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520073_0 | France announced today that it was suspending its 32-year-old program of nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific until the end of this year and suggested that it would extend the moratorium in 1993 if other nuclear powers followed suit. In his first address to Parliament since taking office last week, Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy said President Francois Mitterrand had written to leaders of the other nuclear powers urging them to conclude their strategic disarmament negotiations and halt nuclear testing. He added that France would retain its independent nuclear deterrent as "the keystone of our defense policy," but would continue to press for global arms reductions. "In 1993, we will see if our example is followed and if common sense has advanced," he said. While the French decision is a direct result of the end of the cold war, the announcement was immediately interpreted here as a move by the Socialist Government to court two fast-growing environmental parties, which have long opposed France's nuclear testing policy. In regional elections last month, the two parties, the Greens and Generation Ecologie, won 13.9 percent of the vote against just 18.3 percent for the Socialists. The Government's defeat prompted Mr. Mitterrand to dismiss Edith Cresson as Prime Minister and name Mr. Beregovoy in her place. With parliamentary elections 11 months away, the main conservative coalition currently looks likely to win a big victory. But political experts say they believe that the Socialists have a small possibility of retaining power if they can form a coalition with the two environmental parties. With an eye to next year's elections, Mr. Beregovoy also pledged today to give priority to fighting unemployment, currently running at 9.9 percent of the work force, and he reduced the sales tax on luxury goods from 22 percent to 18.6 percent to help the auto industry. Aware of public disenchantment with the country's political class because of several corruption scandals, the new Prime Minister further announced plans to legislate against conflict of interest and to require officials to disclose their wealth. The decision to suspend nuclear tests was predictably welcomed by the green parties as well as by Greenpeace, the international environmental group. "It's fantastic," Lena Hagelin, a Greenpeace director, said. "Now we hope to be able to work together to convince the remaining countries to follow France's example." While Russia suspended its nuclear testing for one year last October, the United | France Suspends Its Testing of Nuclear Weapons |
520045_0 | International A3-11 ARAFAT SURVIVES PLANE CRASH The chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization was found in the Libyan desert nearly 12 hours after his plane crashed in a sandstorm. Mr. Arafat was bruised but not seriously injured. A1 Celebrations indicated new support for Mr. Arafat. A6 United States officials reacted to the crash with ambivalence. A6 LESS THAN MEETS THE EYE The aid package for Russia announced last week by the Bush Administration and some Western allies is less complete than many officials made it seem, officials in several countries said. They said eagerness to show support for President Yeltsin before a crucial encounter with the Russian Parliament was the reason for the haste. A1 In Moscow, Mr. Yeltsin's economic reforms came under fire. A11 DAY OF DECISION IN BRITAIN Britons vote today in an election that could result in a new Prime Minister. As campaigning ended yesterday, prospects were slim that Prime Minister Major's Conservative Government would retain its majority in Parliament. A10 FRANCE CUTS SOME A-TESTING Prime Minister Beregovoy said France was suspending until the end of this year its 32-year-old program of testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. A5 TAKING CHARGE IN SARAJEVO The Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced a state of "impending war emergency" and ordered the various ethnic militias to join together under the command of the Interior Ministry. A9 LOSING CONTROL IN AFGHANISTAN As rebels and dissident soldiers establish a second autonomous region in the northern part of the country, President Najibullah is becoming further isolated, losing hold of the border with the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. A3 SUPPORT FOR PERU'S LEADER Crowds in Lima chanted in a show of support for President Fujimori, who suspended Peru's Constitution on Sunday night and took command of the legislative and judicial branches of Government. A3 STALEMATE IN ITALY After a national election that amounted to a vote of no-confidence in the country's leaders, Italy is in a political deadlock, with no clear alternative to Prime Minister Andreotti's coalition. A8 American officials worry over reports of Iraqi military actions. A7 Paris Journal: Rescuing Notre Dame from polluted air. A4 National A12-26, D20 SO NEAR, AND YET . . . After hard-won primary victories in New York, Wisconsin and Kansas, Governor Clinton found the Democratic Presidential nomination within his reach but not yet in his pocket. Many voters said they had backed | NEWS SUMMARY |
520055_0 | After nine years of sometimes bitter debate, a committee of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops yesterday issued a draft of a pastoral letter on women's issues that hews to the Vatican line by condemning sexism but refusing to open the priesthood and other ministerial roles to women. The letter, which will now be debated by the full National Conference of Catholic Bishops, condemns sexism as "a moral and social evil" and follows the Vatican's dictates denying women ordination to the priesthood, condemning abortion and banning the use of artificial contraceptives. In addition, it retreats from a previously stated willingness by the bishops to study the inclusion of women in other ministerial roles, including service as deacons and altar girls. The pastoral letter, which is now in its third draft, has been in the works longer than any other major statement before the bishops. It has engendered strong opinions from both conservatives and liberals and has left many in both camps wishing that the bishops would simply drop the whole enterprise. But the bishops seem steadfast in their determination to comment on the role of women, despite the controversy. Going to All U.S. Bishops The latest draft was revised after a meeting a year ago with the Vatican, which summoned several members of the drafting committee to Rome to discuss the issue together with bishops from around the world. The document will go to the full conference of 300 American bishops when they meet June 18-20 at the University of Notre Dame. Its prospects for approval are uncertain. The changes between the previous draft and the one that will go before the bishops are subtle but important to those who have followed the process closely. For example, both drafts are strident in their denunciation of sexism. The documents say that justice calls "for a change of heart that motivates people to defend and support women who are treated unjustly in any way." "This conversion is a work and a witness which the Church is pledged to encourage and promote," the latest draft adds. Both drafts also affirm Vatican teaching that women cannot serve as priests, calling such exclusion "a tradition which witnesses to the mind of Christ and is therefore 'normative.' " But the previous draft urged that the bishops undertake a study to determine whether women could serve in other roles like those of deacons, preachers and altar girls. The | Catholic Bishops Retreat On the Roles of Women |
518842_1 | resource paper," the document is not meant to be binding on Catholics, said Bishop James T. McHugh of Camden, N.J., who oversaw the drafting of the statement. "It doesn't reject out of hand all other approaches," he said, "but having considered them, this gives a clear signal in one direction." The committee, which focuses on abortion and euthanasia, is one of the most important panel of the bishops' conference. It includes four cardinals and some of the nation's most prominent archbishops among its 11 members and 10 consultants. In the last few years, prominent Catholic theologians, individual bishops and even some state conferences of bishops have issued contrasting opinions on withdrawing food and fluids from the permanently comatose. All have drawn upon traditional Catholic teaching that distinguishes between directly taking patients' lives, which is always forbidden, and foregoing life-extending treatments, which is permissible when the treatments are futile or very burdensome. One group of theologians holds that medically supplied nourishment and fluid can be considered futile when there is no possibility that the patient will ever regain consciousness. In their opinion, the total care involved in prolonging the life of a comatose patient can be viewed as a burden. Another group of theologians believe that sustaining physical life alone is a benefit, and only when death is imminent can artificial life support be considered truly futile. They limit the burdens of tube-feeding to those that the treatment directly causes, like pain or psychological repugnance, neither of which can be experienced by the permanently comatose. The bishops' committee favors the latter view. They fear that dangerous precedents will be created by minimizing the value of physical life, even without consciousness, or by looking to the overall state of the comatose patient in estimating the burden of treatment. Such arguments on the permanently comatose may lead society to conclude that other categories of mentally or physically impaired individuals lack a quality of life worth sustaining, the bishops say. Bishop McHugh said the committee's position was also aimed at "forestalling a march toward proposals for active euthanasia," like the one voted down in the State of Washington last November. The Rev. Kevin O'Rourke said, "They are proceeding from the notion that if we allow disconnecting feeding tubes, we pave the way for all sorts of euthanasia and all sorts of abuse of people who can't speak for themselves." But Father O'Rourke, director of | Bishops Warn on Stopping Life Supports for Comatose |
518815_0 | Libyan demonstrators, protesting the threat of sanctions over the downing of Pan Am flight 103, today attacked the embassies in Tripoli of Council members supporting the embargo. The United Nations Security Council then issued a statement strongly condemning Libya for the rioting. The protesters set fire to the Embassy of Venezuela, which held the Council presidency last month when the sanctions threat was made. Reports from Tripoli said about 300 students scaled the Venezuelan embassy wall, rampaged through the garden and the chancery, tearing up plants, smashing furniture, scattering files and throwing gasoline bombs, which set parts of the building ablaze. The students arrived in two buses and Libyan guards protecting the Embassy apparently made no attempt to turn them back. 'Criminal, Terrorist Act' Venezuela's United Nations Representative, Diego Arias, said the rioters "destroyed the Embassy, the vehicles, everything" in what he called "an organized, criminal, terrorist act," though none of the staff was hurt. In Caracas, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Humberto Calderon Berti, said he was recalling all diplomatic personnel from Tripoli and has given Libya 48 hours to provide a satisfactory explanation for the attack. Venezuela will decide whether to break diplomatic relations in the light of the explanation it receives, he added. Libyan mobs tried unsuccessfully to break into the Embassy of Russia, which also supported sanctions, throwing stones through windows and damaging the gates. A spokesman said the rioters "damaged four cars beyond repair." Protests at Other Embassies Noisy, violent demonstrations were staged as well outside the Embassies of France, Belgium, Hungary and Austria, four other Council members that voted for sanctions. Outside the Italian Embassy, which represents Britain, another advocate of sanctions, protesters broke windows and painted slogans on walls. There were no casualties in these protests. The United States closed its Embassy in Libya in 1979 after it was severely damaged by pro-Iranian demonstrators. The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since. While the protests were going on, crowds of women and girls laid garlands of flowers around the Embassies of Morocco and India, two of the five Council members that abstained in the sanctions vote, saying the United Nations should give Libya more time to work out a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Libya appeared tonight to call on foreign nations to remove their companies and workers from the country as a result of the crisis over sanctions. An announcer on Tripoli | Libyans Riot at Embassies; U.N. Protests |
518840_4 | army to deny hiding places to the contras. The flimsy houses abandoned by the Miskitos were set afire or fell victim to the relentless sun and rain. Entire villages disappeared. The most visible work being done in the region today is the effort to repair the important road linking Puerto Cabezas and Waspan, the main town on the Coco River, rebuild bridges, prune the forests, reconstruct fire towers and begin the long process of reforestation. Most of the work is being done by hand, with saws, picks, machetes and shovels, using the wood and other resources available in the area. Engineers for the National Resources Institute, which is in charge of forestry policy and protection, designed the wooden bridges, fire towers and drainage ditches to be built without heavy equipment. Rodolfo Jaentschke, the engineer for the institute in charge of the projects, said, "If we put in a lot of heavy equipment we would have a good road, but people would be dying of hunger." Officials say about 500 men have been put to work in these projects, earning an average of $110 a month, and Mr. Jaentschke said he hoped to have 1,000 working by the end of the year. Most of the money has been provided by the United States Agency for International Development. Rice Farming Resumes A.I.D. also fostered the resumption of rice farming, the mainstay of Miskito agriculture. Not only crops were lost when the Miskitos fled or were relocated, but also the seed, normally carried over from one year to the next. Early last year, A.I.D. imported a tropics-resistant rice seed from Colombia and distributed it, along with machetes made in El Salvador, to 18,000 families. The first harvest, in December, was abundant and the main concern voiced by rice farmers recently was the lack of storage or markets for the surplus. But Mr. Jaentschke and others working on recovery said the continuing political instability interfered with the efforts. Since December, the area has been afflicted by a series of takeovers of police and governmental buildings and roads by rearmed former contras. The group, which says it has 1,200 followers, has demanded housing and other help from the Government and the transfer out of the region of the remaining Sandinista police. "All the delays in getting things done here are caused by the political differences among the various groups," said a frustrated Mr. Jaentschke. "There's | Back Home, Miskitos Can Sing Again, but Face Daunting Job of Rebuilding |
518833_0 | The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled today that courts may not compel children who are victims of sexual abuse to undergo physical examinations at the request of defendants without first determining that there is a substantial need for the tests. The court overturned lower-court rulings that dismissed an indictment because a 10-year-old victim who had been examined by a physician for the state refused to have a second test. The trial court, the Superior Court in Somerset County, recognized a previous ruling by the State Supreme Court that judges should exercise "great care" in ordering young sex-abuse victims to undergo psychiatric or psychological examinations but decided that physical examinations did not hold the same potential for harm as psychological tests. The trial court said children routinely go to doctors for physical tests, "including examination of their privates and other sensitive parts of the body," and saw no harm in ordering the young girl in the disputed case to undergo a second examination. 'Clearly Erred' The State Supreme Court, in a 7-to-0 opinion written by Justice Alan B. Handler, said the trial court "clearly erred" in determining that a physical examination relating to suspected sex abuse "does not constitute an invasion of privacy and does not create a substantial risk of serious harm to the child in the form of emotional trauma and mental distress." "The harmful consequences of a physical examination on child sex-abuse victims dictate that a criminal defendant cannot insist on untrammelled or unconditional discovery rights to such an examination," Judge Handler said. "Many courts have concluded that physical examinations of child sex-abuse victims generate the same harmful consequences that arise from psychological examinations," he added. He cited opinions handed down over the last six years in Alabama, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island requiring defendants to have a compelling reason to ask for physical exams for abuse victims. The Appellate Division of Superior Court had upheld the trial court in dismissing the indictment, reasoning that the defendant's right to challenge the initial examination outweighed the girl's right to privacy. In overturning both opinions, the State Supreme Court said "criminal discovery has its limits" and may not be transformed "into an unfocused, haphazard search for evidence." The court ordered the indictment reinstated against the defendant, who was identified as the boyfriend of the girl's mother, but indicated it was unlikely the case would go | Court Upsets Physical Test For Children In Sex Abuse |
520369_2 | to work, and they can't," he said. "I look at a bachelor's now as the same as a high school diploma." Mr. Lynch, who has a master's degree in clinical psychology from Hunter College, said that one advertising company at the fair had said it would consider him for an opening -- as a secretary. Making an Impression In general, jobs are not parceled out at the fair. Instead, the event gives students a chance to pick up information about different companies, drop off resumes and in the bedlam, hold out the eternal hope of making a good impression. The encounter with the man from the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the representative of the Museum of Modern Art may have been brief, but the briefcase-toting, suit-wearing students, who waited in lines for up to a half-hour, prepared carefully and let no opportunity slip by. Several asked a reporter if his newspaper had any openings. In the lobby, dozens gathered around a television screen that played a video on "How to Make a Job Fair Work for You." "You have to be proactive to make it work for you," said the narrator. "Dress appropriately. Maintain good eye contact. Have a firm handshake." Sidney M. Sussan, assistant director of the division of banking supervision and regulation of the Federal Reserve Board, said he was impressed with the students who lined up to meet him. "Good eye contact," he said. "Good handshake. Good first three sentences." He said that the Federal Reserve was looking to hire several types of workers, including communications analysts, electronic data processing auditors and litigation and regulation attorneys. 'We'll Get Back in Touch After waiting in line 20 minutes for a handshake and a one-minute talk with a McGraw-Hill representative, Mr. Pollicino said he had gotten the same response he received from other publishing companies: "All right, we'll get back in touch if any editorial positions become available." "I think it went O.K., though," he added with a shy grin. Thomas L. Thomas, president of City University's Career Counseling and Placement Association, said that about 35 percent of the students who responded to surveys distributed at previous job fairs had found work through the events. He said many students, apprehensive about the job market this year, were considering graduate school or adjusting their expectations to aim for what he called "back-office-type-jobs." "Look, you have to make yourself marketable," | A Hard Sell: Students Try to Market Themselves; 5,000 Attend City University Job Fair With Their Hopes High and Expectations Low |
520326_2 | now norms in the industry, including the frequent-flier program first proposed in 1981 and super saver fares, introduced in 1977, two years before airline deregulation went into effect. Mr. Crandall also pioneered the two-tier wage system in the mid-1980's, under which new employees are hired at lower salaries than those paid under existing labor contracts. This system, which cut labor costs substantially, was also adopted industrywide. To make his fare reorganization stick, Mr. Crandall is counting on the increasing concern among all carriers over the erosion of what had been one of the industry's most stable bases of revenue -- the business traveler. Because most business executives travel at company expense and corporations consider travel a necessity, fare increases in the past have been swallowed without much protest. But fares reached such high levels that many corporations began to fight back, creating corporate travel departments and hiring large outside travel agencies to negotiate discounts, using their size to secure special deals. Mr. Crandall said it was typical for a representative of a large company to show him a letter from another carrier offering a 40 percent discount and then ask him to offer 42 percent. From a rarity a few years ago, such tactics have spread, and now about 7 percent to 8 percent of business travelers fly on fares secured under such deals. Meanwhile, the number of travelers who pay full coach fare has shrunk to about 6 percent. About 10 years ago, 30 percent of travelers flew on full fares. Consumer surveys also show that the regard that travelers have for the airline industry is falling in comparison with other industries, and letters of complaint are rising. Not a Short-Term Sale In announcing American's new fare system, Mr. Crandall emphasized that it was not a short-term sale but a new price structure that would be kept in place even if other carriers did not meet every part. And in the cities where American's new fares are higher than existing fares of competitors, Mr. Crandall said American would be competitive, meaning that fares could be lowered further. "If people want to test our resolve, let them do so," he warned at a news conference in New York. Such price-cutting actions would put pressure on the whole industry but particularly on weaker carriers like T.W.A., whose lower fares have severely undercut what business travelers pay in many markets. Julius Maldutis, | A Call for Discipline In the Airline Industry |
523269_1 | rely on what is oddly called the "gravity model" of open trade, a simple but generally accurate predictor of country-by-country import and export flows based on income, population and location. They go back to 1985, a time when the East bloc's output was at its peak, and compare actual trade with simulated flows for open, market-driven economies. As expected, the simulation suggests that the bulk of the $100 billion worth of trade within the bloc was dictated by the Kremlin's wish to make the socialist world self-sufficient. What should surprise, though, is the degree to which the total volume of trade was suppressed by the cold war. The model predicts total imports from the West equaling $261 billion, almost five times the actual flow. In terms of absolute volume, the European Community and Germany in particular would have reaped the biggest gains in exports -- a five-fold increase to $133 billion. But the biggest single winner would have been America, with a thirteenfold increase in sales to $50 billion. Note that these trade numbers do not apply to some distant happy future in which Eastern Europeans all drive Saabs and escape winter on the beaches of North Africa. They are about a not very successful Eastern Europe that merely regains the level of physical productivity it managed the year Mikhail S. Gorbachev was elected chairman of the Soviet Communist Party -- a goal attainable, with any luck, by the end of the decade. The catch, of course, is that trade is a two-way street. While developing countries might be expected to run substantial trade deficits in the early years in order to finance industrialization, only Ronald Reagan's America has ever dared to imagine a world in which foreign suppliers would accept a nation's i.o.u.'s indefinitely. Thus to reap the likely benefits of wide-open exports to Eastern Europe, other economies must be ready open their markets to Eastern European goods. That may not be easy. Consider agriculture, probably the sector in the old East bloc economies most amenable to rapid productivity growth. If the world opened its borders to Eastern European farmers, the simulations project export increases ranging from threefold for dairy products to sixfold for pork and poultry. Consumers everywhere would benefit. But their gain would hardly bring joy to European Community's farmers, who would have to swallow sharp cuts in sales and prices. Industrial exports may prove less problematic. | Economic Scene; As Phoenix Rises In East Europe |
524119_1 | city's inventory, said Carl Weisbrod, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation. Rather, he said, the proposed College Point park is "just an additional benefit we would include" for the public. He said that the real "intended exchange" for leasing more Flushing Meadows land to the tennis center was $8 million that the United States Tennis Association would provide for upgrading the three-mile-long Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, one of the city's most heavily used parks. Officials also noted that for most of the year -- the U.S. Open takes place over two weeks each summer -- the tennis center's courts are open to the public. For opponents of the center's proposed expansion, many of whom assail the plan as a giveaway to special interest, no sweetener is enough. Moreover, the site of the proposed park in College Point is "a poor substitute" for devoting additional Flushing Meadows acreage to the tennis center, said Benjamin M. Haber, vice chairman of the Committee for the Preservation of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. "That property is generally inaccessible," he said of the College Point site, 14 acres of uplands and marshes at the edge of Powell's Cove, an inlet of the East River in the northernmost reaches of Queens. The tract generally runs from the cove to 11th Avenue between 131st and 135th Streets. Neighbors Like Plan Whatever the dispute over the tennis center expansion, which is subject to approval by the City Council, the State Legislature and Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, the portion of the plan to turn the College Point site into parkland was greeted favorably in that neighborhood. "That'll be nice -- look what they've got here now, a regular junkyard," said Henry Mashefsky, a longtime College Point resident who was on the site last week, picking through a pile of old automobile hubcaps that had been dumped there. The 74-year-old retired city worker stood against a panoramic backdrop of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge looming dramatically over the glittering waters. But around him were the rusted hulks of a half-dozen stripped autos and discarded tires, mattresses and other trash. Claire Shulman, the Queens Borough President, termed the Powell's Cove park provision one of "a number of benefits for Queens" in the tennis-center expansion plan. The plan's advocates say the expansion is necessary to keep the U.S. Open in New York, and with it more than $100 million in business they say it generates annually. | Proposal for U.S. Open Is Sweetened |
