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1691070_0

On the Road to an Irish Peace

To the Editor: Re ''After Taste of Calm, Appetite for Peace'' (news article, July 29): It is hoped that the Irish Republican Army's decision to disarm shall mark a significant epoch in both British and Irish history. It is a time for reflection, a time to look back with honesty and openness over the violence that has stained Northern Ireland -- not since the 1960's or the 80's (as popular thought goes) -- but at least since the 1920's. But this is not a history lesson. Rather, I want to express that the totality and complexity of the horrible struggle that engulfed the six counties was not evident in your article. While I don't wish to defend any group's killing of any innocent people, how could there not be a single reference to the terrible atrocities committed by British troops during the 20th century? Look at the civilian death tolls over the decades. Look at the climate in impoverished Catholic neighborhoods and the unchecked brutalization of its inhabitants that led to the civil rights movement. The situation is much more complicated than you make it out to be. William Cullinan Brooklyn, July 29, 2005

1690995_1

I.R.A. Pledge Seen as Potential Model for Other Conflicts

that aspiration to be fully realized. Yesterday's gathering was organized by a private foreign policy study group, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, which has played an influential role in the Irish peace process since the early 1990's. The main speaker at the lunch, Martin McGuinness, a former I.R.A. commander and the chief negotiator for Sinn Fein, the political party aligned with the I.R.A., said it was clear that democratic institutions, created by negotiations and ratified by voters across Ireland, could replace the armed struggle. He noted that a ''tiny number'' of Irish republicans did not agree. ''I think they are making a grievous mistake for Ireland, Irish people and for themselves,'' he said. Mr. McGuinness, who came to the United States this week to meet with officials in Washington about the I.R.A. announcement, said that as soon he got off the plane he received a call from former President Bill Clinton, who visited Northern Ireland three times during his presidency and helped persuade the I.R.A. to declare a cease-fire in 1994. ''He said that this was going to be an example for ending conflicts around the world,'' Mr. McGuinness said. Mr. Clinton's view was endorsed by Henry A. Kissinger, the former secretary of state, who said at the lunch that he had never tried to intervene diplomatically in Northern Ireland, thinking it a hopeless cause. ''If it could happen in Ireland, with the history of Ireland and the distrust, I'd like to think it could happen anywhere,'' Mr. Kissinger said. The chairman of the foreign policy group, William J. Flynn, said that people in Northern Ireland had slipped from the grip of history not with the single declaration from the I.R.A. this week but through a long, tedious process of replacing physical force with democratic institutions. He and others noted that conflict in Northern Ireland had its origins in institutional discrimination that began almost as soon as it was split from the rest of the island by the British in 1921. Ruled by one party for nearly 50 years, Northern Ireland's legislative body was described by Lord Craigavon, an early prime minister, as ''a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people.'' The Orange Order, a fraternal society to which many leading politicians, police officers and business people belonged, has an explicitly anti-Catholic charter. Through the first 50 years of partition, Catholics in Northern Ireland had far less access to

1691071_0

On the Road to an Irish Peace

To the Editor: The announcement by the Irish Republican Army that it will renounce violence represents a long-overdue realization that terrorism is an ineffective method of producing political change. Long years of terrorism against Israel have not eliminated Israel. The bombings of American airplanes, embassies and even the destruction of the World Trade Center towers failed to alter American foreign policy. Chechnya was not made independent by the murder of children in Moscow. To produce political change, you must do so by political means, and it is time that the rest of the world's terrorists realize this. Fred Levit Wilmette, Ill., July 29, 2005

1690994_0

To Some in Ulster, Celebration of I.R.A. Pledge Is Early

If Northern Ireland woke up on Friday morning to a new era in the province's troubled history, few people here were in a mood to celebrate. The Irish Republican Army's pledge to end its bloody 36-year campaign of violence, splashed across Belfast's dozen morning newspapers, did not really change anything, some residents said. Large-scale bombings and attacks mainly stopped with the group's 1994 cease-fire, they said, but low-level violence and organized crime have continued. ''It's the same as it was a week ago, a month ago, a year ago,'' said Anthony McIntyre, a former I.R.A. member who writes frequently about Northern Irish politics. The I.R.A. ''will carry on with I.R.A. discipline, and intimidating people who oppose it. It can still prevent people from getting into clubs and from getting jobs.'' Catherine McCartney, one of six women who led an international campaign to highlight I.R.A. violence after members of the group killed her brother, said she was surprised to hear what she called ''euphoric'' reactions to the statement from the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern. ''I thought, 'Have they all taken amnesia pills or something?''' she said. ''It's not historic. It's only historic if it's put into practice.'' Despite the widespread skepticism, some tangible results were immediately visible. The British government promised legislation in the fall that would allow I.R.A. fugitives abroad to return home without fear of prosecution. In southern Armagh, a rural county along the border with the Irish Republic where I.R.A. support is traditionally very strong, the British Army began dismantling a military base and two of the mountaintop watchtowers that, for a generation, have used sophisticated surveillance equipment to spy on private homes. The British Army, which has more than 10,000 soldiers garrisoned in Northern Ireland, has removed a number of similar installations in recent years. The I.R.A. statement was widely hailed as a watershed moment that formally ended the conflict that had stretched over 36 years and claimed more than 3,500 lives. It addressed several issues that have long frustrated attempts to resuscitate Northern Ireland's suspended local legislature, which was designed to share power between Protestant and Catholic groups after the 1998 Belfast peace accord. In particular, the I.R.A. ordered its members to get rid of their weapons, and said it would cooperate with a commission that oversees disarmament, even using clergymen as witnesses to verify the process. The group's

1691069_0

On the Road to an Irish Peace

To the Editor: The leadership of the Irish Republican Army and Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, are to be congratulated for their courageous and unparalleled announcement. But I am disappointed that Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments and the White House statement, as reported, make no mention of the need for loyalist paramilitary groups to follow suit. Jim Judd Cinaminson, N.J., July 29, 2005

1684461_2

They Want The Sharks To Bite; Northeastern Fishermen Have Hard Time Finding Prey

open water. Even in good years, many boats return with empty holds. In this year's tournament season, timed as always to the migration north of big sharks in June, the competition started out slow. The South Jersey Shark Tournament, a premier event held out of Cape May three weekends ago, drew 217 boats competing for $230,000 in prize money, but only 37 sharks were caught in two days of fishing. All but a few had to be thrown back because they were too small. ''There just wasn't a whole lot out there,'' said Bob Glover, the tournament organizer. ''In previous years there have been hundreds more.'' Shark boats typically go from 20 to 50 miles offshore, particularly for mako, a deep-water loner. The fishermen bait immense hooks that trail deep in the water as the boat drifts. The crew ladles gallons of chum -- pieces of fish -- in the water in hopes of drawing prey. Most of the time is spent just waiting for a strike. ''You go from sitting on the deck, taking a nap, to instant adrenaline rush,'' said Mr. Pluta, who went out last weekend with his friends, Mike Petruzzi and Eric Jacobson. ''Suddenly the snap clips go, the drag is screaming on your reel, and you're praying it's a money fish.'' Those moments of excitement make the tedium of waiting, not to mention the fruitless hunts on other days, suddenly worth it. But with all the male bonding surrounding shark tournaments, catching a money fish is not the only reward. ''There's a big macho thing in shark fishing, and in my opinion it's all linked to piracy,'' said Tom DeLotto, the manager of the Crystal Point Yacht Club, the headquarters for the Mako Fever tournament. ''Not the burn-and-pillage kind, but the camaraderie. And there's definitely a top-of-the-dock hierarchy when they come in with their big boats and a big sharks and the gold reels and black rods and tens of thousands of dollars worth of gear -- they're like pirates.'' Pete Ernstberger, a general contractor from Whitehouse Station, N.J., drew slightly embarrassed nods from a circle of friends when he put it down to Darwin. ''A shark is a giant predator and so am I, and I want conquer it,'' he said. ''We're two animals at the top of the apex. Yeah, animals -- you can quote me. I've been called worse.'' The shark boats

