoology at University of | Silence of the Frogs |
576219_0 | THE ECONOMY Clinton's Team Looks a Lot Like Cuomo's Aside from Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, whom President-elect Clinton tapped for Treasury Secretary, and Representative Leon E. Panetta of California, his choice for budget director, Mr. Clinton's dream team of economic advisers all have the same pedigree: they were part of the economic brain trust of Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York. Mr. Clinton's team of pinstripes and mortarboards -- Robert B. Reich, Labor Secretary; Robert E. Rubin, senior economic adviser; Laura D'Andrea Tyson, head of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Roger C. Altman, Deputy Treasury Secretary all advised the Cuomo Commission on economic competitiveness, said Vincent Tese, Director of Economic Development for New York. What kind of policies will the dream team promote? "They'll be working on a growth strategy with investment tax credits as the cornerstone," Mr. Tese said. "The idea is for G.D.P. to grow at 3 percent a year or better." Taking the Deficit Pledge "The economy, stupid" may have been what brought President-elect Clinton to Washington, but now that the economy's breath is once again fogging the mirror, what will Mr. Clinton do? Last week at a meeting in Washington, Mr. Clinton said he would make good on his pledge to leave the country with a "substantially smaller" budget deficit at the end of his term, but he refrained from promising how small the deficit would be. The deficit is expected to reach $340 billion in 1993. And while recent statistics may be showing that the economy has left its comatose state, Mr. Clinton cautioned the country not to confuse signs of life with economic health. The "evidence is more mixed," he said, adding that long-term problems, like the nation's slow productivity growth, must still be addressed. Cable's Next Rival For decades, cable TV systems have had no competition. That is beginning to change. First the Federal Communications Commission said it would let local phone companies carry "video dial tones" and now it has approved a new microwave technology that uses super-high-frequency radio waves to transmit 49 channels of television. The new system sends signals over the airwaves and is far less expensive to install than cable. The F.C.C. proposed offering licenses to two companies in each market and gave Cellular Visions of Freehold, N.J., which developed the technology, the choice of a license in either New York or Los Angeles. "It's another form | Business Diary/December 6-11 |
576149_0 | To the Editor: In "Sublime Sculptures in a Dubious Setting" [ Nov. 22 ] , Michael Kimmelman berated the National Gallery of Art in Washington for its Greek loan exhibition because he doesn't feel that "the occasion is worthy of the objects." He went on to insist that "major loan shows are supposed to make a contribution to scholarship as well as to engage the public." I've had the sense lately from similar reviews in The Times that a new art form has emerged: the curated, purposeful exhibition, and that this form is more important than any art object. In other words, the form's exponents, having found the "vision thing" lacking, appear to feel that paintings and sculptures are of interest only insofar as they can be the subjects of heady intellectualization. Exhibitions thus take value from the amount of verbiage they produce: catalogues, essays, long-winded, scholarly, generally irrelevant blurbs stuck on the walls next to each work, whose usual effect is to interfere with the viewer's attempt to see the work. Mr. Kimmelman states at one point: "No one would question for an instant the sheer value of seeing sculptures as sublime and as moving as these." Yet the whole point of his essay appears to question just that value if it is unencumbered by the didactic. He writes disparagingly, for instance, of people "who may feel grateful for the opportunity to see textbook works, like . . . the breathtaking Nike adjusting her sandal . . . without having to go all the way to Europe." He raises the important issue of possible travel damage to the work, but implies the risk is worth taking if the loan show can teach some lesson or advance some theory that will, of course, be forgotten or replaced long before the works, fragile as they are, vanish from the earth. I saw some of these sculptures in Greece 30 years ago, look forward to refreshing my vision without guilt when the show arrives in New York, and am happy for those who, unable to get to Greece, can at last see these works, perhaps for the only time, freed finally of dependence on reproductions and verbiage. HARRY C. SMITH New York NATIONAL GALLERY | Seeing Beats Reading |
576291_7 | high degree of academic productivity, with 135 research papers and 47 abstracts published by department members during the 1991-92 medical year. That productivity, while testimony to the energy and versatility of people who carry a heavy clinical load, is also the department's collateral for future grants. The grant money is intended for research, and related research is designed to provide patient care: some programs study the developmental progress of babies exposed prenatally to cocaine, while others provide them with good medical care and regular developmental assessments; some study the best ways to support teen-age mothers, and others establish clinics they can attend with their babies. "We're a vulnerable department," Alpert says. "No endowment, no pots of gold. We had to practice the Willie Sutton rule: we went for where the money was. And fortunately, the money was in the right place -- early on, in primary care training, and later in child development and AIDS." Public interest and possible financing often go together; the perception that the social fabric is threatened may translate into a push for more studies. Consider the recent news media leitmotif "crack babies" -- the shame of our cities, the death of our schools. Brain damaged, uncontrollable, unlovable and unable to love. Drs. Barry Zuckerman and Deborah A. Frank have argued that the loud public discussion of the effects of maternal crack use on the developing fetus is largely scaremongering, based on incomplete scientific evidence, and has disturbing political consequences. By portraying these children as permanently damaged, we make them into "throwaway children," as Dr. Zuckerman puts it, children for whom society is not responsible. In the medical journal Pediatrics this year, they staked out their position: Prenatal drug exposure is only one of multiple treatable or preventable biologic and social "stressors" experienced by children living in poverty. By focusing on cocaine and not on lack of adequate nutrition, health care and education, we conveniently can blame mothers and not the conditions of poverty. Drs. Zuckerman and Frank go on to criticize the study that sounded the alarm: sample size too small (only 18 babies), confounding variables (babies exposed to many drugs), nonblind examiners (medicalese referring to the fact that the people doing developmental assessments of the babies in the study knew who had been exposed to drugs). In another study they point to, by a team including Ira J. Chasnoff, the president of the National | Tackling Problems We Thought We Solved |
576138_0 | To the Editor: I took the thyroid-replacement medicine, the anti-inflammatory for what might be arthritis, the calcium tablets and the vitamin D to help process the calcium. Now I can settle down and reply to Natalie Angier's review of "The Change: Women, Aging and the Menopause" (Oct. 11). Right on, Ms. Angier! When I read Germaine Greer's book, I wondered if my reaction was singular. "The Change" is painstakingly researched, but what a diatribe! In making her opinions so clear, the author leaves the reader no opportunity to make up her own mind. I resent being told, by Ms. Greer or by old-school gynecologists, how I ought to respond. ANNE CAMPBELL DENLINGER Merion, Pa. | 'The Change' |
577547_2 | a shape as we can between now and when Clinton comes in." He said he understood why the Israelis felt the need to reply to procovations they have suffered. The slain border policeman was abducted by the militant group Hamas within Israel proper, enraging and spreading fear among the country's citizens. But Mr. Eagleburger argued that by expelling the Palestinians, Israel has "played into the hands of the very people who are trying to wreck the process." The American representative, Edward J. Perkins, said in a speech before the resolution was approved tonight that the United States was voting for it because the deportations were illegal under international law. Israel should have brought charges against the accused in a court of law in order to insure "full judicial process," he said. Mr. Perkins said the United States also strongly condemned "the brutal murder of Israelis" that preceded the deportations. A spokesman for the P.L.O., Nasser al-Kidwa, described the deportations tonight as "not so different from ethnic cleansing and other forms or racism." The text approved tonight "strongly condemns the action taken by Israel, the occupying power, to deport hundreds of Palestinian civilians, and expresses its firm opposition to any such deportation by Israel, the occupying power." Like the resolution adopted in January, the Council also "reaffirms the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949 to all the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967 including Jerusalem, and reaffirms that deportation of civilians is a contravention of its obligations under that convention." The fourth of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 setting out the laws of war provides for the protection of civilians in conflict areas. It forbids an occupying military power from mistreating the population of an occupied area, including deporting its citizens. As expected, the Council voted unanimously today to condemn reported mass rapes of mainly Muslim women by Serbian forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It ordered armed United Nations escorts for a team of European monitors investigating the accusations. The resolution "strongly condemns these acts of unspeakable brutality" and supports the European Community initiative to dispatch the investigators to camps run by Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina where the women were held. The United States signaled its growing impatience with the Serbs in Bosnia today by voting for a nonbinding General Assembly resolution that urges the Security Council to consider authorizing member states to help repulse | SECURITY COUNCIL VOTES TO CONDEMN ISRAELI EXPULSIONS |
578077_1 | more such conflicts are inevitable, as are the agonizing questions they raise. The Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, an adviser to the American Catholic bishops on international affairs, said, "People are calling for reinterpretations of the concepts of both national sovereignty and nonintervention, saying that the way we've understood them for three centuries is not adequate." Next semester, Father Hehir (pronounced hare), a faculty associate at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and a professor at Harvard Divinity School, will teach a course entitled "The Use of Force: Political and Moral Criteria." Not long ago, many divinity students would have dismissed the listing as a contradiction in terms. And just this month, before the announcement of plans to send American troops to Somalia, leaders of major Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim groups issued a rare joint statement calling for firmer action by the United States in both Bosnia and Somalia. The United States "is not policeman to the world," the resolution acknowledged, "but the mass murder of innocents is unacceptable." The United States, the statement continued, should act "in concert with other nations where possible, alone where necessary." Such views are hardly unanimous among clergy members or among their staff or the active congregants who set the tone on international affairs. Troubled Discussions The American Friends Service Committee and the Friends Committee on National Legislation, two independent Quaker organizations, have opposed the Somali action. Kara Newell, executive secretary of the service committee, called its position "consistent with the longstanding Quaker belief that military force never solves problems." But she and other Quakers reported very troubled discussions at local Sunday meetings of Friends. The Fellowship of Reconciliation, a group that embraces a variety of religious and nonreligious pacifists, also opposes the Somali action. "Some pacifists feel that armed escort of food convoys is legitimate, just as most pacifists would say that police actions within a society are legitimate," said Doug Hostetter, the group's director. "What makes us so uncomfortable about this is that it is not truly international," and there is "an element of skepticism about whether the food delivery is the only goal." New Questions for Pacifists Pax Christi, a Roman Catholic anti-war organization whose 12,000 members include about a fifth of the country's Catholic bishops, reluctantly approved of the military intervention in Somalia. But it also called for troops to be placed under the command of the United | Reshaping Pacifism to Fight Anguish in Reshaped World |
578007_0 | World Economies | |
574984_0 | To the Editor: "Home Care in New York, a Model Plan, Awaits Cuts" (front-page article, Nov. 20) presents a picture of home care issues that is both incomplete and simplistic. First, presenting New York's system of allocating Medicaid-funded home attendant service as a "model plan" would seem to imply endorsement of a system that is both very expensive and wholly unsophisticated in the allocation of these monies. Second, the fact that the article referred only to home attendant services vs. nursing home care could lead the reader to surmise incorrectly that these are the only care options for frail persons in the community. Third, the proposed changes discussed in the article exemplify a draft of a failed attempt at cost savings. California and a number of other states have had a program for some years much like the plan now under consideration by New York; California is currently working to revise this plan yet again. What is missing from these programs are formulas that are based on patients' needs. Further home attendant service should be thought of as only one of many services available to meet a recipient's needs. Having designed community-based plans of care for frail elderly and younger disabled persons under both Medicaid and private long-term care insurance auspices, I would posit the following factors as essential to home care: * What is the extent of functional loss for essential day-to-day tasks (bathing, shopping, meal preparation, transportation, toileting, etc.)? * Does the individual evidence symptoms or behavior that put him or her at risk of serious harm if left without 24-hour care or supervision (for example, wandering, frequent falls, severe confusion or disorientation, impaired decision-making or judgment, violence toward self or others)? * If continence is impaired, what is the severity of such impairment? * To what extent can assistance be scheduled (for example, meal preparation, bathing, shopping vs. care that must be continuous, such as protective supervision due to severe mental impairment)? * To what extent does the individual have a support system among family and friends that can be bolstered, rather than displaced, by paid services? After these questions are addressed, one can decide what services best meet the needs of the individual, such as home care, day care, home-delivered meals, home health, telephone emergency response systems, volunteer friendly visiting, mental health services, rehabilitative programming, help from local religious groups, and so on. Determining who gets | Home Health Care Policies Need to Be Refined |
574970_0 | World Economies | |
578984_0 | Reindeer farms and petting zoos lure tourists. A pet reindeer, Star IV, won the designation "official civic attraction," and leads two children's parades each year. But Alaskans also enjoy their reindeer in snack form: reindeer-burgers are popular at luncheonettes, and pizza parlors substitute slices of reindeer for pepperoni. In a state that depends on wildlife for sustenance and as a mainstay of the tourism economy, reindeer are regarded in much the same way as whales, walruses or wolves. A hedge of laws and regulations protects them much of the time. But this is no fairy-tale land. Reindeer can cause problems. And when that happens, the solution is not always pretty. The scene is Hagemeister Island, a 24-mile-long uninhabited wildlife refuge in Bristol Bay, 300 miles southwest of Anchorage. Reindeer, which are not native to Alaska, were introduced to the area from Siberia a century ago. A herd brought to the island in 1965 by a Yupik Eskimo has now grown out of hand and is eating all the native lichen. The Federal Government surveyed the island in 1991 and estimated that 800 reindeer had starved to death in 1990 and that the lichen, which takes 75 years to grow back, was 95 percent gone. The Federal Fish and Wildlife Service sent a team of marksmen to the island last month. They killed 790 reindeer. But only 172 carcasses were removed, dressed and distributed to native villages; the rest were left to decay. Maybe it was the approaching Christmas holiday, maybe it was the pictures of maimed animals struggling in the snow. Or maybe it was just that the marksmen ran out of ammunition. In any case, on Nov. 29 the Government suspended what it had labeled a "mercy killing." An Eskimo doctor from Nome, Donald Olson, paid for another team to go to the island and rescue reindeer. It captured 120 animals and airlifted them to the mainland, where they were taken to an abandoned dairy farm. But then severe weather forced the rescuers to abandon their mission. One hundred ninety-three reindeer remain on the island. The lichen is going fast, and the Government is threatening to renew the shooting. At a meeting in Togiak, a village near Hagemeister Island where residents subsist on hunting and fishing, officials told villagers to submit alternative plans by Jan. 4. Villagers are angry at the way the Government handled the first round of | Alaska Journal; Reality Destroys a Fairy-Tale Image |
576461_0 | World Economies | |
575572_1 | make a career of helping children with handicaps, she says, when she was about 8 years old and discovered that an older cousin had a disability that kept him from reading. She sat down to teach him. Now, as principal of the Hungerford School on Staten Island, one of the city's special education schools, she offers an inventive program for teaching physically or mentally disabled pupils, kindergarten through age 21, that attracts children locally and from other boroughs. She believes fervently that whenever possible, disabled students should attend classes with students without special needs. "They need to socialize and develop friendships with students we classify as 'normal,' and find role models outside their immediate circles," she said. Because youngsters dependent on wheelchairs or special equipment often have to wait for available funds for repairs, she will use her $5,000 prize for a trust fund for equipment. She intends to name the fund for her father-in-law, Thomas McInerney, to "keep alive the memory of this generous Irish farmer." Annie Shen At Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, the obstetrical staff stopped counting the number of newborns called "Annie" after nine, including Egyptian, Ghanaian, Colombian and Chinese babies. "I try to discourage it," said Annie Shen, an obstetrics nurse, with a smile, "but it's such an honor." The bulletin boards in her office are covered with photographs of the babies she has tended. The Elmhurst community has been inundated in the past decade with immigrant families and the hospital's patients are said to be the most multiethnic in New York. Mrs. Shen, born in China and trained in Britain, alerted the medical staff at Elmhurst to the high incidence of diabetes among pregnant Asians, which she believes may be caused by their diet. The hospital gives her credit for rallying its response to the findings, enabling it to adapt rapidly to the new health-care needs. She is the co-author of two medical papers on diagnosing, treating and preventing the diabetes. Mrs. Shen plans to use the award to fulfill a cherished dream -- a trip to China to "look for my roots." Harry Nugent For two decades, he has made it his mission to make the 17-mile long subway run between 242d Street in the Bronx and South Ferry in Manhattan a more civilized experience through his travel commentaries. "I don't believe the public address announcements have to have the quality of graffiti," | Going Above and Beyond the Call |
575529_0 | As the first French troops arrived in Somalia to join the United States-led relief mission there, French politicians sharply criticized the televised landing of American marines near Mogadishu early today as a media event and "charity show." French newspapers also said the decision to send 2,100 French troops to Somalia had divided the French Cabinet, with the Defense Minister, Pierre Joxe, opposing the move and President Francois Mitterrand finally coming down on the side of Bernard Kouchner, the Health and Humanitarian Affairs Minister. Mr. Joxe reportedly argued that France was already taking part in United Nations-backed peace missions in Cambodia and the Balkans and could not send troops to every trouble spot. Mr. Kouchner, in contrast, has long defended the principle of "humanitarian intervention" to save innocent victims of civil fighting. Foreign Minister Roland Dumas was quoted by a spokesman as having told a Cabinet meeting today that the international community had taken "a decisive step" by using military force to save a threatened civilian population. But after television pictures of the American marines landing in Somalia were broadcast here this morning, there was a strong reaction in political circles here against French association with what Alain Juppe, a leader of the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic, described as "a circus." "I thought we were down there to save children who were dying of hunger," he said. "But if it is to organize a gigantic international media show, I don't think it's right." That was an apparent reference to Mr. Kouchner, who was photographed last weekend in Mogadishu carrying sacks of rice purchased with money collected by French children. Mr. Kouchner was also criticized by Rony Brauman, president of the Paris-based France's Doctors Without Borders, who described the photograph as "indecent." Other French figures attacked the publicity surrounding the relief mission. 'A Few Highway Robbers' "A military escort for an international humanitarian operation must not be made to look like a prime-time television series sponsored by the Pentagon," said Jean-Michel Boucheron, a Socialist deputy. Jean-Pierre Chevenement, a former Defense Minister, said he thought 30,000 soldiers too many "to handle a few highway robbers" and he expressed surprise that "hundreds" of television reporters were awaiting the pre-dawn arrival of the first American commandos. Jean Auroux, another deputy from Mr. Mitterrand's Socialist Party, said he was "very shocked" that the arrival of United States forces was timed to coincide with American news | French Fault 'Circus' Coverage of the Arrival of U.S. Troops |
579510_0 | World Economies | |