524041_2 | year, with 252,977 people found to be infected, 80 percent of them in the United States. Africa reported a 60 percent increase in AIDS cases, with the number of infected people rising from 81,019 to 129,066. The worst-affected countries are Malawi, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Tanzania. The report, which contains far more information about health conditions in industrialized countries than in the developing world, identifies malaria as a major third world health hazard, saying it is present in more than 100 countries and accounts for 20 to 30 percent of the deaths of children under 5 years of age. It says the situation in many malarial areas has grown worse over the last decade, with the mosquitoes and parasites responsible for spreading the disease developing increased resistance to insecticides and drugs. More than 2 billion people, or 40 percent of the world's people, are now "at risk" from malaria, the report says. As a result, the organization plans to convene the first conference of health ministers in Amsterdam in October to discuss ways of fighting malaria. Although births in developing countries rose 8 percent between 1985 and 1990, the organization reports that the number of children dying before reaching 5 fell from 13.4 million to 12.9 million, largely as a result of immunization campaigns and progress in combating diarrheal diseases. Nevertheless, diarrheal diseases were still responsible for the deaths of some 3 million infants, or 23 percent of total infant deaths. On the other hand, the number of small children dying from measles has declined from 2 million in 1985 to 880,000 in 1990 as a result of immunization campaigns, while deaths from whooping cough in the same period have been cut from 600,000 to 350,000. The report says 500,000 women die annually in childbirth, mainly in the developing world, where only about 50 percent of births are supervised by trained medical personnel. The fertility rate among women is highest in Rwanda, where each woman has an average 8.3 children, compared with an average of 1.8 for American women and very similar figures in most other industrialized countries. Suicides in Hungary Using the latest available statistics, the health organization says the Bahamas has the lowest rate of suicides in the world, 1.3 for every 100,000 people, while Hungary has the highest with 38.2 per 100,000. The American suicide rate is 10.5 per 100,000, or 17.3 for men and 4.3 for | Japanese Live Longer, the U.N. Finds |
523888_2 | romance, and unrequited love is a deep source of pain." Professor Thomas's anguish has led him to take unusual steps regarding his students, including publicly scolding them last semester in a newspaper advertisement. He had asked his entry-level class how many had completed the reading assignment over a Thanksgiving break. Only 18 of the 275 students present raised their hands. The professor stormed out of the classroom, refusing to teach that day. Then he spent $108.03 on the ad, in which he chastised some student's study habits and the overall work ethic of the campus. Reflecting on his outburst, he explained: "When a professor gives at a certain level, he or she can expect that level in return. Both sides have to give because we can't settle for mediocrity." Faculty, staff and students have since deluged him with statements and shows of support. "I touched a raw nerve and was intending to," said the self-described "intellectual gadfly" who has written books about the psychology of moral character and about slavery and the Holocaust. 'I Love to Explore Issues' An only child, he was raised in a Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore. His parents, both professionals, had always emphasized education, he said. So, after they died -- he was 16 years old then -- he assumed that he would attend college. He obtained a scholarship to the University of Maryland, receiving a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1971, and, from the University of Pittsburgh, a master's degree in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1976. "I studied philosophy," he said, "because I love to explore issues, I love to think." Professor Thomas went to the University of Notre Dame as an assistant professor but resigned to become an Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard. After teaching at the University of Maryland and being offered tenure at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, he said, he wanted to experience academic life at a small liberal-arts college -- Oberlin. By 1989, he said, he sought a program with lots of graduate students. With offers from the University of Texas at Austin and from Syracuse, he chose Syracuse. Stewart Thau, chairman of Syracuse's philosophy department for the last 20 years, said he hired Professor Thomas because of his reputation for provocative teaching. "He puts so much energy and time into his teaching that he can and does give individuals all kinds of attention | CAMPUS LIFE: Syracuse; An Offbeat Style Draws Students To a Professor |
524233_0 | Anne Evans wants to go home. The British Government and tire dealers may be glad to have the 35-year-old American entrepreneur in this industrial city near Birmingham. But to hear her tell it, she was forced to come here to save her family's eastern Connecticut real estate business, which has been pushed to the brink by the recession. "I have no choice. There are no opportunities at home," Mrs. Evans said. The opportunity for her here was applying American technology to a problem that Britain is only now facing up to: discarded used tires. There are about 250 million stacked around the country and the piles are growing by about 21 million a year. Mrs. Evans is heading a group that is building and will own Britain's first electricity-generating plant to use tires as fuel. As part of its diversification efforts, Nipsco Industries Inc., parent of Indiana's largest gas and electric utility, is providing the vast majority of the equity financing for the project as well as technical expertise. Sites in Britain where tires can be dumped or buried have become scarce. And Britons are also discovering something that Americans have long known: not only can tire dumps be a nightmare if they catch fire like a nearby one did recently but they also serve as an ideal breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitoes. In 1990, the British Government decided to provide subsidies to encourage private companies to build tire-burning power plants. Projects like that -- which involve not only getting the plant built, arranging tire deliveries and selling the electricity -- are exactly what Mrs. Evans knows how to do. She has advised the United States Government and tire industry on ways to dispose waste tires and served as a project consultant for a tire-fueled power plant in Sterling, Conn. The $80 million plant being built here by Elm Energy and Recycling (U.K.) Ltd., the company that she founded and heads, will burn about 10 million tires a year to generate 25 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply 25,000 homes. Construction began in April and the plant should be completed by the fall of 1993. Its incinerators are being designed by Basic Environmental Engineering, an Illinois company. Tire dealers can't wait for the plant to go into operation. "You can still find landfills for chopped tires but it's hard if not impossible to get them to take whole tires," said | For One American, Britain Is the Land of Opportunity |
524112_0 | THE ROAD TO EXTREMA By Bob Reiss. 301 pp. New York: Summit Books. AFTER hacking my way halfway through this tangled account of the Amazonian rain forest, I developed a theory about the book's organizing principle. Bob Reiss's plan for "The Road to Extrema" must have been to approximate, in the disorder of his narrative, the confusion that one feels on first encountering the multifariousness of the tropical forest. If so, it was a bold experiment, but misguided. What works for the jungle does not work so well in literature. As nearly as I can tell, Mr. Reiss, a journalist who has written for Rolling Stone and Smithsonian, has simply offloaded his notebooks into his word processor. He travels here and there, makes not very keen observations, ruminates in a not particularly compelling way and enters it in his book. He favors the immediacy of impressions over any attempt to polish them up. His principal literary device is the non sequitur: "What happens to Indians in rain forests that get developed? Like other Amazon tribes, the Karitianas are likely descended from groups that migrated to South America between 70 and 14,000 years ago. Their three-continent trek took them from Asia across. . . ." And so on for a number of paragraphs, while that opening question goes begging. Who is it that introduced the abrupt, jarring discontinuity into American literary journalism? John McPhee? Even a careful writer like Mr. McPhee occasionally has trouble with it, and Mr. Reiss is not a careful writer. The device is best used sparingly. Mr. Reiss works it hard at all levels: sentence, paragraph, chapter. The whole book is designed that way. The author bounces between Brazil and the United States to show how rain forest issues affect urbanites and vice versa. Transitions, he clearly feels, are the hobgoblins of little minds, and the unities, that tired old concept, should have gone out with the Greeks. In "The Road to Extrema," the reader is forever picking himself up, dusting himself off, getting his hat on half-straight, then running into another digression. It's a Chaplinesque experience. Mr. Reiss has not been selective. He hates wasting notes and quotes. The first person he presents in any depth is a young Brazilian field biologist named Rosa Lemos. The original turn of phrase or thought is not Ms. Lemos's specialty, but that does not prevent Mr. Reiss from quoting | A Hundred Words for 'Green' |
521317_10 | show that faults seem to conduct electricity more readily than surrounding rock, indicating that water may be present. Moreover, he said, ancient fault traces show veins of minerals deposited by water. Upward migration of water pulses could trigger earthquakes, Dr. Rice said, in which case it would be important to understand a fault's plumbing rather than its geological traits. This finding strikes terror into those who try to predict earthquakes, Dr. Rice said. If a killer earthquake can be started with just a benign nudge, he said, there may be no precursor events by which to predict it. Phenomena that earthquake scientists have closely scanned as clues to impending earthquakes include changes in water level, gases emitted from earth, strain measurements, animal behavior and the rate of small earthquakes. Federal geologists are looking for such precursors in Parkfield, Calif., a hamlet that experienced moderate earthquakes in 1966, 1934, 1922, 1901, 1881 and 1857. Thinking these were earthquakes of the type predicted by the conventional, seismic gap theory, the agency peppered the region with instruments hoping to find precursors for the next shake-up, which they predict is due any day because of the time since the last one. But Dr. James Savage of the geological agency and Dr. Paul Segall of the agency and Stanford University have evidence that shows the 1966 and 1934 earthquakes were very different. The next Parkfield earthquake could be years away as the agency spends $1 million a year lying in wait. Researchers continue to puzzle, meanwhile, over the meaning of ultralow frequency radio waves that emanate from some faults before earthquakes. Such waves were detected 12 days before the Loma Prieta earthquake, and they grew stronger an hour before the quake. Similar waves have been detected before earthquakes in Russia, Greece and Japan. If the water hypothesis is correct, Dr. Rice said, the radio waves might be produced by electrical currents flowing through the salty, pressured water. Dr. John S. Derr of the Geological Survey's Albuquerque office, who helps install seismometers around the world, is more daring. Electrical currents not only flow through faults, he says, they are sometimes manifested on the Earth's surface as sheets of light and balls of floating orange or blue light, which are often reported by the public as unidentified flying objects. Indeed, four of five presently unexplainable U.F.O. sightings may be natural phenomena associated with earthquakes, Dr. Derr said. | Quake Theory Attacks Prevailing Wisdom On How Faults Slip and Slide |
519712_2 | as a team in business. The other intensive weeks focus on managing quality and diversity; competitive business strategy, and complex management problems. There is also an exchange program under which students may spend a semester at foreign business schools, including Manchester Business in Britain; Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium; University of Sydney, Australia, and Ecole Superieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales near Paris. Another emphasis is on communications. Both concise writing and the ability to stand before an audience and talk with no more than a few small cards to jog the memory are required. "Many students get cold sweats when they try to do this the first time," Dean Keller said. He recalled that one student fainted. The professors are using new case histories as fast as they can be written to make up for the few textbooks available in areas like globalization and crisis management. "Our copy center runs overtime with our 625 students getting what we call teaching notes," Dean Keller said. Later last week, Dean Meyer Feldberg of Columbia University's business school talked about his new program, also scheduled to start in the fall, at a breakfast held at the Bankers Trust Company, which employs about 100 Columbia M.B.A.'s. Eugene B. Shanks, the president of Bankers Trust and host of the breakfast, said that about 30 of them had been hired in the last four years. Dean Feldberg said that through a survey he learned that the school's alumni wished they had been able to take such courses as globalization and ethics, which were not available when they got their M.B.A.'s. They do not favor study-abroad programs, he said, and he called Outward Bound experiences "flaky." Columbia, where 1,500 M.B.A. students are enrolled, stressed integration of four basic subjects into each of the core courses that students must take -- globalization, ethics, total quality and managing human resources, which includes training to instill communications ability. For example, in a finance course a professor might introduce ethics by discussing illegal insider trading. The core courses are managerial statistics, accounting, managing human behavior, managerial economics, business finance, marketing, operations management, the global economic environment, strategic management and decision models, which are typical of courses at other schools. To make sure the students have basic skills, the program requires them to take noncredit seminars in such areas as mathematics, computer science and communications. | Careers; Revamping The Training Of M.B.A.'s |
522544_4 | him at midnight; and that the omission of it would have upbraided and made discord in his conscience . . . for, if I be bound to pray for all that be in distress, I am sure that I am bound so far as it is in my power to practise what I pray for. . . . And now, let's tune our instruments." City of Words Cities, the scientist Rene Dubos argued, played a crucial role in the generation of ideas -- a function threatened by the deterioration of public life. This is from "The World of Rene Dubos: A Collection From His Writings" edited by Gerard Piel (Holt, paper). The interplay of thought in the agoras of ancient Greek cities helped to sharpen philosophical and political concepts. In Europe during the 17th century, the search for new ways to manipulate the physical world led to the creation of academies and thus accelerated the development of science and technology. The revolt against the academic painting of the 19th century became an organized movement through a few artists who met in the art centers of Europe. Impressionism might not have developed into a full-fledged movement if Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frederic Bazille had not met in 1862 . . . in the Paris cafes and restaurants. The history of modern art is largely the history of chance encounters that developed into irreversible historic trends. . . . Humankind has progressively discovered its intellectual and emotional wealth through the unpredictable encounters and confrontations made possible by life in the city. The Strength of the Sensitive Hatred, the British novelist Olive Moore cautions us, is too precious a commodity to spend on individuals. This is from her "Collected Writings" (Dalkey Archive). Be careful with hatred. Handle hatred with respect. Hatred is too noble an emotion to be frittered away in little personal animosities. Whereas love is of itself a reward and an object worth striving for, personal hatred has no triumphs that are not trivial, secondary and human. Therefore love as foolishly as you may. But hate only after long and ardent deliberation. Hatred is a passion requiring one hundred times the energy of love. Keep it for a cause, not an individual. Keep it for intolerance, injustice, stupidity. For hatred is the strength of the sensitive. Its power and its greatness depend on the selflessness of its use. | Noted With Pleasure |
522728_0 | Local-area networks are often like large, rowdy families; too many people trying to use too few bathrooms. In the case of modems, providing one for each person on the network is too expensive since, like bathrooms, modems sit idle most of the time. The only viable option is to provide as many as possible and force people to share. But sharing has its own complications. One approach is to set up a communications server with multiple modems attached to it for access by anyone on the network. Communications software is either loaded on each individual machine or on the server computer. In either case, multiple copies must be purchased. The other option, and the one most often used by small, medium or remote networks, is to attach a modem to just a few machines and ask users go to them. U.S. Robotics, the Skokie, Ill., modem maker, has devised a third alternative, the Shared Access Modem Sharing Kit -- a high-speed modem that uses the V.32bis communications protocol and software that allows any network user to gain access to the modem. So far, users have favorable things to say about it. Travis Carter, senior LAN analyst for the Carlson Companies, the Minneapolis-based holding company, said the system took him 10 minutes to install. "What I really like is that it's been easy to maintain. I have not had it fail me once," Mr. Carter said. He stressed, however, that Shared Access is best suited for a network with modest dial-in, dial-out needs. While the U.S. Robotics approach is not unique, its software approach is. The modem-sharing software sits on top of the network operating system and handles both outgoing and incoming data passing through the modem. The communications program, called On-LAN, resides on the user's desktop computer and allows for connection to outside computers. The third component is software for a remote site or a user traveling with a laptop computer who wants to call in. "As long as the PC is physically wired to the LAN, the On-LAN software can be loaded on it, no matter how many nodes there are," said Gordon Reichard Jr., a U.S. Robotics manager. While most single LAN's rarely exceed a few hundred nodes, traditional software licensing would require paying a fee for each computer, something likely to cost thousands of dollars. Purchase of the U.S. Robotics modem includes unlimited use of the software, | Networking; Containing the Cost of Communicating |
522560_1 | President. Meanwhile, similar trends showed up in Europe and Canada. Others blame foreign competition and the shift of production from manufacturing -- with lots of high-paying blue-collar jobs -- to service industries. But this argument is contradicted by data showing that most of the growing income inequality occurred within individual manufacturing and service industries, even those immune from foreign competition. Yes, during the 1980's the stock market tripled and inflation-adjusted interest rates hit unprecedented levels, all favoring the rich. But it is wages and salaries that account for over three-quarters of family income -- and for most of the growing difference between rich and poor. Between 1939 and 1975, the wage gap between high- and low-skilled workers barely changed. During the the 1980's, however, the gap doubled. At the start of the decade, college graduates with a few years of work experience were earning about 30 percent more than high school graduates; 10 years later, the gap was 60 percent. The Reason Economists are increasingly persuaded that this rising inequality cannot be explained by anything as simple as greed, politics or foreigners. They look to something more deeply ingrained in modern industrialized economies -- call it technology for short. The days when high school dropouts could earn high wages in manufacturing are gone. Modern economies more than ever require educated, skilled labor. That explanation ought to jolt people out of traditional remedies. For one thing, tinkering with tax rates to favor the poor won't accomplish much. Studies show that even if Congress were prepared to jack up tax rates on the rich greatly while cutting taxes for the poor, the impact on income inequality would be trivial. The Remedy But Government need not watch helplessly as income differences widen; it can act to narrow them. Consider the example of Canada. It experienced similar inequality trends in the 1980's. But Canada beefed up its anti-poverty programs and kept the poverty rate flat. In the U.S., it rose. The modern industrial economy is calling out for skilled, educated workers. Government knows how to answer that call; and thus knows how to counter the widening income gap. The right way for Congress to respond is to promote the education of sophisticated workers. That means massive new commitments to Head Start, to primary and secondary education, to training high school dropouts and welfare mothers, to more higher education of different kinds, to workplace training. | The Rich Get Richer; And What to Do About It |
522729_0 | Local-area networks are often like large, rowdy families; too many people trying to use too few bathrooms. In the case of modems, providing one for each person on the network is too expensive since, like bathrooms, modems sit idle most of the time. The only viable option is to provide as many as possible and force people to share. But sharing has its own complications. One approach is to set up a communications server with multiple modems attached to it for access by anyone on the network. Communications software is either loaded on each individual machine or on the server computer. In either case, multiple copies must be purchased. The other option, and the one most often used by small, medium or remote networks, is to attach a modem to just a few machines and ask users go to them. U.S. Robotics, the Skokie, Ill., modem maker, has devised a third alternative, the Shared Access Modem Sharing Kit -- a high-speed modem that uses the V.32bis communications protocol and software that allows any network user to gain access to the modem. So far, users have favorable things to say about it. Travis Carter, senior LAN analyst for the Carlson Companies, the Minneapolis-based holding company, said the system took him 10 minutes to install. "What I really like is that it's been easy to maintain. I have not had it fail me once," Mr. Carter said. He stressed, however, that Shared Access is best suited for a network with modest dial-in, dial-out needs. While the U.S. Robotics approach is not unique, its software approach is. The modem-sharing software sits on top of the network operating system and handles both outgoing and incoming data passing through the modem. The communications program, called On-LAN, resides on the user's desktop computer and allows for connection to outside computers. The third component is software for a remote site or a user traveling with a laptop computer who wants to call in. "As long as the PC is physically wired to the LAN, the On-LAN software can be loaded on it, no matter how many nodes there are," said Gordon Reichard Jr., a U.S. Robotics manager. While most single LAN's rarely exceed a few hundred nodes, traditional software licensing would require paying a fee for each computer, something likely to cost thousands of dollars. Purchase of the U.S. Robotics modem includes unlimited use of the software, | Networking; Containing the Cost of Communicating |
522500_0 | A growing number of American companies, lured by the prospect of approaching change in Cuba as the island tries to ward off economic collapse, are following their foreign counterparts in showing interest in the island. Located at the United States' doorstep, endowed with resources ranging from strategic metals to rich croplands and pristine beaches, and inhabited by an industrious, well-educated population, Cuba is seen by many corporate executives and academics as a country in need of almost wholesale economic reconstruction but also as a land of potentially bright opportunity. American corporations are barred from the island by a 29-year-old embargo and are wary of the sensitivities of a large and politically active Cuban-American population that has expressed hostility to any easing of relations with the Communist regime. Thus they have been forced to remain largely on the sidelines as companies from France, Britain, Canada, Spain and elsewhere seized upon opportunities opened up by recent reforms in the island's policies governing private investment. Yet foreign subsidiaries of United States companies have started to take advantage of a little-heralded 1975 amendment to the American embargo that allows them to trade nonstrategic goods with Cuba. Cut off from its traditional lifeline to the defunct Soviet Union, Cuba is scurrying to replace subsidized supplies of everything from industrial spare parts and oil to flour for making bread. It is feeding the effort by setting up attractive new investment regulations that permit the repatriation of profits, majority foreign ownership in some instances and control over management decisions like hiring and firing that were once the sacrosanct domain of the Government. Cuba, locked into a sterile brand of central planning for the last three decades, barely tips the scales in the economic life of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a Communist oddity in an increasingly free-market world. "If Cuba were to somehow sink tomorrow and disappear from the map, it would hardly make a ripple in the hemisphere's economy," a World Bank official said recently. "It would just not be felt." But many companies have begun to prospect the island's markets, convinced that Cuba's bid to survive will ultimately lead it to convert to a capitalist economy, even if it is not acknowledged in name. If the Government should suddenly pull back on its reforms, many say, economic collapse will follow, eventually leading to the same result. "There is growing anticipation among my clients, | Cuba, Long Forbidden, Wins Major Attention Abroad |
522732_2 | power-base building that accrue to men like Bill Clinton or Al Gore. They found that many of them were gingerly negotiating the contradictions between traditional notions of leadership and traditional notions of femininity. But many had been told from childhood that they could do anything, and they still believed it. Given the chance, maybe they could convince us, too. Consider Ann Richards, who became famous for her convention speech about how good ol' George Bush was born with a silver foot in his mouth -- and who, God bless her, has no dirty linen left unaired after a snake's belly of a gubernatorial challenge. Governor of Texas, a biiiig important state. Smart, can-do, and as charming as a full moon on an autumn night. Truth is that if Ms. Richards is not soon mentioned as a national candidate, it won't be because of her competence. It will be because of her chromosomes. I've heard women wonder aloud about when the idea of a woman President will be something more than an occasion for gags about the First Man. Opportunities for women have expanded so much that those gender deserts in which change is scarce water have become more wrenching. This month the American Catholic bishops released another draft of their pastoral letter on women's concerns. It begins well, calling sexism a sin, and then ends, sadly, with the church's continuing theology of exclusion, its reaffirmation of the priesthood as the exclusive preserve of men. "This constant practice constitutes a tradition which witnesses to the mind of Christ and is therefore normative," the letter reads. I could inveigh here against the sheer foolishness of any system that excludes at least half of its finest potential leaders. But the murmurings about a woman President (as well as women priests) are not only about expanding what seems to be a shockingly shallow applicant pool. They are questions about how we as women are valued, and how we learn to value ourselves. Neither political nor church leaders seem to adequately appreciate that a system which, by custom or covert agreement, considers women unsuitable for its highest positions sends them a message: You are subordinate clauses in the world's history. No rationale can obscure that message. When our daughters ask why they may never see a woman President or a woman priest, we have no good answers for them. That is because there are none. | Public & Private; Ms. President |