1685090_1

NEWS SUMMARY

dominates the lives of those in its shadow; while some are repelled by its intrusive nature, others are drawn to the overwhelming might that lies just on the other side. A8 First Gay Marriages in Spain The lines inside the Madrid Civil Registry, where residents apply for marriage licenses, swelled with gay and lesbian couples after Parliament passed the bill giving same-sex couples in Spain the right to marry and to adopt children. A3 2 Topics to Highlight Summit The leaders of eight major industrial nations meeting at the Gleneagles golf estate north of Edinburgh will be preoccupied by two main subjects: dealing with climate change and relieving poverty in Africa through changes in policies on trade, aid and debt. A6 Corruption Hurts Mexico Police Mexico has been forced to take another hard look at its police force as the country struggles against a devastating crime wave that has taken more than 600 lives in the last six months. A3 French Politician Charges Ahead Nicolas Sarkozy, the nakedly ambitious former mayor of Paris' upper-crust Neuilly-sur-Seine suburb, has bolted clear of all political rivals, polls indicate, in his race to replace President Jacques Chirac. A4 OBITUARIES B7 Christopher Fry The British playwright who created memorable parts for John Gielgud and Laurence Oliver, gave Richard Burton his first role on Broadway, and was primarily responsible for the script of ''Ben-Hur,'' he was 97. B7 NATIONAL A10-15 Military Leaders Consider New Configurations The Pentagon's senior planners are weighing whether to continue with its model of a military capable of waging two wars at once or to shape the armed forces to mount one conventional campaign at a time and shift more resources to homeland security and anti-terrorism. A1 Groups Aim to Sway President As President Bush prepared for a trip to Europe, advocacy groups intensely campaigned to influence the president's selection for a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. A14 More Women in Federal Courts A look at the courts shows the breadth of change across the nearly quarter of a century from Justice O'Connor's nomination to her retirement. A1 Church Body Backs Gay Unions With a movement to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage picking up steam, the United Church of Christ became the first mainline Christian denomination to support same-sex marriage officially by passing a resolution affirming ''equal marriage rights for couples regardless of gender.'' A10 N.A.A.C.P. Adjusts

1685138_0

Plotting to Save the Structure of Those Aging Bones

Osteoporosis is a serious and costly disease. Nearly 30million women and 14million men in the United States already have it or are heading toward it. The numbers continue to rise as the population ages, especially now that far fewer women are taking estrogen, which protects against postmenopausal bone loss. Osteoporosis is also a silent disease, silent, that is, until a bone breaks in response to a relatively minor stress, like tripping on a step. Several drugs in the bisphosphonate class -- Fosamax and Actonel taken weekly and Boniva taken monthly -- have been shown to stem further bone loss, increase bone density and cut fracture rates in half in women with established osteoporosis. The same effect has been seen in women with somewhat less bone loss who, for other reasons, are at high risk for a fracture. But what about the many postmenopausal women with a lesser degree of bone loss called osteopenia? Should they, too, take a bisphosphonate to protect their bones after menopause? Is this cost-effective, and is it likely to help the women more than it harms them? Specialists across the country are divided in their answers. Nearly all the experts, pro and con, act as consultants or receive research grants from the companies that make the bone-protecting drugs. Weighing the Risks Most experts say the inevitable loss of bone after menopause and the proven ability of these drugs to prevent fractures clearly outweigh the risks stemming from a slowdown in bone renewal. But others fear that long-term use of bisphosphonates can render bones more brittle and more likely to break, even as they increase bone density. Dr. Susan M. Ott, a bone expert at the University of Washington, said studies suggested that old bone that was not renewed lost its elasticity. She likened it to the effects of a very strong wind on a young tree versus a thicker old one. Young tree bend under the stress without breaking; older ones, though denser, are more likely to snap in two. Fracture risk, said Dr. Michael R. McClung of the Oregon Osteoporosis Center in Portland, is complex, and the diagnosis of osteopenia and treatment with bisphosphonates should not be based on bone mineral density (B.M.D.) tests alone. It is clear, Dr. McClung wrote in May in Annals of Internal Medicine in response to a report on cost effectiveness, ''that pharmacologic therapy is not cost-effective in women selected

1689606_1

Dross Into Gold

few years, the shipping industry in New York and New Jersey has faced the growing problem of what to do with dredge spoils, the mucky, often highly contaminated byproduct dug up from bays and rivers when they are widened and deepened for navigability. Until recently, the most common practice was simply to load the mud onto barges and dump it in the ocean. But about five years ago, the federal government began to require that all dredged materials be tested before dumping because of the adverse effect of putting tens of millions of tons of toxic muck where it did not belong. Nor was the alternative of dumping the dredge spoils on land a practical solution. Contaminants in the mud -- the product of decades of industrial pollution -- would seep into groundwater, presenting a health risk to those living nearby. As a result, much of the increasingly urgent work of dredging New York area waterways has come to a halt, threatening the viability of the area's future as a destination for super-size container ships. Enter the Algocen, a 730-foot ore carrier recently decommissioned after three decades of service on the Great Lakes. The idea, originally the product of an environmental scientist from Rutgers and Bay Shore's owners, is to solve a dredging problem by setting up the ship as a floating recycling plant that will convert polluted mud into resalable products like topsoil, concrete and a lightweight stone prized in construction. While on a visit to the Bay Shore Recycling company's grim 26-acre site on the Raritan, the Rutgers professor, Ali Maher, had a revelation. Looking around at the confluence of water, rail and road --the bridges that carry the Garden State Parkway and Route 9 are practically overhead -- the professor decided that it would make a perfect site for a large-scale experiment in recycling dredge spoils. The idea was somewhat outlandish, if only because it had never been tried before. Yet within weeks, Ms. Montecalvo said, officials from the State Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Transportation the federal Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy ''came flying in from all over the country'' to take a look. Now, after millions of dollars of investments from a federal fund for pilot recycling programs, and millions more from the private New York and New Jersey companies hoping to profit from a new industry, the groundwork has been

1689700_1

Scaring Us Senseless

say that as much as we think of ourselves as rational animals, risk avoidance is not governed by reason, cognition or intellect. Rather, it comes chiefly from our emotional system. Patients with brain lesions that prevent them from registering feelings even when their cognitive and analytical capacities are intact are incapable of effectively getting out of harm's way. It is largely our emotional toolkit, and not what is called ''reason,'' that governs our capacity for self-preservation. Second, this emotional system can be an extremely naïve statistician, because it was built for a primitive environment with simple dangers. That might work for you the next time you run into a snake or a tiger. But because the emotional system is impressionable and prefers shallow, social and anecdotal information to abstract data, it hinders our ability to cope with the more sophisticated risks that afflict modern life. For example, the death of an acquaintance in a motorcycle accident would be more likely to deter you from riding a motorcycle than would a dispassionate, and undoubtedly far more representative, statistical analysis of motorcycles' dangers. You might avoid Central Park on the basis of a single comment at a cocktail party, rather than bothering to read the freely available crime statistics that provide a more realistic view of the odds that you will be victimized. This primacy of the emotions can distort our decision-making. Travelers at airports irrationally tend to agree to pay more for terrorism insurance than they would for general insurance, which includes terrorism coverage. No doubt the word ''terrorism'' can be specific enough to evoke an emotional reaction, while the general insurance offer wouldn't awaken the travelers' anxieties in the same way. In the modern age, the news media have the power to amplify such emotional distortions, particularly with their use of images that go directly to the emotional brain. Consider this: Osama bin Laden continued killing Americans and Western Europeans in the aftermath of Sept. 11, though indirectly. How? A large number of travelers chose to drive rather than fly, and this caused a corresponding rise in casualties from automobile accidents (any time we drive more than 20 miles, our risk of death exceeds that of flying). Yet these automobile accidents were not news stories -- they are a mere number. We have pictures of those killed by bombs, not those killed on the road. As Stalin supposedly said, ''One

1689419_5

The Truth Wars

Many readers will get lost as Blackburn chattily weaves his way through all this. The book ties together material from his lectures and essays, and does not have the unity of his earlier popularizations, ''Think'' (1999) and ''Being Good'' (2001). But several parts of it repay close study, such as a perceptive chapter on ''the skeptical torrent of Nietzsche.'' Nietzsche's remarks on truth include something persuasive for almost everybody and so, unsurprisingly, are self-contradictory. LYNCH'S ''True to Life'' is a passionate demonstration that truth matters; it is strikingly clear and painstakingly reasoned, and ranges from technical work in the philosophy of logic to a discussion of the role of truth-telling in government (yes, Iraq is mentioned). He argues that caring about truth is necessary for happiness because of the roles in our lives of authenticity and integrity, and that valuing truth for its own sake is an essential part of democracy. But he also notes that ''freshman relativism'' is not always what it seems; maybe the ''truth wars,'' as some call them, are not as bloody as they have been painted. ''The phrase 'it is true for me but not for you' is most often just shorthand for: 'I believe it, you don't, so let's talk about something else.' '' Saying that something is a matter of opinion, Lynch writes, may just be a way of getting out of a debate one doesn't want to be in. His point can be taken further. Perhaps the saving grace of the sort of extreme relativism that some conservatives fear may sap our civilization is that it is so hopelessly daft as to be impossible to put into practice. Indeed, despite the apparent popularity of subjectivist and deconstructionist ideas in parts of the academy, it is hard to find a significant contemporary controversy -- political, moral or environmental -- in which either side appears infected with such notions. People never think there is no truth of the matter; rather, they think the other side is wrong. If relativism really had seeped in under our doors, we would surely see increasing intellectual apathy and an unwillingness to take issue with others. Tell that to talk-radio hosts, overheated television discussion shows, ranting bloggers and the bore next door. Anthony Gottlieb is the executive editor of The Economist and the author of ''The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy From the Greeks to the Renaissance.''