579530_1 | 30. Advocacy groups and public commissions have consistently documented how staff problems undermine the government's ability to protect children from abuse and even death. Record Number of Homicides A city-appointed panel of doctors, social workers and experts reviewed last year's record number of homicides of children in families previously identified as abusive or neglectful. In a report issued in October, the panel concluded that the city's efforts on behalf of the children had been seriously flawed in many cases. And more detailed, confidential records of 15 child death cases, provided to The New York Times by an official who was alarmed about the system's breakdowns, show that caseworkers bungled time and again. In one case, a worker visited a family and concluded that all the children were healthy. But the next day a visiting nurse had one of them hospitalized for malnutrition. In another case, a worker closely monitored the mother, but never talked to her boyfriend, who often cared for the children. He was later charged with bashing in her daughter's skull and found to be mentally ill. In yet another case, a worker accepted a foster mother's explanation that a child's bruises were self-inflicted, but experts later found that the child had been physically abused in the past. The child finally died after a severe beating. Douglas Besharov, a panel member and the author of a book about identifying child abuse, said caseworkers too often failed to see the classic pattern of escalating beatings. "We saw a slew of cases last year in which the battered child syndrome was missed completely," he said. The cutbacks among child welfare caseworkers have come while the agency has been under fire for doing little to examine the thousands of emotionally troubled children who have poured into the foster-care system in recent years from families damaged by homelessness and crack. Foster Parents Struggle Alone Many caseworkers are unable to recognize the children's special needs or negotiate the bureaucracy to get them help. As a result, foster parents struggle alone with depressed, anxious and sometimes violent children. The children end up bouncing from home to home because parents cannot handle them. And in extreme cases, they are abused because they are so hard to raise. Flawed casework by undertrained, poorly paid workers is a problem all over the country. In recent years, financially troubled state and local governments have not hired enough workers | Shortage of Trained Caseworkers Imperils Young Victims of Abuse |
574133_1 | "was a good way to end the launching season," Mr. Sieck said at a news briefing. The 10th military shuttle mission in 11 years puts an end to the Defense Department's routine use of the manned spacecraft to carry its payloads, although military officials held open the possibility of requesting a shuttle should a special need arise. In addition, unclassified military experiments will continue to be carried on some civilian flights, they said. Soon after reaching orbit, the shuttle switched to coded communications with Mission Control. Secrecy was also cited as the reason for not showing pictures of the shuttle's cargo bay, even after the satellite was released. Officials said the mounting equipment remaining in the shuttle could give away the satellite's mission. Noting that the shuttle's orbital inclination of 57 degrees takes it far north of the Equator, experts have speculated that the payload is a picture-taking satellite; an all-weather Lacrosse radar imager that can "see" through cloud cover and darkness; a White Cloud ocean surveillance spacecraft, or a communications relay satellite set to be rocketed into a different, more exotic orbit. After placing the main payload in a 200-mile-high orbit, the astronauts prepared to drop to a 176-mile orbit for the rest of the mission, the 52d since shuttles began flying in 1981. Among the crew's tasks will be to test a spaceborne receiver intended to detect data sent from Earth by low-power laser beams. The astronauts will also see if they can produce time-release antibiotics by encasing drugs in biodegradable microcapsules formed in the weightlessness of space. Camera to Be Tested The astronauts also plan to test a new hand-held camera system that could greatly improve military, weather and environmental photography from orbit. The system involves a modified 35-millimeter camera with through-the-lens-sighting. The camera is connected to a small computerized device that is intended to instantly determine the latitude and longitude of points on Earth within two miles. After pointing at two known stars to obtain a bearing, the user turns the camera to Earth and shoots the pictures he wants while the computer imprints information on the locations of the shots on each frame. Even if the user changes lenses, the camera should continue to know where it is pointing. Researchers said this is a significant improvement over the previous method of identifying the location of ground targets by taking multiple images of the same object | Shuttle Is Lofted In a Final Flight For the Military |
574157_0 | Calgene Inc., a leading agricultural biotechnology company, today named Roderick N. Stacey president and chief operating officer. Mr. Stacey, who has been a director of Calgene since 1990, will be responsible for the company's newly formed oils and cotton divisions, as well as for corporate finance and administration. Mr. Stacey's appointment is the second time that Roger Salquist, Calgene's chairman and chief executive, has named a director to a management position. Last year, Thomas Churchwell was named chief executive of Calgene Fresh, a subsidiary formed to produce and market Calgene's genetically engineered tomatoes. A native of Britain, Mr. Stacey has degrees in both agronomy and economics. "It was always Roger's intention to try to hire board members who could initially add experience at the board level and then later come into the company as it moved closer to commercializing its products," Mr. Stacey, who is 47 years old, said. Mr. Stacey was the founder and chief executive of United Agriseeds Inc., a research-based seed company that was sold to the Dow Chemical Company in 1987; he also spent 10 years in Europe and North America with the Nickerson Seed Company, a unit of the Shell Chemical Company. Transition Period "This is absolutely a transition period," Mr. Stacey said. "The technology in all three areas is proven, and there are either products ready to go on the market, or in the final stages of development," he said, referring to Calgene's efforts in genetically engineered vegetable oils, cotton and tomatoes. "The job now is to build real businesses of these products, which is always the challenge in biotech." James McCamant, publisher of the Agbiotech Stock Letter, said Mr. Salquist's practice of offering management positions to board members was an excellent way to acquire senior executives who might otherwise never consider joining a young company. "One of the biggest problems is putting on senior management that doesn't fit the culture," he said. "Roger finds people with lots of experience, puts them on the board, gets to know them and then offers them a job -- it's brilliant." Mr. Stacey and Mr. Salquist have known each other for 10 years because Calgene, based in Davis, Calif., and United Agriseeds had venture capitalists in common, and once even discussed a merger, Mr. Stacey said. COMPANY NEWS | A Director Is President At Calgene |
575401_2 | the I.R.A.'s use of tactics imported from the campaign in Northern Ireland, like the deployment of large and powerful truck bombs, the use of small incendiary devices to start fires and the hijacking of a taxi driver who was forced at gunpoint in October to drive a car bomb to the curb outside 10 Downing Street, where it exploded harmlessly about 10 minutes later. It is a measure of the growing apprehension here that this month the London police unveiled a new tactic of their own, one also borrowed from Northern Ireland, and began to set up random roadblocks, intended both to deter those trying to sneak large bombs into the heart of the city and to reassure nervous citizens. Not everyone is enthusiastic about the strategy. Paul Condon, the incoming commissioner of the metropolitan police of London, warned recently that turning London into a fortress, along the lines of Belfast, would only disrupt normal life and therefore play straight into the hands of the I.R.A. At the same time, growing fears about the scale of the damage resulting from I.R.A. bombs have prompted another worry: businesses and insurers here have begun to press the Government to underwrite the costs of reimbursing property owners for losses and damages resulting from bombings. Who'll Pay for the Damage? Stunned by the billion dollar-plus damages resulting from the bombing in the financial district in April, insurers are saying, point-blank, that they cannot afford to cover another incident on such a scale. Instead, they want the Government to pay for the bomb damage, as it already does in Northern Ireland. Over the last 20 years, the British Government has paid out nearly $1 billion in property damage claims there. Francis McWilliams, the new Lord Mayor of the City of London, has warned the Government of Prime Minister John Major that businesses will desert London if the Government is unwilling to help them absorb the cost of future attacks on their property. Like the issue of the police roadblocks, the debate over the insurance has angered some members of Parliament, who say the mere discussion of the issue provides fodder for the I.R.A. because it concedes that their tactics are working by creating havoc and disruption. For most people, the I.R.A.'s threats have already been absorbed into the existing rhythms of the city. Security alerts and delays as a result of bomb threats or suspect | London Journal; With Its Bombs, Will the I.R.A. Steal Christmas? |
575450_2 | rugs, poorly lighted stairs, slippery bathtubs, electrical cords and the like -- that can cause a person to trip and fall, particularly if that person has physical limitations that impair vision, gait or balance. A study by doctors at Yale University of 336 elderly people living at home found that 108 of them fell within a single year. By far the most common predisposing factor was the use of sedatives, which tripled the risk of falling. These drugs, which can cause dizziness and impair balance, are all too often prescribed for older people who have trouble sleeping or who complain of depression or anxiety. Many other medications used by the elderly can also cause balance problems or dizziness, including treatments for high blood pressure, heart problems and arthritis, all common disorders among older people. Sometimes the individual drugs are no problem, but the dosages used or the combination of medications raise the risk of a nasty fall. Cardiac insufficiency in itself can be a problem, resulting in temporary dizziness upon arising from a prone position. Or heart rhythm irregularities can cause very brief losses of consciousness. People with arthritis may lack the strength or dexterity to head off an impending fall. Other risk factors identified in the Yale study include mental impairments, poor eyesight, disabilities involving the legs, abnormalities of gait and balance and foot problems. About 10 percent of the falls occurred when the person was suffering from an acute illness, like a bad cold or flu, and 5 percent happened while the person was performing a hazardous activity, like climbing on a chair or stool. Preventing Falls First and foremost among steps to prevent hip fractures is to arrange the home to minimize the chances of falling. All living areas should be well lighted, with switches at room entrances. Install night lights along the route from bedroom to bathroom and keep a lamp and a flashlight next to the bed. Stairways and steps especially should be well-lighted and equipped with sturdy handrails on both sides. Avoid dark or patterned carpeting on steps and mark the top and bottom steps with brightly colored tape. The bathroom itself should be equipped with grab bars at the toilet and tub or shower. Rubber-backed carpeting can help prevent slips on wet floors. Shower stools and no-skid strips that are glued to the tub bottom are more likely to prevent falls than tub | Personal Health |
580069_1 | in 1968, long before the environment was a popular subject for artists, his works have included the East River in New York, the French Riviera port of Nice, the Seine in Paris, the fountain in Trafalgar Square, London, and more recently the Pyramid fountain in the Louvre and the fountain in the Hara Museum in Tokyo. His forays have all been illegal, with no permission asked of or granted by local authorities. "They are so afraid I am using toxic material, they would never permit it," Mr. Uriburu said, adding that the fluorescent sodium is biodegradable and harmless. To prove it he drank a glass of his green water. From Pop to Politics Though a member of the generation of artists who use nature as their canvas, Mr. Uriburu has evolved over the past two decades from pop art into one of Argentina's most important artists, while at the same time campaigning endlessly for preserving the environment. His paintings are sometimes huge, like several in an exhibition called "S.O.S. Brazil" last July at the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paolo. In that show, a multi-panel oil painting of the snaking Amazon River surrounded by rain forest measured 12 by 24 feet. Another, measuring 6 by 18 feet, showed Amazonian Indians holding a giant python. Still another, a 20-footlong painting of the Iquazu Falls, had the waters emptying into what seemed to be a blood-red inferno. Mr. Uriburu starts each canvas with a red wash, which he then paints over. The technique tends to give his works an almost aggressive tone. "The red is the blood in the veins of Latin America," he explains. "Green is nature. It shows that there is life beneath the green that man is killing." Mr. Uriburu's anger at despoilers of the environment is perhaps best expressed in his maps of the Western Hemisphere and of Latin America, many of which surround the land masses with red water. Almost always, the Southern Hemisphere points north and the Northern Hemisphere points south, reflecting his frustration with the dominance of the industrialized nations. "Why is the United States always above and Latin Americans below," he asks. "It creates an image of subservience for entire continents. We are always seen as worse then they." Mr. Uriburu's first map paintings placed all countries on the equator, "to make everyone equal," he said. "My thinking is that we are neither | Argentine's Art Delivers Ecological Messages |
574306_1 | the 1988 report. One such trend is rapid growth of the Hispanic population. The report says the Hispanic population will surpass the black population in 2013, when there will be 42.1 million Hispanic Americans and 42 million blacks. Overall population growth has outstripped earlier projections for two reasons: the sharp increases in immigration and in childbearing. The Census Bureau has rewritten its assumptions about the numbers of illegal aliens, legal immigrants and refugees who will come to the United States. It now estimates that 200,000 illegal immigrants will arrive each year for 60 years, twice the number assumed in the earlier report. The Government had expected that a 1986 law penalizing employers who hire illegal aliens would curb illegal immigration. "In fact, there is no evidence of any reduction" in illegal immigration, the bureau said. In addition, it noted, the Immigration Act of 1990 allows more legal immigration to the United States. The bureau estimates that legal and illegal immigration combined will increase the population by an average of 880,000 a year for the next six decades. But the annual increase could be as high as 1.4 million, it said. Over the 60 years, the cumulative effects of immigration will be more important than births to people already living here, the bureau said. By the middle of the next century, it said, the population will include 82 million people who arrived in this country after 1991 or who were born in the United States of parents who did. This group of immigrants and their children will account for 21 percent of the population in 2050, the bureau said. Rise in Fertility Still, it said, "there has been a dramatic rise in total fertility levels, to almost 2.1 births per woman." The last report assumed that the total fertility rate would decrease slightly, to 1.8 births per woman in 2050, from 1.825 in 1986. The assumption of a decline in fertility "was dead wrong," Mr. Spencer said. In the past, Census Bureau statisticians assumed that fertility rates would eventually be the same among racial and ethnic groups. The bureau has now abandoned that assumption, saying that historical data provide no compelling evidence for it. In its new report, the bureau assumes that childbearing rates for black and Hispanic women will continue to be higher than for white women. In its last report, the Census Bureau said the population of the United | Population Growth Outstrips Earlier U.S. Census Estimates |
578930_0 | To the Editor: My old friend Rembert Weakland, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee, seems to read the Catholic Church amiss in "Out of the Kitchen, Into the Vatican" (Op-Ed, Dec. 6), his plea for admitting women to the priesthood. I suspect this is due to his overweening romanticism regarding modern culture -- political, academic, economic, journalistic. The program he advocates for his church is to embrace this culture, learn from it and follow it. Mainline Protestant churches have tried this program for years, including ordination of women, egalitarian diversification of ministries and genial regard of the Zeitgeist. All these churches find themselves in moderate to steep membership declines. There is no evidence that this program would have different results in the Catholic Church. If the Episcopal Church is any model, ordaining women has not checked the slide in membership. Women's ordination has increased the number of members of the clergy, who minister to parishes that are getting smaller. This may create a new sort of clericalism, a malaise that seems to follow when the clergy becomes overnumerous in relation to the laity. Having less to do, the clergy engages in make-work that ends in driving everyone crazy. God knows that the Roman Catholic Church has its problems. But it does not need to add problems like these. Such distractions would lead a church deeply aware of an ecumenical mission with the Orthodox and other Eastern Churches, a mission rooted in the core of the Gospel, very far afield. AIDAN J. KAVANAGH Professor of Liturgies Yale Divinity School New Haven, Dec. 7, 1992 | Ask Episcopal Church About Women Priests |
577158_0 | The French Government said today that it favored enforcing a ban on flights over Bosnia and Herzegovina and using military force to close prison camps run by Serbians, but it opposed allied air strikes on Serbian artillery positions. A Government spokesman said Georges Kiejman, a Deputy Foreign Minister, told a Cabinet meeting this morning that the United States had proposed pre-emptive bombing strikes against Serbian targets, but that France and Britain were opposed. "They do not favor the American position," Mr. Kiejman was quoted as saying, "since it would pose enormous problems for the protection of the civilian population and could lead to reprisals against U.N. forces." But he reportedly noted that France and Britain, which have already sent some 7,000 soldiers to join the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Balkans, supported "the interception and, if necessary, the destruction of aircraft that violate Bosnian airspace." A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Daniel Bernard, said France was ready to insure that the air restriction zone ordered by the United Nations is respected. "When an overflight is detected, all means will be used to prevent it," he told reporters. "France will participate in the enforcement of this resolution." In a statement to the National Assembly, Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy said France had asked the United Nations Security Council to order the closure of prison camps run by the Serbians in Bosnia. "For that, it may be necessary to have recourse to military force," he said. Describing ethnic cleansing, war crimes and rape as "a shame to humanity at the end of this century," Mr. Beregovoy also warned of the danger that the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina could spread. "At this moment, as I speak to you, fire is smoldering in the Balkans." | France Opposes Air Strikes |
579265_6 | macadamia nuts, arugula, bamboo shoots, ginger root, shitake mushrooms, fresh goat milk cheese, as well as flowers and snacks. The market, protected under awnings from the inevitable rains, fills two empty lots on either side of Mamo Street at Kamehameha Avenue. Not far away, on Hilo Bay, there is a seafood version of the farmer's market, the historic Suisan Fish Auction. The auction has taken place every day except Sunday since 1907. EACH morning the boats dock with their catch of yellowfin tuna, marlin, squid and other delicacies, which are lined up on pallets on the floor and weighed in a big open-air green shed under a huge monkeypod tree at the foot of Lihiwai Street. The auctioneer's bell rings at about 8 A.M. and the buyers for restaurants, sushi bars and wholesale canners make their bids to the auctioneer's guttural bark. In one of the cultural dissonances that is so typical of modern Hawaii, the auctioneer keeps accounts on an abacus while the buyers communicate with their offices by cellular phone. After the auction, visitors should stroll through the nearby Liliuokalani Park, a serene Japanese style garden named for Hawaii's last monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, who was illegally deposed 100 years ago this January by United States Marines. With its footbridges, Japanese stone lanterns and spreading banyan trees, the gardens are among Hilo's finest assets. Just across a footbridge from the garden is a little island, now known as Coconut Island, that is a kind of sacred ground, a place where early Hawaiians built a refuge, a heiau, a temple or place of worship. If the rains bring anything good to Hilo, it is the gardens. There are two private gardens worth visiting for a fee. The Nani Mau Gardens just south of town has 20 acres of almost formal plantings of almost every conceivable native and imported tropical plant, including giant honeysuckle, wiliwili trees, scented star jasmines. One can spend hours walking through its meandering paths; umbrellas available for free. JUST north of Hilo on the Four Mile Scenic Route is the more rugged Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, a 17-acre rain forest that doubles as a nature preserve on Onomea Bay. Visitors can explore winding nature trails, lush with rare exotics, gingers, heliconia, bromeliads, more than 1,800 species of plants, not to mention the dazzling parrots and other tropical birds and koi fish. No visit to Hilo is complete | Hawaii's Gentle Throwback |
579485_6 | macadamia nuts, arugula, bamboo shoots, ginger root, shitake mushrooms, fresh goat milk cheese, as well as flowers and snacks. The market, protected under awnings from the inevitable rains, fills two empty lots on either side of Mamo Street at Kamehameha Avenue. Not far away, on Hilo Bay, there is a seafood version of the farmer's market, the historic Suisan Fish Auction. The auction has taken place every day except Sunday since 1907. EACH morning the boats dock with their catch of yellowfin tuna, marlin, squid and other delicacies, which are lined up on pallets on the floor and weighed in a big open-air green shed under a huge monkeypod tree at the foot of Lihiwai Street. The auctioneer's bell rings at about 8 A.M. and the buyers for restaurants, sushi bars and wholesale canners make their bids to the auctioneer's guttural bark. In one of the cultural dissonances that is so typical of modern Hawaii, the auctioneer keeps accounts on an abacus while the buyers communicate with their offices by cellular phone. After the auction, visitors should stroll through the nearby Liliuokalani Park, a serene Japanese style garden named for Hawaii's last monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, who was illegally deposed 100 years ago this January by United States Marines. With its footbridges, Japanese stone lanterns and spreading banyan trees, the gardens are among Hilo's finest assets. Just across a footbridge from the garden is a little island, now known as Coconut Island, that is a kind of sacred ground, a place where early Hawaiians built a refuge, a heiau, a temple or place of worship. If the rains bring anything good to Hilo, it is the gardens. There are two private gardens worth visiting for a fee. The Nani Mau Gardens just south of town has 20 acres of almost formal plantings of almost every conceivable native and imported tropical plant, including giant honeysuckle, wiliwili trees, scented star jasmines. One can spend hours walking through its meandering paths; umbrellas available for free. JUST north of Hilo on the Four Mile Scenic Route is the more rugged Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, a 17-acre rain forest that doubles as a nature preserve on Onomea Bay. Visitors can explore winding nature trails, lush with rare exotics, gingers, heliconia, bromeliads, more than 1,800 species of plants, not to mention the dazzling parrots and other tropical birds and koi fish. No visit to Hilo is complete | Hawaii's Gentle Throwback |