522475_0 | Cuba, which enjoys a busy tourist trade from Canada, Germany and other countries -- but not from the United States, whose citizens are prohibited from traveling there -- has moved a step closer in its quest to become a member of the Caribbean Tourism Organization. The organization, which represents 28 islands plus Venezuela and Belize, said that Cuba's application for membership, which has been on file for several years, would be considered at the next board meeting, to be held on the island of Curacao June 27. The application has been blocked in past years by an objection from Grenada. But at a board meeting in New York last month organization members were surprised by an announcement by Joan Purcell, Grenada's Minister of Tourism, that since Cuba had formally recognized the Grenada Government, Grenada no longer objected to Cuba's application. An official of the C.T.O. emphasized that at the Curacao meeting there is more likely to be a discussion on the subject than a decision. Ralph Garcia, Cuba's director of tourism in Canada, said that his country was eager to become part of a unified Caribbean voice. He said that in 1990 the number of foreign visitors to Cuba rose to 340,329 and that, although final figures were not yet available, last year showed another increase. About 100,000 Canadian vacationers visited last year. United States citizens are prohibited by the United States Treasury Department from spending money in Cuba, which effectively bars tourism to the island. TRAVEL ADVISORY | Cuba Gets Closer To Tourism Role |
522733_2 | power-base building that accrue to men like Bill Clinton or Al Gore. They found that many of them were gingerly negotiating the contradictions between traditional notions of leadership and traditional notions of femininity. But many had been told from childhood that they could do anything, and they still believed it. Given the chance, maybe they could convince us, too. Consider Ann Richards, who became famous for her convention speech about how good ol' George Bush was born with a silver foot in his mouth -- and who, God bless her, has no dirty linen left unaired after a snake's belly of a gubernatorial challenge. Governor of Texas, a biiiig important state. Smart, can-do, and as charming as a full moon on an autumn night. Truth is that if Ms. Richards is not soon mentioned as a national candidate, it won't be because of her competence. It will be because of her chromosomes. I've heard women wonder aloud about when the idea of a woman President will be something more than an occasion for gags about the First Man. Opportunities for women have expanded so much that those gender deserts in which change is scarce water have become more wrenching. This month the American Catholic bishops released another draft of their pastoral letter on women's concerns. It begins well, calling sexism a sin, and then ends, sadly, with the church's continuing theology of exclusion, its reaffirmation of the priesthood as the exclusive preserve of men. "This constant practice constitutes a tradition which witnesses to the mind of Christ and is therefore normative," the letter reads. I could inveigh here against the sheer foolishness of any system that excludes at least half of its finest potential leaders. But the murmurings about a woman President (as well as women priests) are not only about expanding what seems to be a shockingly shallow applicant pool. They are questions about how we as women are valued, and how we learn to value ourselves. Neither political nor church leaders seem to adequately appreciate that a system which, by custom or covert agreement, considers women unsuitable for its highest positions sends them a message: You are subordinate clauses in the world's history. No rationale can obscure that message. When our daughters ask why they may never see a woman President or a woman priest, we have no good answers for them. That is because there are none. | Public & Private; Ms. President |
521233_1 | Fall in Private Pension Coverage in the U.S.," that is about to be published in the proceedings of the American Economics Association. William E. Even, associate director of the Center for Pension and Retirement Research at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, said, "The decline increases the likelihood that these workers will postpone retirement, be poorer when they do retire and rely more heavily on Social Security and other Government transfers." Changing Labor Market To be sure, the decline in pension coverage could turn around before most of today's workers retire, should the broad trends that have been buffeting the United States labor market change direction. But there are few strong reasons to anticipate such a reversal. In the meantime, the pool of money available for business investment could become more limited if a smaller proportion of the work force is enrolled in pension plans. Such a decline would further depress America's low saving rate and compound the problem of slow productivity and wage growth. "Pensions are the way Americans save," said John B. Shoven, an economist at Stanford University, noting that two-thirds of Americans have no savings other than the equity in their homes and pensions. In the last decade, pension assets tripled in dollar terms, thanks entirely to the rise in the stock market. That rise equals the entire increase in the nation's wealth -- the broadest measure of savings -- for that period. On average, company pensions now provide 17 percent of the income of people 55 and older, while Social Security provides 38 percent and personal savings 25 percent. That portion provided by pensions has more than doubled from 30 years ago, and it has been growing faster than income from Social Security, which, in any case, was never meant to be the sole, or even main, source of support for elderly people. The average includes people without pensions, wealthy people with large investment incomes and people who continue to work. Proposals in Congress One measure of the concern in Washington over receding pension coverage is that a half-dozen bills have been introduced in Congress, all primarily intended to make it cheaper and easier for small businesses to offer pensions. Small businesses created most of the 20 million new jobs in the 1980's expansion. "It's hard to find anyone in this town who is unconcerned," said Richard Ippolito, chief economist of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the | PENSIONS COVERING LOWER PERCENTAGE OF U.S. WORK FORCE |
521108_0 | World Economies | |
521197_2 | under $1,200 apiece, he had to sell his collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in 1963 for $1.2 million. The museum opened the following year in an 18th-century white clapboard house that was once a general store and a Christian Science church. Its backyard became a sculpture garden. In 1986, a wing was added, doubling the exhibition space. Last year, the board was expanded to 18 members from 5. Although Mr. Aldrich comes from outside the art world, his museum has won plaudits from many art professionals. Lisa Phillips, a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, said: "Under Larry Aldrich's leadership, the Aldrich Museum, over the years, has been a lively, provocative showcase for contemporary art." While the museum has long been known by contemporary-art cognoscenti, it is still relatively invisible to its neighbors in the placid, semirural environs of northern Fairfield County and nearby Westchester County. "Our national reputation exceeded our local one," said Jill Clapes, one of the half dozen staff members. Unlike most medium-sized museums in American small towns, the Aldrich mounts several exhibitions a year of always provocative works by the likes of James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein and Cindy Sherman. The museum's decidedly avant-garde edge is certainly not going to change under Barry Rosenberg, who became director in January. Mr. Rosenberg has not only taught studio art and headed the Museum of Contemporary Art in Dayton, Ohio, but has also defined and documented his life as art, having himself videotaped or written about driving a tractor-trailer, working in a maximum-security prison and serving as a stock and delivery boy, with a name tag on his blue work shirt saying "Art." "I was surprised at how closely the Aldrich reflected my interests, in shows that investigate contemporary life and themes dealing with politics and the language of art," he said. "I look at a museum as being like a newsreel, tracking ideas and making philosophy visual," he added. "I don't know if the artists here will be known in 100 years, but I can be sure that people will say of the work we show, 'That was a great 1990's piece.' " "I want my exhibitions to be as perceptive and thought-provoking as past Aldrich shows," Mr. Rosenberg said. "What's going to change is that I want the museum to be more accessible to a larger public, from connoisseurs to the visually naive." RIDGEFIELD JOURNAL | Contemporary, but Largely Invisible |
522983_9 | from facts and adopting a serious attitude." Diplomacy Shedding Status As Pariah in West For all of China's diplomatic difficulties in the 1990's, most diplomats and scholars say the Government has made great strides in improving its position lately. Just a couple of years ago, for example, China seemed to face an intractable challenge in its handling of foreign relations: Li Peng's hands. No Western leader wanted to shake them. Prime Minister Li had been a central figure in the 1989 crackdown, in which the army crushed the Tiananmen democracy movement and shot to death hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators. While the third world paid little attention, the West was outraged and some diplomats suggested then that if China wanted to resume high-level exchanges with the industrialized world, it would be obliged to ease Mr. Li from power. But the Government proved more patient than its critics, and these days Mr. Li is no longer grounded. His triumphal 11-day visit in January and February to Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and the United Nations in New York, where he met with President Bush, suggests that China has largely reintegrated itself into the international community. On the United States Conflicting Views About Washington The only major trading partner of China that is not improving relations significantly with Beijing is the United States. Indeed, there could be a significant further deterioration in ties with Beijing if a Democratic president is elected this fall and refuses to extend China's access to low trade tariffs known as most-favored-nation status. China's leaders apparently are as vexed by the United States as the other way around. Most Chinese express deep admiration for America, but the leadership seems to feel that it has been betrayed by American support for anti-Communist dissidents in China. The central document conveys that ambivalence about America, as it passes on instructions on presenting news from America to Chinese audiences. "We want to ease tensions with the United States and break down the sentiment in America for sanctions," the document states. "We should take prudent and active measures, and properly report issues in Sino-American relations, so that bilateral relations develop in a way that will help us. Propaganda news stories must be careful and tactical, paying attention to results. As for American interference in our internal affairs, violations of our sovereignty, and slanderous rumor-mongering, we can reveal this in ways that accord with the circumstances | As China Looks at World Order, It Detects New Struggles Emerging |
523055_2 | mirrors used in astronomical telescopes. Some four feet in diameter, it is parabolically shaped and coated with thick neoprene. A microphone, shielded against sound coming from directions other than the reflector, is mounted at the focus of the parabolic dish to measure the intensity of sound concentrated at the spot. Without generating any noise of its own, the device easily detected the presence of test objects within its field of "view." In the next phase, the Scripps group plans to mount several hundred tiny microphones at varying distances from the center of focus of the parabolic reflector, with each microphone measuring sound coming from a slightly different direction from straight ahead. The signal from each microphone will then be used to generate a single pixel on a computer screen, and when all pixels are assembled in their correct relative positions, the resulting image should be a coherent picture of the original object. "Imagine what this would mean for a submarine crew," Dr. Buckingham said. "With an acoustic lens in the nose of the sub, a helmsman cruising beneath the pack ice in the Arctic Ocean could easily see ice keels extending below the pack ice, as well as other dangerous obstacles. If he were close enough, he could see a hostile submarine. "I've spent a lot of time in Arctic waters and can appreciate how useful this would be." Dr. Buckingham, who has conducted secret research for both the British and United States Navies, said he was puzzled as to why no one had hit upon the system before. "It seems so simple, once you think about it," he said. Limits to Technique The "white" ambient noise of the ocean has limitations as an imaging medium, however. Much of the noise produced by bubbles, after they have been set to oscillating by the action of waves and falling raindrops, is at frequencies up to 50,000 cycles per second -- far above the range of human hearing. Although low-pitched sound can carry through sea water from one side of the world to the other, sound of so high an average pitch as that of white noise does not propagate very far; in fact, Dr. Buckingham said, the distance from which scattered white noise might be used to image objects is probably no greater than one kilometer (six-tenths of a mile). Short-range acoustic vision might be useful in some duels between submarines, | Using Natural Sounds, System Tries to 'See' Objects Deep in Ocean |
523072_1 | last nation where the cranes are believed to flock in large numbers, has joined an international effort to save the birds, which have long been objects of adoration and mythology in Eastern culture. Several hundred are left. The Department of Forestry in Cambodia recently signed an agreement that may be the first step toward preserving a large expanse of pristine wetlands where the cranes breed during the rainy season. Many naturalists are concerned that the wetlands may be in danger as Cambodia modernizes. In early March, members of the International Crane Foundation, a Wisconsin-based group involved in the conservation effort, and the Royal Forestry Department of Thailand made an aerial survey of wetlands surrounding a large Cambodian lake, Tonle Sap, and the Mekong River. Vast Wetlands, Few People The foundation and the Thai forestry agency then signed the agreement with the Cambodian forestry agency, which will allow more detailed surveys and research in the wetlands. The foundation hopes that will lead to intense preservation efforts in the region. "There is a vast expanse of shallow wetlands with scattered trees and very few people," Dr. George Archibald, director of the International Crane Foundation, said of the Cambodian area. "It was like seeing a Shangri-La, a great ocean of tranquillity in the middle of a country torn apart by civil war." This was the foundation's first look at the Cambodian lands, which had been considered too dangerous for naturalists to study, Dr. Archibald said. The foundation has been involved in conservation projects in Thailand and Vietnam since the mid-1980's. Researchers in Vietnam are trying to restore the dry-season habitat of the cranes, which were driven from their wetland home, the Plain of Reeds on the Mekong Delta, by the war there. In Thailand, researchers are breeding cranes in captivity and hope to release them to the wild soon. The wetland habitat in Cambodia will help both missions, Dr. Archibald said. It will provide a model for restoring the wetlands environment in Vietnam. And it will offer Thai naturalists a chance to see the birds on their natural breeding grounds. "These have been hostile neighbors for thousands of years," Dr. Archibald said. "Now these three Indochinese countries have the chance to cooperate on wildlife preservation." Dr. Archibald hopes to take a group of researchers to Cambodia next winter to do a thorough study of the region as a basis for further preservation efforts. | Bid to Save Rare Crane Advancing |
523058_1 | bones waste away, and from kidney failure, in which life-threatening urinary toxins accumulate. "Working with hibernating bears you only get one chance each year to see what's happening, but we're slowly putting it all together," said Dr. Ralph A. Nelson, research director of the Carle Foundation in Urbana, Ill., who has studied bear physiology for two decades. "If we could duplicate what the bear does to stimulate new bone growth we might be able to treat bone loss in humans, and if we could increase the recycling of urea in humans with kidney failure, we could prevent the need for dialysis," he said. Even before they had a clue about the biochemistry involved, scientists have long regarded bear hibernation or "denning" as a marvel. Most animals that sleep through the winter drop their body temperature drastically and cut nutritional needs sharply during hibernation; these so-called deep hibernators -- like squirrels and wooodchucks -- spend winter limp and defenseless. But bears lower their body temperature only slightly and continue to burn about 4,000 calories a day, resulting in a Zen-like state of watchful rest. Bears can rise in response to intruders at a moment's notice and even carry and nurse their young during hibernation. "It's extraordinary that the bear has combined months of starvation with pregnancy," Dr. Nelson said, noting that humans cannot even muster the hormones necessary to maintain a pregnancy while fasting. To meet the demands of denning, bears must stockpile fat before retreating to their dens -- and then use their internal resources with great efficiency. "Hibernation is an amazing adaptation to climate," said Dr. Christopher Servheen, a bear researcher at the University of Montana in Missoula. "Ninety percent of a bear's diet is plants, which they can't get in the winter in much of North America, so they den." Most bears in temperate climates hibernate from late fall through late March or early April, Dr. Servheen said, although bears in Florida or Arizona may not, since they can find food through the winter. Much of what is known about bear biochemistry has come from the study of three black bears -- U.P., Caruso and Armonzo -- who were taken in by Dr. Nelson seven years ago after they were captured for causing public nuisances in Wisconsin and Michigan. Dr. Nelson, a medical doctor, has been studying them since in the hope that a better understanding of how | Hibernating Bears Emerge With Hints About Human Ills |
523074_0 | Solid Tires Q. Why can't tires be made of solid rubber, so they can't be punctured? A. They can be made of solid materials, and sometimes are, said William E. Egan, chief engineer for product design at the Akron Technical Center of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. However, such tires are made only for special low-speed uses, for places like dumps where punctures are extremely likely or for something like a Presidential limousine to guard against bullet holes. Pneumatic tires are essentially gas containers supporting a heavy weight, Mr. Egan said, and air-filled tires offer great advantages over solid tires or any other filling. "Air is a very efficient carrier of load, it is cheap, it is lightweight, the pressure can be varied, it is very forgiving, and it does not build up large amounts of heat," he said. "Pneumatic tires corner, turn, grip the road, offer wet and dry traction and envelop bumps or objects in the road." A solid tire behaves entirely differently from a pneumatic tire, he said. For one thing, it would give a terribly bumpy ride. For another, the filling, a urethane or rubber cellular foam, quickly builds up heat because of internal friction if the tire goes very fast for very long, and the foam melts. A solid tire also does not have the same force and moment characteristics as a pneumatic tire, Mr. Egan said. "Simply put, that is what makes the steering wheel return by itself after you go around a corner," he said. Other gases, like helium and argon, have been tried as tire fillings because they are slower to permeate the tire and escape, Mr. Egan said, but a new exotic polymer used for tire linings, called halobutyl, has a very low permeability rate, so tires are less likely to go flat. Parrots in New York Q. Large green birds that look like parrots flew into my New York City backyard in early March. Could they possibly be escaped parrots that wintered in New York? A. "Probably," said Joseph Di Costanzo, an ornithologist with the American Museum of Natural History in New York. There are a number of escaped parrots and parrot relations of several species in and around New York City, he said. The most common green one and the one most likely to survive, he said, is the monk parakeet, which is native to the Andes of | Q&A |
513816_0 | *3*** COMPANY REPORTS ** *3*TakeCare Inc. (OTC) Qtr to Dec 31 1991 1990 Revenue 75,838,000 71,761,000 Net inc 4,764,000 3,303,000 Share earns .51 .44 Shares outst 9,374,000 7,481,000 Yr rev 287,419,000 266,813,000 Net inc 16,875,000 11,748,000 Share earns 1.88 1.58 Shares outst 8,954,000 7,449,000 | TakeCare Inc. reports earnings for Qtr to Dec 31 |
513820_1 | Bolivia develop altenative crops to cocaine and to pay farmers $800 for every acre of coca they agree to cut down. Officials say that this year the Government has arrested more than a dozen high-level drug traffickers, shut down several big laboratories and seized almost two tons of cocaine base, an intermediate step in the refining process. But it is evident in talking with peasant coca farmers that the Government has yet to win the hearts of the people. Broken Promises The field of conflict is well defined. There is a legal market in Bolivia for coca leaf chewed by local residents and for herbal tea and home remedies. Almost all the Bolivian coca that is bound for the illegal cocaine trade is grown here in the Chapare, an area about the size of New Jersey that butts up against the Andes and spreads out into the Amazon basin. As many as 150,000 Bolivians eke out a living growing coca. In Peru, where two-thirds of the world's coca leaf is grown, attempts by stop cultivation and cocaine trafficking are severely hindered by the presence of leftist guerrillas. But in Bolivia, the main resistance to eradication of coca farming is economic. Farmers who have accepted Government payments to cut down their coca plants and switch to other crops have found that at harvest time the price paid for their bananas, grapefruit, pineapples or other crops is so low that it does not support their families, or that the roads and bridges that the Government promised to build to get the produce to market have yet to be built. After three years of intense efforts to get Chapare farmers to switch to other crops, the number of acres planted in coca has been reduced by only 15 percent, to about 84,000 acres. "I think coca is here for good," said Pastor Garcia, who described himself as a middleman whose job was to transport coca. "It's the only product you can grow that you know you can sell the same day and earn enough to stay alive." The industry seems vibrant enough at the coca market some 20 miles from here in Villa 14 de Septiembre. Under a corrugated metal roof that provides protection from the blazing jungle sun and torrential downpours, Andean women in felt hats, puffed skirts and brightly colored shawls sit on bags of coca leaf waiting for buyers. Hundreds | Villa Victoria Journal; In the Drug War, U.S. Sows Dollars, Reaps Hate |
515335_1 | a desk; on the box is information on what paper can be recycled. For $1.95, he got his receptacle and an environmental lesson. Earth General is a result of a change in careers for its owners. Until last May, Mr. Geeslin, 31 years old, was a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly magazine in Manhattan. "All the stories started to feel the same," he said. Mr. Doering, 27, was a systems analyst at Citibank in Manhattan. "I'd gotten tired of corporate life," he said. "I felt like a piece of meat." Last year, Mr. Doering joined a Park Slope food cooperative that publishes a newsletter, and in June he placed a classified ad in it saying he wanted to start an environmental retail business. Mr. Geeslin, who had been collecting information on environmentally sound products, had just joined the cooperative. He read the newsletter and then phoned Mr. Doering. "I had the investors," Mr. Doering said, "and Ned knew the products." Both also had working wives. Shari Doering is a computer systems manager at Good Times Home Video, a video manufacturer in Manhattan, and Liz Hettich, Mr. Geeslin's wife, is the executive editor of Travel Holiday magazine in Manhattan. Until the store catches on, "the wives are supporting us," Mr. Geeslin said. By October, Earth General was in business. It has little wooden slats in the window advertising the range of products: string canvas bags, bedding, paint, soap and garden supplies. For motorists, there is recycled and re-refined motor oil ($1.50 a quart). "You go for an oil change," Mr. Doering said, "and mechanics now have to save the oil. They can't just dump it." For the home office, there are products made from recycled paper like hanging files, folders, binders, composition books, computer paper and yellow stick-on notes ($1.10 for a hundred 3-by-5-inch sheets). Because bats live nearby in Prospect Park, Earth General stocks bat houses. Mr. Doering's favorite is the Batchelor Pad ($29.95). A collar to keep fleas and ticks off dogs is scented with citronella, cedar, orange, eucalyptus and bay leaf ($4.99). Some products have to be sold with a warning. Unbleached, undyed clothing made from organically grown cotton is one of them. "The clothes shrink 15 percent," said Mr. Geeslin, who suggests that customers buy the clothing a size larger than usual. At the front of the store, a photograph of Mr. Doering's grandfather Andrew Thliveris hangs | In Brooklyn, the General Store Recycled |
515286_2 | however, which is patterned on one conducted by the Unocal Corporation in California in 1990 and 1991. Under the Government program, a power plant or other "stationary source" could buy the right to continue polluting by reducing pollution from vehicles. The idea is that the new cars that would replace the old ones would be cleaner. Economic Benefit Possible Officials said the cash-for-clunkers program would do no harm to the environment and might improve it somewhat. It might also act as a mild stimulant to the economy, as drivers of at least some clunkers replace their vehicles with later-model used cars or, in some cases, even new ones. The General Motors Corporation, the nation's largest auto maker, said it supported the basic premise of a scrap program, which it said could prove "a cost-effective policy alternative for improving the environment and reducing fleet fuel-consumption." As sketched out at a White House briefing, the cash-for-clunkers program would be run by individual states, cities and companies with the aid of federally provided data on the pollution and other characteristics of each kind of car. The main target is the four million pre-1971 cars still on the road, but officials said many cars from the 1980's would also likely be bid for, depending on such things as their pollution rating and estimated years of remaining useful life. Unocal's Experiment In its program, Unocal bought more than 8,300 pre-1971 cars at $700 each in the Los Angeles area. Old cars emit as much as 20 times more in pollutants than those of the 1990's. As an example of how the Government program would work, said Richard D. Morgenstern, director of the E.P.A.'s Office of Policy Analysis, a refiner in danger of exceeding its pollution limits might place an advertisement in the newspaper listing what it would pay for various kinds and vintages of cars and, having made the purchases, would apply the resulting credits to its own "account." To prevent junkyard entrepreneurs from peddling wrecks, cars qualifying for purchase would have to be continuously insured for the past year and be driven in under their own power. Although the oldest cars would tend to bring the highest prices, a car's value would also depend on its type, its mileage and its likely remaining life. The pollution credits could be traded but could not be applied outside the program area, officials said. Of the remaining | President's Plan Seeks to Create a Market for Cars That Pollute |