1689668_2

The School That Skipped Ethics Class

to a cheerier theme, Career Education said that Brooks was ''proudly celebrating its 60th anniversary'' and that it had recently received the Innovator Award from the Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce. Now, if you were a Career Education shareholder, what would you care more about: a local Chamber of Commerce award or a smackdown from a state oversight board? No one should be surprised that companies with trouble on their hands would accentuate the positive. But Career Education's shareholders deserve candor, seeing as the company is already under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice. Tracy Lorenz, a spokeswoman for Career Education, said it received the report in mid-July and did not disclose its details immediately because it was so lengthy. ''Because it is not a final order, it would not be required to be disclosed,'' she said. ''We intend to file a request for an administrative hearing at which point of time we will have an opportunity to present our facts.'' Because so much of Career Education's business is financed by the United States government -- aka you and every other taxpayer -- its operations affect more than just its shareholders and students. In the first quarter of 2005, for instance, the company recorded $500 million in tuition payments and fees; 60 percent came from the federal government. THE California bureau, in addition to finding violations in Brooks's records, sent an employee to the school, posing as a prospective student. The report said she was told that she could expect her starting salary to be ''$50,000 to $150,000'' in her first year after graduation from Brooks -- enough to pay off the debt she would take on as a student. ''The sky's the limit,'' the admissions official said of her prospects, according to the report. But the bureau's examination of Brooks's records found not one 2003 graduate at any degree level whose reported wages and employment tenure were enough to generate even $50,000 of earning potential. Indeed, of the 45 graduates reported by Brooks as employed full time, the average income was about $26,000, the report said. The average indebtedness of this group was around $74,000. Projecting future high salaries for graduates was not the only way Brooks's officials misled students, according to the report. They also presented false and misleading information on the availability of jobs, and the career

1689512_0

Coffee Growers Try to Revive a Toast of Cafe Society

Long before Starbucks and even Sanka, the coffee produced in this cool mountain region was internationally beloved -- so much that Puerto Rico, barely the size of Connecticut, was among the world's largest, proudest coffee exporters. The cafes of Vienna, Paris and Madrid served Puerto Rican coffee in the 19th century, as did European monarchs and even the Vatican. But while short and sturdy coffee trees still flourish on parts of the island, it is hard to find Puerto Rican coffee anywhere now. Puerto Rico does not even produce enough to meet its own demand, forcing the island to buy beans from other countries. Up to a quarter of the annual harvest goes to waste, mostly because of one problem: nobody likes picking coffee beans, and there are far more appealing options for work these days. Rural Puerto Ricans who might once have picked beans for a living have sought better opportunities in the mainland United States, where the Puerto Rican population roughly equals the 3.9 million people living on the island. And as Puerto Rico has evolved into an industrial economy from an agricultural one, low-wage workers have come to prefer factory or construction jobs -- available even in remote mountain towns -- that pay more and demand less. ''I picked coffee one time,'' said Julio Torres, executive vice president of Grupo Jimenez, the island's leading coffee company. ''I lasted six hours, and I never picked coffee again.'' So bleak are the industry's prospects that last month, Puerto Rico's new agriculture secretary, José Orlando Fabre, held a coffee summit with other cabinet members and the mayors of 21 coffee-growing towns, mostly in the island's rugged interior. Mr. Fabre decided to try putting prisoners and the unemployed to work as pickers, and perhaps even importing pickers from other countries. With the harvesting season beginning next month, Mr. Fabre said the island's 10,000 coffee farms needed at least 5,000 new pickers, and more to increase exports, as he would prefer. Compared with giants like Brazil and Colombia, the Puerto Rican coffee industry is but a blip; the island produces about 20 million pounds of coffee a year, compared with more than 3 billion pounds in Brazil, the world's largest producer. Exports plummeted after Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States in 1898, partly because the United States was already buying coffee from Brazil and saw sugar, not coffee, as the

1687095_1

Rice Claims U.S. Role in Korean About-Face

Bush's pledge not to improve the existing offer until the North responds to it at the negotiating table. At the same time, the North enters the talks knowing what specific benefits it can gain if it gives up its nuclear ambitions. In the last year, Washington has urged the other parties to the six-nation disarmament talks -- Russia, Japan and South Korea -- to refrain from offering further incentives to the North and instead to push the Chinese to use their considerable leverage over its leaders to persuade them to return to the talks. But China refused, so the South Koreans took the lead. On June 17, South Korea's unification minister, Chung Dong Young, traveled to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and met with the North's leader, Kim Jong Il. Mr. Chung promised that if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapons program, South Korea, on its own, would string power lines across the border and begin delivering up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to solve the North's dire energy crisis. In that same meeting, Mr. Kim said for the first time that the North was ready to rejoin the disarmament talks. The discussions in the weeks since then have been to decide when the new talks will take place and what will be discussed. All of that was settled in Beijing on Saturday, during a dinner between Christopher R. Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea's deputy foreign minister. A senior administration official traveling with Ms. Rice indicated that the Bush administration was startled, and pleasantly surprised, when the South Koreans told of their ''very generous'' energy offer, as this official put it. Administration officials insisted that they did not know why North Korea had suddenly decided to return to the talks, but seemed to go out of their way to dismiss the South Korean offer. ''How do you know that the South Koreans made a difference?'' Ms. Rice asked, in response to a question. ''Have you been talking to the North Koreans about what made a difference? I think I can make the argument that a number of diplomatic efforts here by the Chinese, by the South Koreans, by the United States'' were responsible. ''The Japanese and the Russians have been involved too,'' she said. The senior administration official described a continuum of activity in recent months that

1687220_0

Research Changes Ideas About Children and Work

WHEN Americans think about child labor in poor countries, they rarely picture girls fetching water or boys tending livestock. Yet most of the 211 million children, ages 5 to 14, who work worldwide are not in factories. They are working in agriculture -- from 92 percent in Vietnam to 63 percent in Guatemala -- and most are not paid directly. ''Contrary to popular perception in high-income countries, most working children are employed by their parents rather than in manufacturing establishments or other forms of wage employment,'' two Dartmouth economists, Eric V. Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik, wrote in ''Child Labor in the Global Economy,'' published in the Winter 2005 Journal of Economic Perspectives. Their article surveys what is known about child labor. Research over the past several years, by these economists and others, has begun to erode some popular beliefs about why children work, what they do and when they are likely to leave work for school. When he started working on child labor issues six years ago, Professor Edmonds said in an interview, ''the conventional view was that child labor really wasn't about poverty.'' Children's work, many policy makers believed, ''reflected perhaps parental callousness or a lack of education for parents about the benefits of educating your child.'' So policies to curb child labor focused on educating parents about why their children should not work and banning children's employment to remove the temptation. Recent research, however, casts doubt on the cultural explanation. ''In every context that I've looked at things, child labor seems to be almost entirely about poverty. I wouldn't say it's only about poverty, but it's got a lot to do with poverty,'' Professor Edmonds said. As families' incomes increase, children tend to stop working and, where schools are available, they go to school. If family incomes drop, children are more likely to return to work. Some of the best data, and the most noteworthy results, come from Vietnam, which tracked about 3,000 households from 1993 to 1998. This was a period of rapid economic growth, in which gross domestic product rose about 9 percent a year. In a paper published in the Winter 2005 Journal of Human Resources, ''Does Child Labor Decline With Improving Economic Status?,'' Professor Edmonds found that child labor dropped by nearly 30 percent over this five-year period. Rising incomes explain about 60 percent of that shift. The effects were greatest for families escaping