579299_2 | home." A few weeks later, she would put her plans in motion. Far from docile, many of these women are quiet revolutionaries who stand in loving opposition to the church. Many support the ordination of women. They want nuns to have a visible role at the alter. And they are impatient with the church's failure to make convents as racially diverse as the communities they represent; of the more than 99,000 nuns in the United States, only about 500 are black. Though they are not screaming at the door of the Vatican, many nuns are humming loudly around the convent, saying that it is time for religious women's voices to be heard. And this is exactly how the orders want them. Most religious orders today discourage younger women from joining, preferring instead those who bring skills that can be put to use in ministry. "There is a great deal more respect for the experience and maturity of today's novices," said Sister Geneal Kramer, co-director of the novices at the Dominican Common Novitiate in Manchester, Mo., where Sister Ceil has joined. "It affirms that the person has had a life before they come, and that they come committed." Ambiguous Roles As the number of nuns has dropped over the past 25 years, their ages have risen. Among the 99,337 nuns in the nation today, the median age is 65, according to the Religious Formation Conference, an organization in Silver Spring, Md. At the height of the profession in the United States, in 1968, when there were 176,341 nuns, the median age was about 45. The future of the sister has become ambiguous since the mid-60's, when Vatican II impressed upon lay people to take a greater part in church life. Experts say that as the role of laymen increased, and as feminism took hold in American culture in the 70's, the number of novices began to drop sharply. Last year, only 481 women signed up for the two rigorous years of novitiate life at the approximately 530 religious orders in the country. In 1986, 844 novices entered. Church officials recognize the decline and have stepped up recruiting efforts, and they believe that the numbers will stabilize. "While there may be much fewer numbers, I tend to look at it more as a change than a crisis, " said Mary Ann Hamer, administrative assistant for the National Religious Vocation Conference in Chicago. | Older and Skilled, New Nuns Are Working to Widen Roles |
579157_5 | as the church's Eastern European stronghold. In Czechoslovakia, Communism's fall unearthed a network of 300 secretly ordained priests who had kept the faith alive during decades of repression, but whom the Vatican is now attempting to purge because of what is seen as their unacceptable status. Some are married. Some are even said to be women -- ordained, against all dogma, as priests of the Catholic Church. The collapse of Communism offered a paradoxical harvest in other ways, too. During the days of Communist hegemony, says a Jesuit analyst, "the influence of the church was vastly inflated: it was an avenue to power and the only alternative to government. There was a very big vocation in Poland. Is this going to continue?" Even within the Vatican there is a recognition that the church's influence in Eastern Europe is bound to decline. "If it weren't for the church, Communism would not have been overcome," says a high-ranking insider. "But now that it's overcome, there's criticism of getting involved in politics." In Western Europe, too, the Catholic Church confronts what it sees as an abyss of drug abuse, promiscuity and abandonment of the Pope's stern moral teachings that cast a return to Catholic family values and personal integrity as the only hope of salvation. Once among the most pious of lands and fecund ground for souls, Italy now boasts Europe's lowest birthrate; condoms are sold openly at supermarket checkouts; newsstands within view of St. Peter's Basilica offer hard-core pornography. Further afield, liberal Catholics in the United States bridle increasingly at the stern conservatism of the Vatican that frowns on discussion of contentious issues like the ordainment of women and married men and the fraught questions of birth control and abortion. According to a recent Time/ CNN poll, only 14 percent of America's Catholics believe they should always obey the Vatican's moral teachings; the overwhelming majority of respondents said they believed their personal morality was their own business. And in the third world, the most fertile growth area for the Catholic Church, Catholic numbers are under threat from evangelical Protestant churches that Rome labels "sects." Even in Brazil, the world's biggest Catholic nation, millions of Catholics have left the church to join charismatic and often American-financed Protestant churches. When the Pope visited the country last year, one of his open-air Masses seemed almost overshadowed by a newlybuilt and amply proportioned Protestant church on | Challenge to the Faithful |
579484_6 | macadamia nuts, arugula, bamboo shoots, ginger root, shitake mushrooms, fresh goat milk cheese, as well as flowers and snacks. The market, protected under awnings from the inevitable rains, fills two empty lots on either side of Mamo Street at Kamehameha Avenue. Not far away, on Hilo Bay, there is a seafood version of the farmer's market, the historic Suisan Fish Auction. The auction has taken place every day except Sunday since 1907. EACH morning the boats dock with their catch of yellowfin tuna, marlin, squid and other delicacies, which are lined up on pallets on the floor and weighed in a big open-air green shed under a huge monkeypod tree at the foot of Lihiwai Street. The auctioneer's bell rings at about 8 A.M. and the buyers for restaurants, sushi bars and wholesale canners make their bids to the auctioneer's guttural bark. In one of the cultural dissonances that is so typical of modern Hawaii, the auctioneer keeps accounts on an abacus while the buyers communicate with their offices by cellular phone. After the auction, visitors should stroll through the nearby Liliuokalani Park, a serene Japanese style garden named for Hawaii's last monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, who was illegally deposed 100 years ago this January by United States Marines. With its footbridges, Japanese stone lanterns and spreading banyan trees, the gardens are among Hilo's finest assets. Just across a footbridge from the garden is a little island, now known as Coconut Island, that is a kind of sacred ground, a place where early Hawaiians built a refuge, a heiau, a temple or place of worship. If the rains bring anything good to Hilo, it is the gardens. There are two private gardens worth visiting for a fee. The Nani Mau Gardens just south of town has 20 acres of almost formal plantings of almost every conceivable native and imported tropical plant, including giant honeysuckle, wiliwili trees, scented star jasmines. One can spend hours walking through its meandering paths; umbrellas available for free. JUST north of Hilo on the Four Mile Scenic Route is the more rugged Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, a 17-acre rain forest that doubles as a nature preserve on Onomea Bay. Visitors can explore winding nature trails, lush with rare exotics, gingers, heliconia, bromeliads, more than 1,800 species of plants, not to mention the dazzling parrots and other tropical birds and koi fish. No visit to Hilo is complete | Hawaii's Gentle Throwback |
579369_2 | chain of processes took a new twist in early December when Texaco successfully tested a device that cooks old tires into a liquid. It does so in a bath of waste oil, like old lubricating or transmission oil or even antifreeze from cars. At a laboratory in Montebello, Calif., in Los Angeles County (and, appropriately enough, overlooking a landfill), the company built a processing unit that takes chunks of tires and cooks them at 700 degrees Fahrenheit, for half an hour. The system, which the company hopes to sell for about $2 million, handles 1,000 to 2,000 tires a day, the number produced daily by a city of 250,000 to 500,000 people. The machine also requires an equal amount of waste oil, by weight. The tires have an energy content of about 15,000 British Thermal Units per pound, nearly 80 percent as much as crude oil. That means that a single 20-pound tire has as much energy as 2.5 gallons of gasoline. One difficulty is that tires are laced with steel belts, which must be removed with a rotating screw. The steel goes to a metal recycler. In the main reaction tank, the heat not only liquefies the tires, but also breaks down some of the largest, heaviest hydrocarbons, which are the least desirable, into gases, like methane and other light products that can be used in a refinery or burned immediately. The finished product from the liquefier is energy-rich, containing 85 percent to 90 percent of the energy in the tires and oil, but being heavily contaminated with sulfur and heavy metals, it is not attractive. One of the strengths of gasification is that dirty fuels can then be cleaned up. In a gasifier, hydrocarbon feedstock is combined with oxygen at controlled temperatures and pressures and broken down into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which in this case is used as fuel, giving off energy and combining with oxygen as it burns to form carbon dioxide, a clean combustion product that is released into the atmosphere. Molecules of other ingredients, like hydrogen sulfide and heavy metals, are removed before burning with a sieve or by other methods. The most common use for the cleaned-up gas is a "combined-cycle turbine." The turbine sends its mechanical power to an electric generator and its exhaust gases to a steam generator, which captures much of the heat from the exhaust to boil water. The | Technology; Turning a Stew of Old Tires Into Energy |
579321_0 | To the Editor: "Calls to Restrict Immigration Come From Many Quarters" (The Week in Review, Dec. 13) shows immigration as the thorny issue it is, though you barely explore the complexities of immigration and its chief cause -- global overpopulation. Also, you incorrecly state that the Sierra Club is a member of the Coalition to Stabilize Population. We are not. We believe all nations, developed and developing, should act to curb their own population growth. The United States and other developed nations have a special responsibility because of our disproportionate per capita consumption of world resources. Our goal in the United States should be achieving domestic population stabilization. CARL POPE Executive Director, Sierra Club San Francisco, Dec. 16, 1992 | Immigration's an Effect Of Population Growth |
574669_4 | and somewhat overpriced paperback "If I Had a Hi-Fi" by William Irvine (Laurel, $5.99), which includes We panic in a pew and Desserts, I stressed and the ambitious Some men interpret nine memos . (Gary Muldoon of Rochester, in the course of explaining to me that the word mnemonic comes from the Greek goddess Mnemosyne, contributes a palindrome of interest to parents proud of their grown-up offspring: Diapers repaid .) For serious linguists, the gift of the year is a reprint of Otto Jespersen's 1924 "The Philosophy of Grammar," with an introduction and a new index by James D. McCawley (University of Chicago Press paperback, $17.95). When I recently offended who-whomniks by opining that than was a preposition, not a conjunction, Professor McCawley rode to my rescue by citing the great Danish linguist Jespersen's conclusion that so-called subordinating conjunctions are prepositions with clause objects. (Anybody still there? Helluva book.) For librarians of major Wall Street investment houses -- not a huge audience, but somebody has to look out for their interests -- here's The New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance (Stockton Press, 3 volumes, $595). General readers will find more than they want to know about takeovers, leverage and the quantity theory of money , but word freaks will be titillated by such entries as contango , "a fee paid by the buyer who wants to postpone delivery," a sultry dance by the buyer of futures options that is the reverse of backwardation . The Wizard of Oz entry by Hugh Rockoff was an eye-opener: this children's story by L. Frank Baum is explicated as an 1890's allegory about bimetalism. The Yellow Brick Road is the gold standard (an oz. of gold); the Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryan, derogated for lack of courage by free-silver populists; President William McKinley, friend to financiers, is the Wicked Witch of the West, and the Wizard in Emerald City (Washington, D.C.) is Mark Hanna, the Republican leader. The New Palgrave does not say who Dorothy's dog is supposed to be. Finally, for word lovers who appreciate an example of simple and lucid writing on a subject of infinite complexity, try the new edition of Robert Jastrow's short classic, "God and the Astronomers" (Norton, $18.95). By running the big-bang theory backward, scientists must deal with the moment of cosmic creation, a subject usually confined to theologians. To describe the reach of Hubble's Law | Gifts of Gab for '93 |
574870_2 | postponed the kill and invited conservation and wildlife groups to a "wolf summit" in Fairbanks next month. Rearranging the Neighborhood The wolf, whether in the Arctic tundra or outside a Montana cattle ranch, is no mere spectator in the natural world. Efficient meat-eaters, a pack of wolves can rearrange the order of any neighborhood in the wild. Wolves are thought to have a self-regulating effect, on themselves and the animals they consume. Some biologists have argued that allowing moose and caribou numbers to inflate will increase the pace of breeding among wolves, setting up endless debates on wolf kills. In both Alaska and the Rocky Mountain West, biologists are trying to use wolves to tip the balance of nature, but for completely different reasons. Alaska wildlife officials believe the best way to double the size of some moose and caribou populations -- thus appeasing wildlife-seeking tourists and hunters -- is to remove its most ubiquitous predator. But the area around Yellowstone National Park is overcrowded with big game and could use a natural hunter like a wolf. Three years ago, one of the more pathetic sights amid the grandeur of Yellowstone was that of hundreds of starving, dazed elk stumbling around towns on the border of the park, scrounging for food. Without a predator, the elk herds have grown to record highs, and when the fires of 1988 took away much of the foraging ground, the weaker animals died en masse. As the Fish and Wildlife Service has inched toward its goal of bringing a few wolves back to parts of the West by 1994, nature has stepped up the pace. Wolves migrate when their territory becomes fallow; traveling from Canada, they have been spotted in Montana, Idaho and Washington. And on Sept. 30, a gray-black, 92-pound animal that looked like a wolf was shot by a hunter south of Yellowstone, in the Teton Wilderness Area. The animal has been subjected to one of the most extensive wildlife autopsies in recent years, including a detailed reading of its DNA, to determine if it was, in fact, a wolf. The final results are expected this week. A positive finding would confirm that wolves, on their own, have entered the Yellowstone area, the largest ecosystem in the contiguous 48 states, and a place in which wolves have been only a phantom presence for the last 50 years. Ranchers' Fears Yellowstone may be | As Americans Adjust Nature, Wolves Get Pushed Around |
574938_0 | In response to reading "Coram Housing Project for Disabled Imperiled" [ Nov. 15 ] , I propose the creation of a new organization entitled Nimby, for Negative Insensitive Mistrusting Biased Yahoos, to combat this frightening trend of warm community acceptance of housing for people with disabilities. This organization should focus on a two-prong attack. First, mount an educational campaign to convince the masses that affluence affords intolerance, and immunity from differences, whether it's on the Upper West Side or Nassau-Suffolk County. But more importantly, it should muster all of its resources to halt these unwelcome efforts, for there could be dire consequences to integrating the deaf, the mentally ill, the homeless, the developmentally disabled and the retarded into the community. They could actually begin to be viewed as just people -- people who are struggling as all people do, to one degree or another. ANITA SHANKMAN Forest Hills | Are Disabled Just Regular People? |
574927_3 | more than 30 small nuclear reactors in orbit, mainly to power spy satellites designed to monitor Western naval operations. In 1978, one of these satellites crashed in northern Canada, spreading irradiated debris over the desolate region. While scientists have recognized the problems from orbiting reactors for several years, the increased alarm has been raised because of newer satellites with more sensitive instruments that would be flying in the region of the "Star Wars" satellite. The effects the orbiting reactors had on scientific satellites became apparent when astronomers sought to examine the puzzling gamma radiation that flooded the Solar Maximum Mission satellite. An analysis of these data by Dr. Gerry Share of the Naval Research Laboratory led to the estimate that the more sensitive instruments of the Compton observatory would experience about 30 disruptive events daily, if the Topaz is in the 1,000-mile-high orbit that is being considered. Some of the radiation would be gamma rays escaping directly from the Topaz. Wider Fear Is Raised Dr. Roald Z. Sagdeev, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland and former director of the Space Research Institute in Moscow, said in an interview that even greater concern is focused on radioactive particles emitted by Topaz and trapped by Earth's magnetic fields as "artificial radiation belts." Although the behavior of such particles is not yet well understood, he said, spacecraft passing through these pervasive clouds of particles could suffer regular disruptions of computers and instruments. A Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Mike Doble of the Army, responded by saying that it was unfortunate that the astronomers had not discussed their concerns privately with military officials. "We are early enough in the planning phase," he said, "to take into account the concerns of the American Astronomical Society and others." Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based organization that has opposed the "Star Wars" program, said astronomers who have had some meetings with planners of the mission came away unsatisfied. "They were told, 'Trust us, don't create a fuss,' " Mr. Aftergood said. "There's a growing impatience with this approach." Col. Simon Worden, a solar physicist and deputy for technology at the anti-missile defense organization, emphasized that all plans for the mission were subject to change. Contrary to what astronomers said they had been told, a launching rocket for the mission will not be purchased this month, he said. Scientists feared that | Scientists Alarmed Over Plan to Launch Reactor Aboard a Satellite |
574920_60 | 800 to the late 11th century. CHINA: A New History. By John King Fairbank. (Belknap/ Harvard University, $27.95.) A grand ambition, grandly achieved in Fairbank's final book: the analytic narrative is full of intelligent ideas, original contributions and up-to-date scholarship. THE CIVIL WAR IN THE AMERICAN WEST. By Alvin M. Josephy Jr. (Knopf, $27.50.) A learned and powerful narrative that reveals how intimately joined the war and the Western expansion were. THE EMPEROR'S LAST ISLAND: A Journey to St. Helena. By Julia Blackburn. (Pantheon, $22.) That nowhere place in the South Atlantic springs both to mind and to life in this geographical, psychological and historical account of Napoleon's final days. THE END OF HISTORY AND THE LAST MAN. By Francis Fukuyama. (Free Press, $24.95.) A quixotic, tightly argued work of political philosophy whose rallying cry is "Back to Hegel" and whose central argument is that liberal democracy is the natural and inviting end of history. THE FAMILY ROMANCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Lynn Hunt. (University of California, $20.) A historian's original reading of the Revolution's themes and anxieties as they suggest Freudian programs (first, cut off Daddy's head . . .). FRONTIERS: The Epic of South Africa's Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People. By Noel Mostert. (Knopf, $35.) A thorough account of the clash, generations long, between the Cape colonists and the first big, powerful African nation they encountered. THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN GARDENS: Proud Owners, Private Estates, 1890-1940. By Mac Griswold and Eleanor Weller. (Abrams/Garden Club of America, $75.) Meticulous documentation by horticultural historians of over 500 great gardens created when wealth was bold and showy. THE GREAT GAME: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia. By Peter Hopkirk. (Kodansha, $30.) The frankly admiring story of the men (all stouthearted) and the lands they strove over during more than a century of contest between Russia and Britain. HELL'S FOUNDATIONS: A Social History of the Town of Bury in the Aftermath of the Gallipoli Campaign. By Geoffrey Moorhouse. (Holt, $24.95.) Patriotism, stoicism and resentment in the home base of a British regiment 2,000 of whose men died in the fiasco of 1915. "IT'S YOUR MISFORTUNE AND NONE OF MY OWN": A New History of the American West. By Richard White. (University of Oklahoma, $39.95.) A lively synthesis incorporating the work of the revisionist scholars who have renewed the study of the region. JAPAN AT WAR: An | Notable Books of the Year 1992 |
574920_67 | as a prototype for the developing war. Medicine & Psychology THE "ABORTION PILL": RU-486, a Woman's Choice. By Etienne-Emile Baulieu with Mort Rosenblum. (Simon & Schuster, $22.) The discoverer of the antihormone RU-486 lucidly explains the discovery and its workings, his views on social responsibility and the political barriers, here and elsewhere, the drug has run into. ACCEPTABLE RISKS. By Jonathan Kwitny. (Poseidon, $24.) This well-paced story of bureaucratic adventure and political protest centers on two men who tried, by hook and by crook, to change the rules of Federal drug testing when their lovers and friends began dying of AIDS. THE AMERICAN WAY OF BIRTH. By Jessica Mitford. (William Abrahams/Dutton, $23.) The supercharged social critic of "The American Way of Death" takes no prisoners (especially not men) on her march through the other end of life in this country. THE ASPIRIN WARS: Money, Medicine, and 100 Years of Rampant Competition. By Charles C. Mann and Mark L. Plummer. (Knopf, $25.) A fascinating and thoroughly researched history of a most remarkable little pill. THE CHANGE: Women, Aging and the Menopause. By Germaine Greer. (Knopf, $24.) The author of the classic "Female Eunuch" struggles grandly with practically everything -- historical, medical, psychological, metaphysical -- that concerns the dreaded event, and finds it in the end a liberating occasion. I'M DYSFUNCTIONAL, YOU'RE DYSFUNCTIONAL: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions. By Wendy Kaminer. (Addison-Wesley, $18.95.) The author, a lawyer and journalist, offers a witty, occasionally harsh account of people who call their troubles diseases and blame other people for them. INTOXICATED BY MY ILLNESS: And Other Writings on Life and Death. By Anatole Broyard. (Clarkson Potter, $18.) Urbane, lyrical, witty and gracious essays by a former book critic and editor at The New York Times, written mostly in his last 14 months. THE INVISIBLE EPIDEMIC: The Story of Women and AIDS. By Gena Corea. (HarperCollins, $23.) This important and disturbing book argues that a paternalistic medical establishment is so used to seeing women as "other" that it has failed to recognize AIDS in women. MEETING AT THE CROSSROADS: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development. By Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan. (Harvard University, $19.95.) Two psychologists study the transition from childhood to adolescence and find adult women guilty of teaching girls to suppress their native truthfulness. THE MISMEASURE OF WOMAN. By Carol Tavris. (Simon & Schuster, $23.) A social psychologist examines the scientific | Notable Books of the Year 1992 |