515252_2 | entered the race against Mr. Dixon after he voted to confirm Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court last fall. If she wins in November against Richard S. Williamson, a conservative former assistant secretary of state who was recruited to run in the Republican primary, she would be the first black woman to serve in the Senate. Largely overlooked, and treated civilly by the other two candidates, Ms. Braun plainly profited from their attacks on one another. With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, she had 538,496 votes, or 38 percent. Mr. Dixon had 495,577, or 35 percent, and Mr. Hofeld had 389,624, or 27 percent. But the bulk of Washington's attention was fixed on the state's House races, although analysis was complicated by redistricting. Illinois lost 2 of its 22 seats. The new lines were drawn to discomfit Democrats, forcing one Democratic retirement and two races between Democratic incumbents. Turmoil of Redistricting Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House majority leader, said the Illinois returns showed once again that "incumbents have to fight to gain re-election." He said that even before Tuesday's results, "Anyone who didn't understand that was not in the real world." But in fact only one incumbent had been denied renomination before Tuesday. She was Representative Beverly B. Byron, a seven-term Maryland Democrat who traveled widely for the House Armed Services Committee and apparently lost touch with her district, taking too lightly a challenge from Thomas A. Hattery, a State Representaive who upset her March 3. The other incumbent who was upset, Mr. Savage, suffered a resounding defeat that plainly exceeded any possible impact of the bank scandal. Redistricting, however, was critical. Melvin J. Reynolds, a businessman who had challenged Mr. Savage twice before, won the race 59,243 votes to 34,717, piling up almost all of his winning margin in the enlarged suburban section of the district. Mr. Reynolds said his victory over the six-term Congressman was a message to all politicians not to run on racial themes. He had attacked Mr. Savage as being hostile to whites and particularly Jews. Mr. Savage explained his defeat by saying, "We have lost to the white racist press and to the racist reactionary Jewish misleaders." Both candidates are black. Not Business as Usual Mr. Rostenkowski, with 57 percent, and Mr. Crane, with 55 percent, had closer challenges than most political analysts had expected, and Chicago experts attributed those | THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Congress; The Rumble of Discontent Rattles Illinois Incumbents |
515612_2 | January. Mr. Deng has engineered the latest push for more economic liberalization as the best way to preserve Communism in China. 'Emancipate Our Minds' "We must further emancipate our minds, dare to innovate and take a bolder approach to reform and opening up," Mr. Li said. He called for more stock markets and for state-owned factories to compete in the market. Though he said the focus of reform would be efforts to make state-owned enterprises competitive, Mr. Li did not offer many specifics about steps the leadership would take in its "bolder approach." He also bowed in his speech to the hard-liners' demands for ideological campaigns and vigilance against subversion. "We must be on the watch for any ideological trend toward bourgeois liberalization, checking it the moment it appears and never allowing it to run rampant," Mr. Li said. "Otherwise, there will be serious consequences." The Prime Minister also called for dealing harshly with criminals, presumably alluding to democracy campaigners as well as to thieves and murderers. "If we are too tenderhearted, we shall come to grief," he said. Mr. Li also called repeatedly for buttressing political education programs, especially for university students. He said that social scientists "should continue to take Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong thought as their guide." Dam Project Approval This year's work report was less dismissive of human rights than in the past, and Mr. Li said that countries should discuss human-rights concerns. But he gave no indication that China was prepared to release political prisoners or tolerate dissent. "It is not acceptable for a small group of countries to impose their human-rights criteria or models upon others," Mr. Li said. "Nor is it permissible to use human rights as a pretext for interfering in other countries' internal affairs." Mr. Li called on the National People's Congress to approve the proposed Three Gorges Dam, a controversial project on the Yangtze River that has been under discussion since the 1920's. Proponents of the Three Gorges dam say the project would generate huge amounts of electricity and reduce the risk of a catastrophic flood that might kill one million or more people. Critics say the project would flood one of China's most scenic areas, would offer only limited flood-control benefits, and is too costly and complex for China to tackle now. Mr. Li's comments indicate that the Congress is almost certain to approve the Three Gorges project. | 'Bolder Approach' Is Urged for China |
516848_1 | Professor Brilliant's letter reached Mr. Skalsky, Arion, a thrice-yearly journal devoted to the classics and humanities, had accepted the article and now plans to publish it with a special color fold-out in its May issue. Two Intriguing Scenes The elegantly crafted frieze on the Portland vase, so named after it was purchased by the Duchess of Portland in the 18th century (it was later sold to the British Museum), depicts two scenes that are as compelling as they are obscure. In both scenes, a young reclining woman is at the center. In one, this central figure is flanked by a young man and a mature man; in the other, by a young man and a mature woman. The scenes also include tantalizing figures of a snake, a winged Cupid and a horned and bearded mask. The intensity and focus of the eyes of all of the figures makes it clear that something dramatic is taking place, but exactly what has long mystified scholars. Since the 1630's, a half-century after the discovery of the vase, no fewer than 44 interpretations of the scenes have been advanced. For example, the striding figure at the far left in the position scholars designate as "A" has been variously thought to represent Alexander the Great, Paris, Peleus, Orpheus, Adonis, Pluto, Alexander Severus, Bacchus, a ghost, a soul, Pylades, Theseus, Apollo Veiovis, Marcellus, Dionysus, Achilles, Apollo, Perseus and Augustus. Disagreements have intensified in recent years as a replica of the Portland vase attracted scholarly attention in major international exhibitions in Corning, N.Y., and in Rome. The actual vase also took center stage in an important show of Roman glass at the British Museum from 1987 to 1989. Mr. Skalsky said he had selected the vase as the subject of a research paper for a course in Roman art because he was intrigued by the challenge of an artwork widely believed to be an elaborate and subtle puzzle whose creator might have taken as long as two years to plan and execute it, and also because none of the solutions had satisfied scholars. From Waiter to Student Mr. Skalsky, now 43 years old, is not a typical graduate student. After finishing high school in Syracuse, he worked for the next 16 years as a waiter and in other jobs at hotels and restaurants in the South. He did not resume his education until 1987 at the College | For an Answer to a Roman Riddle, Find Pi |
513962_0 | A late-night encounter with a grizzly bear has become the mother of invention for William Pounds, an outdoor equipment retailer who has developed a hot pepper spray for use by wilderness hikers. The success of the spray in warding off bear attacks has prompted Mr. Pounds to repackage the product recently for use against human assailants. "It was my first night in Montana," Mr. Pounds said in recalling the 1977 bear scare. "It was dark, and I was in my tent. The bear was digging around outside. There was nothing I could have done. A weapon would have been quite useless in the dark, and a liability in the tent." The experience, harrowing as it was, left Mr. Pounds unscathed -- the bear left peaceably -- but it started him thinking about ways to protect himself in the future. Mr. Pounds now lives in Big Fork, Mont., a small town near the edge of Glacier National Park, one of the largest grizzly bear habitats in the world. Meant 'to Create a Problem' The spray that he developed for use against the grizzly is based on the hot red pepper, oleoresin capsicum, used in Mexican and other spicy food. The spray, Counter Assault, is a natural product, nontoxic and nonlethal, intended to divert a bear, not maim it, said Mr. Pounds. It is meant to "create a problem" so "he can't find you," he added. Counter Assault sprays a fiery mist up to 30 feet, temporarily burning the eyes and causing disorientation. The product was tested for six years by the Border Grizzly Project, a former research group that was affiliated with the University of Montana. Results have indicated that its effects are temporary, said Dr. Charles Jonkel, a project zoologist. "We never had a single case where it failed," Dr. Jonkel said. Mr. Pounds's concern, Bushwacker Backpack and Supply Company of Missoula, Mont., recently began packaging the bear spray in smaller containers for use against muggers -- by joggers, cyclists, or anyone apt to encounter a threatening situation. Counter Assault causes a person to shut his eyes and double over, said Linda Reddish, vice president of Bushwacker. "It burns your eyes and turns them red," she said, "but you're all right again in a matter of minutes. This is a totally innate response. You don't have any choice about it." Used by the Police The plan to widen the spray's | Bear-Repellent Spray Joins The Arsenal Against Crime |
513888_2 | church. The two men, both of them black, are in the middle of an impassioned, neck-and-neck campaign for the state's newly drawn Second Congressional District, once a mostly black, working-class district that has now become whiter and more affluent with the addition of suburbs to the south. It is the third time the two men have faced each other in a battle for the district. In previous Democratic primaries, Mr. Savage won by a narrow majority as Mr. Reynolds split the anti-Savage vote with a third candidate. This time there is no third candidate. And the district's new voter mix, which is now 48 percent suburban, was seen as a benefit to the 40-year-old Mr. Reynolds, whose appeals for accountability and racial unity sit well with middle-class black moderates embarrassed by Mr. Savage and whites frightened by his often combative, racially charged speech. But the 66-year-old Mr. Savage has deep roots in his loyal black wards where people remember his crusading civil rights days as the publisher of a community newspaper and do not care what his mainstream critics think. A Chicago Tribune poll of registered voters found Mr. Savage leading Mr. Reynolds, 44 percent to 35 percent, with 21 percent undecided. The poll, conducted Feb. 19-21, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. In recent weeks, Mr. Reynolds is believed to have narrowed the gap. "Ten days ago, I would have bet you the best dinner in town on Gus," said Don Rose, a longtime political consultant. "But it is a much tighter race than I would have expected." For now, the shooting is expected to help Mr. Reynolds pick up support. In campaign appearances and radio spots, he has attacked the incumbent's political persona as divisive and ultimately harmful to constituents, who he says lose out because Mr. Savage has alienated possible allies. But Mr. Savage's followers consider Mr. Reynolds a turncoat for running against their Congressman. They do not want to hear about how Mr. Savage had the worst attendance record in the House in his first term or about accusations that he made unwanted sexual advances to a Peace Corps worker on an official trip to Africa two years ago. That hostility has made Mr. Reynolds vulnerable, his supporters and some analysts say. Vandals have twice broken windows at his campaign headquarters and he has reported being threatened with physical | Gunshots Fired at Congressional Candidate in Bitter Chicago Race |
512203_3 | the latest recession started in July 1990. So while it appeared from one set of statistics that the economy was no longer throwing people out of work in recent weeks, neither was it generating enough jobs to absorb an ever-larger pool of people seeking them, including the hard-core unemployed. At the same time, however, the report also showed a rise of 541,000 in "job losers," those forced to leave their jobs, during February. The labor force grew by another 241,000 last month, a major factor in raising the unemployment rate. The jobless rate typically continues to move higher during the early stages of recovery as people who had given up looking for jobs become hopeful enough to start searching again, and are thereby restored to the statistical work force. Yet the figures show that there were 190,000 fewer of these jobless "re-entrants" last month, a total of 2.16 million, compared with 2.35 million in January. The number of unsuccessful new entrants to the labor force -- like college graduates and other first-time job hunters -- rose 33,000, to 823,000. One partial explanation of what was happening was that the long-term jobless who had exhausted their benefits had been induced by the latest extension of benefits to visit their unemployment office to re-establish eligibility. The household survey also showed a sharp increase of 1.7 points, to 20 percent, in the jobless rate for teen-agers, a group that has been hit especially hard over the last two years. Black teen-age men now have a jobless rate of 39 percent, or 42.4 percent without benefit of seasonal adjustment. The jobless rate for Hispanic people rose last month to 11.6 percent from 11.3 percent. Longer Jobless Periods Over all, the number of people out of work six months or more has nearly doubled over the last year and the proportion of such jobless has risen to 1 in 5 from 1 in 10. The department's survey of payrolls produced a far bigger expansion than analysts had predicted, but the 164,000 rise proved less impressive when subjected to close inspection. Of the total, 133,000 of the increase was reported as coming in retail trade, a result that analysts said was not credible in light of a decline of 158,000 before seasonal adjustment. William G. Barron Jr., Deputy Commissioner of Labor Statistics, told the Joint Economic Committee that "recessionary forces have modified the seasonal patterns" for | Jobless Rate Increases to 7.3% In a Mixed Report |
511286_0 | AS the world approaches the day of decision on a treaty to deal with the threat of global warming, separate negotiations on another overarching environmental question, maintaining biological diversity, are moving toward their own denouement. The object of these less prominent but nevertheless high-stakes talks is to forge a binding agreement among the world's nations to slow or halt a steady loss of plant, animal and microbial species that many biologists fear will result in a mass extinction of epic proportions in mere decades. The basic question involves actions that nations should be required to take in conserving species, habitats and ecosystems. Despite a patchwork of international agreements like the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, there is no legally binding treaty that directly and comprehensively addresses the overall problem of preserving biological diversity. Some countries have developed national action plans to identify, conserve and manage biological resources. But most, including many tropical countries that are richest in species, have not. These are precisely the main countries where economic and development pressures are destroying habitats at a rate that alarms many scientists and conservation biologists. Dr. Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University, an expert on the subject, has calculated that 50,000 species a year are being doomed to eventual extinction because of deforestation in the tropics. At that rate, says Dr. Wilson, a quarter or more of all species on earth could be exterminated within 50 years. While a few biologists say that the problem has been overstated, few if any argue with the idea that a problem exists, and most say it is serious. The direst scenarios predict an eventual wave of extinctions comparable to the one 65 million years ago in which the dinosaurs disappeared. Scientists say this could weaken the ecological webs that support human life. Like the talks on global warming, whose penultimate session ended last week in New York on a modest note of hope, the talks on preserving biological diversity are throwing a spotlight on basic differences between the rich nations of the industrialized world and the struggling countries of the developing world. In both cases, the poverty-plagued countries of the South, as they are collectively characterized, insist that the affluent countries of the North foot the bill for the developing nations' part in dealing with the problem. The two sets of treaty talks are tied together on this question, in that the | Talks Seek to Prevent Huge Loss of Species |
512846_3 | be arrogant." The challengers have objected to the Koch team's tactics for months. Last Tuesday, the Coast Guard met with challengers and defenders to discuss on-the-water activities. All but Koch's syndicate agreed that intelligence gathering had gone beyond acceptable limits, Taylor said. Koch's actions may be unsporting but they are not illegal, and as such they pose a problem for the challengers' committee. New Technological Tactics "Unfortunately, in simple terms, it's legal," Taylor said. "I guess if you're off the three-mile coastal limit, you can throw things in the water. But this is unusual. It's never been done before. It is one giant step forward in technological inquisitiveness." The Guzzini, the America3 syndicate's spy boat, is so sinister that Darth Vader of Star Wars infamy might be expected to be on board. In addition to its smoke-black windows, the powerboat is loaded with antennae and other technological equipment on deck. It moves around the sailboats like a hawk in search of prey. On one occasion, Guzzini moved in too close to Il Moro during a race, said Cayard. Last December, challengers and defenders agreed to keep their yacht tenders at least 200 yards away from the racing boats. Guzzini was within 126 yards of Il Moro, Cayard said. Koch, who makes no attempt to disguise his intentions, has criticized Cayard for complaining about the interference. "We take high-resolution pictures from way up in the air, bring them back and have a computer analyze them," Koch said last week. "You can't stop or police that. That's all part of the game." In fact, most of the cup syndicates have hired helicopters at one time or another to see what the competition is doing. A view from the air unlocks many secrets, including coveted views of other boats' underwater appendages. An '83 Incident Spying is not new to the America's Cup. In 1983, Australian yachtsmen apprehended a Canadian diver swimming around the Australians' docks in Newport, R.I. The diver wanted a peak at the secret winged keel of Australia II, the boat that went on to win the America's Cup that summer. Much was at stake. By winning, the Australian team broke the 132-year-old winning streak of the New York Yacht Club, and Australia gained the right to stage the event Down Under. In 1992, the money at stake has multiplied exponentially. And with a new class of America's Cup racing boat | Spy vs. Spy in the Hunt for America's Cup |
512823_0 | World Economies | |
517935_1 | virgin patch of mature forest in New Jersey was set aside as a nature preserve on the assumption that, in Dr. Pickett's words, "protecting the forest, but otherwise leaving it alone, would be an adequate and appropriate conservation strategy." Three decades later, exotic species from other continents, including Japanese honeysuckle, Norway maple and Chinese tree of heaven, had become abundant in the forest. Many native wildflowers had become rare. And oaks, the backbone of the forest, were no longer regenerating. Ecologists believe that oaks require fire to flourish; they can withstand it, other species cannot. In the absence of fire, sugar maples were choking out the oaks. Though the ecologists say the forest still has considerable conservation and educational value, it has become partly a human artifact. 'Prescribed Burns' Similar alterations have affected ecosystems of varying kinds across the country, and conservationists are beginning to undo them. In Nebraska, for instance, the Nature Conservancy is conducting what it calls "prescribed burns" of the mixed-grass prairie. In the past, the grasslands were regularly swept by fires; the deeply rooted plants simply popped back up after the fire, while competing species were killed. Similarly, the long-leafed pines of the Southeast were the heart of a fire-dependent ecosystem that kept hardwoods from competing with the pines. Controlled burning is being selectively reintroduced to restore the original ecological community. To keep up with demand, the Conservancy maintains a fire management and research program based in Tallahassee, Fla. Dr. Ron Myers, its director, said he supervised scores of burns, amounting to about 15,000 acres a year, mostly on small urban and suburban sites. Similarly, the Conservancy last year hired an expert on the identification and management of invasive and exotic species, Dr. John Randall, who is based in Galt, Calif., near Sacramento. Managing plant communities is challenge enough, but compensating for human-induced distortions of wild animal communities has its own problems, not least the pause and soul-searching that often come when people realize it may be necessary to kill animals. Argument for Hunting But many ecosystem managers believe it is the only way. At the Prade Ranch in the Texas hill country, for instance, Beyrl Armstrong, the ranch manager, is plagued not only by out-of-control herds of native white-tailed deer but also by non-native animals, like Russian wild pigs and axis, sika and fallow deer. The exotic deer were imported by neighboring ranches as game, | A Hands-On Approach to Nature |
517862_0 | The Seagram Company plans to re-enter the soft-drink business with a diet drink called Quest. The product will be sweetened with Nutrasweet and have two calories for each bottle. It is aimed at one of the only fast-growing areas in the lackluster soft-drink business, the "new-age" beverage market. That market includes juice sparklers and natural sodas. Seagram plans to notify distributors about the product this week and to introduce it for summer, people in the beverage industry said yesterday. Seagram officials would not comment on the product. Growth Under 2% Faced with a slowdown in sales, the soft-drink business has been searching for new types of drinks. The $45 billion soft-drink industry grew by less than 2 percent last year. But the new-age drinks were the exception, growing by 13 percent, to $515 million last year, according to Packaged Facts, a New York market-research firm. "It is beginning to appear that this is a real extension of the soft-drink business," said Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark, a beverage consulting concern in Los Angeles. Mr. Pirko said the drinks were popular because of the healthful connotation of mixing fruit flavors and sparkling water. The success of one product in particular, Clearly Canadian, has attracted the large beverage companies. Sales for Clearly Canadian jumped 252 percent last year, according to Packaged Facts. "We are not going to sit on the sidelines," said David Novak, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Pepsi-Cola. "We are developing products of our own." Since 1989, Pepsi has been testing a line of sparkling water in Denver called H2Oh! Pepsi is also looking at a clear version of its cola, called Crystal Pepsi, which beverage analysts expect will be expanded into the new-age market with a line of Crystal drinks in other flavors. Analysts expect Pepsi to enter the market soon. "We are moving with a sense of urgency," Mr. Novak said. Coca-Cola is taking a different approach, promoting its Fresca diet drink, which was reintroduced last year. "They are directly positioning Fresca against bottled water," said Laura Schenone of Packaged Facts. A magazine advertisement for Fresca shows a can of the citrus-flavored drink next to a bottle of sparkling water. The text says, "Now there's a tasteful alternative." In January, Seagram, based in Montreal, sold Soho Beverages after an unsuccessful attempt to expand the trendy gourmet soda into a national brand. But Seagram has had | Seagram Plans to Market New Diet Drink |
517870_0 | Sinn Fein, the civilian wing of the Irish Republican Army, is struggling in the British parliamentary election to maintain credibility as a political force in Northern Ireland. The campaign refocuses attention on the personal background of Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein's president, and his No. 2, Martin McGuinness, both of whom are running for Parliament. It also raises other basic questions: How close is the Sinn Fein to the I.R.A.? Could it actually broker a cease-fire or peace talks between Britain and the I.R.A.? How rigid is the Sinn Fein-I.R.A. demand of "Brits out," a policy denounced by the Protestant majority and many Catholics in Northern Ireland. Announcing Sinn Fein's election program at a news conference here today, Mr. Adams emphasized that the party preferred a peaceful solution to the troubles, as the 23 years of conflict over Irish nationalism are known, but he declined again to denounce I.R.A. violence. Sinn Fein, Gaelic for Ourselves Alone, is seeking to increase its share of the general vote and to hold on to the one seat it controls, that of Mr. Adams in West Belfast. Contesting 14 of 17 Seats The party is contesting 14 of the 17 parliamentary seats allotted to this British province of 950,000 Protestants and 650,000 Catholics. In the last national parliamentary election, the party won 9 percent of the vote in Northern Ireland. This would seem to make it a negligible factor in the politics of the province, but its identification with the I.R.A. enhances its importance. Many people here say that if there is ever to be peace in Ulster, ending the violence that has killed nearly 3,000 people, the British Government will have to agree to talk to representatives of the I.R.A. Sinn Fein casts itself unmistakably as eager for that role. But the British will not talk to Sinn Fein until it denounces the violence of the predominantly Catholic I.R.A., which is responsible for the deaths of some 1,600 people, including about 800 civilians. Many people fear that if Britain withdrew the 10,000 troops and 6,000 reserves posted in Ulster province, a blood bath would follow as the Protestant-dominated police and paramilitary forces would overwhelm the I.R.A., which has an estimated 400 active guerrillas. Mr. McGuinness was an I.R.A. military chief in the 1970's and is now banned as a terrorist from entering other parts of Britain. He became active in Sinn Fein in the | I.R.A.-Linked Party Faces Test With Ulster Voters |
517939_1 | be incorporated into the products, as well as charts, and documents can be formatted in multiple columns, with multiple type fonts, suitable for newsletters, flyers or just plain fun. Some features are aimed specifically at the classroom. To take but two examples, a teacher can write a message that will appear when the program is started, perhaps describing that week's activities, and can protect documents, perhaps a list of assignments, from being erased. (I wouldn't bet the farm on that kind of protection, at least in the higher grades.) The manual, written for teachers, consists of 250 loose-leaf pages packed with a three-ring binder. The first two sections, Getting Started and Reference Guide, take up about half of it. The rest is a Teaching Guide, with ideas on how to use the program in the classroom in general, and suggestions for specific areas of study. One of these sections is Language Capers, instructive ways to play with words. Here are such team activities as breaking codes, competitive copy editing and producing nonsense passages. With school budgets pinched as they are, a helpful subsection is devoted to managing the use of computers when access to them is limited. The Bank Street Writer for the Macintosh works with all Macs from the Plus on, with at least a megabyte of working memory. A hard disk is recommended, although not absolutely essential. The list price of the program is $162.45; with the discount given to educators it is $129.95. For information on ordering, write to the Inquiry Department, Scholastic Software, Post Office Box 7502, 2931 East McCarty Street, Jefferson City, Mo. 65102, or phone (800) 541-5513. Of course, you don't have to be a student or teacher to like Writer. It would make a perfectly sensible choice for a home Macintosh, particularly one used by the whole family. WordPerfect Cheat Sheets The odds are good that anyone doing word-processing in an office is using WordPerfect, the biggest selling such program. It is powerful, it has just about every feature you could want or need and, beyond the basics, it is a pain in the neck to learn. Especially if you do not use it every day, how are you going to remember that the combination of the Alt key and the F1 key brings up the thesaurus, while Shift-F7 with P prints the page that the cursor is in? One answer is a | Class Act For Home Or School Is Updated |