1687248_0

When Art Imitates Pain, It Can Help Heal, a Therapy Group Finds

The psychologist handed a painting by Frida Kahlo to a woman in a group therapy session for depression recently at a Brooklyn hospital. ''I want you to tell me what you see here,'' the psychologist, María Sesín, said in Spanish. ''What are you thinking about when you see this? How do you interpret it and relate it to your own lives?'' The woman, Cricelva Villicres, 52, started to cry. ''This is a united family,'' she said. ''I cannot identify with them. There was so much violence and blood between my mother and father.'' The painting, ''My Parents, My Grandparents and I,'' shows Kahlo as a naked child holding a blood-red ribbon connecting her to portraits of her parents and grandparents. The 11 women gathered around a long table at Lutheran Medical Center in Sunset Park took turns looking at it. When it was her turn, Vilma, who is 59, said: ''It makes me feel very lonely. I have two children, but I am always alone. I do not have a family like this one.'' Vilma, who lives in Prospect Park, spoke on the condition that her last name not be used, to protect her privacy. The painting is one of 12 works by Kahlo that Dr. Sesín uses to treat Hispanic women who are suffering from depression, have been abused and have physical illnesses. The sessions are in Spanish, and the paintings help the women feel more comfortable discussing their traumatic experiences. Though the effectiveness of her novel practice has not been extensively evaluated, Dr. Sesín said Kahlo resonated with the women in her group not only because she was Mexican but also because she confronted some of the same emotional and physical problems. The paintings used in the therapy touch on themes like infidelity, violence, male dominance and infertility. ''This was an attempt to develop treatment that was culturally sensitive,'' said Dr. Sesín, who works at the hospital's mental health center, adding that she has used Kahlo's artwork to treat about 60 women in the last eight years. ''The beauty of this artwork therapy is that it brings out each individual's history, each individual's narrative.'' In the paintings, Dr. Sesín said, Kahlo was brutally honest about her own troubles, like her turbulent marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera and the excruciating and chronic pain she endured after a bus accident. These kinds of paintings are especially helpful in opening

1690098_2

In Search of a New Energy Source, China Rides the Wind

are expected to deploy huge new turbines with 87-yard-long blades, each capable of generating 1.2 megawatts of electricity, enough to power hundreds of homes, if not more. ''We have huge goals for wind power development,'' Wang Zhongying, director of China's Center for Renewable Energy Development. ''By 2010, we plan to reach 4,000 megawatts, and by 2020 we expect to reach 20,000 megawatts, or 20 gigawatts.'' If anything, Mr. Wang said, these targets are too conservative, and may be easily surpassed. The biggest limitations, he said, were not in China's wind-power potential, or in its generating technology, but rather in the country's antiquated power grid, which cannot automatically reroute power from one region to another as demand and supply rise and fall. That makes it difficult to take full advantage of wind power, whose output vacillates according to the weather. China's wind-power program has roots in a visit to the United States 18 years ago, early in the country's economic takeoff. A Chinese delegation witnessed modern wind turbines at work in Utah, then came back determined to adopt the technology at home. ''We bought some turbines and brought them to Urumqi to see how they performed, and the production data was very, very good,'' said Wu Gang, a member of the delegation who was fresh out of engineering school at the time. What followed is a story that encapsulates some of the main ingredients of China's economic miracle, including the disciplined marshaling of intellectual and financial resources by a state determined to solve a problem and establish a sector it deems strategic. After his return from the United States, Mr. Wu was put in charge of a state-financed wind farm in the western province of Xinjiang, where he was able to master all the technical aspects of the business. Later, the government provided the seed money for the business he now directs, the Goldwind Science and Technology Company. It is China's largest producer of wind turbines, and remains 55 percent state owned. China has backed wind power and other alternative sources in other ways. It has provided tax incentives for developers, imposed standardized electricity rates that amount to a subsidy for power sources like wind, which remain more expensive than coal, and has imposed equipment requirements that help local manufacturers. In February, the Chinese government passed a nationwide renewable energy law that formalizes many of those incentives and mandates clear targets

1690126_4

In Bronx, a Fight for Health and Dignity

should put her complaint in writing. ''I believe they should treat anyone who walks through their doors with dignity,'' Ms. Altieri said. ''I cannot question their medical expertise. But I know about dignity.'' Indeed, she arranged for Ms. Pagan to see a neurologist as well as a trauma counselor at a Manhattan hospital, all covered by their employer, Easter Seals. Last week, both women were at the Bronx center, where new parents were visiting to learn how to help their children develop language skills. Ms. Pagan, whose co-workers affectionately dubbed her ''Bullet-head,'' was taking a group of youngsters to a park to play. Ms. Altieri was showing parents how to improvise low-cost arts and crafts games to develop young minds and bodies. ''Take away the television,'' she said in a calm mix of Spanish and English. ''Give them a spray bottle or these clothespins. These are the muscles they are going to use one day for writing.'' The center is roomy, clean and bright. Ms. Altieri made sure a tray of sandwiches and pastries had been laid out for the parents. This is not, some said, an unusual touch here. Yet they contrast the attention lavished on them here with the indifference they encounter outside. ''Other than here, it's difficult communicating with people or getting them to listen,'' said Lisa Rivera, whose twin daughters just graduated from the center. ''Either that, or they do not have the time or -- excuse me for saying this -- they're just ignorant.'' Ms. Rivera had an unpleasant experience recently at the Lincoln hospital, as have many of the parents at the Bronx center. But that was nothing compared with what happened at a social services office when she sought help in sorting out aid payments for her handicapped son. ''The caseworker there said, 'It's not my fault you had a retarded kid,''' Ms. Rivera recalled. ''I went over the desk and hit her. You're supposed to be professional. How can you talk to somebody like that?'' Ms. Rivera was at the center to help Ms. Altieri orient the new parents. She urged them to speak up for themselves, to not settle for quick explanations from counselors or therapists when their children move to public schools. And yes, she said later that it was always important to stay cool. Hitting is not an option. Ms. Altieri said women like Ms. Rivera have supported her

1690070_4

Restoring Reputation of 'Artist-Citizen of the U.S.'

conservators, experts in Raphael and Michelangelo, helped change her mind. The pair were hired shortly after Dr. Wolanin's arrival to consult on a project to clean and conserve the frescoes in the canopy of the Rotunda. ''They could kind of see through the overpaint and the dirt,'' Dr. Wolanin said. ''Seeing major conservators of Michelangelo get excited about Brumidi made me think that maybe we Americans ought to get excited too.'' Dr. Wolanin has promoted Brumidi conservation projects ever since. Much of the work has been done by Christiana Cunningham-Adams, who together with her husband, George Adams, an engineer, has spent the past 13 years cleaning the Brumidi Corridors, a network of trompe l'oeil hallways in the Capitol's Senate wing. It has been painstaking work. Before the cleaning could began, Mr. Adams developed a technique for stabilizing the shaky walls. Then Ms. Cunningham-Adams took her scalpel to them, carefully chipping away layer after layer of dried and hardened paint to reveal work whose light, airy feel had been long lost to time. ''Every single inch is a discovery,'' she said. ''A new color, a new detail. We uncovered feathers on birds that you could see, or little tiny insects on leaves that had been painted over. I think the importance of the recovery is bringing back people's understanding of the very high quality of this incredible artistic treasure.'' That is surely Mr. Grano's aim. On Sunday, dressed in a summer suit and straw hat, he stood beside the Brumidi grave marker, the flags of the United States and Italy flapping against him in a gentle breeze. He announced with some satisfaction that Washington's mayor, Anthony A. Williams, had designated Tuesday Constantino Brumidi Day in the District of Columbia, and that the speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, had agreed to the celebration. Then he read a three-paragraph message from President Bush, who sent his good wishes ''on this special occasion.'' Still, it was not enough. With the wreaths laid and the speeches over, Mr. Grano could be seen scribbling out the White House switchboard number for his fellow Brumidi lovers, urging them to call Mr. Bush to ''ask the president graciously to give Brumidi the Medal of Freedom.'' Correction: July 30, 2005, Saturday An article in The Arts on Tuesday about Constantino Brumidi, whose murals decorate much of the Capitol in Washington, referred incorrectly to the breaks he took,

1685529_1

Do Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Stimulate Employment?