574763_0 | FOR the average driver -- and even for a driver who is avidly interested -- tires are the most boring part of an automobile. As long as they are round and not too flat on the bottom, they don't get a second look. But they should. Air bags and antilock brakes and side-impact protection in the doors are all well and good, but it is those tiny patches of tread that connect a car to the road and that often mean the difference between an accident and a safe trip. Tire technology has increased dramatically over the years, and the flats that once were the bane of every motorist are a rarity these days. But tires do lose air over time, and when they are underinflated they pull money out of the consumer's wallet by decreasing fuel economy. Further, they wear out more quickly and pose a threat to safety by changing a car's handling characteristics. And, according to the Tire Industry Safety Council, few drivers know that the information about needed replacements is as close as their driveway. Thomas E. Cole is the chairman of the council, which represents the major tire companies, and he pointed out that a tire's sidewall can make some interesting reading when baby needs new shoes. "In addition to safety and performance information, the sidewall will tell you the size, the load and the inflation pressures the tire can take," he said. For example, he said, a typical sidewall might contain the marking P205/60R15 90H, which tells the tire's width, height, construction, diameter, load capability and speed rating. Specifically, the "P" means the tire is for a passenger car and the "205" is the width in millimeters. The "60" refers to the ratio of height to width, and the "R" stands for radial construction, while "15" is the diameter in inches of the rim that it will fit. The load index, represented by "90" is a code associated with the maximum weight a tire can carry at the speed indicated by its speed symbol. The index for most cars ranges from 75 to 100, but the actual maximum load, in pounds or kilograms, also is branded into the sidewall. In the example, "H" is the speed symbol, a simplified indicator of the tire's speed capability based on laboratory tests. The six symbols in common use, along with their speed limits, are: S, 112 m.p.h.; | Need Tires? The Writing's on the Wall |
574563_0 | THE world's nonsmokers should find flying less bothersome in the years ahead as a result of action by the International Civil Aviation Organization. In an action taken by consensus, that is, agreement without a vote, it decided to bring about an end to all smoking aboard airplanes by July 1, 1996. The Assembly of the organization, a United Nations affiliate, adopted the resolution in October at a meeting at its headquarters in Montreal, with 153 out of the organization's 174 member nations present. The group has no enforcement power, but airlines not adhering to the ban will be responsible to world opinion. The Montreal group makes international rules and sets standards for many issues in civil aviation: That passengers should be able to clear immigration procedures in 45 minutes, for example; what level of security is appropriate for an airport with international traffic, or who has jurisdiction in investigating sabotage. The smoking resolution, though it may incur the ire of smokers, looks toward a single standard for airlines flying both international and domestic routes. It will eliminate complaints from people with heart and lung disorders who find confinement in a fuselage with smoke fumes painful. It should also mean an end to safety problems created by flames and smoke on planes: fires in trash, for example, and possible clogging of oxygen masks and air systems with cigarette tars. The resolution was proposed by Canada, Australia and the United States, which already have Government limitations on smoking by passengers. The United States rule, which now bans smoking on domestic flights of less than six hours, went into effect in early 1990; a ban for flights of two hours or less was enacted in 1988. The medical arm of the international air organization is gathering data on current rules in all nations. A few are shown in the accompanying table. The year 1994 was at first proposed for the worldwide ban. However, the Assembly meets only every three years, and some countries said the Assembly should get the results of continuing technical studies on cabin safety before any ban was put forward. A compromise was drafted calling for intensified safety studies and a 1996 date, and this resolution was approved on the final day. Claude A. LaFrance, a former Canadian aviation official, who was a professional lobbyist in behalf of the Canadian Cancer Society and the American Heart and Lung Association, said | Smoking Ban on All Flights Near |
573813_8 | these compressed messages you fill in the blanks and think you've met your soulmate, but in fact a lot of these people have trouble functioning normally." The world of the message boards breeds rumor and conspiratorial thinking. Many users will speculate that an important writer or producer is "lurking": reading messages but not posting one himself. No one ever knows for certain. Mr. Rickard, of Boardwatch Magazine, estimates that there are five or six lurkers for each poster on a bulletin board. "I do know that the producers of 'Brooklyn Bridge' are on it, basically pleading with people to watch the show and to answer questions about it," said Jefferson Graham, who is Prodigy's on-line television expert, writing columns and fielding questions. The television show recently went off the air. By and large, however, something close to a Jeffersonian democracy reigns in a world where users are what they write. "We really have returned here, in spite of the centralization of technology, to the old-fashioned definition of what folk culture used to be," said Robert J. Thompson, an associate professor of television at Syracuse University. "We have these jokes and stories that will never see the printed page, that exist only as glowing dots of phosphorus. It's not word-of-mouth folk culture but word-of-modem folk culture." What You Get; What It Costs PRODIGY: $49.95 starter kit includes software, one month's service and identification numbers for six people; $14.95 a month, unlimited use of bulletin boards and 30 pieces of E-mail a month at no extra charge, 25 cents each thereafter. (800) 776-3449. COMPUSERVE: $49.95 starter kit ($39.95 if bought from Compuserve) and $7.95 a month for unlimited access to 30 basic services, with 60 E-mail messages a month at no extra charge, 15 cents thereafter. Access to bulletin boards costs 21 cents a minute or $12.60 an hour at 1,200 or 2,400 Baud (bits per second). (800) 848-8199. GENIE: $4.95 a month for basic service. Bulletin boards cost $6 an hour from 6 P.M. to 8 A.M. and $18 an hour at all other times. (800) 638-9636. DELPHI: The 10/4 plan is $10 a month for 4 hours on-line. The 20/20 plan costs $20 a month for 20 hours on-line. (800) 544-4005. ECHO: $18.95 a month ($12.95 for students and the elderly) for 30 hours on-line; additional time is $1 an hour. (212) 255-3839. THE WELL: $15 a month plus $2 | Computer as a Cultural Tool: Chatter Mounts on Every Topic |
573759_0 | After difficult negotiations between industrialized and developing countries, the two sides have agreed on the make-up and the powers of an agency to monitor how governments live up to the promises they made in June in Rio de Janeiro at the first Earth Summit. Under an informal agreement reached by assembly delegates last Wednesday, a new 53-member group, the Sustainable Development Commission, will regularly scrutinize the environmental records of all nations, hearing evidence from both governments and private groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Though the commission is viewed as a linchpin of the accords reached at the Earth Summit, it will lack the power to make governments respect their pledges to insure that future economic development is environmentally sound. Like the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, on which it is modeled, the Sustainable Development Commission will rely on publicity and international pressure to make countries keep their promises. The industrial nations will nominate 19 of the 53 members, Africa and Asia 12 each and Latin America 10. Winners and Losers The agreement brings the two sides very different benefits and disadvantages. More-advanced developing countries, including India, Malaysia and Brazil, initially opposed outside scrutiny of their industrial policies. But in the end they agreed because the commission will eventually their financial advantage, diplomats here said. And a commission that enjoys the confidence of industrial nations could exert political pressure on them to provide the extra aid they promised in Rio to pay for maintaining higher environmental standards in developing lands. That aid would include cleaner technologies and an expansion of a special World Bank fund called the Global Environmental Facility. There was also a general pledge, from which the United States disassociated itself, to double the annual share of aid, to seven-tenths of 1 percent of the industrial world's economic output. The Main Tasks The resolution setting up the commission is to be adopted by the General Assembly next month. It says the commission's main task is to monitor how countries carry out Agenda 21, which is a blueprint for cleaning up the environment and encouraging development in an environmentally sound manner, and a global consensus on forest management. The latter document recommends that countries assess the impact of economic development on their forests and take steps, individually and jointly, to minimize the damage. Separate Rio conventions to protect plant and animal species and curb global warming have | U.N. FOLLOWING UP ACCORDS FROM RIO |
577308_2 | withdraw from the passenger car business, it said, reversing earlier pronouncements. Such a withdrawal would allow it to concentrate on trucks and recreational vehicles. [ D3. ] Police in Los Angeles arrested 22 people and seized equipment as part of a nationwide investigation into the theft of millions of dollars of air time from local cellular-phone networks. [ D3. ] Coca-Cola's global business has picked up in the fourth quarter after an unusually sluggish third quarter. [ D3. ] Regulators are reportedly investigating insider trading before the deal that created Nationsbank last year. [ D4. ] American Express may be planning a stock sale of a majority interest in its Shearson unit, according to a published report. [ D4. ] State Street Boston named a new chief financial officer and said its chief executive would add the title of chairman. [ D4. ] Delaware North won the concession contract at Yosemite National Park, the largest such contract in the park system. [ A22. ] International The North American free-trade agreement was signed by the leaders of Mexico, Canada and the United States. But President-elect Bill Clinton says he will seek to negotiate three supplemental agreements before putting the provisions into law. [ D1. ] Vehement comments were exchanged by French and American officials, suggesting a world trade agreement might not be achievable in the next few months. [ D2. ] Markets Blue-chip stocks rose as I.B.M.'s shares recovered a bit. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 14.05, to 3,269.23. On the New York Stock Exchange, 251.6 million shares traded. [ D6. ] New Jersey sold the second largest municipal bond issue ever and included a new type of bond product called a detachable call that appeared highly popular with some portfolio managers. [ D5. ] Wheat futures slipped to a six-week low as worries increased about Russia's inability to make payments on U.S. loans. [ D13. ] The dollar was mixed in light trading. [ D13. ] Today's Columns A confrontation over supercomputers may be near. Japan says the U.S. market is closed to Japanese supercomputers, and Americans say the Japanese have not lived up to an agreement to open its Government market to U.S. makers. Market Place. [ D6. ] Riddick Bowe would be happy to be a pitchman for a variety of products. And others believe the new heavyweight boxing champion has the potential. Advertising. [ D15. ] | BUSINESS DIGEST |
577737_1 | alternative to that disposal, the company, which has been moving into environmental businesses as it gets out of its disastrous involvement with financial services, has developed a process to remove almost all the lead from sand after it has been used in blasting. The mobile system, which is mounted on a 24-foot-long flatbed trailer, can decontaminate two to four tons of sand an hour, company executives say. The treatment reduces the lead content, which is typically at 12,000 parts per million, to less than 200 p.p.m. The cleaned sand cannot be reused in blasting because the blasting process rounds off the sharp edges needed for paint removal, Edward J. Lahoda, a Westinghouse engineer, said. But it can be used in other applications, like making concrete. The contaminated sand is fed by a conveyor onto a screen that filters out stones, twigs and large particles of paint. Anything passing through the screen is fed into a scrubber where it is treated by a water-based chemical that leaches the lead from the sand. The lead paint particles and very fine sand go into suspension in the fluid, and the now-scrubbed larger sand particles are separated out and dumped onto a clean sand pile. Westinghouse executives report sand recovery rates of 80 to 90 percent in early tests. The liquid goes into a mixing tank where a coagulant is added and then to another tank, where a flocculant further thickens it. This produces a material that Mr. Lahoda said resembles cottage cheese and contains the lead and fine sand particles. Most of the liquid is separated out and prepared for recycling. The lead-rich material can either be disposed of in a landfill or sent to a smelter for recovery of the metal. Westinghouse executives say they can treat the contaminated sand for about one-third the cost of burying it -- $500 a ton -- or smelting without pretreatment. And they say the system can also be used for other problems, such as treatment of used foundry sand, which is usually contaminated with the residues of the chemicals used to bind the sand particles together in molds. "It's basically the same process," Mr. Lahoda said. "You just change the leachate." An alternative approach, developed by Pentek Inc., of the Pittsburgh suburb of Coraopolis, Pa., eliminates most sand blasting. Instead, it uses a pneumatically powered needle gun, in conjunction with a powerful vacuum system, to | Technology; Improving Safety When Removing Lead-Based Paint |
577717_9 | customers for the European reprocessing centers. Officially, the Japanese say they are unfazed. "Were Japan to be the only nation working in this area," the Foreign Ministry said last month, the country would "view its responsibility as even greater and redouble its efforts to contribute to the international community through technological development." A Possible Switch Behind the scenes, many in the Government and industry have their doubts. As evidence has mounted that the world -- and Japan -- will be awash in plutonium, the Science and Technology Agency has rushed to come up with ways to burn it rather than produce more. Its idea involves mixing plutonium with uranium to fuel ordinary nuclear power plants, which run on uranium alone. In other words, the Government has told the utilities to replace a relatively inexpensive fuel with a far more expensive one. The giant utility companies were horrified; the implications for their shareholders, rate-payers and profits were obvious. "In public we will tell you that this is taking the long-term perspective," a senior official of Tokyo Electric Power said recently. "But what everyone knows, and won't say in public, is that this will cost consumers a fortune." Meanwhile, here at the Monju plant, engineers like Ken Yamamoto have raced to make sure that Japan's breeder reactor is not plagued by the problems that killed France's. The technology is difficult: Breeder reactors must use sodium, rather than water, to carry away intense heat -- a more complex system. Moreover, the piping is much thinner, so as to transfer heat more quickly. That can make the system more prone to cracking. It was the piping that tripped up the French. "Japanese are very good at checking and quality control, and we think we have overcome the problems," Mr. Yamamoto said the other day at the plant, soon to "go critical" with its first bit of plutonium fuel. "We believe it is safer because it is a Japanese design." Then there are the political problems -- particularly how Japan would get its European-processed plutonium back to its own shores. In fact, most experts agree that the risk of shipping the plutonium by sea is fairly low, but still, Japan kept the details of the voyage highly secret. (The convoy swept south from France, around South Africa, and is now believed heading north in the Pacific near Indonesia.) The shipment is expected to arrive in | Japan's Nuclear Fiasco |
577808_4 | the Serbs an ultimatum: Stop shelling Sarajevo and put all heavy guns under U.N. control or face military action. A senior American official said, meanwhile, "No action is imminent." July 3 -- The Serbs temporarily withdrew from the airport but without relinquishing their heavy guns. The airlift began, but only fitfully under intermittent Serb shelling. Three weeks later Roy Gutman of Newsweek visited Serb-run camps and heard eyewitness accounts of murders and atrocities. Other reporters uncovered rape camps where Muslim women were violated by the thousands. What did the world do? The U.S. expressed concern and insisted that the Red Cross be allowed into the camps. It said nothing about freeing those imprisoned or punishing the perpetrators. Summer and fall -- Serbs conducted hundreds of bombing and strafing raids on Bosnian towns. What did the world do? Oct. 9 -- The U.N. Security Council banned military flights over Bosnian territory. But it ducked a vote to enforce this ban. Late autumn -- The Serbian air raids slowed, but reconnaissance and troop flights continued. The shelling continued. So did ethnic cleansing. And many camps still operated, unvisited. By now more than 1 00,000 Bosnians, mostly Muslim Slavs, were dead or missing. And what has the world done? Washington, finally, is prodding the U.N. to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia -- four months too late. The U.S. is prepared to lift the arms embargo that effectively keeps Bosnia from defending itself -- six months too late. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger now denounces Serbian war crimes, doubtless hoping that will help defeat the strongman Slobodan Milosevic in today's Serbian election. But even now Washington, and London, and the European Community, and NATO and the U.N. shrink from forceful actions to counter the Serbs' aggression and slaughter in Bosnia: Attack their big guns and supply lines; Send in enough U.N. troops to secure safe havens in areas now menaced by Serb-sponsored ethnic cleansing; Threaten to attack military installations in Serbia unless it stops its brutal aggression in Bosnia and the rest of Yugoslavia. After a year of savage slaughter, mass rapes, ethnic cleansing and undoubted genocide, the world has responded with all the right words. But the question remains, What will the world do? Correction: December 22, 1992, Tuesday Roy Gutman, the reporter who first uncovered Serb-run concentration camps in Bosnia, was incorrectly described in an editorial Sunday. He writes for Newsday. | What Has the World Done for Bosnia?; A Diary of Disgrace |
578708_2 | quarreling with three major powers: France, over the fighter sale; Great Britain, over the pace of political change in Hong Kong; and the United States, over various matters including the sale of F-16 fighters to Taiwan. High-Level Visit to Taiwan President Bush announced the F-16 sale in September, and he further annoyed Beijing a few weeks ago by sending his trade representative, Carla A. Hills, on a visit to Taipei. Mrs. Hills is the first American Cabinet-level official to visit Taipei since the United States transferred its recognition of China from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. While indignant, China so far has taken only minor steps in retaliation against the United States: the withdrawal from talks on the spread of arms, the rejection of a proposal for a Chinese-American human rights commission, and the effective suspension of a rather feeble discussion on human rights. At the same time China has made a huge purchase of American wheat and bought six Boeing passenger airliners, in what seemed to be a peace offering to President-Elect Bill Clinton. And the Bush Administration announced on Tuesday that it would send China military equipment that had been in storage for more than three years to protest the Tiananmen massacre. Some further Chinese retaliation is still possible, but for now centrists appear to have won a strenuous debate within the leadership about how to respond to American actions considered negative. They presumably argued that firmer steps against the United States would encourage the Clinton Administration to revoke China's most-favored-nation trade benefits when they expire next summer. Discouraging Arms Deals China regards Taiwan as a renegade province, and it had strongly warned France and the United States in recent months not to continue with the fighter sales. Beijing apparently felt that it had to make France pay a significant price for the deal, in part to discourage Germany and the Netherlands from going ahead with proposed weapons sales to Taiwan. Relations between France and China were deeply strained after the Chinese crackdown in 1989 on the Tiananmen democracy movement. France took the lead among Western countries in giving asylum to Chinese and even in smuggling dissidents out of the country. But relations recovered relatively quickly, much more rapidly than ties between Beijing and Washington. France has not considered imposing trade sanctions against China, as the United States continues to do, and on Tuesday Paris extended a $120 | CHINA SAYS FRANCE MUST CLOSE OFFICE |
574530_2 | and Presbyterian, respectively, two groups that often take politically liberal positions. On Violence in the World This weekend has been set aside as a "Sabbath of Prayer and Petition" in mosques, synagogues and churches for human tragedies in two different parts of the world: one in Europe and the other in Africa. American clergy members of all religions are being asked to read from their pulpits a statement calling on the United States to intensify its efforts "to promote an immediate and lasting end to the violence in both Somalia and the former Yugoslavia." The statement by a coalition of American religious groups did not specifically mention the use of force or the deployment of American troops, but it indicated a common readiness to consider such measures. Among the groups that endorsed the new statement were the National Council of Churches, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Synagogue Council of America and the National Council of Mosques. The United States is "not the policeman of the world," the resolution said, "but the mass murder of innocents is unacceptable." Yesterday, after the United Nations initiated action to send troops to Somalia, Leonard Fein, a spokesman for the interfaith group, said the group was "relieved and delighted." He added, "While we recognize how much more complicated the situation in Bosnia is, we intend to continue to press for effective intervention there as well." In addition to this weekend, Dec. 23 has been set aside as a day of prayer for former Yugoslavs. Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, said the date was agreed upon in a Nov. 24-25 meeting that his group sponsored in Switzerland with the heads of the Serbian Orthodox, Croatian Roman Catholic and Muslim religious communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia and Croatia. Award for 'Freethinkers' This weekend atheists and agnostics from around the country will gather in San Antonio under the banner of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which plans to give its "Freethinkers of the Year" award to the Weisman family of Rhode Island. Daniel Weisman, a 46-year-old associate professor at Rhode Island College, and his teen-age daughter, Deborah, won a Supreme Court decision last June upholding a 30-year-old ban on officially sponsored prayer in public schools. The case stemmed from a clergyman's invocation and benediction at Miss Weisman's graduation in 1989 from a junior high school in Providence, R.I. | Religion Notes |