517943_1 | engines, airframes and materials to the task of operating routinely in the harsh environment of the upper atmosphere. One company is developing a gasoline engine that recycles its exhaust and mixes it with oxygen carried aboard the plane to maintain the pressure and power needed to turn a large propeller and operate at extreme altitude. Another proposes fueling its plane with microwave energy fired from the ground. "No question about it, there is a revolution going on in how people are thinking about using remotely piloted aircraft in atmospheric research," said Dr. James G. Anderson, a professor of chemistry at Harvard University. "I can't imagine this field in the future without unmanned aircraft. The time is ripe." Dr. Anderson, a mission scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Airborne Arctic Stratospheric Experiment-2, an aerial assault on the ozone problem based in Bangor, Me., said the single greatest restraint on science in studying ozone loss "is the inability to get deep into the higher altitudes of the atmosphere where the chemistry is happening, particularly over polar regions." Dr. Ari Patrinos, director of the Energy Department's environmental sciences division, also sees pilotless aircraft as a unique solution for gathering data on climate change. "Their time has come, and I'm quite optimistic the ones we need can be developed," he said. As part of its Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program, the Energy Department has requested $10 million in the fiscal year 1993 to begin developing drones that can probe the tropopause, the special boundary region between the troposphere and the stratosphere. Aircraft, balloons, small rockets and satellites are used to study the tropopause, but each has serious shortcomings. Satellites are fine for giving an overall picture of the atmosphere but because they measure chemical interaction indirectly, they cannot provide the precise information scientists need. Satellite users often do not know what they have seen or if their readings are true unless the measurements are compared with data gathered directly in the atmosphere, researchers say. Balloons cannot be maneuvered to areas of interest, since they are at the mercy of the winds, and are often lost along with an expensive instrument package. The ER-2, a modified version of the famed U-2 spy plane, has done invaluable work, including confirming the existence of the Antarctic ozone hole. But the single-engined jet is limited to 70,000 feet, about 13 miles, and its maximum airborne time is | Designers Plan Drones To Probe Atmosphere |
513021_0 | THE Sphinx, ravaged by time and the crush of human beings who come to gaze or settle near its great stone paws, has coughed up a new riddle for the modern age: What can be done to save the ancient monument? In an effort to curb the effects of erosion, pollution and sewage creeping into the water table, 70 international experts gathered in Cairo last week to discuss measures to preserve the great stone sculpture with its human head and lion's body. "The gathering was unique because it brought together, for the first time, specialists from around the world to coordinate efforts to study and preserve the Sphinx," said an American Egyptologist, Edna Russmann. Archeologists, historians, art restorers, stone masons and geologists bandied about ideas that included pumping chemicals into the 4,500-year-old limestone monument to harden its surface or placing slabs of stone around it to protect against the elements. No Proposal Endorsed But the experts, who say previous restoration efforts have furthered the Sphinx's decline, refused to endorse any proposal. "The problems are exacerbated by the feeling that the situation is urgent," said Dr. Mark Lehner of the University of Chicago. "It is deteriorating, and we have to do something, but we do not have to do it today. We can't rush into something without thinking about the long-term effects." One danger to the Sphinx comes from Cairo's population explosion. Some 200,000 people now live around the Sphinx, spewing car exhaust into the air and waste water into the ground. Every day buses full of tourists descend on the monument and the three pyramids that flank it. "What we need to do most urgently is remove the human impact," said Barry Stowe, a British conservationist. "We need to remove the effects of the settlements, of tourism and of traffic." Egyptian officials have asked Unesco to draw up an architectural plan to limit the access of vehicles to the Giza plateau, where the Sphinx and the three pyramids are. But restoration itself poses risks. An effort by Egyptian specialists from 1981 to 1987 to shore up the 200-foot-long monument only hastened its deterioration, said experts at the conference. The restoration used large limestone blocks and cement around the base, but the blocks cracked and the cement caused salt erosion. The effort also altered the appearance of the Sphinx, which received its name from the ancient Greeks, but whose original name | Sphinx Poses Riddle About Its Own Fate |
513085_0 | By condoning a series of stormy demonstrations against the far-right National Front, France's faltering Socialist Government has turned the front's leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, into the central figure of the campaign for crucial regional elections this month. Even after protesters clashed with the police in several French cities last week, Prime Minister Edith Cresson gave them her blessing. "If I were not Prime Minister, I could easily take part in such demonstrations," she said. "I am certainly not going to tell Socialists not to demonstrate." But some Socialist Party leaders now fear that the strategy may backfire. Not only has it given free publicity to Mr. Le Pen's anti-immigrant views and enabled him to claim persecution, but it has also left many voters wondering if the Government has an alternative platform to offer. The elections have assumed unusual importance because a setback for the Socialists, which is predicted, could prompt President Francois Mitterrand to replace Mrs. Cresson. They will also provide a gauge of the popularity of the National Front with an eye to parliamentary elections next year. Socialists in Trouble The Socialist Party has scoffed at opposition assertions that the regional elections on March 22 will serve as a form of referendum on the Government's recent performance. "Voters will not be giving their verdict on President Mitterrand or on Mrs. Cresson," the party leader, Laurent Fabius, said. But after 11 years in office, the Socialists are in trouble, with a new poll showing approval ratings of 35 percent for Mr. Mitterrand and just 22 percent for Mrs. Cresson. Another poll said 61 percent of voters wanted the President to retire next year rather than when his term ends in 1995. Unhappiness with the Government jumped last year as an economic slowdown raised unemployment to almost 10 percent. But discontent has also focused on third world immigration to France, an issue that Mr. Le Pen has exploited so successfully that the Government was forced to tighten immigration controls. To the cry of "France for the French," he has proposed repatriation of unemployed foreigners as well as reduced welfare support for immigrants. His main target are Arabs who account for two-thirds of France's three million immigrants, but in the past he has also asserted that Jews are too powerful here. Election Upset Unlikely In this month's elections, France's two traditional conservative opposition parties are in fact likely to retain control of | French Socialists Look to Rightist Discontent |
512988_0 | BIG or small, universities and colleges are worrying more about the job outlook for their students. Perhaps surprisingly though, their concern is not so much for those graduating this recessionary year, but for those who are now just freshmen and sophomores. Some college administrators say that juniors and seniors are already painfully aware of how bad the employment situation is. But they say younger students may be unrealistically optimistic about how easy it will be to enter the career they want by the time they graduate. As a result, Texas A & M University in College Station, one of the nation's largest with 40,000 students, plans a seminar called, fittingly enough, "Reality 101." The seminar will start next fall for first- and second-year students, and as many as 7,000 could take part. Dr. C. Wayne Terrell, the university's acting executive director of career planning, said the seminar's leaders would try to convince students that the job market could be tough even when there was not a recession. He wants the discussion to have "almost a shock effect on students." They will be told that grade point average is important and that they must gain work experience during summers and possibly during the college year. Students will also be lectured on developing their personal skills, including the ability to be interviewed successfully, speak and write well and other basics like dressing properly. Other colleges do much the same, but few start before the crucial junior and senior years. Another college has an innovative program aimed at young women seeking careers as business executives. The college, Susquehanna University, is a private institution in Selinsgrove, Pa., with 1,400 students. Its business school has started a new approach to the job market for women, who often have a harder time finding good jobs than male students. The approach involves a mentorship program in the second part of a woman's freshman year. The aim, said Dr. Mary Cianni, assistant professor of management in the business school, is to get the women involved with mentoring early enough so that it can be useful in their career planning. Each student has been assigned a woman to be her mentor -- an alumna of the university successful in the business world. They include a manager of human resources for Citibank, a senior industrial engineer at Quaker Oats and a vice president of Equitable Life. The program, started two | Careers; Early Start To Job Study In Colleges |
513000_0 | WITH lofty perspective and vision no human eye can match, advanced technologies for surveying the landscape from satellites, the space shuttle and airplanes are changing the practices of archeologists and paleontologists exploring the buried remnants of past life. Not that these explorers will be throwing away their spades and trowels, or finding much relief from long hours digging in the baking sun, but the technologies of remote sensing are becoming indispensable tools for telling them where to dig. The result has already been some dramatic discoveries once thought impossible, leading enthusiasts to proclaim remote sensing the most promising new technique in archeology since the introduction of radiocarbon dating in the 1940's. "We're on a roll," exclaimed Dr. Thomas L. Sever, an archeologist at the Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss., who is a pioneer in applying these remote-sensing tools. A "lost city" buried in the sands of Arabia, perhaps the fabled Ubar, was found in November by archeologists following ancient caravan routes detected by a radar imaging system on a space shuttle. The same radar has been used to map ruins along the legendary Silk Road in the desert of northwestern China. A more detailed search with shuttle radar is scheduled in October 1993. Buried prehistoric walls, buildings, agricultural fields and roads were detected in Chaco Canyon of New Mexico, exposing patterns of life thousands of years before the Anasazi settled there in cliff dwellings. The discovery was made with airborne instruments sensitive to parts of the electromagnetic spectrum invisible to the eye. Footpaths walked by prehistoric people but long blanketed by volcanic ash have been identified in this way in Costa Rica. Likewise, a Maya causeway running through the jungle of Guatemala and other ruins on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula have been located. And some of the most recent fossil findings related to early human ancestors have been made in Africa on the basis of clues from spacecraft imaging systems. Although this is one of the first applications of space-age remote sensing in fossil hunting, Dr. Bernard Wood, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Liverpool in England, said the technology "holds the promise of helping to deliver further and richer finds both within and beyond East Africa." Dr. Farouk El-Baz, director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, said recent improvements in instruments and refinements in data interpretation accounted for the rising optimism about remote sensing's | Lofty Instruments Discern Traces of Ancient Peoples |
517148_1 | which is regularly distributed to airlines, were offered in stronger terms such as a formal advisory or warning. It was also unclear if the Federal Aviation Administration was provided with the information. Bob Hawk, a spokesman for Fokker, a Dutch manufacturer, said that the recommendations were based on information from the flight manual. But he drew a distinction between the two sources of information, noting that the flight manual is the prime document governing procedures. "The flight manual should be followed," he said. He said he did not know if the recommendations were in the current flight manuals or those used three years ago. The recommendations dealt with planes that use Type I de-icing fluid, which is commonly used in the United States and was used on Flight 405. A longer-lasting fluid, Type II, is now being used widely in Europe. USAir and other airlines routinely receive such publications from aircraft manufacturers, said Patrica Goldman, a senior vice president for corporate communications at USAir. "These are helpful things, and they are discussed," she said. Ms. Goldman said she could not determine late yesterday whether the December 1989 issue of Wing Tips had been reviewed by the airline's managers, but she said she was certain that such publications were routinely sent to the airline. Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, the senior Republican on the Transportation Appropriations subcommittee, said he would seek Congressional hearings into why the manufacturer's warnings were ignored and the plane was allowed to try to take off. "This gross negligence will clearly prompt a Congressional investigation and may result in legislation," the New York Republican said. The F.A.A. and the airline industry have been studying de-icing problem for years and were to release final draft guidelines in mid-1990, according to the Air Transport Association, an industry trade group. It said the release of the recommendations was postponed until at least the middle of this year because of unresolved environmental problems, among other things. But Mr. D'Amato said the F.A.A. should have given priority to drafting the guidelines and accused the agency of cozying up to the industry at the expense of flight safety. "It's obvious the F.A.A. is more interested in accommodating the airline industry than saving passengers' lives," he said. Visual Inspection The La Guardia crash killed 27 people and raised questions about de-icing procedures at airports. A passenger, Kathy Gray, said in an interview on Thursday that | Maker of USAir Plane Urged More Frequent De-Icing Plan |
517167_0 | Moving to reduce its debt sharply, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company said yesterday that it had reached an agreement to sell its polyester resin business to the Shell Chemical Company, a division of the Shell Oil Company. Neither company would not disclose the purchase price, but analysts said Goodyear was likely to receive $350 million to $400 million from the sale. The unit is the nation's second-largest maker of the polyester resin polyethylene terephthalate, behind the Eastman Kodak Company. The material is used in beverage bottles, containers for microwave ovens and adhesives. The division also makes textiles that are used in the tire-making process. Strategy to Sell Assets The sale of the division is an important move in a strategy focusing on asset sales to reduce Goodyear's debt. Stanley C. Gault, who became Goodyear's chairman last year, has stated a goal of trimming the company's debt to about $2 billion by the end of this year. The company has already sold its profitable aerospace division and a textile plant in Alabama, among other smaller properties. "This, and their other transactions, will take their debt down to $2 billion immediately, from $3.6 billion at the end of 1990," said Harry W. Millis, an independent tire analyst based in Cleveland. "That's pretty dramatic, since they reduced their debt-to-equity ratio from 66 percent to 40." Shell Chemical, which had sales of $3.3 billion and operating income of $157 million last year, is a maker of both basic chemicals and specialty chemicals but has no presence in the polyester resin business. Complementary Chemicals "We are interested in acquiring the business because it holds a strong competitive position in a rapidly growing area," said Michael Grasley, president of Shell Chemical, in a statement. "Also, it will complement Shell's existing technology and feedstock capabilities." The Goodyear polyester resin business employs about 700 workers in a manufacturing plant in West Virginia and a technical center in Akron, Ohio, where Goodyear is based. Goodyear said that a definitive agreement was yet to be negotiated, and that board approval was also needed. The sale is also dependent on governmental approval. The company said it anticipated that the sale would be completed within three months. On the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, Goodyear's shares fell 62.5 cents, to $65.75. Goodyear acquired its huge debt when Sir James Goldsmith, the British-French financier, tried to buy the tire company in 1986. | Plastics Unit Is Being Sold By Goodyear |
517144_0 | Peru's inability, or its unwillingness, to cut exports of semi-refined cocaine is as real as the nighttime droning of small planes taking off from this Amazon village for laboratories in Colombia. "The cocaleros block a stretch of road, light it with cans of kerosene and the planes land for a quick pickup," a mahogany merchant said here last month of the regular export of coca base from this town in the Huallaga River Valley, Peru's largest coca-growing region. Anxious to cut the air bridge linking growers here with refiners in Colombia, the United States has put pressure on Peru, which produces 60 percent of the world's leaves for cocaine and crack, to assert control over its Amazon air space. Late last year, United States and Peruvian technicians started manning new radar stations at airfields in Andoas and Iquitos, two river towns in Peru's vast Amazonas region. President in the Cockpit To underscore the new interdiction effort last month, the Peruvian President, Alberto K. Fujimori, posed for photographers in a new Brazilian-made Tucano airplane, one of 10 delivered recently for interdiction duties from a base in the Huallaga region. American-made A-37 ground attack planes are also based at the Andoas and Iquitos airfields, whose radar stations receive intelligence gathered by United States reconnaissance planes flying out of Panama. With the United States paying fuel bills for the airborne antidrug battle, Peruvian Air Force pilots have intercepted nine drug planes since December. Six were forced to land, and the others crashed in the jungle while trying to escape. In comparison, an estimated six planes leave Peru each day carrying coca base north. "Some planes just disappear into the clouds," a Western diplomat in Lima said of this aerial cat-and-mouse over the Amazon. Secret Air Strips Fearful of interception, more planes are flying over the Brazilian Amazon, an unpatrolled area. And increasingly, drug planes make night runs to secret air strips, like the ones that dot this remote municipality, since Peruvian Air Force planes do not have the equipment to fly interdiction missions at night. There are also obstacles. With the drug industry injecting hundreds of millions of dollars annually into Peru's rural areas, few police, politicians or army officers are willing to seize planes. Indeed, officers often bribe their superiors for transfers to the Huallaga Valley. So-called landing fees for drug planes at airports like this one can go to $5,000. Pedro | Yurimaguas Journal; Fighting the Drug War In the Skies Over Peru |
515839_1 | exchange intimacies by typing messages back and forth. Unlike telephone conversations, however, which convey some information about age and sex, the computer permits people to hide their identity entirely. At a computer keyboard it is possible to assume any identity and change roles on a whim. The user of a computer connected to a data network can simply type messages that show up instantly on the screen of another user around the corner or hundreds or thousands of miles away. Bulletin boards or "chat" systems provide an important source of revenue for many on-line computer services like Compuserve and America Online. (Prodigy, a joint venture of Sears and I.B.M., does not permit a chat feature and discourages electronic messaging with high fees.) Until Minitel, the French computerized information service, began cracking down on the so-called "Rose" services, the sex-oriented messages constituted more than 20 percent of the usage on its conferencing system. They dropped to less than 10 percent in the last year. Yet in the United States keyboard sex-oriented communication is on the rise. "There is a lot of heavy clicking out there," said Paul Saffo, a researcher at the Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley, who studies the impact of computer technology. One recent evening, users of the America Online network had the opportunity to visit a series of "rooms" offering, for example, "Naughty Girls," "Romance Connection" and a "Gay Room." After meeting electronically in the public room -- actually a window in which comments from many users scroll by -- new friends adjourned to private rooms for intimate conversations, often using noms de plume or "handles." Roger Dietz, the man from Fremont, Calif., told newspapers and television stations that he has been in contact with 20 to 30 pedophiles using America Online. Mr. Dietz, a computer designer for a Silicon Valley company, said in a phone interview that he had subscribed to the service to see if child pornography was being traded, as he had heard. "For me child pornography is where the line is crossed," he said. After the incident America Online turned over computer files that contained pornographic materials to the F.B.I. The company said it prohibits messages that are defamatory, obscene, profane, racially threatening or illegal, but that it does not, and cannot, monitor private electronic mail. "It's none of our business and it shouldn't be our business," Stephen Case, the company's president, | The Latest Technology Fuels the Oldest of Drives |
515860_0 | Angry French Voting Today Frustrated by rising unemployment and abruptly uncertain of their place in the world, the French appear ready to register a big protest vote. Page 3. Rep. Dwyer Drops Out One of two Democratic Congressmen thrown into the same New Jersey district said he would retire. Page 26. Brazil Ousts Ecology Aides Ten weeks before Brazil is to play host to a mammoth "Earth Summit," its President dismissed his top two environmental officials. Page 15. | INSIDE |
516168_0 | Robert Hamilton's interview with Cathy Juni, "Speaking Out for Disabled People" (Feb. 2), was informative and constructive in many ways, but it presented a very unfair and inaccurate picture of Southbury Training School. Your readers deserve to know what Southbury Training School is really like. Our current population, 24 years after Ms. Juni left the school, is very different from what she remembers. Over 77 percent are severely or profoundly retarded, with little or no language, functioning below a 5-year-old level. In addition, 25 percent are both mentally ill and mentally retarded, and 33 percent are "at risk," needing either special drugs or a behavior modification program to help them control behavior problems. They are extremely handicapped, and almost none of them would know what to do with the "freedom" Ms. Juni wants for them. People First, a self-advocacy group for people with developmental disabilities, wants to close Southbury Training School. But the parents and guardians, who after all are the primary advocates for the school's residents, are pleased and relieved to have their relatives living in a protected community set up to meet their very serious handicaps. The advantage of having immediate access to medical and psychological help on campus adds to the families' peace of mind. At this time, less than 5 percent of the parents and guardians are actively seeking a community residential placement for their relatives at the school. That is a very clear message to outsiders who think they know what is best for our children. Ms. Juni doesn't "have any bad memories of Southbury," but, she says, "there's a lot of people who feel the place isn't good." She is listening to the wrong people. Those who are in closest contact with the school think it's by far the best place for their relatives to be. SARAH E. BONDY President Home and School Association Southbury Training School | Southbury Training School |
515827_1 | religion affects so many aspects of modern life," Professor Adams said. Long-Term Endowment A short-term $50,000 gift and an undisclosed long-term endowment from H. Stanley Krusen, who graduated from Cornell in 1928, will be used to pay for academic and administrative duties, according to the university. "Along with some of the other disciplines, for example philosophy and literature, religious studies is one of the most important places to look for answers to the pre-eminent questions about understanding human beings," said Michael Slon, a senior from Buffalo who is majoring in English and music. Mr. Slon had urged the faculty to institute the religious studies major, but he will be graduating too soon to complete a major in the field. So far, Professor Adams said, a half-dozen students have expressed interest in declaring themselves religious studies majors this spring. The major's requirements include an introductory course, "Understanding the Religions of the World," as well as proficiency in a foreign language and a series of courses on both a particular religion and the methodology of religious studies. "We're trying to work both sides of the street, breadth and depth," noted Professor Adams. "The gulf war highlighted the number of world cultures that have embodied much more deeply in them systems of belief that are recognized as religious rather than secular." Jane Elwood, a junior from Brooklyn who is majoring in English, said she planned to declare a second major in religious studies because of its impact on decision-making and life styles throughout the world. "I'm very glad that Cornell University discovered finally that religion is very important to students and is largely responsible in determining value systems in society," she said, adding that she planned to seek a career in writing Christian fiction. When he founded Cornell in 1865, Ezra Cornell wanted to insure that a single religious sect would never wrest control of his university. Confident that such a takeover is not in the cards, Don M. Randel, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said that "there is a continuing need to understand religion to understand contemporary world events." Norman Krutzman, a philosophy professor who supported the introduction of a religious studies major, said the decision to create the major was long overdue. "I don't know how Cornell has managed for more than 125 years without it, and I think it's about time we got one," he said. | CAMPUS LIFE: Cornell; Religious Studies Are Upgraded To a New Major |