business owners could afford to hire additional workers, they would. But whether owners can afford to hire is not the issue. What matters is whether hiring will increase their profits. The basic hiring criterion, found in every introductory textbook (including those written by the president's own economic advisers), is straightforward: If the output of additional workers can be sold for at least enough to cover their salaries, they should be hired; otherwise not. If this criterion is met, hiring extra workers makes economic sense, no matter how poor a business owner might be. Conversely, if the criterion is not satisfied, hiring makes no economic sense, even for billionaire owners. The after-tax personal incomes of business owners are irrelevant for hiring decisions. The president's defenders might respond that business owners often need money up front to cover the hiring and training costs incurred before new workers can effectively contribute to extra production. The tax cuts put that money in their pockets. That is true but does nothing to alter the basic hiring rule. Owners who used their tax cuts to finance the initial costs of new hiring would be acting, in effect, as their own bankers, lending money to themselves in the hope of future returns. The test for whether such internal loans make economic sense is exactly the same as the test for external loans. A loan from a bank makes sense if the firm's ultimate gain from hiring extra workers is enough to cover not only their salaries but also repayment of the loan plus interest. Internal loans must meet the same standard. They are justified only if the firm's gain from hiring extra workers is enough to cover their salaries and repayment of the loan, including the interest that owners could have earned had they left their tax cuts in the bank. In hiring decisions, the implicit costs of internal loans have exactly the same economic standing as the explicit costs of external loans. In brief, the president's claim that tax cuts to the owners of small businesses will stimulate them to hire more workers flies in the face of bedrock principles outlined in every introductory economics textbook. A second way the Bush tax cuts might have stimulated employment is by inducing the wealthy to spend more on consumption. But a large share of the tax windfalls received by the wealthy are not spent in the short run.

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Center for Disabled Children Agrees to Improve Medical Care

A center for developmentally disabled children in New Jersey, where a child died three years ago after being placed in restraints, has entered into a legal agreement with the state to improve medical care and training. Under the agreement announced yesterday, the center, Bancroft NeuroHealth, based in Haddonfield, has also agreed to have a monitor appointed by the state's child advocate to oversee the reforms called for in the agreement. The center, which houses 50 to 60 young people with neurological impairments, came under fire after the death of one of its residents, Matthew Goodman, 14, in February 2002, after he was put in restraints. The boy, who was autistic, died from pneumonia and other ailments. A county prosecutor found no evidence that he had been harmed intentionally, but state regulators fined the center $127,700, citing lapses that the state said had led to neglect and the physical and sexual abuse of patients. ''The children served by Bancroft, children with developmental disabilities and acquired brain injuries, are among the most vulnerable children in society,'' said the child advocate, Kevin M. Ryan. ''Their innate dignity requires the utmost vigilance in protecting them from abuse and neglect.'' The reforms include improved training so that workers know they must remain on duty until their replacements arrive, video monitoring of the center to root out abuse and neglect, better internal investigations of abuse or neglect allegations, and more comprehensive medical care. The independent monitor will oversee the changes for at least six months, but will be available for an additional six months if Mr. Ryan deems it necessary. Bancroft cooperated fully with the child advocate's office, said Robert Martin, its president. ''We look forward to moving ahead as a stronger organization,'' he said. ''We will continue efforts under way for the past year to enhance and improve the innovative services we offer to children and adults with some of the most complex neurological disabilities." State Assemblyman Eric Munoz, a Republican from Union County, is sponsoring a bill that would limit the use of restraints on the disabled. The proposal is known as Matthew's Law, after Matthew Goodman. Dr. Munoz, a physician, called on the state yesterday to withhold a $125,000 appropriation for Bancroft in the recently passed state budget until the reforms are put in place. ''The state should not continue to subsidize neglectful and substandard care,'' he said. Bancroft NeuroHealth serves 1,200 children

1688967_0

Bruschi Decides to Miss Patriots' 2005 Season

If the New England Patriots are to win a third consecutive Super Bowl, they will have to do it without Tedy Bruschi. Ending months of speculation since Bruschi had a mild stroke in February, the Patriots announced yesterday that he would sit out the 2005 season. The decision was hardly surprising, but it left the Patriots with the challenge of trying to minimize the loss of Bruschi, a Pro Bowl linebacker and the team's defensive captain and emotional leader. It has been an off-season of turnover for the Patriots, who have lost their offensive coordinator, Charlie Weis, and their defensive coordinator, Romeo Crennel, since winning the Super Bowl. Weis took over as the coach at Notre Dame, and Crennel is the coach of the Cleveland Browns. Those departures were expected after the Super Bowl. Bruschi's departure, however, could not have been anticipated. Bruschi, who turned 32 in June, had a stroke Feb. 16, three days after the Pro Bowl and 10 days after helping New England beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 24-21, in the Super Bowl. He had surgery in March to repair a hole in his heart, and he has not said much publicly about his recovery, although he has attended team meetings during the off-season. With the Patriots opening training camp July 28, the team and Bruschi decided to clarify his status. ''Tedy has reached a decision on his playing status for the upcoming season, and has declared his intentions to forgo the 2005 campaign,'' Stacey James, a team spokesman, said in a statement released by the team. Bruschi was due to earn $850,000 for the 2005 season. His contract would be voided if he retired; he would receive his salary if the Patriots placed him on the physically-unable-to-perform list. ''Since suffering a mild stroke on February 16, 2005, Tedy Bruschi has focused on the short-term goal of getting better every day,'' the statement said. ''His health has improved steadily during the past five months, and Tedy continues to make daily improvements with his ongoing rehabilitation. It has been an off-season of many emotional highs and lows for Tedy and his family. Tedy pledges to focus on his health and his family while continuing to offer ongoing support to his teammates throughout the upcoming season.'' The Patriots had already begun planning for Bruschi's absence, signing the three-time Pro Bowl linebacker Chad Brown last month. Brown has 78 career sacks,

1688371_1

Iraqis Press Donors for Billions More in Reconstruction Aid

of the American rebuilding program, which he said had failed to produce quick results despite the expenditure of about $9 billion, according to Pentagon figures. After formulaic declarations by officials at the United Nations and the World Bank that the first day of the conference had been a success, Mr. Salih gave a blunter assessment. ''I want to hold judgment and claim success once we see these pledges turned into realities on the ground,'' Mr. Salih said, adding that the rebuilding effort had roughly six months to show results before Iraqis began giving up hope that it would ever improve their lives. ''This is the time to make the difference,'' he said. ''It is now or it will be too late. Iraq's people have grown numb to many statements of support.'' Staffan de Mistura, a United Nations representative at the gathering, held at a conference center next to the Dead Sea, agreed that ''we are facing six crucial months'' but argued that some programs had quietly been successful. For example, he said, water chlorination programs carried out by Iraqis have prevented major outbreaks of cholera amid the chaos of the insurgency. ''We cannot be, outside of this room, too loud about it, for reasons that you know,'' Mr. Mistura said, referring to the danger that any project faces in Iraq if it is understood to be directed or financed by foreigners. That concession captured what often seemed to be a paradox of the meeting: although the Iraqis were trying to persuade other countries that Iraq was safe and secure enough to carry out rebuilding projects, the meeting took place in the safety of Jordan rather than in Baghdad. Much of the conference focused on $1.1 billion already placed in trust funds for Iraqi reconstruction by a number of countries around the world, led by Japan, the European Union and Canada. Japan's contribution to those funds is the largest, about $350 million, said Michael Bell, chairman of the International Reconstruction Fund Facility for Iraq, which oversees the money. Most of the fund's money has already been committed to specific projects, and Iraqi officials have been saying for weeks that they hoped to reel in more pledges here. But while 59 countries registered for the meeting by an official count, actual attendance seemed sparse, and a number of those countries did not send representatives. Before his formal speech, Mr. Salih addressed the