574377_0 | Lev Zetlin, an internationally known civil engineer who helped to design innovative buildings and was an expert on structural disasters, died yesterday at St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee. He was 74 years old and lived in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla. He died of cardiac arrest, his family said. Dr. Zetlin worked with famed architects like Philip Johnson and I. M. Pei. Among his projects were the Roosevelt Island tramway and several structures at the 1964 World's Fair in Queens. Hired as engineering detectives, his consulting businesses investigated the 1981 collapse of the Hyatt Regency's suspended walkway in Kansas City, where 110 people perished, and the 1987 collapse of the L'Ambiance Plaza building in Bridgeport, Conn., which killed 28 construction workers. Specialized in Long Spans Dr. Zetlin invented a cable suspension roof, and his patents included prestressed concrete for airport runways. He also specialized in long bridges and in structures using concrete reinforced with steel cables under tension. Another innovation was the space-frame roof, which uses light-gauge metal to form large open-space enclosures with minimal interior supports. He applied the concept to build the first hangars housing jumbo jets. His best-known World's Fair project was the New York State Pavilion, called the Tent of Tomorrow, which still stands. Its multicolored plexiglass roof, measuring 250 by 320 feet and strung from cables attached to concrete towers, was the world's largest suspension roof. It weighed 2,000 tons, but conventional rigid construction would have weighed six times that. Mr. Johnson, the pavilion's architect, described Dr. Zetlin as "the best engineer I ever had -- exciting, imaginative and reliable, a combination that's hard to get." Among Dr. Zetlin's various projects as a designer or consultant were Disney's Epcot, Christo's paper bridge, an Alcoa bauxite plant in Jamaica, the St. Anselm Cathedral in Washington, the Harvard Science Center, a portable fiberglass theater, underground fuel tanks for NATO, the American Embassy in New Delhi and Montreal's Olympic Stadium. He also investigated the collapses of the Mianus River Bridge on Interstate 95 in Connecticut in 1983, the Hartford Civic Center roof in 1978 and the PATH station roof at Journal Square in Jersey City in 1983. Dr. Zetlin taught at Cornell University, Pratt Institute, Manhattan College, and the University of Virginia. He wrote articles and books and won numerous awards. He served on panels for the National Academy of Sciences and several Federal agencies. He was also | Lev Zetlin, 74, an Expert on Structural Disasters |
575233_2 | to 69 were randomly selected from lists of households with telephones and interviewed by telephone. The French researchers found that more than 56 percent of men and 43.7 percent of women said they used a condom during intercourse at least once in the past year. The most widespread use of condoms was among 18- and 19-year-olds, with 79.8 percent of men reporting at least one condom use, as against 48 percent of women. Condom use was more prevalent in people with several partners. Among 18- to 44-year-olds, about 75 percent of homosexual men with multiple partners and more than 65 percent of women with multiple heterosexual partners used condoms at least once in the last year. "The most surprising finding for me," Dr. Spira said in a telephone interview, "was the relatively high use of condoms among young people, especially during their first experiences in intercourse, though it decreases as people become more accustomed to sex. There seems to have been a real increase in condom use in France, but unfortunately it is not enough because about one-third of men and half of women at risk of contracting H.I.V. or sexually transmitted diseases never used a condom during the last 12 months." The findings should help public health officials calculate more precise estimates of the number of people likely to become infected with H.I.V. and to better direct prevention efforts, the scientists said. More than 18,000 cases of H.I.V. infection have been reported in Britain and about 25,000 cases in France. "Our results clearly indicate that for prevention purposes you must carefully take into account demographics," Dr. Spira said. "Sexual behavior is not the same among men and women, young and old." In the French study, respondents were assured in a letter that all answers would remain anonymous and that information identifying them would be destroyed once the first answer was entered into a computer. The British relied on 500 experienced interviewers who met individually with the subjects. Findings in Britain Among the British findings were these: *The proportion of people reporting 10 or more partners so far in their lifetime is higher among people from 25 to 44 than among those over 45. *A quarter of men under 25 reported five or more partners in the last five years. *People in the professional and managerial classes were twice as likely as manual workers to report having two or more | Sexual Behavior Levels Compared in Studies In Britain and France |
575223_2 | failed. Beginning Dec. 28, engineers plan to make a last-ditch attempt to open the stuck antenna. As well as they can determine from a distance, engineers think three of the 18 graphite-epoxy ribs remain stuck to the antenna's central shaft. This has prevented full deployment of the molybdenum mesh that should stretch across the ribs like the cloth on an umbrella. In previous attempts to correct the problem, flight controllers turned the antenna alternately away from and toward the Sun, hoping the cooling and warming would cause contractions and expansions of deployment mechanisms that would somehow free the stuck ribs. Nothing budged. Plan to Repair Antenna The new strategy is to take advantage of Galileo's return to Earth's vicinity, closer to the Sun. The antenna should warm up enough to expand ever so slightly and thus restore it to its assembly dimensions. Then flight controllers plan to turn the antenna's drive motors on and off 1,000 to 2,000 times in steady pulses. The hope is that this will jolt pushrods and double the "eject" force, which just might pull the ribs free of the central shaft. "This is the most aggressive plan we have yet undertaken," Dr. O'Neil said. If these actions should also fail, he added: "We will be satisfied we have done our best. It will either be free or stuck." But while one engineering team has been trying desperately to unfurl the antenna, another has developed a contingency plan that officials say should enable the spacecraft, using only its two smaller antennas, to "yield a very rich harvest of data from Jupiter." Earlier, it had been feared that without the large antenna and its ability to rapidly transmit high volumes of data, Galileo might wind up at Jupiter as a virtually silent explorer. In a plan prepared last summer, project engineers and scientists outlined ways that Galileo should be able to achieve 80 percent of its observation objectives of the Jovian atmosphere, 70 percent of its studies of the four largest Jovian satellites and 60 percent of the research on magnetic fields -- for an overall 70 percent achievement level. The main loss will be in photography, said Dr. Torrence V. Johnson, the chief project scientist. With only the two small antennas, which are normally used mainly for sending engineering data, Galileo may return only 2,000 to 4,000 pictures instead of 50,000 as planned. Priority will be | Planetary 'Slingshot' Aims Craft At a Rendezvous With Jupiter |
573946_2 | bytes, of information each day, Sarnoff researchers said. To cope with this flood of information, researchers at Sarnoff, which was the research arm of the RCA Corporation until the General Electric Company acquired RCA in 1986, have devised ways to ignore most of the data. "Much like the human visual system, Smart Sensing selectively sorts through vast amounts of information in any visual scene, then isolates key characteristics such as movement, shapes, colors, letters and face patterns," the center said in a statement. Mr. Carlson said, "The point is to back away and get perspective -- to look at the forest rather than each of the trees." A more rudimentary form of the system was first developed for the military to help helicopter crews distinguish incoming missiles from background information, he said. Professor Kanade of Carnegie Mellon described the Sarnoff development as particularly important because it would permit rapid searches of picture data bases. But he said some flaws remained in the process. Eliminating Verbal Descriptions Currently, devices that employ the power of computers to store video pictures are greatly limited in their ability to sort and retrieve the images. Texts can be found by searching for a few key words, but images must be described in great detail, with a considerable likelihood that the verbal descriptions will miss crucial detail in any one image. Sarnoff researchers say their system will enable image-based searches without the need for detailed descriptions that use words. For example, instead of entering a verbal description of a ship when asking a system to look for pictures of ships, the Smart Sensing system would let the computer view the silhouette of a sample ship. It could then be asked to search the data base for similar images of ships. But Professor Kanade said such a system would recognize only images of ships at roughly the same orientation as the example. "If it were to see a bow view of the same ship, it would not recognize it as the same as the side view," he said Sarnoff officials said they established Sensar as a free-standing subsidiary to speed the commercialization of the computer-vision technology, rather than licensing it or forming a joint venture with a manufacturing company. They said Sensar was still developing its business plan, but that its products would most likely be a part of more complex systems, like self-guided vehicles. COMPANY NEWS | New System Lets Computer Identify Pictures and Images |
573945_0 | With France busily trying to win allies in its fight against a United States-European Community farm trade agreement, tens of thousands of farmers from across Western Europe filled the streets of the French border city of Strasbourg today to protest the pact. French farm unions, which contend that the farm trade accord will badly damage French agriculture, chose Strasbourg for the daylong demonstration because the city not only is the headquarters of the European Parliament, but also is within easy reach of German farmers. Roads leading to the European Parliament and the local American Consulate were blocked, but some 200 French farmers clashed with police when they tried to reach the parliament building. They threw paving stones, street signs and metal bars at the police, who responded with tear gas grenades. Several Farmers Injured Violence also erupted after a mass meeting in a soccer stadium when 100 protesters again clashed with riot policemen. Local officials said several farmers were injured, including one who lost a hand. Some farmers were also injured by firecrackers fired by colleagues during the march to the stadium. The day began with the burning of an effigy of Carla Hills, the American Trade Representative, on a bonfire of wood and straw. But most of the 40,000 or so demonstrators heeded Government warnings that televised scenes of disorder would only damage their cause. At the stadium, a French farmers' leader, Luc Guyau, warned farmers elsewhere in Europe that they too would be hurt by the farm trade accord. "Yesterday, some farmers thought they weren't concerned by the consequences," he told the crowd. "But today they understand that no one is safe." Constantin Heereman, a German farm union leader, said European farmers were being sacrificed to the profits of the United States and some multinational corporations. "We must put an end to their threats and their arrogant blackmail," he said, adding that a new demonstration by European farmers would be held in Bonn on Dec. 8. German farmers were best represented in Strasbourg today, but delegations from most other community countries -- as well as Canada, Japan and South Korea -- were also on hand. Under the farm trade accord, the community agreed to reduce its exports of subsidized food products by 21 percent and cut back oilseed cultivation by 15 percent. Settlement of the dispute has led to the resumption of long-stalled global trade liberalization negotiations. Within | Europe's Farmers Protest Trade Agreement |
579776_0 | In 1992, the telecommunications industry was not so much on hold as on continuous call-waiting, with the forces of new technology, industry consolidation and government regulation piling up like so many urgent telephone messages. The industry's most visible story involved something that cannot be seen: radio frequencies used by cellular telephones. More than 10 million people now subscribe to cellular services, a level once forecast for the turn of the century. A.T.& T., recognizing the shortsightedness of its withdrawal from the cellular market a few years ago, announced in November that it was negotiating to buy a third of McCaw Cellular, the nation's biggest provider of wireless telephone service in a $7 billion market. Within a few years, the second generation of wireless phones -- handheld devices that are smaller, lighter and more versatile than today's cellular models -- may well add $30 billion more annually, some telecommunications consultants say. Known as personal communications, the market will consist of an as-yet-undetermined mix of telephones, computers and low-power radio transmitters. The Federal Communications Commission may decide in the coming year how to organize markets for these phones, probably in ways intended to promote more competition and lower prices than in the cellular markets. A Phone for the Subway? As envisioned by the product planners, people will be able to use wireless phones at their desks, on the street and in places normally blocked off from cellular signals, like elevators and subways. GTE, Bell Atlantic and Ameritech spent the year conducting large-scale trials to help them design such personal communications services. The year's less visible story was the continued increase in capacity and speed in communications networks. With the addition of new undersea cables planned this year, there will be more than 1.1 million voice circuits between the United States and Europe by 1996 and 441,000 to Asia. And new techniques in data transmission that were widely deployed this year, like the so-called frame-relay format, will raise speeds nearly thirtyfold. Meanwhile, improvements in laser-fired fiber optics by A.T.& T. and Northern Telecom promise even higher communications capacity, and lower costs. The technologies place intense pressure on long-distance carriers like A.T.& T., MCI and Sprint and local carriers like BellSouth and Nynex to fill up these huge pipelines. They spent the year increasing services like caller-identification and information services like stock quotes. The more people call, the more cost-effective all that increased capacity | BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY: A Year of Transitions; Planning a Future of Telephones Without Tethers |
575693_0 | The Federal Communications Commission approved a new microwave technology today to transmit simultaneously dozens of channels of television, telephone calls and large amounts of data. The system, which would use superhigh-frequency radio signals to deliver up to 49 television channels, could pose a threat to the virtual monopoly that cable television systems enjoy today in most cities. The system was recently introduced, on an experimental basis, to homes in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. One big advantage to the technology is that it avoids the need to spend millions of dollars to lay cables to every home in a city, a cost that is passed on to cable television subscribers. Once Considered Unusable The main innovation of the new technology is its use of extremely high-frequency microwaves to transmit information. Until now, these radio frequencies -- far higher than the UHF and VHF signals commonly used in television broadcasting -- have been considered unusable for anything more than transmitting data between two sites in full view of each other. The new technology was developed by a Freehold, N.J., start-up company called Cellular Vision of New York Inc. Company officials said the technology would make it possible to undercut, by more than half, the prices of cable television companies, which deliver their signals over wires. Impressed by the results from two years of technical tests, the F.C.C. today proposed allocating a big block of superhigh radio frequencies for the new technology and offering licenses to two companies in each market. Recognizing Cellular Vision as the pioneer, the commission tentatively gave it the chance to choose between a license for the metropolitan New York or Los Angeles areas. Licenses for other markets will probably be issued through a lottery process, perhaps as soon as next summer. The developers of the technology assert that they can reach almost every site in a metropolitan area, in part by bouncing signals off buildings and other objects until they reach their ultimate destination. In Brighton Beach, the company began offering a package of several dozen cable television channels, including Cable News Network, ESPN, MTV and two movie channels, for $29.95 a month. Customers receive signals over small, flat antennas about six inches square that can be placed indoors or outside. The company said a similar package of channels offered by the Cablevision Systems Corporation, the cable company that serves Brighton Beach, would cost $50 a month. One Brighton | A New Microwave System Poses Threat to Cable TV |
578344_0 | A SOUTHERN BAPTIST, described as a social drinker who has a beer now and then, hardly seems the ideal spokesman for a national public-service announcement warning holiday revelers about the perils of drunken driving. It makes sense, though, when he turns out to be Bill Clinton. Between Christmas and New Year's Day, the three major television broadcasting networks plan to run -- during their coveted prime-time viewing hours -- a public-service commercial in which the President-elect will deliver a cautionary greeting to the nation he is soon to govern. The 30-second spot is the latest strategem in a four-year-old campaign by the Harvard University Alcohol Project to encourage drinkers to designate drivers. It also introduces some subtle shifts in the project's attempts to modify behavior. "We're always looking for opportunities to sustain the visibility of our message," Dr. Jay Winsten, director of the Harvard Alcohol Project, said in an interview yesterday from his office at the Center for Health Communications of Harvard's School of Public Health in Boston. Sounding like a top executive at an ad agency, he added, "It's part of our ongoing public-relations campaign to advertise our product -- and our product is the designated driver." (In a speech he delivered last month, Dr. Winsten described how important Madison Avenue concerns like "positioning," "creativity" and "exposure" had been to the project.) In the 30-second spot, videotaped last Friday in Little Rock, Ark., Mr. Clinton is seated by a blazing fire. To dispel comparisons with the last Chief Executive to make a fireside chat, Jimmy Carter, Mr. Clinton is dressed in a suit and tie rather than a cardigan. "We start the new year with a sense of hope and possibility," he says, according to a script provided by the Harvard Alcohol Project. "Let's also start it safely. If your New Year's celebration includes alcohol, please, for yourself and your friends, take responsibility, drink in moderation, choose a designated driver who doesn't drink at all." The spot ends with Mr. Clinton, on behalf of himself and his wife, Hillary, wishing viewers "a safe, healthy and happy New Year." The commercial serves each participant's purposes nicely. For the Alcohol Project, it offers a fresh angle to what has become a familiar refrain at the Christmas and New Year's holidays: that, in the words of another public-service spot, "Friends don't let friends drive drunk." Mr. Clinton's appearance is meant "to capitalize | A (Nearly) Presidential Call for Care in Holiday Imbibing |
579641_2 | hijackings in 1969, there has been only one attempted hijacking in the last two years, and it failed. Still, there are gaps in the security system that worry some experts. Frank G. McGuire of Silver Spring, Md., the editor of a security intelligence newsletter, said a lawyer he knows broke his leg not long ago and had to fly on a business trip. At the check-in counter, airline employees brought him a wheelchair. "Then they pushed him around the security checkpoint and seated him aboard the plane," Mr. McGuire said, "without ever checking him, his cast or the backpack he was carrying." There were no weapons in the backpack, but there could have been, Mr. McGuire said. While the aviation agency and private manufacturers are working to develop better and more sophisticated X-ray metal detectors, many security experts favor more and better training of security officers. "You can have the best equipment but you still depend on the vigilance of the X-ray operators," Mr. Lally said. Many security experts, like Mr. Lally, favor upgrading the status of security officers. The officers, most of whom work for companies hired by individual airlines, are usually paid only slightly more than the minimum wage, and turnover is high. "It isn't glamorous but it's an important and tough job to focus on every single bag," said Chris Witkowski, safety director of the Association of Flight Attendants. Officials say there is no typical profile of those who try to board an airplane with a gun. Violators run the gamut of occupations and ages, although 54 percent are between the ages of 21 and 39. Security officials also say an increasing number of violators are women. Len Limmer, director of public safety at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, said most women arrested there for carrying handguns were those who work late hours. "The guns become so much a part of the paraphernalia in their handbags," he said, "they forget about them when they come to the airport." Concealing Gun in Radio What concerns most security experts, though, are the people who bring weapons to the airport with apparent illegal intent. Last month, for example, a passenger was arrested trying to board a plane in Las Vegas, Nev., with a handgun hidden in a radio and a .357 magnum hidden in a television set. What is not known is how many passengers manage to board airplanes with | Guns at Airports: a Common Problem |
524661_0 | The Bush Administration has for the first time offered to curb the increase in climate-warming gases released into the atmosphere by American factories, trucks and automobiles as part of a proposed agreement being prepared for a top-level international environmental conference to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June. This American negotiating position was stated in Paris earlier this month during informal talks on the planned treaty between the industrial nations and some developing countries, officials said. But the United States is still refusing to join the rest of the industrial world in accepting a treaty commitment to stabilize the emission of these "greenhouse gases" at 1990 levels by the year 2000. Already Succeeding, Bush Says In a document released last week, the Bush Administration suggested that there was no need for it to join in this pledge, contending that environmental programs the United States has already put into effect would reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 7 percent to 11 percent below what they would have been by 2000. But officials acknowledged that the levels of such gases released into the atmosphere through American industrial production and use would still be 1.5 percent to 6 percent higher in 2000 than they are today. At the Paris preparatory talks, the United States, in convoluted language, pledged only "to contribute to the global effort" on climate stabilization by "recognizing that the reduction of growth of net anthropogenic emissions of the total of all greenhouse gases not covered by the Montreal Convention would be an appropriate signal that longer-term emission trends have been modified consistent with that objective." The Montreal Convention bans the release of gases that damage the ozone layer, meaning man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. In the view of many experts, these gases threaten environmental havoc by trapping heat in the atmosphere and melting portions of the polar ice caps, raising ocean levels. The Bush Administration's stand at the Paris talks, which ended on April 16, is being seen by many diplomats and officials here as an indication that the United States is becoming slightly more flexible on global warming, which until recently it refused to recognize as being a problem at all. Nevertheless, its position remains far from that taken by leaders of other industrial nations, in refusing to set legally binding targets for curbing greenhouse gas releases. And in a presidential election year, | U.S. Informally Offers to Cut Rise in Climate-Warming Gases |