515844_3 | open sea. Vessels available for rent, most without a crew, include traditional fishing boats, canoes, motorboats and yachts, including catamarans. Small wonder, then, that the Netherlands Board of Tourism promotes the country as Holland, Land of Water, and has set up an annual Aquatic Recreation Open Day (May 30 this year). Indeed, the Netherlands Board of Tourism would be a good place to start the search. It publishes a booklet of general information called "Holland, Land of Water," and two detailed booklets "Traditional Sailing" and "Boat Rental." All three carry advertisments for yacht, canoe and motor boat rentals and charters. "Traditional Sailing" and "Boat Rental" also feature lists of companies, with addresses and names of ships. They are available free from the board at 355 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017; (212) 370-7367. At least two tour operators in the United States can also provide information and bookings for water vacations in the Netherlands. Waterways and Byways of Europe is offering seven-day hotel barge cruises of canals in the southern Netherlands from April to early October. The trips leave from Amsterdam and travel to Leiden, Delft, Rotterdam, Oudewater, Gouda, Haarlem and Utrecht. Trips leaving April 11, 18 and 25 and May 2 and 9 will include a visit to Floriade, the world's biggest horticultural show, near The Hague. Prices range from $2,495 to $2,895. More information: Waterways and Byways of Europe, 1027 South Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, Calif. 92262; (800) 925-0444. The other United States operator is Sea Air Holiday, 733 Summer Street, Stamford, Conn. 06091; (203) 356-9033. It offers a one-week Waterways of Holland cruise starting every Saturday from April 4 to May 16. The cruise, which begins and ends in Amsterdam, costs from $1,529 to $1,779 per person, including all food and excursions. Jewish Museum in Munich Q. Some years ago I read about a privately run museum in Munich devoted to Jewish life as it was before the Holocaust. Does the museum still exist? -- Rita Kaplan, Scarsdale, N.Y. A. The museum you have in mind, the Judisches Museum Munchen, opened in April 1989 at 36 Maximilianstrasse and is still operating. The result of a private effort by an art collector and gallery owner, Richard Grimm, its exhibits are designed to acquaint visitors with Jewish customs, culture and the history of Jewish life in Germany. It is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 2 to 6 P.M. | Q and A |
515911_0 | Ten weeks before this city is to be host to a mammoth international conference on environment and development, Brazil's President today dismissed his top two environmental officials. Citing a need for "only one line of thought and action in the area of environmental protection," President Fernando Collor de Mello dismissed Jose Lutzenberger, a 65-year-old agronomist who served as Secretary of the Environment, and Eduardo Martins, the fifth appointee in two years to serve as president of Brazil's environmental agency. Internationally, Mr. Lutzenberger was known as Brazil's environmental ambassador. He went from conference to conference giving eloquent pleas in fluent English or German for world aid to defend the Amazon. But at home his outspokenness enraged conservatives, and his distaste for administration alienated environmentalists. Harsh Words From Green Party "As Secretary of Environment he was a disaster," Alfredo Sirkis, president of Brazil's Green Party, said today. "I have rarely seen a public servant as incompetent as Lutzenberger." Defenders hailed what they saw as his two main accomplishments: influencing Mr. Collor to end Brazil's atom bomb program and to demarcate a reserve for Brazil's Yanomami tribe. Mr. Lutzenberger was unavailable for comment. The dismissal deprives Brazil's environmental pioneer of a cherished speaking platform, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, a 10-day gathering in June that is expected to bring to Rio as many as 100 world leaders. Brazil's host will probably be Jose Goldemberg. Currently Education Minister, Mr. Goldemberg today took on the added duties of Acting Environmental Secretary. The dismissal of Mr. Martins leaves Mr. Goldemberg free to choose a new president for the agency. Today's dismissals add to a growing fear among foreign environmentalists that the Rio conference will suffer from disorganization under the pressure of an expected 30,000 participants. Addressing this worry, President Collor issued a statement today saying that Mr. Goldemberg intends to "start a wide-ranging dialogue with all national and international movements connected to the protection of the environment with the aim of making the Rio conference a success." Spoke His Mind Mr. Lutzenberger's demise was hastened by his bluntness. Last year, Brazil's conservative military leadership was angered when he told a foreign audience that Brazil's highest-ranking army general in the Amazon was a "jerk." This month in New York, Mr. Lutzenberger asked industrial nations to pare down environmental aid to Brazil on the ground that the money would be lost in corruption. Also in | BRAZILIAN REMOVES ENVIRONMENT CHIEF |
515986_0 | Frustrated by a stagnant economy and rising unemployment, troubled by the new strength and size of their neighbor Germany, abruptly uncertain of their place in the world, the French appear ready to register a vote of overwhelming protest on Sunday in regional elections likely to deal a major setback to the governing Socialist Party of President Francois Mitterrand. With television programs repeatedly asking whether France still has an identity and the leading newsweekly L'Express suggesting that next month's opening of Euro Disneyland will turn the Paris region into the 51st state of the American union, a country renowned for its pride and sense of destiny has seldom seemed at such a loss. "People are angry," said Jean-Luc Parodi, a political scientist, "and that is what they will use this poll to express." Opinion polls have been unanimous in predicting that the Socialists will finish second behind the moderate rightist opposition, winning only about 18 percent of the vote. That would be roughly half the Socialists' score in 1988 parliamentary elections and only slightly more than the extremist, anti-immigrant National Front, which is expected to garner around 15 percent. An Unusual Censure Never before in the history of the Fifth Republic, established in 1958, has a President faced such an overwhelming vote of censure. Part of the national angst may be no more than a weariness with Mr. Mitterrand's 11-year rule and a sense of profound misgiving over the fact that his term does not end until 1995. But beyond that, France seems tired of all the traditional governing parties of both left and right, and nervous about the prospect of declining international influence in a changed world. "It's a mid-term election and, as such, an occasion when you expect people to protest," said Olivier Duhamel, a professor of political science at the Sorbonne. "But never in the history of the Fifth Republic has such a sweeping rejection of a president appeared possible, and that, in turn, suggests a real political crisis." Voters will select governing councils for the country's 26 regions in an election that has no direct effect on the President's seven-year mandate. But the vote is being widely viewed as a potentially devastating verdict on the President and a strong indicator of possible voting patterns in crucial parliamentary elections next year. Center-Right Gain Unlikely The possible implications of the vote appear particularly uncertain because the Socialist decline seems | Protest Sentiment Is Expected to Hurt Mitterrand in French Regional Voting |
516643_1 | other that would enable them to serve. The debate will start at 10 A.M. at the Jewish Theological Seminary, at 3080 Broadway at 122d Street in upper Manhattan. A Divisive Issue The issue is the most divisive to confront Conservative Jews since the movement's decision in the early 1980's to ordain women as rabbis. Arguing for homosexual rabbis, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson of Mission Viejo, Calif., said that the Bible forbade only those homosexual relationships that were prevalent in biblical times and not loving and supportive couples living in exclusive relationships. But Rabbi Joel Roth, a professor of Talmud at the seminary, said that such factors as a couple's devotion to each other are irrelevant and that no steps should be taken to "imply the co-equality, validation or acceptability of a homosexual life style." While both Jewish and Christian fundamentalist groups maintain that homosexuality is an aberration that can be "cured," among the groups debating homosexuals in the clergy, there is general acknowledgment that there are people who have a homosexual orientation and such people are acceptable in the pulpit if they remain celibate. The one Jewish movement not directly engaged in the debate is the Orthodox, which holds fast to the biblical prohibition against homosexuality as articulated in Leviticus 20:13, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them." The specter of the Biblical denunciations has kept almost every major Protestant group from condoning sexually active homosexuals in the clergy. In the Roman Catholic Church, which relies more on philosophical reasons than Scripture on issues of sexual morality, questions about ordaining homosexuals simmer despite the fact that all Catholic priests are pledged to celibacy. But the debate rages in many Protestant denominations. Resolutions approving homosexual ministers have been repeatedly debated, and defeated, at conventions of the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Methodist Church. Nonetheless, some Episcopal bishops have ordained sexually active homosexuals despite church resolutions. A recent survey of delegates who are going to the United Methodist convention next May in Louisville found that they are "tired" of the issue but realize that they will have to take it up. There appears to be little fatigue on the issue among the Jews. Both sides have mustered legal, religious, social and medical experts to their cause. | Jews Debate the Issue of Gay Clergy Members |
514729_1 | go ahead with a $19 billion, 20-year contract it signed in 1989 to buy 1,800 megawatts of hydropower a year, roughly enough to supply 10 percent of the state's demand. The bill passed by the Democratic-led Assembly today, on a vote of 122 to 17, would require the state to delay the decision again, because the review it calls for could not be completed within a few months. Quebec officials denounced the measure as unwarranted because Canada has already begun at least five different sets of environmental hearings. They say these hearings will help insure that the project, despite warnings from the Cree and many environmental groups, will not destroy the taiga, the wildlife or the Cree way of life in the James Bay area. The main sponsor of the bill, William B. Hoyt, a Buffalo Democrat and the chairman of the Assembly's Energy Committee, argued during a debate in the chamber that the state should back out of the purchase entirely because Hydro-Quebec's plans, which include flooding an area the size of New Jersey and damming parts of 20 wild rivers, will be "an environmental, human rights and economic disaster." But an opponent of the bill, Chris Ortloff, a Republican of northern New York, countered that by passing it New York was in danger of "throwing away" an opportunity to buy significant amounts of power that would be far cleaner for New Yorkers than generating electricity with oil or coal. 'Illegal Intrusion' Richard M. Flynn, chairman of the New York Power Authority said that the bill would violate the United States Constitution by giving New York the power to regulate international trade. "The Assembly unfortunately has passed legislation that calls for an unwarranted and illegal intrusion into the affairs of a foreign country," he said, "and could seriously jeopardize New York's ability to secure low-cost energy supplies from out-of-state sources in the future." New York already buys 800 megawatts of power during the spring and summer months from Hydro-Quebec, under a contract signed in 1978. But the new contract has led to far more controversy both because it substantially increases the state's commitment to the power and because the environmental effects of the hydroelectric projects in James Bay have come under increasing scrutiny. In addition to raising questions about how the flooding and rerouting of rivers will alter the James Bay ecosystem, the Cree have denounced the projects because | Hydropower Under Review In Albany Bill |
514836_1 | lungs, mouth and throat. "Everyone just talked about field defects like they were God's word and there was no other way around it," said Dr. David Sidransky, a senior research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Oncology Center and principal author of the study. "But now we've been able to actually test these things." Pinpointing the Gene Researchers studying the bladder tumors took advantage of the fact that each cell in women has two X chromosomes, one from each parent, of which only one is active. They found that in each woman the same X chromosome, either the one from the mother or the father, was inactive in all the cancerous cells, strongly suggesting that a single cell was to blame for all the tumors in one bladder. The X chromosome is not thought to be involved in producing the tumor and was used simply as a way to identify cells. The researchers also traced three other chromosomes, numbered 9, 17 and 18, known to carry genes associated with tumors. All tumors in each woman had the same changes in chromosome 9, but often had different changes in chromosomes 17 and 18. Researchers interpret this to mean that changes in the gene on chromosome 9 precede the spread of the tumor-causing cell and that changes on chromosome 17 and 18 lead to the aggressive and invasive growth which characterizes the later stages of tumor development. "It looks like the gene on 9 sets the stage -- it may be the first event," said Dr. Sidransky. "Now we know that it's very important that we go after that gene first" and find out as much as possible about it. While researchers express confidence that the tumors originate with a single cell, how this single cell spreads from place to place to begin new tumor growth remains unknown. Dr. Sidransky said the cells that have mutated may spread by rapid growth, or by being moved by fluid such as urine or even by being moved by a doctor removing a tumor. The finding is very exciting for scientists studying multiple-tumor cancers, said Dr. Peter Jones, director for basic research at the University of Southern California Comprehensive Cancer Center. "It's a big advance in our understanding of the generation of tumors," he said. "It indicates that not all cells are at equal risk -- that there may be a single cell at risk." | Study Finds One Cell Can Provoke Many Tumors |
514960_3 | destruction of its Amazon rainforest, lobbied to serve as host for the meeting and won enough backing. Brazil's purpose, officials said at the time, was to improve its image. Brazil and other developing nations also said that holding the conference in the third world was symbolically important and would help them put the blame for most environmental destruction and pollution back where it belonged, in the industrial world. The strategy has put rich countries on the defensive on a host of issues. A planned treaty to protect and manage the world's tropical forests, which are vital regulators of the global climate and which harbor most of the planet's species, has already been shelved. Brazil and other countries demanded that such a treaty be extended to all forests and had the word "tropical" removed. "By extending the debate to all forests, there was not enough time for a binding treaty," a United Nations official said. "The best we can hope for is a declaration to save the rainforests." Another planned high point of the summit meeting, a treaty to protect the world's animal and plant species, is being fundamentally changed. In the past, nature has always been considered part of the common heritage. But now developing countries want the convention to state that biological resources "are under a country's sovereignty" and are no longer "to be considered as a common heritage of humankind." Poor countries say this is part of their quest for equity. They have long complained that their contributions such as natural genes, or strains bred by farmers in the fields, have been reaped by foreign researchers or pharmaceutical companies for free while poor nations have to pay for seeds or other organisms protected by patents and licences elsewhere. There is still basic disagreement over how a country can profit from its biological resources. Rivalry for Western Funds The emerging rivalry for Western funds that many Africans and Latin Americans show toward Eastern Europe was one topic of debate here this week. Westerners said that every time a meeting document mentioned the need to give special attention to eastern Europe, the large bloc of developing nations wanted it crossed out. "The south sees eastern Europe as a drain on Western resources," an American official said. "They look at them as competitors for Western funds. But we see eastern Europe as a test case, a special opportunity to demonstrate quickly | North-South Divide Is Marring Environment Talks |
514960_5 | that you can have cleaner economic growth. If you can't do it there, where can you?" One way to dissolve the acrimony, Marjan van Giezen of the Netherlands said, is a pledge from the West to keep separate budgets and not to send eastern Europe any aid funds earmarked for the developing world. United Nations officials have been disappointed with the low profile of oil-rich Arab states. Several have not yet provided their reports, which were due in November. In December, when the United Nations tried to raise funds for a program to rehabilitate environmental damage in the Middle East that was not related to the Persian Gulf war, "not a single Arab state offered one penny," a senior official said. Some Arab delegates have said the environment is a task for the international community. Cooperation Is Cited As the summit meeting nears, delegates say the spirit of cooperation is improving somewhat in small work groups. "But in every plenary session, the north-south smokescreen is still up," Mrs. van Giezen said. Rich countries still feel strongly that population control deserves a more prominent place and more commitment. They see population problems as an issue inextricable from the environment. By the year 2000, when a billion more people will have been added to the planet, they argue, almost every environmental problem will be magnified. But many poor countries see demands to curb population growth as an infringement on their sovereignty. At first they kept population off the agenda and many remain reluctant to make population growth a key issue. "Population finally came in through the back door," a French delegate said. It was finally put on the agenda, she said, "but it's still very sensitive." The big question remains what to do about an ambitious agenda of some 800 pages, ranging from human settlements to the chemistry of the upper atmosphere. Organizers say it has been virtually impossible to draw the line in a summit meeting called Conference on Environment and Development. "The environment runs through everything, the interlinkage has given us gray hairs," said Lars Hyttinen, a Finnish economist and biologist who coordinates the country reports in Geneva. Maurice Strong, a Canadian who is Secretary General of the Rio summit meeting, has said that although unwieldy, the agenda serves to project the magnitude of the problems. Most proposals for action demand enormous transfers of money and technology from the industrial | North-South Divide Is Marring Environment Talks |
514688_2 | church property that Communist governments often turned over to the Orthodox. The Eastern Orthodox churches have regarded these groups as beachheads of Catholic proselytizing, while Catholics have seen them as victims of both Communist and Orthodox persecution. Last year, the spiritual leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Aleksy II of Moscow, protested the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops in areas of Russia. The Vatican said the bishops were to serve Catholics already in those regions. The Orthodox said the appointments were part of a missionary effort. As a consequence, Aleksy and four other Orthodox leaders refused to attend a synod of European Catholic bishops in December, to which Pope John Paul II had invited them. The three-day meeting in Istanbul that just ended strengthened the standing of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who was enthroned last year. He is the symbolic leader of the 14 self-governing national Orthodox churches, whose rites and doctrine stem from the Greek-speaking half of the Roman Empire that had Constantinople as its capital. The meeting, attended by the patriarchs heading 12 of the churches and representatives of the other two, was an unusual display of unity among churches that have often been at odds with one another. A Vatican spokesman said yesterday that it was waiting for an official text of the Orthodox patriarchs' statement before commenting. Early this month, Edward Cardinal Cassidy, the Vatican's chief ecumenical officer, met for two days in Geneva with Metropolitan Kyril, his counterpart in the Russian Orthodox Church. Their joint statement showed no progress in resolving conflicts, although on the eve of the Orthodox prelates' meeting, Patriarch Bartholomew told an an Italian newspaper that the Geneva talks may have eased tensions. Speaking of the new Istanbul statement, John Borelli, a staff member with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, "To discerning eyes, this is not a negative text at all." He said it simply recognized what was already the case -- that Orthodox-Catholic dialogue was limited to issues surrounding Eastern-Rite Catholics. That was the topic for the next meeting of the joint commission of Catholic and Orthodox representatives, he added. The Orthodox church leaders also repeated concerns that the World Council of Churches had departed from its goal of promoting unity among Christian churches, and that the ordination of women and the use of gender-free language for God were creating new obstacles to restoring that unity. | Orthodox Warn Other Christians on East Europe |
511477_1 | which shields the earth's surface from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, is deteriorating more quickly than previously thought. A family of chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFC's, is generally regarded as the culprit. The primary use for CFC's is in refrigeration, both as the liquid refrigerant and as a component of the foam insulation. Appliance Recycling's business is potentially a large one, although success is likely to draw competitors. Studies by the Environmental Protection Agency indicate that 32 million household appliances were discarded in 1990 and the number is expected to grow to 54 million by 2000. Not all of them contain CFC's, but most have to be processed in some way before scrap dealers will accept the metal for recycling. Recently the Bush Administration decided to support legislation that would phase out use of CFC's by 1996, even though an international agreement does not require ending production until 2000. Regardless of the deadline, the measure would affect only new production, not the millions of pounds of CFC's locked in refrigerators and freezers already in use. Until recently, CFC refrigerants were simply vented to the air as appliances were crushed by heavy equipment at landfills or when the devices were shredded to recover metal. The Clean Air Act of 1990 bans the venting of CFC's after July 1 of this year. Meanwhile, nine states either now or soon will ban the dumping of appliances in landfills, both to preserve scarce disposal space and to prevent mercury and toxic chemicals known as PCB's from contaminating the land. Appliances are not particularly welcome at incinerators either, because they are bulky, do not burn well and add to the ash that must ultimately be carted to a landfill. Enter Appliance Recycling Centers of America. Since 1976 the company has been collecting old appliances, mainly to separate out the 10 percent that are in good enough condition to be refurbished and sold. In the last few years, though, it has recast itself as an environmental services company, extracting CFC refrigerants from appliances before there is any danger of their being vented. (Some of the recovered CFC's are used in the appliances that are reconditioned.) It also removes mercury switches, as well as electronic capacitors containing PCB's, so that the residue left after the metals are recycled can be buried in an ordinary landfill. Under E.P.A. rules, materials even slightly contaminated by hazardous substances must be | Market Place; Finding Money In Old Freezers |
511454_0 | The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company said yesterday that it would sell its name-brand tires through Sears, Roebuck & Company. The move is a shift for the nation's largest tire producer, which has avoided distribution pacts with large retailers. Goodyear, which has a big network of its own dealers, will sell seven tire lines through 875 Sears tire and auto centers beginning April 1. Goodyear holds about a third of the market of tires sold to automobile companies and about 25 percent of the replacement-tire market. Sears stores sell about a tenth of the nation's replacement tires. "Our market analysis indicates that a Sears customer is a loyal customer," said David F. Wilkins, a Goodyear spokesman. "And the person who buys at a Goodyear dealership is likely to continue to buy tires there." The move will stiffen the competition between Goodyear and other tire producers, like Bridgestone and Pirelli, which have long sold their tires through retailers. Analysts suggest that the arrangement might help Goodyear to increase its share of the replacement market by several percentage points. "It is Goodyear's recognition of the shifting to retailing of replacement tires," said W. Dudley Heer, an analyst with Duff & Phelps in Chicago. "By admitting the fact that they have to be in large retailers like Sears, they are acknowledging that they have to be where the shoppers are." COMPANY NEWS | Sears Will Sell Goodyear Tires |
511532_3 | Higginbothams chose Clarke for the individual attention it provided. Other Parents Help Although it is hard living without her husband, Mrs. Higginbotham said a support group for new Clarke parents had eased the transition. "They just took us in and made us a part of their family right away," she said, adding that Lindsey was happy and making progress. Dennis Gjerdingen, the school president, said the number of parents moving from out of state ballooned during the 80's. "We've had as many as 19 families move in one year," he said. But those numbers have declined recently because of the recession, as families find themselves unable to afford the tuition. The Clarke curriculum is grueling for the children, who must learn not only their ABC's but the skills to speak them at the same time, said Alan Marvelli, the acting headmaster. Hearing children have years of listening and speaking before they learn to read. For this reason, schooling goes more slowly at Clarke. The school is divided into lower, middle and upper schools instead of grade levels. At age 17, graduates are usually ready to be "mainstreamed" into a high school of their choice, usually at the ninth- or 10th-grade level. Speech or Signing? Poor performance among the hearing-impaired children has kicked off a vigorous debate among teachers of the deaf about which of three methods is best -- signing, speech alone or a combination of the two, the so-called total communication method. The two dominant teaching methods since the 1950's, speech and total communication, have come under fire. Standardized tests have shown that the average hearing-impaired 18-year-old reads at a third- or fourth-grade level, said Arthur Schildroth, a researcher at the Center for Assessment and Demographic Studies at Gallaudet College in Washington. Teaching speech to deaf children "works for only a handful of children," said Robert Johnson, chairman of the linguistics department at Gallaudet and co-author of "Unlocking the Curriculum," a 1989 paper credited with prompting the current debate over how to teach the deaf. "Most deaf people don't learn to speak very well," said Mr. Johnson, who advocates teaching American Sign Language before English or speech. Signing, he said, "doesn't require any intervention, anything except getting them in contact with people who use it, and it can be acquired by age 5." So far, though, teaching signing as soon as children are identified as deaf is being attempted | A School for the Deaf That's Founded on Speech |