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JUNE REPORT LED BRITAIN TO LOWER ITS TERROR ALERT

Less than a month before the London bombings, Britain's top intelligence and law enforcement officials concluded that ''at present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the U.K.,'' according to a confidential terror threat assessment report. The previously undisclosed report was sent to British government agencies, foreign governments and corporations in mid-June, about three weeks before a team of four British suicide bombers mounted their July 7 attack on London's public transportation system. The assessment by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Center prompted the British government to lower its formal threat assessment one level, from ''severe defined'' to ''substantial.'' The center includes officials from Britain's top intelligence agencies, as well as Customs and the Metropolitan Police. Asked to comment on the document, a senior British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, ''We do not discuss intelligence assessments.'' British officials said the reduced threat level had no practical impact on terrorism preventive measures, and the British home secretary said it did not make Britain more vulnerable to attack. The tersely worded threat assessment was particularly surprising because it stated that terrorist-related activity in Britain was a direct result of violence in Iraq. ''Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the U.K.,'' said the report, a copy of which was made available by a foreign intelligence service and was not disputed by four senior British officials who were asked about it. On Monday, Pakistani government officials confirmed that three of the four men identified as the London bombers visited Pakistan last year. [Page A11.] Prime Minister Tony Blair and other British government leaders have sharply criticized claims made since the attacks that the country's support for the American-led war in Iraq and the involvement of British troops in fighting the insurgency there were factors in the terrorist bombings on British soil. On Monday, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, an influential private research organization commonly known as Chatham House, concluded that Britain's participation in the war in Iraq and as ''pillion passenger'' of American foreign policy had made it vulnerable to terrorist attack. A pillion is the second seat on a motorcycle. Mr. Blair and other British leaders have insisted there is no evidence that the policy on Iraq motivated the London bombers. They have argued instead that the coordinated

1688457_0

The Night Before the Morning After

When morning-after pills become more easily available, do women become less diligent about using birth control? Apparently not, reports a new study in the medical journal BMJ, which looked at what happened in Britain after it became legal to buy emergency contraception without a prescription. The pills are intended to prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has not approved their sale over the counter. Some critics of the pill argue that easy access to it will make it more likely that people with have unprotected sex. The authors of the new study, led by Cicely Marston of Imperial College London, found no evidence, however, to support that concern. The findings were based on an annual survey conducted by the British government that, among other subjects, asks about contraceptive use. About 7,600 people are surveyed each year. The researchers looked for changes in behavior after January 2001, when people were allowed to buy the pills over the counter. Among women ages 16 to 49, there were no reported changes in the types or frequency of contraceptives used. On the other hand, the study did not support the argument of people who said that making the pills more available would reduce unwanted pregnancy. Overall use of the pills remained the same even after the rules were changed. About 7 to 8 percent of the women surveyed reported having used them. The study did find that women were more likely to buy them over the counter than to ask their doctors for prescriptions. VITAL SIGNS: BEHAVIOR

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Arts, Briefly

Italy Protecting Art From Terror Antiterrorism measures to protect Italy's cultural and archeological sites are being drawn up in the aftermath of the London bombings, Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione said yesterday in Rome. An increase in security guards, surveillance cameras and the use of metal detectors as well as a ban on purses and backpacks were listed among the protections, some of them already in place, Reuters reported. Declaring the museums safe but adding, ''In these times of international terrorism we must make our museums even safer,'' Mr. Buttiglione said: ''We are studying measures to, above all, defend visitors. We have made a list of all of Italy's cultural heritage sites and are defining which are at highest risks.'' He said the measures, being worked out with the Interior Ministry, would be carried out quickly. Over the weekend, a journalist managed to take an oversize backpack into the Leaning Tower of Pisa, wander around for two hours and leave the bag unattended at the top without attracting the attention of the guards. Anybody Here Speak Elizabethan? Actors in the Globe Theater production of Shakespeare's ''Troilus and Cressida'' in London next month are being called on to pronounce their lines as they might have sounded during the age of Elizabeth I. Giles Block, who is directing the production, scheduled to run for six weeks beginning on Aug. 24, told the BBC News Web site that the accent was a mix of West Country, Irish and northern British, with a bit of modern Australian and American English. For example, ''my'' might sound more like ''me.'' Mr. Block said audiences would benefit, not only because of the ''richness of the sound'' but also because the Elizabethan pronunciation ''brings out many of the rhymes and puns we have lost over the years, as well as the street savviness and colloquialness of the language.'' Bill T. Jones Is Honored The choreographer Bill T. Jones, below, joined a pantheon that includes Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, Alvin Ailey, Twyla Tharp and Maguy Marin when he became the 24th recipient of the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award on Sunday night at the festival at Duke University in Durham, N.C. Mr. Jones, 53, who received a $35,000 prize, offered thanks in several ways. He said, ''I could pull a Miles Davis and say, 'Thank you very much' and disappear. He then recited a Frank O'Hara poem

1688063_1

In Troubled Times, Bring On the Spartans

It's just that they are stoical by nature and are more comfortable publicly with matters of the gut than with matters of the heart. In public life they tend to flee from the politics of family values, believing that government can do little that is productive or good in this sphere. They handle social issues with obvious discomfort, and pick them up only reluctantly and out of political necessity. They tend to assume that a leader's private peccadilloes do not corrupt the public performance of his duties. In fact, they sometimes seem to regard private sins as symptoms of a spirited nature. (Look at the way R.F.K. accepted his brother's lifestyle.) Courage politicians pose problems for their own parties. They distrust concentrated power (except when it's in their own hands) and so instinctively resist party discipline. They are quick to anger and sometimes bully. This makes them unpopular with their colleagues, especially in an age like ours, which values loyalty to party over loyalty to truth. Yet the courage politicians are important these days, especially for those who hope to escape the current polarized landscape in Washington. If some new political force is to smash through the reigning orthodoxies and the stale hatreds, thena courage politician will be at its head. The center is weak in Washington because most moderates lack guts and ideas. They lack the courage to take on party leaders, and so almost always buckle when the heat is on. Furthermore, they have no cadres of foundations, think tanks and scholars to give them intellectual heft. You go to a liberal or conservative organization's dinner and the room is filled with scholars and writers. You go to a centrist dinner and the room is filled with lobbyists. The current courage politicians, like Giuliani and McCain, have the guts most moderates lack. The issue is whether they can find political agendas that offer persuasive solutions and whether they can rise to power in the current political system. One of the great virtues of Fred Siegel's fantastic new book, ''The Prince of the City,'' is that it shows how Rudy Giuliani found a political program that matches his characterological dispositions. Giuliani didn't just take on urban liberalism, he offered a set of reforms that emphasized competition, accountability, hard work and upward mobility. He not only challenged the entrenched civil service, but had an alternative way to manage the welfare

1688070_0

In the Matter Of the Bulls, Papa Knows Best

The running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, took place over the week, with the usual scores of bashed heads and bruise knees, as well as the odd goring. Hemingway popularized the event in ''The Sun Also Rises.'' And in his nonfiction work ''The Dangerous Summer,'' opined that it was no place to take a wife (he had taken his first): The odds are all in favor of her getting ill, hurt or wounded or at least jostled and wine squirted all over her, or of losing her; maybe all three. It's a man's fiesta and women at it make trouble, never intentionally of course, but they nearly always make or have trouble. I wrote a book on this once. Of course if she can talk Spanish so she knows she is being joked with and not insulted, if she can drink wine all day and all night and dance with any group of strangers who invite her, if she does not mind things being spilled on her, if she adores continual noise and music and loves fireworks, especially those that fall close to her or burn her clothes, if she thinks it is sound and logical to see how close you can come to being killed by bulls for fun and for free, if she doesn't catch cold when she is rained on and appreciates dust, likes disorder and irregular meals and never needs to sleep and still keeps clean and neat without running water; then bring her. You'll probably lose her to a better man than you. War Is Health? If avian influenza were to realize its pandemic potential, Laurie Garrett writes in Foreign Affairs, the security implications would be quickly apparent. In considering the lessons of the current pandemic, AIDS, she describes one link between infection and security: One counterintuitive effect of wartime, as the recent histories of Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe show, is that it can actually reduce the risk of H.I.V. infection. During wartime, civilians either hunker down in their homes or flee war-torn regions and become refugees. Trade grinds to a halt, borders are locked tight and social mobility is minimized. Consider Angola, for example. For 27 years, it was wracked by a civil war that left the now-peaceful nation in shambles. War, however, largely kept H.I.V. outside Angola, since most forms of trade and travel, both within the