523422_4 | environmental protection and asserted it was time for "Congress and the Democratic Party" to step up to the challenge. Some Bush campaign strategists have begun speculating that Mr. Clinton's environmental record can be held against him by showcasing sites like the polluted White River region in northwestern Arkansas, where waste from millions of animal farms has tainted miles of streams. Mr. Clinton, who served as Governor from 1978 to 1980 and again from 1982 until now, did not appoint a study group to address the problem until 1990. The Governor challenged Mr. Bush to join him at the White River so he could show him what the problems were there. "If you really want to clean up the problem, I'll make a deal with you," Mr. Clinton said he would tell the President. "We'll outline the Federal and the state responsibility and we'll get results in cleaning up one of the most wonderful rivers in this country. Our people in Arkansas are tired of the politics of blame." Recalling Mr. Bush's effort to turn the environmental debate against Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic nominee in 1988, Mr. Clinton asserted: "I will not let this become the Boston Harbor. So, Mr. President, if you want to place the blame, you're going to have to shoulder some of it, too." National Standards Urged Mr. Clinton said that national standards must be put into effect to deal with pollution like the agricultural runoff that has created so much of his state's environmental problems. The Governor said Mr. Bush was "single-handedly blocking" global efforts to address environmental concerns by hesitating over whether to attend the international conference on the environment, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June. Mr. Clinton called for "a new covenant for environmental progress" that would include debt-for-nature swaps, in which poorer nations would be allowed to satisfy debt by setting aside land for preservation. He also urged American participation in United Nations programs aimed at curbing global population growth. Mr. Clinton also said that he would develop "revenue-neutral" incentives to encourage conservation and tax automobiles that are less fuel-efficient. And he said he would encourage further development of solar energy alternatives and pass a national bottle bill that would place a refundable fee on recyclable bottles, cans and other containers. He did not say how much the measures he has proposed would cost taxpayers or the Federal Government. | THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Environment; Clinton Links Ecology Plans With Jobs |
523441_2 | any educational level has become the home." Even women whose careers have soared with the revolution complain about discrimination. Fatemeh Karrubi, the 44-year-old director of the powerful Martyrs' Foundation Hospital Center, and her husband, Mehdi Karrubi, the Speaker of the Parliament, both of them so-called hard-line candidates for Parliament who fared poorly in the April 10 election, have been criticized recently in the press for the lavish wedding they gave for one of their children. But the press expended extra ammunition on Mrs. Karrubi. "Couldn't you find anyone more qualified than your own wife to run the Martyrs' Foundation so that at least she would have less contact with strange men?" an interviewer from the hard-line newspaper Resalat asked Mr. Karrubi, a mid-ranking cleric, in an interview last month. Mr. Karrubi snapped back, "I don't expect a Muslim to hold such a view about women." President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani tried to respond to women's complaints recently by naming a biologist, Fatima Hashemi, as his special adviser on women. But her office has not yet had much of an effect. Mr. Rafsanjani incurred the wrath of many women when he implicitly endorsed temporary marriage in a sermon in 1990. He justified the practice on the ground that young people did not have enough money to pay for a proper Persian wedding, and also suggested that it would not be un-Islamic for widows or divorced women to "have a temporary relationship -- a temporary marriage -- with someone else." Prostitution in Comeback In the early years of the revolution, prostitutes were sent to prison or Islamic reform schools. But prostitution has made a comeback, and his sermon gave impetus to an already growing call-girl business. The world's oldest profession is practiced largely in the form of "sigheh," the Islamic practice by which a couple can get married for a few years or months, or, if the rules are stretched, a few hours. "I don't think sigheh should have been recommended for young people," Mrs. Karrubi said in an interview. "To establish a permanent foundation for marriage it must be a permanent marriage, not a temporary one." The most visible battle for women's rights is still fought through their wardrobes. In the 13-year revolution, perhaps no other issue has been debated with such fury as the rules for what constitutes "good hejab," or head covering. "Research proved female hair had a kind | Teheran Journal; From the Back Seat in Iran, Murmurs of Unrest |
523470_0 | The International Monetary Fund sharply reduced its forecast for the world economy today, saying growth would be only a sluggish 1.4 percent this year. Last October the I.M.F. predicted 2.7 percent growth for 1992. Fund officials said today that they cut that forecast largely because the United States had taken longer than expected to begin its climb from recession. The fund said the world's economy was gathering steam, however, and would grow by a healthy 3.6 percent next year. Although the growth in most of the major industrial countries has stumbled, the report did not forecast a recession for the industrial world as a whole. It predicted the industrial countries would grow 1.8 percent this year and 3.3 percent next year. Growth of 2.3% Seen for U.S. In its World Economic Outlook report, the I.M.F. said the American economy was beginning to turn up. It forecast that the nation's output would grow by 2.3 percent from the fourth quarter of 1991 to this year's fourth quarter. In a news conference today, Michael Mussa, the fund's chief economist, added that he would not be surprised if the nation's economy grew by 3 percent for the year as whole. The report said it would be unwise for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates further because the recovery appeared to be taking hold. "Barring evidence that growth continues to falter, a further significant reduction of interest rates does not seem warranted in the United States," the report said. Concerns About Inflation The I.M.F. said the decline in interest rates already in place should produce the long-awaited strengthening of activity. Worried that further monetary easing could ultimately overstimulate the economy, the report said that underlying inflation in the United States "still appears to be above long-term objectives." The report said consumer prices would rise 3.1 percent both this year and next year, compared with 4.2 percent inflation last year. "The significant decline in short-term interest rates in North America and Japan -- made possible by the continued moderation of inflation -- is expected to contribute to a strengthening of growth during 1992," the report said. But it noted that long-term rates remained high, partly because of the huge American budget deficit. Mr. Mussa said that the construction slump and military spending reductions meant the American economy would not rebound at the 5 percent or 6 percent rate generally seen in the first year | I.M.F. Trims Global Growth Forecast |
519944_3 | by Accident Aspartame was discovered in 1965, when a scientist researching proteins for an ulcer drug licked his finger and noticed a sweet taste. Twenty-seven years later, Nutrasweet sweetens nearly 5,000 different products, ranging from sugar-free gum balls to Ultra Slim-Fast shakes. Monsanto began preparing for the patent expiration two years ago, when it installed new management at Nutrasweet, moving the chairman, Robert B. Shapiro, to another Monsanto division. Mr. Flynn, a hard-boiled career Monsanto executive, took over in June 1990, with a simple charge from Monsanto's chairman, Richard J. Mahoney. "He said, 'We don't want earnings to fall off the cliff,' " Mr. Flynn recalled in a recent interview at Nutrasweet headquarters here. Mr. Flynn set to work refocusing the company on the food ingredient business, quickly scratching plans for Nutrasweet to add 500 more employees. Saying he has no interest in competing directly with Nutrasweet's customers, the nation's largest food and beverage companies, Mr. Flynn tells of how Michael A. Miles, chairman of Philip Morris, recently reminded him of Nutrasweet's grand ambitions. "I said, Mike, we don't have that problem anymore," Mr. Flynn said. 'The Harsh Approach' Last year, Mr. Flynn attacked Nutrasweet's high costs, dismissing 200 employees, or 15 percent of the company's work force. "Within Monsanto, I'm viewed as taking the harsh approach," he acknowledged. Despite the cuts, Mr. Flynn has brought in a half-dozen executives from other Monsanto divisions and placed them in important positions at Nutrasweet. And David Morley, a protege of Mr. Shapiro who was responsible for developing Simplesse, recently left Nutrasweet to join his mentor at Monsanto's agricultural products company. Mr. Flynn is also signaling his willingness to rethink the logo requirement. "I'm not hung up on it," he said. "I tell people, if one day you want to take the logo off, that's your choice. You won't get a lower price." He said Nutrasweet might drop the logo requirement in two years. But Mr. Pirko, the consultant, said he did not expect the company to drop the demand without a fight. "They have always played hardball," he said, "and they always will." Nutrasweet spends millions advertising its logo, and contributes money to the advertising campaigns of customers that display the swirl. "They are saying to Coke, "You drop us, and we will put all of our resources behind the other guy,' " Mr. Pirko said. Neither Coke nor Pepsi will discuss | Nutrasweet's Race With the Calendar |
519817_0 | In Bernt Capra's "Mindwalk," opening today at the Film Forum, an alienated scientist (Liv Ullmann), a losing candidate for the United States Presidency (Sam Waterston), and an American poet (John Heard) who lives in self-imposed exile in France meet by chance at Mont-St.-Michel and spend the day walking and talking. Though not exactly spontaneous and seldom witty, it is good serious talk, a sort of feature-length op-ed piece. The source material is "The Turning Point" by the director's brother, Fritjof Capra, a physicist and the author of the best seller "The Tao of Physics," which finds links between science and religious mysticism. (The Austrian-born Capra brothers are no relation to Frank Capra.) It is Fritjof Capra's point that the Earth can be saved only by a radical rethinking of priorities. Because the universe and everything within it function according to a single system of interdependencies, he believes, a holistic approach is needed to solve all problems, from famine, overpopulation and global warming to the tired businessman's heart attack. Mont-St.-Michel, a mile off the Normandy coast, is as apt a locale for the Capra brothers today as it was for Henry Adams in 1904. That was when Adams privately published his first edition of "Mont-St.-Michel and Chartres," a meditation upon the 13th century, when, as he saw it, the worship of the Virgin Mary briefly gave a transcendent unity and coherence to French life. The ancient Benedictine abbey, founded in the eighth century, is a spectacular setting, though "Mindwalk" is less interested in scenery than in delivering ideas as efficiently and conversationally as possible. Miss Ullmann's scientist must do most of the talking while she leads the two men around the island, gently lecturing them on Descartes, Newton and the outmodedness of the mechanistic approach to science. "Well, let's take the population problem, for example," she says by way of one preamble, or "Take Brazil. As you know they are destroying the Amazon rain forest at the rate of one football field a second." A specialist in laser physics, she describes herself as being on "a semi-permanent sabbatical" from her post at an American university. She lost interest, she tells them, when she found her work was being "fed to the U.S. Defense Department." She is intense, sincere and so very knowing that the politician and the poet haven't much to do except make little interjections, which allow her to catch | Reviews/Film; Engaging in Conversation on the Normandy Coast |
524870_0 | After revising upward its forecasts for world population growth, a United Nations agency called today for "a sustained and concerted program starting immediately" to curb the expansion. It said such action was needed to reduce poverty and hunger and to protect the earth's natural resources. Releasing its latest population projections, the United Nations Population Fund said the world's population would probably rise from 5.48 billion in mid-1992 to 10 billion in 2050 before leveling off at 11.6 billion after the year 2150. This means that the world's population is expected to stabilize at a level that is one billion higher than the United Nations predicted in its last long-term forecast, in 1980, but about 50 years later in time. In 1980, the agency predicted that global population would level off after 2100 at 10.6 billion people. 97 Million More a Year The new projections show the world adding 97 million new people every year until the end of the century and 90 million a year thereafter until 2025. The following 25 years will see annual additions of about 61 million people, the report said. "Ahead lie four decades of the fastest growth in human numbers in all history," the report said. Ninety-seven percent of the increase is expected to occur in developing countries, with Africa alone accounting for 34 percent of the rise. The report warned that such rates of growth mean greater numbers of poor and hungry people, increased migration toward cities and richer countries and increased pressure on the world's reserves of food, water and other natural resources. "This crisis heightens the risk of future economic and ecological catastrophes," Dr. Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani physician who runs the Population Fund, said at a news conference in London today. The United Nations Population Fund, which seeks to encourage family planning throughout the developing world, called for an urgent new campaign to curb the third-world population explosion in the coming decade. The United States, which used to provide about 27 percent of the voluntary contributions governments make to the agency, suspended all funding in 1976 in a quarrel over abortions in China. The agency's current budget is about $225 million a year. Growth Could Be Cut While it calls a rise in the population to 10 billion by 2050 the most likely development under current circumstances, the Population Fund believes a stepped-up campaign in favor of smaller families during the | Curb on Population Growth Needed Urgently, U.N. Says |
524898_1 | estimated 180,000 American women this year, and there will be 46,000 deaths, authorities said. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women aged 40 to 45, and the risk of developing the disease rises with age. Heart disease is the leading killer of women above age 65. Dr. Bernard Fisher of the University of Pittsburgh, the principal investigator for the tamoxifen trial, said it was important to find a way to diagnose and prevent breast cancer in the earliest, pre-clinical stages of the disease. Researchers suspect the trial drug may be beneficial at these early stages when the first biological changes toward cancer occur. "Tamoxifen may have some effect on tumors that exist below the area of detection," Dr. Fisher speculated. Tamoxifen is a synthetic hormone discovered by British researchers 30 years ago that competes with the female hormone estrogen and blocks its effects. It has proved particularly effective in treating tumors that use estrogen to grow and is the most widely prescribed cancer drug in the world, experts said. On some tissue, however, tamoxifen produces a mild estrogen-like effect, Dr. Broder said, which decreases the bone thinning of osteoporosis and lowers blood cholesterol, which helps in decreasing heart disease. The tamoxifen for the study will be supplied without charge by I.C.I. Americas Inc. of Wilmington, Del. Risk Factors The $60 million trial, which is to take five to eight years, will begin enrolling women on May 15. Those eligible are women over age 35 who have at least five times greater than normal risk of developing breast cancer, and all women over age 60, who have a similarly high risk because incidence of the disease increases with age. Among the factors putting younger women into the higher-risk category are having had two or more noncancerous tumors, having had their first menstrual period under age 14, never having been pregnant and having two or more close relatives who had breast cancer. Women in the trial will take two pills once a day for five years. Half of those in the test will be given a 20-milligram daily dose of tamoxifen, and the other half will take a placebo, or dummy drug. Neither the women involved nor their doctors will know whether they are taking the real drug or the placebo. Some critics of the trial have argued that it is too risky to subject so many healthy women | Large Study Will Test Whether Drug Prevents Breast Cancer |
519106_0 | Following is the draft text of a declaration of principles for encouraging environmentally responsible development that is to be considered in June by leaders attending an environmental summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro: THE CONFERENCE ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT, Having Met at Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to 14 1992, REAFFIRMING the Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, adopted at Stockholm on June 16, 1972, and seeking to build upon it, WITH THE GOAL OF establishing a new and equitable global partnership through the creation of new levels of cooperation among states, key sectors of societies and people, WORKING TOWARD international agreements which respect the interests of all and protect the integrity of the global environmental and developmental system, RECOGNIZING the integral and interdependent nature of the earth, our home, PROCLAIMS that: Principle 1. Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature. Principle 2. States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsiblility to insure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other states or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. Principle 3. The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations. Principle 4. In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it. Principle 5. All states and all people shall cooperate in the essential task of eradicating poverty as an indispensable requirement for sustainable development, in order to decrease the disparities in standards of living and better meet the needs of the majority of the people of the world. Principle 6. The special situation and needs of developing countries, particularly the least developed and those most environmentally vulnerable, shall be given special priority. International actions in the field of environment and development should also address the interests and needs of all coutries. Principle 7. States shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the earth's ecosystem. In view of the different contributions to | Draft of Environmental Rules: 'Global Partnership' |
519106_3 | be provided. Principle 11. States shall enact effective environmental legislation. Environmental standards, management objectives and priorities should reflect the environmental and developmental context to which they apply. Standards applied by some countries may be inappropriate and of unwarranted economic and social cost to other countries, in particular developing countries. Principle 12. States should cooperate to promote a supportive and open international economic system that would lead to economic growth and sustainable development in all countries, to better address the problems of environmental degradation. Trade policy measures for environmental purposes should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade. Unilateral actions to deal with environmental challenges outside the jurisdiction of the importing country should be avoided. Environmental measures addressing trans-boundary or global environmental problems should, as far as possible, be based on an international consensus. Principle 13. States shall develop national law regarding liability and compensation for the victims of pollution and other environmental damage. States shall also cooperate in an expeditious and more determined manner to develop further international law regarding liability and compensation for adverse effects of environmental damage caused by activities within their jurisdiction or control to areas beyond their jurisdiction. Principle 14. States should effectively cooperate to discourage or prevent the relocation and transfer to other states of any activities and substances that cause severe environmental degradation or are found to be harmful to human health. Principle 15. In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied to states according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. Principle 16. National authorities should endeavor to promote the internalization of environmental costs and the use of economic instruments, taking into account the approach that the polluter should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution, with due regard to the public interest and without distorting international trade and investment. Principle 17. Environmental impact assessment, as a national instrument, shall be undertaken for proposed activities that are likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment and are subject to a decision of a competent national authority. Principle 18. States shall immediately notify other states of any natural disasters or other emergencies that are likely to produce sudden harmful effects on the environment | Draft of Environmental Rules: 'Global Partnership' |
519188_4 | books that were already Brailled here often come from other states with which the bindery has a reciprocal arrangement. Sold on a cost-recovery basis, these books help finance the bindery, Mrs. Bente said. Each transcriber must be certified by the Library of Congress after a nine-month training course. The Red Cross offers Braille classes taught by staff members and volunteers, at the Essex chapter and the Bergen chapter in Ridgewood, as well as at the West Caldwell Civic Center and the adult school in Bernardsville. A class will also be given at the Millburn-Short Hills chapter in September. Rose Cipriano, chairwoman of the volunteers who serve in the department, has been Brailling since she passed the course in 1971. "It's addictive," she said. "It engenders devotion because there's meaning to it." Mr. Lampert, who has been Brailling for 16 years, said: "Brailling is an 'odd skill' that isn't just for anyone. It appeals to someone who is detail-oriented, with a mind that's good at code. A lot of Braillers are avid crossword puzzle fans." He described the majority of the transcribers as "mature women with grown children." Although a blind person reads Braille, from left to right, with two hands, sighted people learn to read it by eye. "I try to utilize whatever skills people have," Mrs. Bente said, noting that she tries to match up a book with a compatible reader. Diagrams to Be Read by Touch Occasionally, a book requires an ability other than reading. For example, Jesse Stage, a retired chemical engineer who has spent a lifetime making accurate drawings, was asked to produce diagrams capable of being read by touch. Images can be problematic, Mrs. Bente said. "Sometimes you have to find another means, such as giving a child an actual cube instead of an image of a cube that depends on optical perception of depth," she said. Neither the staff members nor the volunteers have direct contact with the students or the schools. But Ms. Boorstein, who was once among some 40 itinerant teachers assigned geographical portions of the state, said the integration of visually impaired children into local schools benefited not only them but also sighted students and teachers. "It makes everyone more tolerant," she said. "I can't exaggerate the value of the bindery's work," Ms. Boorstein said. "The children couldn't live at home and go to neighborhood schools if they didn't have textbooks." | East Orange Journal; Volunteers Make Textbooks That Open the World to the Blind |