517028_2 | will all come together." Last week, Muslim nations complained that the June 1-12 conference dates coincided with an Islamic festival. Brazilian organizers now say the conference will run from June 3 to 14, but the United Nations has yet to confirm the new dates. Today's newspapers also carried a new worry: Rio de Janeiro State's fourth cholera case. The epidemic, which was largely restricted to the Andean nations last year, is slowly moving down Brazil's Atlantic coast and is expected to hit Rio fully by May. There have been 2,751 cases reported this year in Brazil, but doctors have kept the mortality rate low, to fewer than 2 percent of hospitalized cases. In a move that apparently disconcerted foreigners more than Brazilians, President Collor on Saturday removed the Secretary for the Environment, Jose Antonio Lutzenberger, and Eduardo Martins, the president of Brazil's environmental agency, Brazil's top two environmental officials. Mr. Lutzenberger had won a large following overseas for impassioned pleas to save the Amazon rain forest and for a world without pollution, but at home the press ridiculed him as "Lutzenboeing," criticizing his frequent travel to the detriment of working on solving environmental problems at home. Today, President Collor faulted Mr. Lutzenberger for displaying "managerial inexperience" and a "radicalized vision" of the world. He said that Brazil's host at the conference would be Jose Goldemberg, Brazil's Education Minister and Acting Environmental Secretary. A Plan for the Amazon Seeking to regain momentum in environmental affairs here, Maria Teresa Jorge Padua, the new president of the environmental protection agency, announced in an interview today an ambitious Amazon protection plan: expanding the national park system to cover 30 percent of Brazil's Amazon. Ms. Padua, who was sworn in on Tuesday, said national parks, forests and reserves currently cover 6 percent of Brazil's Amazon rain forest. Often called the "Mother of Brazil's National Parks," Ms. Padua helped create 15 million acres of park land when she managed the environmental agency's parks department in the 1970's and early 1980's. Widely respected for her managerial skills, Ms. Padua has served for the last six years as president of Brazil's largest conservation group, Funatura. An experienced fund raiser, the new agency president said today that she had identified $500 million in foreign financing available for environmental projects in Brazil. The largest amounts are $120 million from the World Bank and $30 million from the Inter-American Development Bank. | For the Environmentalists, Hurdles on the Road to Rio |
514346_0 | Nature created an abundant electromagnetic spectrum, which ingenious scientists have exploited for radar, television and lasers. But that is small comfort to cellular telephone operators. The Federal Communications Commission has been stingy with the radio frequencies that make wireless telephone calls possible. But through clever design that largely prevents any two users from electronically bumping into each other, cellular telephones and the networks that serve them have coped with spectrum scarcity -- up to a point. That point is rapidly approaching in America's largest cities, where more and more miffed cellular users find their calls garbled, or blocked entirely, when a cellular channel fails to open up. To increase capacity as well as to provide for improved voice quality, privacy and longer battery life, cellular operators plan to convert to digital transmission in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other large cities this autumn. The conversion is not without controversy within the cellular industry, as competing methods of digital transmission vie for the lucrative digital equipment market, certain to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years. One digital method, known as time division multiple access, is available now and can increase network capacity threefold. A method of staggering phone calls in sequence, it has been adopted by the industry, at least for now, and will be used for digital conversion later this year. Another method, known as code division multiple access, is a year or more away, but might increase capacity fifteen- to twentyfold. A method of uniquely identifying information, it is the subject of furious technical debate over capacity and compatibility. Still a third method, known as extended time division multiple access, is also a year or more away. This method, a variation of time division, might raise capacity eighteenfold, but without the suspected flaws of the code division method. These methods imply that a large cellular system like that of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, with a theoretical capacity today of about 700,000 users, might eventually have enough capacity for as many as 14 million cellular users. That is almost two phones for every man, woman and child in greater Los Angeles -- without an increase in the amount of radio spectrum. Such astounding increases in capacity come from digital coding. In analog transmission, electrical impulses carried by the telephone vibrate in the same way as the human voice disturbs the air. Like | Technology; Next for the Cellular Phone |
514117_1 | ordinarily thrive, dead hippopotamuses slump on the parkland and buffalo carcasses rot in the sun. Zimbabwe has been among the handful of African nations able to feed itself and to export to its often hard-pressed neighbors. But this year, this country of nearly 11 million is at the center of a southern African regional drought that meteorologists and food specialists say is the worst this century. While individual countries, including Zimbabwe, have experienced serious droughts before, experts here do not recall a time when all the countries from South Africa north to Zambia, Angola and Malawi were hit at once. Zimbabwe's leaders have invested in irrigation, agricultural-extension services and farmer education in an effort to show that this country is different from Africa's beggar nations. So the drought's economic and social consequences are particularly devastating. Last week, President Robert Mugabe bowed to the obvious and declared a national disaster. With only a month's supply of food on hand, more than two million tons of food -- corn, wheat, soybeans, sugar -- will have to be imported during the next year, Government officials say. But the officials do not know if the food, which must be hauled by creaky trains and trucks from ports in South Africa and Mozambique, can get here on time to prevent deaths. South Africa is importing an unprecedented four million tons of food because of its own severe drought and has designated a well-equipped port, Durban, for itself, leaving the less modern Port Elizabeth for food shipments for Zimbabwe. "Even if things work perfectly, people will die as a result of this drought," the United States Ambassador, Gibson E. Lanpher, said. In addition to the peril of starvation, the effect of the drought on Zimbabwe's economy threatens to be devastating. Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has been a fairly solid economic performer. The country inherited schools, roads and other basic services from the British and has retained a diversified economy that grew by 3 percent a year in the 1980's. The high food import bill now -- in a period when the best export earners like sugar and tobacco are affected -- is likely to flatten the economy. "Our feeling is that this could result in a minus 5 percent growth rate," said Christiaan J. Poortman, the World Bank's representative in Zimbabwe. On the small farms like Mr. Matsilele's, a sense of desperation is setting in | Drought Shrivels Farms and Hope in Zimbabwe |
514184_0 | After years of public protest and delay, the Mexican Government is moving ahead with a hydroelectric dam project that some environmentalists and archeologists say could damage an ancient center of the Mayan civilization and the ecology of North America's largest surviving rain forest. A spokesman for the Federal Electricity Commission denied that the one or more dams it now planned to build on the Usumacinta River, which marks an isolated stretch of the border between Mexico and Guatemala, would produce such effects. Commission officials have yet to choose among three sites in the Lacandon rain forest for the dam they are to start constructing in 1994. But they say they are contemplating much smaller installations than they have in the past, and would therefore have to flood much smaller areas of the river basin. But after years in which the Government consistently denied any plan to dam the Usumacinta even as feasibility studies leaked out, Mexican and foreign environmentalists remain suspicious of the assurances. Effects of Multiple Dams The environmentalists say past evaluations have shown that only a series of dams would be economically viable on the river. And though the Government plays down its ambitions, they note, it continues to suggest that it might expand the project later, possibly under an accord with Guatemala. "One dam would have a damaging impact by itself, but a series of dams would be the most ecologically and culturally damaging project ever in Mexico and Central America," said Dr. Jeffrey K. Wilkerson, an American ecologist and archeologist who has studied the area. Criticism of the plan emerged less than a month after President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico stopped in the project area on his way to an international environmental conference. At the meeting, Mr. Salinas pledged new Government respect for the already devastated Lacandon, and expanded the ecological reserve by some 136,000 acres. Mexican energy officials disclosed the new dam project two weeks later. In between, Mr. Salinas made a state visit to Guatemala that officials in both countries cited as evidence of a marked improvement in their ties. With peace talks continuing in Mexico City between the Guatemalan Government and leftist rebels, officials said that an era of border tensions fueled by the Guatemalan civil war was all but over. The two countries began studies for a huge joint dam project on the Usumacinta in 1980. But public protests, technical | Mexico Moves Ahead With Embattled Dam Project in Mayan Area |
514432_6 | columnist for the Real Estate section of The New York Times. Today the tour "GERRYMANDERED CARNEGIE HILL" explores the historic district along Madison Avenue from 90th to 94th Street; meets at the southwest corner of 92d Street and Madison Avenue. On March 28, the tour "HALF A BABY IS BETTER?" focuses on the Metropolitan Museum historic district; meets at the northeast corner of 78th Street and Fifth Avenue. On April 4 the walk "SAVE THE SCHLOCK" tours buildings on Lexington and Third Avenues not in the Upper East Side Historic District; meets at the northwest corner of 64th Street and Lexington Avenue. On April 11, the last tour in the series, "THE PRESERVATION PARTY LINE AND THE MYTH OF FIFTH AVENUE," explores what remains of turn-of-the-century midtown and meets at the southwest corner of 56th Street and Fifth Avenue. All tours begin at 1 P.M. Fee: $10. Reservations: (212) 799-0520. WEST VILLAGE, Manhattan. A tour with stops at the oldest house in the Village and St. Luke's Church. Sponsored by Citywalks. Meets at 1 P.M. at the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street. Also on April 11, same time. Fee: $12. Information: (212) 989-2456. "NATURE'S SKYSCRAPERS," Owls Head Park, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. A nature walk to learn the basics of tree identification. Sponsored by the Urban Park Rangers. Meets at 2 P.M. at 67th Street and Colonial Road. Free. Information: (718) 287-3400. NORTH WOODS WALKING TOUR, Central Park. A tour of the woodlands in the northern part of the park, led by Marianne Cramer, deputy administrator for Planning for Central Park. Sponsored by the Central Park Conservancy. Meets at 10 A.M. at the Conservatory Garden, Fifth Avenue and 105th Street. Fee: $10. Information: (212) 360-2766. March 22 "LA DOLCE VIA: AN ITALIAN HERITAGE TOUR," Little Italy, lower Manhattan. A walking tour with stops at Mulberry Bend, a former slum written about by Jacob Riis. Sponsored by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, 97 Orchard Street. Meets at the museum at 2 P.M. Also April 19 and June 14, same time. Fee: $12 ($10 for students and the elderly). Information: (212) 431-0233. "EDITH WHARTON'S NEW YORK," Gramercy Park. A walking tour through the 19th-century writer's neighborhood. Included are visits to the National Arts Club and Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace. Led by Joyce Mendelsohn, an urban historian. Sponsored by the 92d Street Y. March 22 at 11 A.M. Fee: $17. Registration | TOURS |
514394_3 | was an international byword, Mr. Peters and his brother, Manfred, bought a 25,000-acre coconut plantation that fronted on seven and a half miles of beach. The purchase gave him title to the fishing village of Praia, the castle ruins and the rain forest. He created a foundation to administer the castle and turned the forest into a reserve administered by Brazil's federal environmental agency. The village's land title he donated to its inhabitants, but only after the municipality, Mata de Sao Joao, adopted in 1989 a series of strict zoning regulations -- a rarity for Latin America. WITHIN the village of 3,000 inhabitants, buildings are limited to two stories and must be constructed of traditional native materials, such as roofing of colonial tiles or piassava palm fronds. No streets can be paved. No walls can be erected -- only fences. To prevent the kind of real estate speculation that has expelled fishing families from many of Brazil's coastal resorts, outsiders cannot buy village houses. Instead, houses can only be passed down within families. Although the village is open to the public, a police post placed squarely at the entrance discourages squatters and pickpockets schooled in the hard ways of Salvador, a city of 2.5 million people 50 miles to the south. "Praia do Forte is one of Brazil's last authentic fishermen's villages," Mr. Peters said. "You can dance lambada in the village wearing a gold Rolex and nothing will happen to you." Outside village limits, construction of vacation homes is limited to two stories, to traditional materials and to Mr. Peters's personal approval. Homeowners are required to plant four coconut palm trees for each one they cut down. In another conservation effort, Mr. Peters encouraged Brazilian environmentalists to establish here, in 1980, the headquarters of the national turtle conservation project, Tamar, an acronym for tartarugas marinhas, or sea turtles in Portuguese. The richest nesting area along Brazil's coast, Praia do Forte is visited every October by hundreds of female sea turtles, which lay an average of 50,000 eggs in the sand . At first, Tamar workers had to collect eggs for artificial incubation. But due to a public education campaign and a new economic dependence on ecological tourism, fishermen stopped killing turtles and taking their eggs. Today the sea turtle has become Praia do Forte's symbol, featured on T-shirts and postcards sold in craft boutiques all over town. Half of | Brazil's Pristine Playground |
515108_0 | To the Editor: Proposing that President Bush should increase Government programs to help needy students attend private colleges, Samuel Hynes (Op-Ed, Feb. 29) cites the G.I. Bill, which provided one month's college tuition for each month a World War II veteran served on active duty. He could have mentioned National Youth Administration assistance for poor college students, predating the war. Through that agency, the Federal Government provided money to colleges, which hired needy students to perform needed chores on campus. The work ran the gamut from cleaning urinals to washing test tubes and setting up lab experiments. The pay may have varied, but in 1939 manual labor earned 35 cents an hour. That was not as paltry as it seems, because tuition at some of the finest schools ranged from $300 to $400 a year (Stanford's tuition after the war was $500 a year), a dormitory room cost $12 a month, and cafeteria bills seldom exceeded $10 a week. Through National Youth Administration income and summer employment indigent students managed. Not only college students were assisted by the agency's programs. In the summer of 1941, when the Government foresaw the need for welders, machinists and other crafts for expanding military production, unemployed inner-city youths from Massachusetts were recruited, fed, housed in college dormitories and received daylong training for three months in the crafts shops of the local high schools in Springfield. That was a successful and worthwhile program. ANDY SYKA Sunnyvale, Calif., March 4, 1992 | When U.S. Helped Poor College Students |
515097_4 | passengers arrive without documents, and airlines are liable for all detention costs of any transit passengers who ask for political asylum. Sames Stories, Word for Word Airlines insist they canot be responsible for passengers who destroy their documents druing the flight or hand them off to smuggling couriers. In January, the Air Transport Association filed a lawsuit against the Immigration and Naturalization Service over the agreement under which the airlines may be fined. "We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg and it's moving fast," Mr. Norton said. "The I.N.S. is not going to solve this by sitting back and fining the airlines." The stories that these immigrants tell immigration officers are often repeated word for word. Ashiq Hussain, a small man on jeans and a gray leather jacket, admired without emotion to destroying his entry docuemnts while on the flight to New York. His only luggage was a black leather attache case that contained no clothes. Like several other Pakistani questioned that evening, he said he was a member of the opposition Pakistan People's Party and had been jailed by the present Government and risked death if he returned. "I know the answers by heart," said an immigration officer as he questioned a Pakistani in Urdu. "I could write them in my sleep." " There were 15 questions in all and Mr. Hussain's answers were polite but vague. "I will go back only when there is peace in Pakistan," he insisted. He added that he knew no one in. New York Next to him, Bahia Singh, 24 years old, tall and lanky, smiled throughout the entire interview. He carried an Indian passport but the picture inside was of another man. Mr. Singh said he knew no one in New York and has fled the Punjab because of the civil war between Sikh militants and the Indian military. "I am just a farmer," he said "The police said I gave shelter to the militants. I paid $3,000 for the passport from a man called Bajinder Singh in Jullundur. If I go back I will be killed by the militants or the Indian police." Several hours after his flight had landed, when the questions were finished, Ashiq Hussain signed a document and walked out into the crammed jostle of the arrivals area. He sat stone-laced in a corner, oblivious to the hugs and excitement around him, then melted into the crowd. | A Flood of Illegal Aliens Enters U.S. Via Kennedy |
515055_2 | killed by a policeman who happened to be at the scene. Witnesses said that passers-by cursed and spat on the attacker after he was gunned down, and that an angry crowd tried to prevent his evacuation, rocking the ambulance taking him away. Palestinians identified the assailant as Raed al-Rifi, 22, from Gaza, and said he was a member of Islamic Holy War who had been twice detained without trial. The fundamentalist group, which distributed leaflets accepting responsibilty for the stabbings, is believed by security officials to have carried out a series of deadly attacks on Israelis in recent years, including an assault last month in which three soldiers were stabbed and hacked to death at an army camp. A leaflet found on Mr. Rifi's body said the attack on the soldiers should be emulated, and identified him as a member of another fundamentalist group, the Islamic Resistance Movement, said Inspector General Yaacov Terner of the police. In Gaza, Mr. Rifi's family said he had acted to avenge the death of his diabetic father in an Israeli prison three years ago. Relatives said he had hitched a ride in a truck to Jaffa after attending early morning prayers at a Gaza mosque. The driver of the vehicle was arrested, the police said. Continuing a Pattern Today's killings emphasized a pattern of increasing bloodshed that has accompanied the faltering of Arab-Israeli peace talks. In the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli troops have killed at least a dozen Palestinians in the last month, and Arab gunmen have killed an Israeli soldier and a civilian in what has become a shooting war between hard-core militants of the Palestinian uprising and undercover army units who hunt them down. Arab attackers have also killed six Israelis in Israel. Military regulations have been relaxed in the West Bank, allowing soldiers to shoot armed Palestinians on sight. Army officers say radical Palestinian groups are intent on disrupting the Middle East peace process. The intensifying violence has exposed the gulf between the talks taking place abroad and the much harsher reality at home, said Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli expert on ethnic strife. "Events in the field have a dynamic of their own," the historian said. "The violence is spontaneous, endemic and chronic. The diplomatic process has not yet ripened, and the lack of progress has had a radicalizing effect because people who had expectations have been disappointed." | 2 ISRAELIS KILLED IN TEL AVIV ATTACK |
515045_4 | U.T.A. plane. But so far Libya has refused, but has offered to put them on trial and has asked the accusing Western Governments to provide evidence against them. Libyan Expresses Outrage In a news conference this afternoon at the United Nations, the Libyan representative condemned the proposed resolution. The envoy, Ali el-Houderi said: "This draft resolution does not reflect the will of the entire Security Council, but only the wishes of the three co-sponsor countries," referring to the United States, Britain and France. "Any pressure that might be applied against member countries of the Security Council to adopt this draft resolution will be considered as coercion and domination in its worst and most blatant form." He said the resolution "gets close to declaring war by using the Security Council." The United Nations plans in the next few days to test Iraq's willingness to accept the destruction of most of its Al Atheer nuclear-weapons plant south of Baghdad. The special commission and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations specialized agency, will send the Iraqis a list of the installations they want eliminated. Al Atheer was undamaged in the gulf war because the allies did not realize at the time that it was where Iraq planned to build and test a bomb. At last week's Security Council meeting with Mr. Aziz, the United States called for the plant's destruction. Mr. Aziz, officials say, took a more flexible approach with Mr. Ekeus on two other issues where it appeared to be heading toward a fresh confrontation with the Security Council. The Iraqis gave Mr. Ekeus an Arabic document that they say is the list of military industries requested by the special commission to monitor these factories, insuring that they are not used to make weapons of mass destruction. But it will take about two weeks before the document is translated into English and the commission can assess its value. Some Give and Take The Iraqis also said they were prepared to give the commission a requested list of the materials they have imported in their push to build nuclear, chemical and biological arsenals. But the Iraqis appeared unwilling to provide names of the companies that supplied these goods, as the commission also wants. And Mr. Aziz repeated that his Government does not accept Security Council Resolution 715, which provides for this long-term montitoring, calling this a breach of its sovereignty. | U.N. Demands an Iraqi Plan By March 26 to Scrap Arms |
513588_0 | Only two miles from the Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center, which last year was racked with disputes over the rewriting of critical internal analyses of patient care, a battle was playing itself out over the very same issue in an even more hard-pressed medical setting -- sprawling and beleaguered Kings County Hospital. Administrators at the huge Brooklyn hospital, scrambling to pass an important inspection, wanted to rewrite a host of inadequate records that were part of an important system of self-monitoring. The executive director, Bernard Rose, said the rewriting was needed to better reflect conversations that took place but were poorly recorded. Questions of Integrity But the doctor hired to help overhaul the system, Robert M. Levine, protested repeatedly, people familiar with the incident say. He contended that various proposals to rewrite the records either amounted to fraud or did not follow industry safeguards intended to insure honest documentation of the hospital's workings. A day after Dr. Levine told regulators of his concerns, the confrontation reached a climax: he was dismissed. The battle at Kings County is emblematic of the questions increasingly being raised in New York and across the country about the integrity of the hospital industry's primary system of self-policing, an elaborate network of checks and balances that forces hospitals to deal with their most uncomfortable medical problems, from impaired physicians to serious lapses in care. The system, called quality assurance, requires every hospital department to conduct candid self-analysis, most often in regular meetings, to track medical procedures and remedy flaws and to study the data so bad doctors can be identified. The battle at Woodhull involved the administration's effort to make substantive changes in the minutes of the committee that reviews surgical procedures. The rewriting, in the months before an accreditation survey, concealed failures in the hospital's quality assurance program and mistakes in medical care. Last week, the hospital learned that it had failed the survey and would lose its accreditation. Woodhull may be an extreme example, but interviews with more than 100 regulators, consultants, doctors and hospital administrators across the country paint a picture of frequent alterations to minutes in crunches before inspections, often with the help of consultants from a cottage industry that has grown up around the regulations. Many doctors say they are simply too overworked to comply with the requirements of the system, and administrators insist the changes are intended to do | Questions of Ethics Confront Hospitals Facing Inspections |
510651_4 | are recommended for those traveling to the Brazilian states of Acre and Rondonia, the territories of Amapa and Roraima and in rural areas of Amazonas, Goias, Maranhao, Mato Grosso and Para states. The Centers for Disease Control say that there is a problem in Brazil with dengue fever, a virus spread by mosquitoes that are active in the daytime; visitors are advised to wear long pants and sleeves and to use an insect repellent containing the chemical DEET. Visitors can be protected against cholera, which the centers say has also been reported in Brazil, by avoiding raw seafood, raw vegetables, ice cubes, water that has not been treated or boiled and fruit they have not peeled themselves. Buenos Aires in April is cooler than Rio, with average high temperature 72 and the low 53, with humidity about the same as in Rio. There are eight rainy days on average in April with a total of 3.5 inches. Argentina does not require visas for United States passport holders traveling as tourists for no more than three months. There are no vaccinations required for visitors to Argentina, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Only those visiting rural areas outside the usual tourist routes need protect themselves against yellow fever or, in rural areas near the Bolivian border, malaria, the centers say. In general, the centers add, visitors going to regions with questionable sanitation should consider a dose of immune globulin, and anyone born in 1957 or later visiting any developing region (including South America) should consider a second dose of measles vaccine. Specialty Tour Directory Q. Is there a directory of specialty tour operators that is available to the public? -- Richald L. Golden, Princeton, N.J. A. The Specialty Travel Index, published twice a year, is probably the most comprehensive such listing. The publication was designed for travel agents, who make up the great majority of its users, but about 5,000 consumers subscribe to it too, the publisher says. The most recent edition, for spring and summer of 1992, has 188 pages and lists 623 tour companies, most of which offer a variety of trips. The index has listings both by destination and by activity or focus. It costs $10 for two issues or $6 for one. They may be ordered from Alpine Hansen Publishers, 305 San Anselmo Avenue, San Anselmo, Calif. 94960, (415) 459-4900; credit card orders are not taken. | Q and A |