1687732_0

A Feminist Classic Gets a Makeover

The unthinkable, though perhaps inevitable, has happened. Long known for its ardent denunciations of society's obsession with image, the feminist health guide Our Bodies, Ourselves (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, paper, $24.95) turned 35 this year and received a drastic makeover, like a contestant on ''The Swan'' concerned with brow furrows. The ''New Edition for a New Era'' is smaller than the proudly unwieldy editions of the past, with punchier graphics and a pink cover -- a clichéd feminine color one suspects would've horrified the original authors, who met at a 1969 women's liberation conference in Boston. The old ''Our Bodies, Ourselves'' celebrated the average and anonymous. The new one submits to glitz, with endorsements from the actress Julianne Moore and Eve Ensler, creator of ''The Vagina Monologues'' -- a pet piece of performance art among Hollywood stars. The text includes a disquisition on ''vulva chic'' and the increasing popularity of Brazilian bikini waxes and labioplasties. While the old ''Our Bodies, Ourselves'' would have taken an outraged position toward such oppressive, patriarchal procedures, the new edition blandly tsks at their trendiness and leaves it at that. First issued as 193 pages of stapled newsprint by the New England Free Press under the title ''Women and Their Bodies'' (later changed to convey a more forceful sense of individual autonomy), the tract sold a quarter of a million copies, mostly by word of mouth, before the first commercial edition was published by Simon & Schuster in 1973, under the byline Boston Women's Health Book Collective. This flock of chicks had been driven to market by the formidable editor Alice Mayhew, but the project retained the homemade feel of its maiden mimeographs, with copious informal acknowledgments (editors were credited as ''midwives'') and snatches of bad poetry (''Women who scrub have strong faces / Women who type have strong faces''). Growing up in Manhattan during the late 1970's and early 80's, I had a friend whose mother neither typed nor scrubbed, but wore gold lamé pantsuits, smoked Virginia Slims, used Sweet 'n Low in baked goods and seemed continually on the brink of divorce. But what was really shocking was that their apartment contained a copy of this revolutionary -- and occasionally revolting -- primer on women's personal health, freedom and fulfillment that featured, among other things, pen-and-ink sketches of six different kinds of hymens. I had seen so-called adult books before, of course, lurking on

1687741_0

Whose Loot Is It Anyway?

THE WRECKERS A Story of Killing Seas and Plundered Shipwrecks, From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day. By Bella Bathurst. Illustrated. 326 pp. Houghton Mifflin Company. $25. Coast dwellers have always reaped the harvest of the killing seas described in Bella Bathurst's unusual book. In Britain the practice of plundering downed vessels is known as wrecking, and within these elegantly written pages the salty spoils range from slot machines to Cadillacs, grand pianos and a large consignment of rubber boots, all made to fit the same foot. But the divisions between innocent retrieval and theft are often too narrow to be clearly visible, and as Bathurst acknowledges, the difference between wrecking, commercial salvage and ''pro-active beachcombing'' is small indeed. The author's previous book, ''The Lighthouse Stevensons,'' concerned the construction of lighthouses up and down the Scottish coast by Robert Louis Stevenson's ancestors. ''The Stevensons and the lifeboats,'' Bathurst writes in the preamble to ''The Wreckers,'' ''represent the lighter side of humanity; now here is the dark.'' Although it is not illegal to find and rescue cargo, it is against the law to fail to declare findings to Britain's Receiver of Wreck. Of course, no wrecker has ever done such a thing, cleaving rather to the view that the sea washes things clean of ownership. ''It is that gap between law and lore which is part of what makes the concept of wreckers and wrecking so beguiling,'' Bathurst says, plausibly enough. Plunder was invariably communally sanctioned by insular coastal settlements used to weathering storms together. When an American liberty ship was blown up in Bunnessan Bay off the western edge of the Scottish island of Mull in 1942, the booty, ranging from wartime egg powder to oranges and bales of calico, was divided into piles on the beach, one for each family. In the old days even the lifeboatmen nipped into the wheelhouse to unscrew the compass off the gimbal once the human cargo was safe. ''The Wreckers'' considers 300 years of shipwrecks on or off the perilous and variegated coastline of the British Isles. Arranging her material geographically, Bathurst guides the reader on a maritime tour from Cornwall in the far south, ''shipping's ultima Thule,'' where wrecking used to be a profession, not a crime, to Scapa Flow in the far north, once Europe's finest natural anchorage and now, as a result, its best wreck dive site. In the

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North Korea Nuclear Goals: Case of Mixed Signals

others were predisposed to look for one because of another past intelligence failure: after American officials missed preparations for a 1998 North Korean missile test, they later found that one overlooked signal was the construction of a reviewing stand in the weeks before the test. Analysts also observed other ''V.I.P. preparations'' around Kilju, according to several officials familiar with the intelligence, including a helipad and housing that was luxurious by North Korean standards, although officials later said it was at least a year old. Warnings by the Allies After the urgent briefings of allies, which made headlines in the United States and Asia, officials in Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing issued warnings to North Korea not to test. The South Korean foreign minister, Ban Ki Moon, said North Korea would ''further deepen its isolation'' if it took ''such reckless actions.'' On May 15, Mr. Hadley publicly warned North Korea for the first time against testing, saying the United States and several Pacific powers would take punitive action. ''We have seen some evidence that says that they may be preparing for a nuclear test,'' he said on ''Fox News Sunday.'' ''We have talked to our allies about that.'' Officials in the office of John D. Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, whose mission is to coordinate intelligence functions, declined to discuss specifics of the North Korea case. But they said the National Intelligence Council was putting in place a system to identify and resolve important differences between agencies on crucial issues like North Korea, while still encouraging debate. So far, North Korea has not conducted a test. After the warnings to the North Koreans, several diplomatic moves -- including offers of food and electrical power -- helped bring the North back to the long-stalled talks, although many experts predict that if the talks fail, the North may conduct a test, or threaten to. The most recent satellite images of the Kilju show that the suspicious activity has subsided. But analysts, typically, are unsure what that means. The site could be unrelated to nuclear activity. And a senior nuclear intelligence official said it might also indicate that a bomb was buried and ready for testing, or that the North Koreans had accomplished what they wanted -- a deception that roused the West to diplomatic action. ''They know that this is being looked at intently,'' he said. ''Maybe they achieved what they wanted.''

1685003_2

Girth of a Nation

there is, understandably, a movement to do something about rising obesity, especially among the young. Bills that would require schools to serve healthier lunches, remove vending machines selling sweets and soda, and so on have been introduced in a number of state legislatures. By the way, Britain -- with the second-highest obesity among advanced countries -- has introduced stringent new guidelines on school meals. But even these mild steps have run into fierce opposition from conservatives. Why? In part, this is yet another red-blue cultural conflict. On average, people living outside metropolitan areas are heavier than urban or suburban residents, and people in the South and Midwest are heavier than those on the coasts. So it's all too easy for worries about America's weight to come off as cultural elitism. More important, however, is the role of the food industry. The debate over obesity, it turns out, is a lot like the debate over global warming. In both cases, major companies protect their profits not only by lobbying against policies they don't like, but also by financing advocacy groups devoted to debunking research whose conclusions they don't like. The pro-obesity forces -- or, if you prefer, the anti-anti-obesity forces -- make their case in part by claiming that America's weight gain does no harm. There was much glee on the right when a new study, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appeared to reject the conventional view that obesity has a large negative effect on life expectancy. But as officials from the C.D.C. have pointed out, mortality isn't the only measure of health. There's no question that obesity plays an important role in many diseases that diminish the quality of life and, crucially, require expensive treatment. The growing availability of such treatment probably explains why the strong relationship between obesity and mortality visible in data from the 1970's has weakened. But the cost of treating the obese is helping to break the back of our health care system. So what can we do? The first step is to recognize the industry-financed campaign against doing anything for the cynical exercise it is. Remember, nobody is proposing that adult Americans be prevented from eating whatever they want. The question is whether big companies will have a free hand in their efforts to get children into the habit of eating food that's bad for them. Op-Ed Columnist E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