519018_0 | To the Editor: Robert Stone decries the decline of an ancient code of honor and self-sacrifice shown in betrayals by Mafiosi. He states: "a Mafioso's self-image as a Man of Honor bound him to a tradition with some heroic pretensions, one deeply rooted in the Mediterranean past" (Op-Ed, March 15). Mr. Stone's analysis, in keeping with recent communitarian critiques of American pragmatism and liberal self-interest, nevertheless does not recognize that within that Mediterranean past he lauds, some writers sought to distinguish between just and unjust forms of community. Aristotle contended in Book VIII of the "Nichomachean Ethics" that friendship exists in three forms: that based on a shared appreciation of the good; that based on utility, and that based on pleasure. He wrote: "In a friendship based on utility or on pleasure men love their friend for their own pleasure, and not as being the person loved, but as useful or agreeable. . . . Consequently friendships of this kind are easily broken off. . . . " Similarly, the Roman philosopher Cicero -- who lived in a different time and place, but still by the Mediterranean -- wrote in his dialogue "On Friendship": "Let us, then, lay down this law for friendship: we must not ask wrongful things, nor do them, if we are asked to." In both cases these ancient thinkers viewed relationships based on anything other than a shared appreciation of and commitment to a life of virtue as corrupt and ultimately unstable forms of friendship. Mr. Stone assumes that any relationship in which self-sacrifice occurs is worthy of praise and that betrayal is a result of pragmatic self-interest derived from American life at large. Yet according to his own appeal to ancient Mediterranean sources, he should recognize that relationships among evil men performing evil deeds are less than noble, being based on utility or pleasure, and therefore subject to betrayal as soon as personal advantage is threatened. In short, such relationships are from the very outset infected by the very pragmatism and self-interest he assumes to be wholly absent. Mr. Stone should differentiate contemptible forms of self-sacrifice and community from those deserving esteem. PATRICK J. DENEEN New Brunswick, N.J., March 21, 1992 | What Aristotle and Cicero Tell Us About the Fate of the Mafiosi |
519281_0 | Imagine floating 500 miles above Earth in a glass-bottomed spaceship. The ship is traveling 100,000 miles an hour as it circles the planet in less than three minutes. The view is perpetually in sunlight and cloudless, so passengers can see Earth as if the continents were lifted from the pages of a gigantic atlas. With public space flight still a distant fantasy, such a view of Earth is possible only with a new video exhibit created by multimedia specialists and an architectural firm here called Cambridge Seven. The exhibit, created by combining satellite photographs with innovative video and computer technology, was produced for the exposition that is to begin next month in Genoa, Italy, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage. The exhibit, which took 10 months and $300,000 to produce, brought together artists and graphic designers. Though visitors to the Genoa exhibit may feel as though they are looking through a window to the planet below, what they are actually seeing is a high-resolution video display that offers a sharper, more detailed view than even high-definition television. To accomplish this, the designers used component/RGB video rather than composite video signals. Composite video carries all of the red, green and blue information in a single wire to a video monitor. This limits the clarity of the image. Component/RGB video delivers the red, green and blue information directly to the monitor on separate lines. This makes for a crisp high-resolution image. Laser disk machines capable of playing back component/RGB information have become available only in the last year. The spaceship "window" in the exhibit is actually nine studio-quality video monitors sunken into the floor. In Genoa the exhibit, which measures 7 feet by 9 feet, will be visible from a balcony as well as from the floor. Though the appearance is of a single image flowing across the nine screens, there are actually nine separate video images played on nine Sony laser disk players, which sell for $7,000 each. Each player is hooked up to an individual monitor, and the nine images are precisely synchronized. The data used for the display come from photographic work by Tom Van Sant, an artist in Santa Monica, Calif., who is the head of the nonprofit Geosphere Project. In 1990 he created the first high-resolution, cloud-free satellite composite picture of Earth as seen from space. Mr. Van Sant sifted through thousands of infrared | Technology; A View of Earth Never Seen Before |
519123_0 | Faced for the first time with a possible shutdown of all salmon fishing off the West Coast, the coastal communities dependent on the seasonal returns of the legendary fish are bracing for a season of despair. Anticipating the worst, owners are boarding up their fresh fish markets instead of preparing to open. Big trolling boats that rolled through a half-century of hook-and-line chases are for sale, and others are being auctioned to pay off bank loans. And charter operators, who usually are already filling in their calendars with bookings for the peak summer months, are telling callers they cannot make a commitment now. "Who would ever have thought we would be looking at a season with zero salmon?" asked Bob Eaton, executive director of Salmon For All, which represents commercial net fishermen and processors here at the mouth of the Columbia River. "I mean, this is the Pacific Northwest. We are supposed to have these pristine rivers -- and look what's happened." Formula for Disaster What has happened is a combination of human degradation of the streams in which salmon spawn -- from excessive logging to development -- and a series of dry years. On April 10, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, appointed by the Federal Government to control the take of West Coast salmon, will meet in to decide if this year's season will be drastically curtailed or eliminated. The three options range from a massive reduction in the salmon harvest to a coast-wide ban on all salmon fishing by commercial, recreational and American Indian fishermen. The tribes, which have their own fishing rights based on century-old treaties upheld by the Supreme Court, are likely to see the amount of fish they can take and the length of their season reduced by the Federal council. Alaska Not Affected Though the council meets every year to set the limits on what has become an increasingly small catch, never before have such draconian measures been under serious consideration. "Whether you are a charter boat operator, a restaurant owner or an ocean troller, this is going to hurt real bad," said Phil Anderson, chairman of the 13-member fishing council. "But the other side of this is, if we overfish this year, there may be nothing in coming years." The economic cost of a coast-wide shutdown has been estimated be as high as $60 million. The market price of chinook, or king salmon, | Bracing for Worst in West Coast Salmon Country |
519370_2 | from Orlando's traffic management center. The information, in turn, comes from highway video cameras, road sensors, emergency vehicles and construction reports. Each car's location is pinpointed by the satellite and through compasses and wheel sensors on a computerized dashboard map that operates with a database provided by the American Automobile Association. While driving, the map and the audio information, tell you exactly where you are and where to turn. When the car is parked, the dashboard display offers information on hotels, restaurants, attractions and special events in the area. By all accounts, it works wonderfully well, although the start of the project was less than auspicious. Robert Frosch, a General Motors vice president and one of the first drivers to try it out, got into his Toronado, started the engine, checked the information and put the Olds into gear. He ran over an orange traffic cone and smashed it flat. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan has put out a forecast for the automobile industry through the end of the century, and the study notes that electronic components, currently amounting to 10 percent of a car's value, will climb to nearly 20 percent of the total value in the next eight years. The survey, based on responses from more than 200 engineers, scholars and consultants, also notes that Government regulations rather than fuel prices will force major changes in the design of automobiles. The price of gas, the study said, will increase modestly through the year 2005, rising to about $1.75 per gallon in 1990 dollars. According to the study, regulations will mandate fuel economy increases from today's level of 27.5 miles per gallon to 30 m.p.g. for 1995, 33 for the year 2000, and 36 m.p.g. for 2005. In order to meet those standards, the university report said, manufacturers will reduce the weight of vehicles through the use of more plastics, aluminum, magnesium and powdered metals. Recycling will be a big issue in the future, according to David Cole, director of the school's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation, and manufacturers eventually may be required to buy used cars back from their customers. Not surprisingly, Cole also said that air bags will be standard for the driver and front-seat passenger on all cars produced in America by the end of the decade. But he added that air bags to protect rear occupants and to ward off side impacts will | In Florida, Testing Road to the Future |
519061_0 | Representatives from more than 160 nations agreed early today on a document that commits the industrial nations of the Northern Hemisphere to help the poorer countries of the South develop in a way that will not damage the environment. The document, in draft form, was the only full accord to come out of five weeks of negotiations here in preparation for a major international environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro in June. Three important issues taken up in the preparatory negotiations remain unresolved. Although the conference adopted portions of Agenda 21, a plan for cleaning up the world's environment in the 21st century, disputes persist on how to pay for the cleanup, whether developing countries should have free access to new, environmentally sound technologies, and how to safeguard the world's forests. Discussion of these matters is expected to resume in Rio. Weather, Plants and Animals Also unresolved are two legally binding conventions -- one on stabilizing climate and the other on protecting the diversity of plant and animal life. The draft Rio Declaration on Environment and Development commits all nations to a number of principles that have not been universally accepted before. At its heart is an agreement that eradicating poverty is an "indispensable requirement for sustainable development." [ Text, page 10. ] The other main points are that those who pollute should bear the cost of cleaning up, that nations should guard against environmental damage even where there are not established scientific reasons for precautions, that women have "a vital role in environmental management and development" and that while nations have a right to exploit their own resources, they have no right to "cause damage to the environment of other states or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction." Burden on the Rich In convoluted language, the richer northern countries acknowledge that the damage they have done in industrializing and the wealth they have acquired give them a special responsibility to help poorer lands raise living standards in environmentally safe ways. And the developing countries, which have environmental problems like overgrazing of land and the destruction of forests, pledge to curb soaring birthrates that contribute to poverty and to environmental degradation. The declaration, which was adopted early this morning, emerged from a bitter North-South political struggle that dominated the meeting. At first, the negotiators hoped to draft an Earth Charter, which the industrial nations expected to be a | ENVIRONMENTAL AID FOR POOR NATIONS APPROVED AT U.N. |
521685_0 | Scientists said today that they have more evidence that halogen lights may increase the risk of skin cancer, a risk that apparently can be eliminated by using simple glass or plastic covers over the bulbs. Researchers at the University of Genoa in Italy, in a letter published in the current issue of the journal Nature, said halogen lamps emit large amounts of far-ultraviolet radiation, a type known to cause skin cancer. In tests with hairless mice with a propensity toward cancer, the researchers said, they were able to produce skin lesions and large tumors of increasing malignancy by exposing the animals to uncovered halogen lamps for 12 hours a day for a year. The tests were an extension of earlier work done in Australia, Britain and elsewhere, which found that exposure to halogen lamps caused damaging mutations in bacteria and cell cultures that indicated a cancer risk. The Italian researchers, Silvio De Flora and Francesco D'Agostini, said in the letter that their small pilot study with 12 mice was not definitive, but that the results were striking enough to confirm the results of the cell tests and indicate a possible human risk. The scientists said results of such animal experiments did not always apply to humans, but they added that it was probable that halogen lamps could cause similar adverse effects on human skin. In the animal tests, mice not exposed to the halogen lamps and those shielded by a thin pane of glass while exposed to the lamps 20 inches away did not develop the skin lesions. The researchers said this showed that the damaging light was easy to block, and they recommended that all halogen lights be fitted with glass or plastic covers. A spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration said the agency looked into the health risks posed by halogen bulbs and determined that they were not great enough to warrant immediate regulation. | New Study Bolsters Skin Cancer's Link To Halogen Lamps |
520940_0 | People throughout Eastern Europe struggle with the question of how to deal with the contents of Big Brother's files. Is there a middle ground between total amnesty and wholesale purges in post-dictatorial societies? What seems to be a morally defensible answer emerged at a conference I attended recently in Salzburg. Politicians, lawyers and scholars from very different countries in Europe and Latin America joined to appraise a common problem. Ordinary people who have suffered under different brands of tyranny -- Communist or rightist military juntas -- understandably seek retribution. Yet doing so may shatter social peace, divide new democracies and punish the innocent as well as the guilty. Planted like a toxic bomb in these societies is an ugly legacy of despotism: police dossiers. Nowhere was surveillance more penetrating than in East Germany, where the State Security police, or Stasi, kept files on a third of the 18 million citizens. As Stephen Kinzer relates in today's New York Times Magazine, these "horror files" have been declared the property of every individual who was spied upon. This very rough justice has devastated families, estranged friends and ruined careers. In a sober second thought, Germany is forming a legislative commission to examine exhaustively the abuses of 40 years under Communism. Its chairman, Rainer Eppelmann, a former dissident and an organizer of the uprising that rent the Berlin wall, has expressed its salutary aim: "Let us declare this century's most important lesson for us Germans -- never again dictatorship! Whatever label it may carry -- national, religious, National Socialist, Socialist or Communist -- never again dictatorship!" Germany's commission has its counterpart in Chile, where a pragmatic bargain was struck between a democracy and its brutal military predecessor: Expose the crimes without naming the perpetrators. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has documented 1,000 disappearances and 3,000 deaths during the Pinochet dictatorship. The compromise has satisfied neither relatives of victims nor the impenitent armed forces. But the report has brought to light devastating truths, while averting the perils of a whitewash or witch hunt. A witch hunt is what seems to be happening in Czechoslovakia. Last year, a legislative commission recited the names of alleged collaborators serving in parliament on television ; those who refused to resign were ensnared in legal procedures worthy of Kafka. In October, the National Assembly adopted a "lustration" law that bars former party officials from administrative jobs for five years. | Editorial Notebook; The Horror Files |
520941_0 | People throughout Eastern Europe struggle with the question of how to deal with the contents of Big Brother's files. Is there a middle ground between total amnesty and wholesale purges in post-dictatorial societies? What seems to be a morally defensible answer emerged at a conference I attended recently in Salzburg. Politicians, lawyers and scholars from very different countries in Europe and Latin America joined to appraise a common problem. Ordinary people who have suffered under different brands of tyranny -- Communist or rightist military juntas -- understandably seek retribution. Yet doing so may shatter social peace, divide new democracies and punish the innocent as well as the guilty. Planted like a toxic bomb in these societies is an ugly legacy of despotism: police dossiers. Nowhere was surveillance more penetrating than in East Germany, where the State Security police, or Stasi, kept files on a third of the 18 million citizens. As Stephen Kinzer relates in today's New York Times Magazine, these "horror files" have been declared the property of every individual who was spied upon. This very rough justice has devastated families, estranged friends and ruined careers. In a sober second thought, Germany is forming a legislative commission to examine exhaustively the abuses of 40 years under Communism. Its chairman, Rainer Eppelmann, a former dissident and an organizer of the uprising that rent the Berlin wall, has expressed its salutary aim: "Let us declare this century's most important lesson for us Germans -- never again dictatorship! Whatever label it may carry -- national, religious, National Socialist, Socialist or Communist -- never again dictatorship!" Germany's commission has its counterpart in Chile, where a pragmatic bargain was struck between a democracy and its brutal military predecessor: Expose the crimes without naming the perpetrators. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has documented 1,000 disappearances and 3,000 deaths during the Pinochet dictatorship. The compromise has satisfied neither relatives of victims nor the impenitent armed forces. But the report has brought to light devastating truths, while averting the perils of a whitewash or witch hunt. A witch hunt is what seems to be happening in Czechoslovakia. Last year, a legislative commission recited the names of alleged collaborators serving in parliament on television ; those who refused to resign were ensnared in legal procedures worthy of Kafka. In October, the National Assembly adopted a "lustration" law that bars former party officials from administrative jobs for five years. | Editorial Notebook; The Horror Files |
520656_2 | variety of additional factors could well delay that goal, including slow work, widespread corruption, the theft of power cables and diversions of electricity. The Tehri Dam is expected to produce 2,400 megawatts of power. Officials say that India has tapped only 13 percent of its total hydroelectric potential, estimated at 80,000 megawatts. The Tehri Dam, located in a gorge where two swift-flowing rivers meet, will be one of the world's tallest dams when built: 800 feet high. Environmentalists say it is unsafe because it is located in a seismic zone that has been jolted by several major earthquakes, including one last October. That quake killed more than 700 people and measured 6.7 on the Richter scale. But it did not damage the foundations and tunnels of the dam at Tehri town. These structures are the only part of the $1.4 billion project which have been completed. There are sharp divisions in the Government of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao between environmental and energy lobbies. Recently, Environmental Minister Kamal Nath threatened to withdraw environmental clearance for the Tehri project if environmental and safety programs are not completed. Power Secretary Srinivas Rajgopal, said, however, that Tehri was "a viable project but the environmentalists are slowly killing it; they are wasting time. "This project will bring drinking water for Delhi, meeting the needs of half of its population by the turn of the century, increase the area under irrigation and generate much needed power," Mr. Rajgopal said in an interview Tuesday. Opposition leaders are divided over Tehri. The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in power in Uttar Pradesh state where Tehri is located, favors the dam. Centrist politicians oppose it, saying it is environmentally unsound and that Russia does not have the money to finance the project. At Tehri Dam, a small group led by Sunderlal Bahuguna, a pioneer of India's environmental movement, is on a hunger strike to protest the project. The other giant hydroelectric project, far more ambitious than the one at Tehri, covers three states where 30 large dams, 135 medium-sized dams and 3,000 small dams are to be built on the Narmada River and 41 tributaries at a cost of $20 billion. The World Bank, which has contributed $450 million to the project, has been sharply criticized by local groups for not planning adequately to help about 1.5 million persons who are to be displaced by the dam. | Soviet Collapse Endangers Indian Power Projects |
520624_5 | previous year the company established a foothold in Europe by buying a United Technologies plant in Brescia, Italy, and a business owned by Altecna, a division of Fiat. "So if 'Fortress Europe' slams closed, which is looking less likely but could still be possible, we're now inside the European Economic Community and ready to expand our operations there," Mr. Gurley said. But with its international operations growing, Stanadyne was facing a shrinking market at home. "We recognized that our business in the U.S. would be fairly flat," Mr. Janik said. "So we got together a small resource group of engineers, marketing people and so on, to do entrepreneurial work." Recalling how Stanadyne got into the filter business 20 years ago, because no one else was making diesel-fuel filters sophisticated enough for its fuel pumps, the group started talking about other uses of filtering technology. Some members recalled hearing about the problem with spent antifreeze. After long use in an engine, antifreeze is contaminated by sludge and other materials that rob it of its ability to keep the engine's temperature within strict limits. It had to be drained out, disposed of as hazardous waste and replaced. The Stanadyne team designed a system that draws off ethylene glycol, the active ingredient in antifreeze, and leaves a sludge behind, Mr. Janik said. Operating at its full capacity of 100 gallons a day, the $10,000 machine, which uses a process called reverse osmosis to cleanse the antifreeze, pays for itself in a year through reduced replacement cost for antifreeze, he said. The oil pump for the new Cadillac Allante is another example of the entrepreneurial group's work. "We got in line behind three others who wanted to provide that pump," Mr. Janik said. "But our design got us in the door." Stanadyne's engineering group proved itself willing to make changes to accommodate different engine designs, he said. "A couple of times the engineers would talk to Cadillac on the phone about some changes, come out here and set up and have the new part on the way to them the next day," Mr. Janik said. Mr. Gurley said: "The business has changed over the years, and it's going through another transition now. I could claim it was vision, but it was really the realities of the market that pushed us to do what we've done throughout our history. And that's what's pushing us still." | 116-Year-Old Company Thrives on Innovation |