510623_4 | a tour of his property. The Amazon rain forest is a frontier. Any Brazilian resident can homestead legally, Mark told us; ownership requires only that the pioneer improve upon some portion of the land. Unfortunately, "improvement" usually means slash and burn. This brings nitrogen to soil so poor it can only sustain a single crop, the grain manioc. Pieces of the stem are just cut up, stuck in the ground and they sprout. From these fields, we trekked on through secondary forest (10 years' growth) and on into terra firma. "You can walk this way for six months and still be in the rain forest," Mark said. "Between here and Caracas, nothing but trees." From Alex Bradbury's book, "Backcountry Brazil," I had learned that there are 20 times as many species of trees in the Amazon as in Europe. With such competition for nutrients and light, no two alike grow side by side: palms, some of their trunks ringed with long spikes, rubber, cecropia, mahogany, itauba (its bark bendable when wet), jacaranda and ivory wood, to name a few. Most of the larger varieties support themselves on thin topsoil with buttress roots. BACK at our host's house, Andrew became livid when the homesteader showed us a room full of live Amazon turtles caught for food. Authorities are not doing enough to educate the settlers and protect the wildlife, Andrew felt. The homesteader had told him turtles were much easier to find as recently as a few years ago. A few mornings later Andrew was further incensed by the sight of a woman plucking a striated heron for breakfast. Our own breakfast, back on the boat, was a buffet of scrambled eggs, cheese, ham and crackers, bananas (raw, fried and boiled), cookies and a choice of fruit juices. New to me were graviola -- a subtle milky flavor; cuperacu -- sweet and sour; guarana -- tangy and highly caffeinated, and an avocado milkshake the cook hesitated to serve, explaining that this "vitamina" is locally considered a potent aphrodisiac. Afterward, we soaped up and bathed in the river before the warm water grew too hot to be pleasurable. By 9 o'clock, we were sweating again and sought out the shade of the top deck until lunch. Lunch, like dinner, generally featured some riverfish, the best of which was tambaqui -- a fruit-eater with teeth like a cow's whose meat tastes similar to | Chugging Down the Amazon |
510718_0 | In the Belem Tower, a 500-year-old stone bulwark in Lisbon, near the point where the Tagus River gets lost in the iron-gray nothingness of the Atlantic, a disk symbolizing the celestial sphere revolved slowly in the middle of a blackened room, illuminated by a spotlight. It was a stormy day. I was the tower's only visitor. As ocean gusts belted the shutters -- evoking what I imagined to be the sound of solar winds in space -- the deathly loneliness of exploration, both in our day and in Vasco da Gama's, became overwhelmingly manifest. Winds whistled up the spiral stone stairs and rain lashed the gangplank connecting the tower to the shore, 50 feet away. Only in this weather could I envisage the Belem Tower as it was before the Tagus changed course, when it stood far out in the water, the final beacon for generations of Portuguese navigators facing an ocean, only recently charted, beyond which lay the virgin shores of Africa and South America. More so than other empires -- British, Hapsburg, Ottoman, Russian -- the Portuguese empire evolved romantically, without direction, the territorial bounty of a few adventurers. The voyages of Diogo Cao, Bartholomeu Dias, Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral at the turn of the 15th century eventually gave Portugal Angola and other African territories, Goa on India's western coast and Brazil; later the Portuguese acquired parts of Timor, in the Malay Archipelago, and Macao in China. They will rule Macao until 1999, two years after the British are to leave Hong Kong, making Portugal the last European colonial power in China. Intoxicated with their new-found wealth, the Portuguese let the gold slip through their fingers. The imperial booty was never directed toward modernization back home. Portugal remained an antiquated and crumbling little jewel, lacking a middle class until this century. In the "historical" age in which we now live, there may be no more poignant a place to meditate on the folly of empires than along Lisbon's Tagus waterfront, with its weather-beaten stone-and-tile monuments, eloquent in their sadness and decline. There is a myth about Lisbon: that it is a southern city. But the truth is that like two other cities of empire, Istanbul and Trieste (the one Ottoman, the other Austro-Hungarian), it is both northern and southern, damp and cold almost half the year, with badly heated interiors. The southern aspect of Lisbon's | Lisbon: Reliquary of Portugal's Golden Age |
510650_2 | tour company has been running this particular trip; judgment on rating the difficulty of a trip is developed through experience. Ask who will lead the trip because it helps if the people who screen the participants will have to live with their choices. Listen to how hard the telephone sell is. Nonprofit companies do not usually give commissions to the phone agents, so the employees can be more selective. As Mr. Robertson of Mountain Travel said, if a company offers a range of trips, from passive to rugged, you can assume that an uneasy prospect can be offered something less strenuous. Ask how much of the company's clientele is repeat business: in interviews for this article, the levels were 40 or 50 percent. If you are going to a remote destination, ask if there is a way out, short of helicopter evacuation. A couple of experts said they had turned down travelers, but usually it was a matter of adjusting the client, once the capacities were clear, to the trip. One group of travelers had a bad experience last year on a yacht trip to swim with dolphins off Grand Bahama. The program, planned with five days of anchoring offshore for swimming, was organized by a nonprofit group, Oceanic Society Expeditions of San Francisco, which has been operating for 20 years. The trip leader, Pamela Byrnes, a naturalist who is a veteran of 80 trips over eight years for this operator and others, said that she had never encountered a situation like it. A Problem Client The participant at issue was extremely obese and she could not at first get into a bunk on the boat. Nothing in the application betrayed this, with the applicant described as a "strong swimmer" "in good physical condition." Under "weight," the client wrote "heavy." "This applicant gave us the answers we wanted to hear," said Mary Jane Schramm, a spokeswoman for Oceanic. The weather on this trip was rough and it was not possible to go to the anchorage where participants encounter dolphins, a disappointment to all, and the days were spent on short rides in rubber boats, swimming at the beach and the like. A participant on this trip wrote afterward to complain to Oceanic that the trip was wrecked for everyone because even without the dolphin swims, the woman had trouble negotiating the Zodiac craft used for forays, and further, could not | Gauging Fitness For Active Trips |
510606_2 | edge. Teen-age mothers. Child abuse. Crowded schools. Homes without fathers. Projects lousy with drugs, vermin, crime, and always, the smell of urine in the elevator. I have never been in a project that hasn't had that odor, and I have never smelled it without wondering: If your home smells like a bathroom, what does that tell you about yourself? One of the ways to motivate kids is to say that if you do this bad thing now, you won't be able to do this good thing tomorrow. That doesn't work with the Lost Boys. They stopped believing in tomorrow a long time ago. The impulse control of an adolescent, the conviction that sooner or later you'll end up dead or in jail anyhow, and a handgun you can buy on the corner easier than getting yourself a pair of new Nikes: the end result is preordained. "If you don't got a gun, you got to get one," said one teen-ager hanging with his friends at the corner of East New York and Pennsylvania Avenues. If news is sometimes defined as aberration, as Man Bites Dog, it's the successes we should be rushing out to cover in these neighborhoods, the kids who graduate, who get jobs, who stay clean. Dr. Alwyn Cohall, a pediatrician who runs four school-based clinics in New York, remembers the day he was giving one of those kids a college physical, which is the happiest thing he ever does, when from out in the hallway he heard the sound. Pow. Pow. One moment he was filling out the forms for a future, the next giving CPR to another teen-ager with a gunshot wound blossoming in his chest. The kid died on the high school floor. "He never even made the papers next day," the doctor recalled. The story in East New York will likely end with the funerals. A 15-year-old killer is not that unusual; many city emergency rooms provide coloring books on gun safety. Dr. Cohall says that when the students at his schools come back after the long hot summer, they are routinely asked by the clinic staff how many of their friends were shot over vacation. The good doctor knows that it is possible to reclaim some of the Lost Boys, but it requires money, dedication, above all the will to do it. Or we can continue to let them go. To defray expenses. | Public & Private; To Defray Expenses |
510782_5 | to co-exist after all these years. Recently, he recalled, he attended a wedding Mass in which some charismatics began speaking in tongues. Those, like Mr. Zwilling, who do not consider themselves charismatics, continued to worship in their own more subdued way. Evidence of Growth While Mr. Zwilling said that parishioners do not register themselves as charismatics, evidence of its growth can be seen in the number of people who attend weekend charismatic retreats or the prayer meetings held in local churches. The New York Archdiocese has two charismatic centers, the one in the Bronx for those who speak Spanish and another in Scarsdale. In the Bronx, where many Catholic parishes have mostly Hispanic members, the movement has resulted in a boom in weeknight prayer meeting attendance and in overflow crowds at the charismatic center. "There is hardly a church in the South Bronx that does not have a charismatic prayer group," said Bishop Franscisco Garmendia, auxiliary bishop for the South Bronx. The Rev. J. Juan Diaz Vilar, a Jesuit at the Northeast Catholic Center in New York, said that Hispanic Catholics, unlike the Irish and Italian immigrants before them, did not bring their own clergy to this country. "The tradition of church activities among Hispanics is much stronger than it is among many Americans," he said. "Much of the social life for many Hispanics revolves around the church. Americans have other activities besides church. They don't have time, especially if they are professional people. Hispanics tend to have more gatherings related to their church. They celebrate the religious holidays with more fanfare. That is why the charismatic movement has been so attractive to them. It gives them the chance to experience their faith more." One recent Tuesday night at St. Thomas of Aquinas Catholic Church in the East Tremont section of the Bronx, about 30 parishioners sat in chairs arranged in a semicircle around a microphone and a small group of musicians. During a four-hour session, several in the audience stood before the group to "witness," or recount an act of God that they had observed recently, or led the others in prayer. Most of them were middle-aged women, but there were also a scattering of men and young couples and even some small children, who sat coloring in a book as the adults were entranced in their prayer. Juanita Villarreal, who said she has been attending this prayer meeting | Charismatic Movement Gains Among Catholics |
511619_1 | provide the digital expertise and France Telecom, the French national telephone and communications corporation, will handle transmission of the project's images by satellite and digital telephone lines. Averting Wrong Impression The venture's title is "Projet Patrimoine 2001" ("Project Patrimony 2001"). Unesco officials sought to minimize the sexist implications by translating patrimoine as heritage. The "2001" seems to have no other meaning than to point forward in a zippy way. "It's supposed to suggest a little step into the future," said Luis Monreal, director general of La Caixa Foundation, at a news conference preceding the announcement. The foundation receives its income from La Caixa Bank and La Caixa municipal pension fund of Barcelona, each of which, under Spanish law, must devote half its profits to cultural and social philanthropy. The foundation is one of the richest in the world. The budget for the first year alone is $140 million, and that does not include the equipment, assistance and expertise provided by Unesco, Gamma, Kodak and France Telecom. The project has set an initial goal of 200 "missions" over the next five years. A Growing List Each site is to be photographed using two criteria: scientific comprehensiveness and artistic beauty. Most locations will be drawn from a list of 358 "world heritage sites" assembled by Unesco, a list that comprises 260 cultural sites, 84 natural sites and 14 that are both. The list is growing, however, since new sites are being added and new countries are joining the program (Japan, for instance, has not yet signed up). Completed assignments on display at Unesco headquarters are Angkor Wat, Celtic civilizations and "El Dorado," meaning pre-Columbian ruins in Peru, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Colombia. Plans include Viking and Hittite civilizations, the cities of Oxford, England, and Bruges, Belgium, and Seychelles Islands turtles. Gerard Bolla, a retired deputy director of Unesco, said that the project had come about after conversations he had with Mr. Monreal and Olivier Binst, editor in chief of Gamma. All agreed that a remarkable number of important world sites were poorly documented photographically. The three will select the sites to be photographed, Mr. Bolla said. Gamma will choose the photographers, but they will not, as Mr. Binst was eager to point out, all be from Gamma. Indeed, of the three projects on display here tonight, Angkor Wat was photographed by Julio Donoso, a French-based Chilean associated with Sygma, a Gamma rival. | Photo File Of World's Wonders |
511794_0 | With rain forests disappearing and species becoming extinct, many possible sources of drugs may vanish in coming decades. "Nature is still full of all these compounds that no one really knows what they do," said Thomas Eisner, a professor of biology at Cornell University. "Species are disappearing faster than we are looking chemically." Conservationists say the potential of natural areas as a source of drugs could provide an economic incentive for both drug companies and the citizens of tropical countries to save the forests. Rewarding Source Countries Providing such an incentive requires rewarding the country that is the source of a drug. Until a few years ago, companies would freely collect samples from tropical rain forests without feeling any obligation to compensate the source country. Now, nations are beginning to realize the value of their genetic resources, and in some cases are demanding payments. "They are very sensitive to the possibility of exploitation," said Dr. Gordon M. Cragg, chief of the natural products branch of the National Cancer Institute. The institute has now agreed to require payment of royalties to a country whose bio-material turns into a source for drugs. In most cases it can take decades for a drug to reach the market, at which point royalties are paid. Some conservationists say that if rain forests are to be saved, drug companies must make payments up front. As a model, they point to Merck & Company's agreement last year to pay $1 million to the Institute for Bio diversity in Costa Rica in return for the right to prospect for drugs in that country. Shaman Pharmaceuticals, a start-up company in San Carlos, Calif., is searching for natural drugs in rain forests by relying on the knowledge of native healers, or shamans, in those areas. The company has set up a nonprofit organization, the Healing Forest Conservancy, to help funnel aid back to those tribes. | Not Without the Rain Forests |
516509_5 | developing world." Chile's delegate, Vincent Sanchez, said: "This conference could fail. We've agreed absolutely nothing of real significance so far." Already, an important attempt to draft a convention to save the world's rain forests has collapsed because mainly northern, industrial countries and southern, undeveloped countries cannot agree on who is to blame for their destruction. Progress Is Expected While few delegates deny that the Rio preparatory conference has reached a critical phase, some say progress will pick up in the two remaining weeks as countries realize time is running out. "These big conferences usually reach a low point about now," said Britain's delegate, Fiona McConnell. "It's often darkest just before the dawn." But increasingly participants here say that the Rio meetings must be judged less on concrete agreements than on broad global initiatives to make economic development environmentally sustainable. "Rio must be seen as the start of a process, not the end," Mr. Strong, the conference's Secretary General, said today. The last world environmental conference, held in Stockholm 20 years ago, resulted in most governments' creating environmental ministries. Agenda 21, the 800-page global environmental action plan, lays down new goals in virtually every field. To carry out their part of this agenda, developing countries say they will require $70 billion in additional aid each year over the $55 billion they now receive from northern industrialized countries. Relations Embittered Most industrialized nations are ready to make firm pledges of new resources and access to technology that will allow developing countries to make a safe transition to industrialization. But the United States continues to resist even a general commitment, even though it recently made an additional $75 million available in environmental aid for developing countries. The result, many delegates say, has been a general embittering of North-South relations at the conference, with the Group of 77 pushing a number of demands the northern countries consider extreme, politicized and unacceptable. In Rio, heads of state hope to adopt what is being called an "earth charter," a document northern countries foresee as a relatively short statement committing everyone to taking greater care of the environment -- "the sort of thing you hang on a classroom wall," one diplomat said. But the Group of 77 has submitted a long draft accusing northern countries of selfishly pushing the world toward ecological disaster through their greed. The draft demands sweeping changes in life styles and consumption patterns. | U.S. Under Fire In Talks at U.N. On Environment |
516352_0 | By rebuffing France's traditional political parties and giving new support to far-rightist and environmentalist alternatives, voters have deepened the political uncertainty that has slowly taken root here in the last year. The stunning defeat of President Francois Mitterrand's Socialist Party in regional elections on Sunday confirmed a loss of faith in a Government that has been in office since 1981. Yet, almost as significant, the conservative Union for France coalition failed to profit from growing disenchantment with the way the country is being run. Because almost 50 percent of French voters turned away from the two main political groups, Sunday's results represent more than a setback for the Socialists. The turn also presents a serious challenge to the highly centralized political system that has governed France for the last 34 years. The Socialists had expected to fare poorly in the elections for France's 22 regional councils. But in their worst showing in 23 years, they won just 18.3 percent of votes, down from 36.4 percent in the 1988 parliamentary elections and 23.6 percent in the 1989 European Parliament elections. 33 Percent for Coalition The conservative Union for France remains the largest political bloc, but it also lost ground, winning 33 percent against 37.7 percent in 1988 and 37.1 percent in 1989. Scattered across the political spectrum, the anti-establishment vote further underlined not only the confusion but also the frustration of a good part of the 37.5-million-strong electorate. Whether in protest or out of conviction, however, its message was one of rejection of the dominant political class. Results showed that 13.9 percent of the electorate backed the "anti-immigration" National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, 13.9 percent supported two competing environmentalist parties, 8 percent remained loyal to the Communists, 3.9 percent voted for a hunting and fishing movement and the balance went to fringe groups on left and right. Until now, France's simmering political crisis has largely focused on Mr. Mitterrand and his Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, who have seen their popularity tumble as the French blamed them for an economic slowdown, rising unemployment, urban blight and the quality of education. Focus on Immigration Many French also fear that their jobs and their way of life are being threatened by third-world immigration and they hold the Government responsible for not tackling the problem. In fact, many of the French who do not vote for Mr. Le Pen do share his view that | Political Doubt in France: Challenges to the Status Quo |
516392_0 | OF all the giant plates of the earth's surface whose motions cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, none is more mysterious than the Philippine Sea Plate, the one bounded by southern Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and the chain of islands from Iwo Jima to Guam. Now scientists from countries bordering the plates, as well as from Korea and the United States, are beginning an effort to solve the mysteries. They are setting up survey markers as reference points so satellites can measure relative motions between points on or around the plate to within a fraction of an inch. The project is of great importance because this plate's motions cause severe earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in some of the world's most densely populated areas, notably in Japan and the Philippines. Other plates forming the earth's surface move as new sea floor spreads in opposite directions from midocean ridges like the ones in the mid-Atlantic or eastern Pacific. But the Philippine Sea Plate is unusual in having no such ridge. Instead, it is almost completely surrounded by "subduction zones" where the sea floor, driven by the motion of neighboring plates, is drawn down into the earth's interior, a phenomenon that makes it more difficult for researchers to track the plate's motion. Adding to the problem, the sea floor on this plate for some unexplained reason lacks the magnetic patterns observable on other plates that scientists can use to follow movements. The satellites used in the measurements are part of the Global Positioning System. Each carries an atomic clock whose readings are encoded in signals from the satellite. By comparing time on the satellite with that from another clock at the observing position, the travel times of the signal can be determined. The exact position of the marker can then be determined if readings are obtained from at least four satellites. The system is widely used by ships, but the Defense Department has withheld the codes needed for the precise positions, because they have military uses. But scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University say they plan to calculate the precise position of the markers by making repeated measurements. SCIENCE WATCH | Unlocking the Secrets Of a Mysterious Plate |
514646_0 | World Economies | |
513165_0 | For many in the Caribbean, the most readily visible face of Cuba was long represented by olive-green military advisers, or young bearded doctors sent abroad from Havana to share the fruits of the revolution in the hopes that others might deecide to emulate it. But as leaders of the English-speaking Caribbean gathered here recently to discuss issues of common concern like tourism and regional economic integration, they were joined by what Havana hopes will rapidly take hold as its new image. As they have at other recent regional meetings, nattily attired Cuban officials worked the hallways here at a February summit of Caricom, as the Caribbean Community is known, buttonholing business leaders, exploring investment possibilities and renewing political contacts that have in many cases lay dormant for years. Cuba's rediscovery of the Caribbean has become a centerpiece of Havana's high-priority push to build bridges to the rest of the hemisphere at a time when the island needs new friends. And after years of wariness toward Cuba, at least in part for fear of invoking Washington's displeasure, many of the Caribbean's leaders are tentatively reciprocating Havana's interest. "There is quite a widespread view that we would like to see some measure of reintegration of Cuba," Prime Minister Michael N. Manley of Jamaica said. "We are a democracy and they are not, but we have always felt it was good to cooperate in ways that do not compromise our principles." Mr. Manley's friendship with Cuba brought him Washington's hostility from when he previously served as Prime Minister in the 1970's, but he and other Caribbean leaders suggested that with most of the region consisting of democracies that are pursuing free-market style reforms, contact with Cuba no longer araouses the same suspicion it once did. With its sugar industry in serious decline, the cooperation that most interests Havana involves finding ways to tap into the Caribbean's multi-billion-dollar tourism industry. Deprived of regular airline connections with the United States, which were severed as part of Washington's three decade-long embargo, Cuba is seeking to help its travel industry by building links to other Caribbean islands in the hope that more vacationers, including Americans, will take side trips to the island. Already, in the last year Cuba's strategy has produced payoffs in the form of hotel investment from Jamaica and both chartered and scheduled flights with a growing number of islands, including the Bahamas, the Cayman | Cuba Seeks Friends and Tourists in Caribbean |
513286_7 | Foods Company in Minneapolis) to Thai pizza (seasoned with mint, basil and coriander, which the Satay Company of Austin, Tex., will introduce next year). But even these concepts aren't as limitless as the Salsa Concept, which borrows the familiarity of ketchup but smacks of exotica and health and is adaptable to myriad "ethnic flavor profiles." Mr. Weiss, the New York market researcher, predicted the salsa coup 18 months before it occurred, and analysts in his company project an indefinite salsa sovereignty, with retail sales growing from $640 million in 1991 to over $1 billion in 1995. Ketchup will remain in subjugation, with projected annual retail sales of $715 million in 1995, compared with $600 million in 1991. Beth Adams, the manager of public communications for Heinz U.S.A. in Pittsburgh, the country's oldest and largest producer of ketchup, points out that while salsa has surpassed ketchup in dollar sales, ketchup continues to have a "higher household penetration." In addition, she said, salsa, which is being used as a dip for chips, a garnish for grilled meat and, increasingly, as a marinade by the health-conscious, is typically used in larger quantity than ketchup. In upscale restaurants, the salsa frontier is still being explored. Last week, for instance, Mr. Hayot served a feta, minced onion and tomato salsa with chicken paillard, and Ms. Beepe served a spicy corn salsa with catfish and a pineapple and pepper salsa with grilled swordfish. As big brands formulate traditional Tex-Mex salsas, small ethnic producers are infusing the Salsa Concept with flavors that range from fiery peanut and ginger to feisty curry. Culinary purists regard these salsa variations with the disdain that Stalinists once reserved for Trotskyites. But Dave Pace, who in 1947 bottled and sold the first commercial salsa in the United States, is amused by the ethnic explosion. "In '47, my sauce bottles exploded all over the grocery shelves because I couldn't get the darned formula right," said the 78-year-old Mr. Pace, who retired last year from Pace Foods Inc. in San Antonio, where he still lives. "In the 70's, the business exploded when the hippies came along. No question but this health stuff made the whole category explode, and it just tickles me to see these people take the ball and run with it." -------------------- Next Wednesday: Status and food choices. THE SERIES SO FAR THE second article of this series appeared on March 4 | New Mainstream: Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Salsa |
516290_0 | World Economies |
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