522289_0 | Genelabs Technologies Inc., a biotechnology concern in Redwood, City, Calif., has patented the genetic code to reproduce a potential drug to fight AIDS that is derived from a Chinese flowering plant called Trichosanthes kirilowii. Alpha-trichosanthin, the compound isolated from the plant, has been used in China to induce abortions and belongs to a broad family of chemicals that inhibit the genetic machinery of cells that is responsible for synthesizing proteins. The concern is now testing it as a possible AIDS treatment as part of the second round of human clinical studies at the University of California in San Francisco. The company has already obtained patents on using the chemical itself in treating AIDS, but the new patent covers the gene needed to reproduce the chemical in commercial quantities if it proves to have merit. Dr. Frank F. C. Kung, president of Genelabs, said the compound had been suggested for screening by two academic researchers, one from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and one from the University of California. Two Genelabs researchers, Michael Piatak and Theresa Chow, received patent 5,101,025. | Patents; Potential Drug To Fight AIDS |
522928_0 | World Economies | |
522865_2 | small boys, hugged three old women who spoke to him in Gaelic, then replied: "I see no evidence of that. I don't expect that to happen." During the campaign, Mr. Adams emphasized that Sinn Fein advocated a peaceful settlement, not violence. But he held to his party's refusal to condemn I.R.A. attacks, which have caused more than half of the 2,980 deaths in the 23-year conflict. Mr. Adams is considered by British analysts to be a close confidant of the I.R.A. leadership, though he denies having such a relationship. Many assume that his arguments for a political solution to obtain the pullout of British troops may now be weakened in the eyes of I.R.A. military leaders, and that the violence may now increase. But so far there is no clear evidence of this. Violence has continued since the April 9 election, but not at a sharply increased rate. A bomb exploded in London the day after the election, killing two people; several bombs have been set off in Belfast, but caused no deaths. A Catholic civilian who worked for the British Army was slain by the I.R.A. at his home Friday night in Armagh, south of here, apparently in another warning against cooperating with the British. The chairman of the Social Democratic Labor Party, Mark Durkan, said the election result should furnish Sinn Fein with an argument against the I.R.A. commanders -- that the election loss was a vote against violence and that a peaceful political approach should now be emphasized. "They lost," he said of Sinn Fein, "because they went one contradiction too far, blatantly campaigning as a peace ticket but refusing to denounce violence. It stretched their credibility too far." Support Dropped to 10% In overall election results in the province, the level of support for Sinn Fein dropped to 10 percent of the vote, from 11.4 in 1987. It received about 30 percent of the Catholic vote, with the rest of the Catholic support going to the Social Democratic Labor Party. The 17 seats that Northern Ireland has in the British Parliament are now divided among pro-British unionists, who hold 13, and the Social Democrats, who hold 4. Sinn Fein has more than 40 counselors in city halls in the province. Mr. Durkan said he was aware of the view that depriving Sinn Fein and its I.R.A. affiliates of the only seat they had in Parliament might | I.R.A. Candidate Says Vote Loss Is Temporary |
518045_1 | XH4, is available for a wide range of wheel sizes, and is priced between $60 and $120, depending on size. Tire industry experts say that the tire represents a breakthrough in durability, although they consider it unlikely that many customers will collect on the warranty because of strict rules for tire maintenance. For example, customers are expected to have an authorized Michelin dealer inspect and rotate the tires every 7,500 miles. 'Important Advancement' "Most people neglect their tires, so we probably won't be able to determine how many will collect on the warranty," said Lloyd R. Stoyer, editor of Modern Tire Dealer, a trade publication. "But Michelin is a conservative company that tests extensively before introducing a product, and I think this represents an important advancement." Michelin is not alone in adopting computer technology. The Bridgestone Corporation of Japan, also enlisting computer-design techniques, has introduced a new model that also carries an 80,000-mile warranty. And the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company made extensive use of computer models before introducing four products last year, including its Aquatred tire, which is designed to provide better handling on slick roads. Goodyear says the Aquatread's computer-designed tread virtually prevents hydroplaning -- the gliding of tires over wet surfaces without making full contact with the road, causing handling difficulties. (Computer animation, incidently, was employed in Goodyear's television commercial for Aquatred, in which the tire seems to form spontaneously from a puddle of water.) The use of computers in the tire industry has greatly changed the entire design process. In earlier decades, tire companies tested by building a tire and then looking at the results of road tests, making modifications in the tire and building another prototype before repeating the process. As a result, monitoring tire prototypes for features like wet traction or riding comfort would entail test after test of actual road wear. Tread-wear tests were even more tedious. To determine how long a tire could perform capably, teams of drivers would take to the roads or city streets to test tires for 10 hours a day, until the tire had logged 40,000 or 50,000 miles. Two months sometimes elapsed before designers had enough data to make adjustments. As a result, the entire process of designing a tire could take four to six years. Series of Computer Tests Supercomputers have cut that time period considerably. Now researchers can look at more than 100 tire characteristics | Computer Tests Pump More Miles Into Tires |
518156_0 | John Hume, viewed as the most effective Roman Catholic political leader in Northern Ireland, wants the British election campaign to be a referendum on the violence that has killed some 3,000 people in Ulster since 1969. For the time being, the violence has subsided while politicians compete for the 17 seats Northern Ireland has in the British Parliament. Of these, 13 are held by Protestants who want this country of 900,000 Protestants and 600,000 Catholics to remain part of Britain; 3 by moderate Catholics, headed by Mr. Hume, who favor a negotiated end to the violence, and one by Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. The voting on April 9 is unlikely to being many changes in the current balance. Protestants are hoping for an indecisive result in the nationwide election that will give them power to make or break a coalition government headed by the Conservative Party of Prime Minister John Major. The Protestants would use their power to delay negotiations that they believe could lead to Britain's giving up control of Northern Ireland. The Catholic politicians are not expecting to unseat any of the Protestants, certainly not the Rev. Ian Paisley or James Molyneaux. The 55-year-old Mr. Hume, who has been a member of Parliament since 1983, is virtually certain to win a third term and he says it may well be his last. But he also wants the voters in his safe district and elsewhere to repudiate Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army. These contend that violence is justified to force Britain to withdraw its troops and give up political control, permitting the eventual establishment of a country composed of Northern Ireland and the Irish republic. Mr. Hume's opponent here, Martin McGuinness, is widely believed to have been an I.R.A. military chief before he entered politics. He and Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president and its only member of the British Parliament, insist that their party does not advocate violence, but refuse to condemn the I.R.A. killings. For this reason the British Government refuses to talk to them and they are excluded from the peace talks that have been held sporadically in the last year among Mr. Hume's Social Democratic Labor Party and the Protestant parties. "I will never do that in a million years," Mr. McGuinness said in an interview. "I could not condemn them, the people who offer resistance to | Ulster Catholic Hopes Vote Advances Peace |
518186_1 | Mr. Freedman said, Dr. Mayer has used his own "well-established reputation to give Tufts a higher public profile." Last Friday, for example, Mr. Freedman and Dr. Mayer announced an agreement to establish an innovative program under which students at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration can earn a joint degree in international business. Dr. Allan Callow, a professor of surgery at Washington University in St. Louis who is chairman of the Council of the Boards of Overseers of Tufts, said that one of Dr. Mayer's most important contributions was that he had "convinced the faculty and the administrators that they had the potential for being a world-class university." "There is a bit of the evangelist about him," Dr. Callow said of Dr. Mayer (pronounced my-YAIR). List of Accomplishments Among Dr. Mayer's most important accomplishments have been the creation of a graduate school of nutrition, the building of New England's only school of veterinary medicine and the establishment of a center for environmental management. Tufts has also become less of a parochial New England institution; the number of foreign students has doubled since 1986 and the university now runs a popular European center in a converted 11th-century monastery at Talloires, France. The university's financial condition has greatly improved; Dr. Mayer has seen the endowment increase to $200 million from $30 million when he arrived. This year Tufts, which has 4,300 undergraduates and 2,200 graduate students, is scheduled to complete a second capital campaign with a goal of $250 million. In addition, Tufts has become much more selective in its admissions policy. University officials said that the percentage of incoming freshmen who ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class rose to 74 percent last year from 38 percent in 1976, and that the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores of students admitted to Tufts had increased, too. Luck has played a role, too. Medford, where Tufts is situated, is only five miles northwest of Boston, which has become an increasingly popular mecca for college students in recent years and has helped make the university more attractive than other colleges and universities in rural parts of the country. On Par With Northwestern Tufts may not yet have the prestige of the top Ivy League schools. Its yield -- the percentage of applicants it admits who actually accept -- was 35 percent | After 16 Years as President of Tufts, Scientist Counts His Achievements |
518051_0 | Harriet Mandelbaum, who spent decades of her life working in behalf of autistic and other mentally impaired children, died on Thursday at Caledonian Hospital in Brooklyn. She was 79 years old and lived in Brooklyn. Her family said a cerebral hemorrhage caused her death. She was active both in her community and on the national level. A member of the United States Joint Commission on Mental Health for Children, she toured the country to speak about the special needs of such children. In 1951, she helped found the League for Emotionally Disturbed Children, which was dedicated to promoting educational and therapeutic facilities. The league became the National Organization for Mentally Ill Children in 1955, and Mrs. Mandelbaum was its first president. For many years, she was involved in the growth of the League Treatment Center, for both children and adults, in Brooklyn, and of the League School. She was the first head of the school's board after it was founded in 1953. Mrs. Mandelbaum is survived by her husband, Dr. Joseph Mandelbaum, himself a past president of the League School; two sons, Paul Mandelbaum, of Brooklyn, and Dr. Joel Mandelbaum, of Kingston, N.Y.; a daughter, Jo Travis, of Branchville, N.J., and two grandchildren. | Harriet Mandelbaum, Children's Lobbyist, 79 |
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524315_2 | the same time, would help downtown Chattanooga," said William Flynn, the president of the aquarium. "I've been working with aquariums in various cities for the better part of 35 years, and this is truly one-of-a-kind," he said. "In effect, you can follow a drop of rain from the point that it falls into the headwaters of the Tennessee until it flows out the mouth of the Mississippi and into Gulf of Mexico." The Chattanooga aquarium, like those in Baltimore, New Orleans and most recently, Camden, N.J., has been deliberately situated to give a boost to a downtown area in need of rejuvenation. It sits on the banks of the Tennessee, just north of the main business district, in a part of town that once bustled with factories and warehouses but more recently has been mostly abandoned. Visitors to the Chattanooga aquarium, like visitors to most aquariums, will be able to view exhibits from above and below. They will see rainbow trout darting and tumbling about the foaming base of an Appalachian waterfall, 50-pound catfish nuzzling the muddy bottom of a 30-foot-deep river pool and alligators lying motionless on the banks of a Louisiana bayou. From above, visitors will follow a mountain path that takes them along the banks of a swift stream, where computer-generated cloud mist hangs in the air, enveloping the visitors and nearby live maples and oaks that will lose their leaves in fall and regain them in spring, thanks, again, to a computer-controlled climate. Farther on, the path leads through the sweaty bayou, where turtles sleep on mossy logs and a brilliantly plumed wood duck keeps a wary eye on the gators. Chattanooga officials boast that the aquarium, along with a $20 million airport terminal, an $18 million courts building, a $3 million performance center and another $32 million in highway and housing projects, all to be completed this year, make Chattanooga the latest Southern city to keep an eye on. They say the city and surrounding metropolitan area, with a total population of more than 400,000, have managed to diversify economically over the past 20 years, luring more tourists to Lookout Mountain, Civil War battlefields and a Chattanooga Choo Choo park and replacing some heavy industries, especially major polluters, with a better balanced mix of white-collar offices and government agencies. "Chattanooga is a city worth watching," said Mayor Gene Roberts, "and we back it with evidence." | Chattanooga Journal; 4,000 Specimens in a 12-Story Bottle |
521670_0 | French politicians, newspapers, human rights groups and a chorus of other voicesexpressed outrage today over a Paris court's decision to drop charges of crimes against humanity against a Frenchman accused of killing Jews in Nazi-occupied France in World War II. The decision on Monday, which is to be challenged before the Supreme Court of Appeal, was denounced by a broad spectrum of political leaders, many of whom saw it as new evidence of the French judiciary's reluctance to condemn French citizens for war crimes against Jews even though it has been willing to condemn Germans for similar crimes. The lower appeals court ruled that there was no case to support charges against Paul Touvier, a 77-year-old former pro-Nazi militia leader, on the ground that his execution of seven Jewish hostages in June 1944 did not constitute a crime against humanity. But the angry reaction to the ruling also suggested that almost 48 years after the liberation of France, French society is now readier than before to confront the reality of extensive French collaboration with Nazi Germany's campaign to kill Jews. The French Parliament suspended its session this afternoon to permit members to attend a memorial service for Mr. Touvier's victims organized by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions at the Monument to Deportation on the Ile de la Cite. Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy was described by a spokesman as "upset" by the court's decision. Laurent Fabius, leader of the governing Socialist Party, described Mr. Touvier as "filth who committed abominable, horrific crimes." Politicians of other parties demanded the ruling be reversed. In Turkey, President Francois Mitterrand said, "This has surprised me too and that's an understatement. The court stirred further indignation by clearing the collaborationist Vichy Government of any crimes against humanity because it had no policy of "ideological hegemony." It was never a secret that some 76,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, were deported to Nazi death camps from France. Of these, only 2,500 survived. But it was only in the 1980's that public opinion became aware that French police and others also killed Jews and organized deportations. Since then, led by Serge Klarsfeld, a lawyer who brought Klaus Barbie, the Lyons Gestapo chief, to trial in 1987, the campaign against French war criminals has focused on Mr. Touvier and two wartime police officials, Maurice Papon and Rene Bousquet. Mr. Touvier was arrested in 1989 at a French monastery where | French Angered at Ruling on Nazi Collaborator |
521553_2 | year, thinks he has identified the real source of the boom: "This business has nothing to do with sex; it is about loneliness and low self-esteem," he said. "If anyone is being exploited it is the men, the guys buying into the fantasy of she really likes me ." Even so, the recent appeal of top-drawer topless bars comes at a curious time, especially considering the ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States last year in Barnes v. Glen Theater, which gave localities the right to ban the baring of female nipples unless they are covered with flesh-colored makeup and liquid latex, which is how pasties are concocted these days. Campaigns to ban topless bars are being fought in towns across the country. In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Michael J. Peter, who manages Stringfellows and who owns or operates 23 other high-priced topless bars in several states, has estimated that he has spent $2 million in the past 18 months on lawyers to keep his clubs open. The legal expenses are a trifle, though, as are the tens of thousands of dollars that his clubs give, for public-relations purposes, to local charities each year. Mr. Peter's own clubs, located in Florida, Minnesota, South Carolina, Hawaii and Texas, can easily gross $30,000 to $100,000 a week each in alcohol sales alone. "What you see here is the entertainment night life of the 90's," said Mr. Peter, who graduated from Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and is widely credited with applying modern marketing techniques (like selling trading cards featuring his topless dancers) to what had been considered a seedy, small-time business. Many women understandably believe that the bars exploit women. "They are demeaning and degrading to women and treat them like sex objects," said Caia M. Mockaitis, a spokeswoman for Concerned Women of America, an advocacy group in Washington. "All they do is foster an unhealthy relationship between men and women." Not all women share this view. Many dancers say their work is no more exploitative than most other forms of employment. Besides, they say, by dancing in a G-string they can earn in one night's tips as much as they could in a month in many other jobs. "I can make $1,000 a night or more, if I really work at it," said Tara Obenauer, 21, of Massapequa, L.I., who dances at Stringfellows and graduated from Adelphi University last | Topless Bars For a Crowd In Pin Stripes |
523746_2 | the village. As it moved thus, the tunnel was extended and the lava flowed farther down. At present, it stands at the village's edge, and is still moving. It has so far destroyed one house, whose owner had set a table with wine and bread to appease it. This afternoon, in half an hour, it burned a fruit tree in its last bloom, and moved on. Almost two weeks ago, Italian volcanologists, who had used explosives to try to divert the flow, asked the United States to help. So, apart from the C-53 helicopters at Sigonella base, a helicopter squadron from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit also arrived from the aircraft carrier Inchon with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Just about every pilot in the unit, Major Ross said, had flown either in the war to evict Iraq from Kuwait or the subsequent operation to protect Iraq's Kurds. Some Marine and Navy pilots had flown in other operations to take American diplomats to safety from civil conflicts in Somalia and Liberia. 'It Was Too Late' By comparison, said Major Ross, Operation Volcano Buster, as the Marines called this deployment -- a logo they painted on the sides of their helicopters -- was "not life or death." But it was nonetheless precarious. The tactic to halt the flow in the joint Italian-American operation this week was for Italian units to use explosives to blow a hole in the lava tunnel 6,000 feet up Mount Etna, high above this village. Then, the American helicopter carried the huge concrete blocks into position around the hole and knocked them in. On Tuesday evening, the maneuver filled the hole with 92 tons of concrete and rubble that seemed to block the flow. The main problem was the size of the eruption. Since Dec. 15, Mount Etna has disgorged 120 million cubic yards of lava, and it is still spiting out the stuff high on its flanks. So, after a brief pause, the lava started to move again, and the Italian Air Force is now planning to deploy its own Chinook heavy transport helicopters to repeat the American maneuver. It is not clear, thus, whether the American helicopters will fly again. That was not much consolation for Rosaria Russo, 54, whose vineyard and fruit trees lie in the lava's path in the steeped, wooded valley that leads down Mount Etna and on through Zafferana Etnea. | Zafferana Etnea Journal; It's Plug Up Mt. Etna or Go the Way of Pompeii |
518909_2 | work report praised stock markets and the private sector, said that markets could be used in socialism as well as capitalism, and hinted that the economy could grow more quickly. While the National People's Congress session was a success for Mr. Deng and his campaign, it showed that hard-liners were still fighting back. "The reformists cannot get a 100 percent victory over the conservatives," said a Western diplomat in Beijing. "The wording today again points to a power struggle going on among leaders of the party and Government." Moreover, Mr. Deng's faction has not replaced the hard-liners they have criticized, including Gao Di, the head of People's Daily, Wang Renzhi, the head of Propaganda Department, and He Jingzhi, the acting Culture Minister. The Congress would have been a particularly suitable time to change Culture Ministers, and the absence of personnel changes suggests that the hard-liners are down but not out. Important decisions in China are never made by vote, but rather by a combination of consensus and power politics among the top leaders and retired leaders, and Mr. Deng's campaign seems intended to shape that consensus in the coming months. A major opportunity for change will come at the end of the year at the 14th Communist Party Congress, the highest-level party gathering since 1987. Communism With a Twist The motivation for Mr. Deng's campaign seems to be that the best way to insure Communist dominance of China is flexible economic policies -- including elements of capitalism -- that raise the standard of living. Mr. Deng appears to believe that the hard-line strategy, with its emphasis on ideological purity and harsh warnings against foreign subversion, may actually increase dissatisfaction and the risks to the Government. In another important action today, the Congress approved a proposal to build a dam on one of the most beautiful stretches of the Yangtze River in central China. The Three Gorges dam, which would produce more electricity than any dam in existence, was first proposed in the 1920's and in recent years has been quietly opposed by some intellectuals. They fear that the Government is undertaking a costly and dangerous prestige project without allowing opposing opinions to be evaluated. The proposal to build the dam was passed 1,767 to 177, with 664 abstentions. By Chinese standards, where Government-backed measures are supposed to pass with virtual unanimity, the number of no votes and abstentions was enormous. | China Takes Jab at 'Leftists' and Nudges Economy |
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