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Millionaire or Not, You Can Find a Financial Planner

so high volume equals high commission,'' said Mr. Wild, whose own clients have portfolios of $100,000 to $1 million. ''Even most fee-only planners who do not take commission tend to work by taking assets under management, which means they're paid a percentage of the assets they manage. There, again, the great advantage is to serve high-net-worth individuals.'' When planners manage the assets of a core long-term client group, he added, the steady income makes it less necessary to market themselves continuously -- and planners generally like to work with clients who can benefit from the more sophisticated services for which they have been trained. A common perception in the industry, said Mr. Wild, who charges $150 an hour and offers a comprehensive package for $800 for portfolios of less than $500,000, is that dealing with people with less money means no more than managing debt and cash flow. ''I think the general consensus in the profession is it's just not as much fun,'' he said. Although Mr. Wild says he appreciates the advantages that may come from having very affluent clients, he thinks the profession should be more democratic. Peter Bielagus, a registered investment adviser, owns Getting Loaded, a financial planning firm he named after his book, ''Getting Loaded: A Complete Personal Finance Guide for Students and Young Professionals'' (NAL/Penguin Putnam, 2003). His practice, in Bedford, N.H., focuses mainly on the needs of those between college age and 35; most of his clients are in their late 20's, with annual incomes of $30,000 to $65,000. He charges a flat fee of $500 for a session that runs about three hours; each client first completes a 10-page questionnaire. ''There is a belief in this country that 'I don't need to deal with money management because I hardly have any money,''' said Mr. Bielagus, adding that many young people engage in ''short-term thinking,'' like expecting to save money only after they graduate from college or professional school. Bill Driscoll, a fee-based certified financial planner in Plymouth, Mass., also focuses on individuals who do not bring many assets to the table; the tag line on his business cards reads, ''You don't need to be rich to need a financial planner.'' ''Typically, when somebody at the lower financial end comes to me, it's because they're trying to figure out how to save for a house or really get themselves started,'' said Mr. Driscoll, whose

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Lofty Goals

team's colors of red and black could be heard throughout the stands as they tried gamely, but in vain, to get the crowd to make some noise. And when the game ended with the MetroStars on the losing end of a 1-0 score, a group of preadolescent girls -- hardened San Jose fans, presumably -- taunted the listless home crowd by chanting, ''Why so quiet?'' But team officials these days are stubbornly optimistic that their status as a middling team in a fledgling league is coming to an end, and that a number of ongoing drastic changes will give local soccer fans something to cheer about. Pursuing High-Priced Talent First and foremost is the stadium. If all goes as planned, the team will begin playing in a soccer-only stadium in Harrison by 2007. Judging by the experiences of teams in markets that have built such sites -- including Los Angeles and Columbus -- the stadium may even start producing something unprecedented in MetroStars history: bellowing sellout crowds. The idea behind a stadium in Harrison, convenient to the immigrant populations in towns around Newark, is that it would not only provide a more attractive place to play but also would also make games more accessible to potential fans who rely on public transportation. ''It's two different worlds,'' said Mr. Lalas, who recently lived through a shift to a soccer-specific stadium in a previous stint as a player for the Los Angeles Galaxy. ''It makes you more competitive, it's good for business and from a social and community perspective, and it will finally give our fans the proper environment to view our sport. I could not be more excited about the Harrison project.'' Then there is the issue of personnel. Already, the team has attracted a couple of established internationalplayers to throw into the mix with its homegrown youth, including the Frenchman Youri Djorkaeff, a former World Cup winner, and Amado Guevara, a Honduran who was last year's most valuable player in the league. Now, with their ambitious new general manager in place, the team looks likely to be more aggressive in going after high-priced, high-profile talent. Indeed, Mr. Lalas has pressed for an end to the league's tightly structured system of financing. And he was recently fined $2,000 by the league for comments he made about the club's designs on one of the league's hottest young stars, Freddy Adu of D.C.

1685846_2

In Effort to Secure Borders, Iraqis Are Patrolling a River For Smugglers and Pirates

middle of the Shatt. At the port, the lieutenant, a short man in tan camouflage who had served for 12 years in the Iraqi Navy, clambered over three skiffs awash with stolen gasoline that the coast guard had recently seized. He boarded his own boat, which had the word ''police'' painted in Arabic and English on its gray metal side. Two men in light blue police uniforms and flak jackets stood at the rear brandishing Kalashnikovs. The boat started down the river, passing stands of tall reeds and fishermen in launches with their nets. Enormous cargo ships and tankers with names like Bluebeard, Jumbo Express and Wonsan sat in port or out in the middle of the water, towering above the palm trees on the banks. The ouster of Saddam Hussein brought an end to United Nations sanctions, and commerce has been rebounding. The ships, from Middle Eastern or Asian countries, are thriving in the small boom; they bring in everything from cars to household appliances to canned food. The trade explains the pirate problem. ''We've captured a lot of them,'' said one senior coast guard official in Basra who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety; four colleagues were gunned down in two attacks last month. ''If there are big ships coming with goods on them, the pirates will board them. They're not after the goods, but commercial ships have lots of cash and valuables.'' A large black tanker drew a collective gasp from those on the patrol boat. ''Look at the name of that ship!'' one of the men exclaimed. Painted in English on the side was Al Baath -- the name of Mr. Hussein's tyrannical party. It means resurrection in Arabic. The most striking feature of the river, though, are the half-sunken 500-foot freighters protruding from the surface, their seafaring lives ended abruptly during the Iran-Iraq war. One lies on its side, its name -- Oriental Star -- in faded white letters on the prow. Nearby, only the cabin and a fraction of the deck of another ship protrude above the water. But that is enough living space for one family -- laundry lines are strung across a cabin doorway, and a young man pokes his head out at the sound of an approaching motor. It was a dispute over control of the Shatt that ignited the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. Eight years

1684687_3

Warts and All

shudders when she sees the artificial waxy shine on rows of identical vegetables in a grocery store. ''These hybrid tomatoes that are everywhere are only bred for shipping and handling and shelf life,'' Dr. Goldman said, ''so they're just devoid of flavor. But it doesn't have to be that way.'' Dr. Goldman usually starts her day at 4 a.m. at her 200-acre farm near Rhinebeck, N.Y. First thing in the morning, she says, she scouts her squash rows, looking for garden pests, which she crushes between her fingers. About 15 years ago, she gave up her child-psychology practice to devote herself to her kitchen gardens. She gives away her produce by the basketful. In the spring, much of her attention is absorbed with doling out seeds to the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, an organization that connects more than 8,000 members to swap heirloom seeds. The gardeners in the exchange are unified by their concern that many delicious crops are threatened by extinction because of commercial agriculture's increasing reliance on a few varieties of sturdy hybrids. Dr. Goldman said the lack of plant diversity was a crisis for food lovers and a threat to food security. She cites a dire example, the Irish potato famine of the late 1840's. ''There was only one sort of potato, the lumper,'' she said. ''When it got hit by potato late blight, the whole crop went down, a million people starved to death, and a million people emigrated. It was a disaster, because there was only one egg in the basket. There's strength in diversity, literally.'' The author of ''Melons for the Passionate Grower'' (Artisan, 2002) and ''The Compleat Squash: A Passionate Grower's Guide to Pumpkins, Squashes and Gourds'' (Artisan, 2004), Dr. Goldman now has a new crop in her sights: tomatoes. She has found plenty she likes. Take Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter Tomato, named for a radiator repairman in West Virginia. In the 1930's Charlie Byles began crossbreeding four pink heirloom beefsteak types, creating a super-tomato that he would later sell for $1 a seedling to pay off his $6,000 mortgage. ''It is the most incredible tomato,'' Dr. Goldman said. ''I grew one that was over three pounds last year. It's outrageously delicious and a pleasure to look at. It's monumental. And it has to be preserved in bronze.'' For information on LongHouse, go to www.longhouse.org; for heirloom seeds: www.seedsavers.org or www.rareseeds.com

1684634_0

The Basics; America: Not Their First Choice

Where's the love? The Pew Research Center recently asked nearly 17,000 people from 16 countries: ''Suppose a young person who wanted to leave this country asked you to recommend where to go to lead a good life -- what country would you recommend?'' Only India rated America as its top pick. Except for respondents in India, Poland and Canada, no more than 1 in 10 people in the other nations said they would recommend the United States. Canada and Australia won the popularity contest, selected as first choice by several other countries. The question was posed in April and May, the first time it was asked in the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, which has tracked sentiments toward the United States, among many issues, since 2002. The survey has a margin of error ranging from plus or minus 2 percentage points to plus or minus 4 percentage points. HANNAH FAIRFIELD

1684812_11

Were the Good Old Days That Good?

late 1950's, life expectancy in the United States was slightly ahead of that of Germany and France, and well ahead of Japan's. Now Japan is far ahead at 80.5 years, compared with 78.5 in France, 77.5 in Germany and 76.5 in the United States. Infant mortality, at more than six deaths per thousand live births, similarly trails the rates in France, Germany and Japan, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Height, too, is no longer an American hallmark. Average height has been stuck at less than 6 feet for a decade or more while Europeans have grown passed that mark, suggesting that they are somehow healthier. Obesity is now a distinguishing feature. The percentage of obese American adults has doubled in the last 15 years, to 30 percent, said Kenneth E. Thorpe, chairman of the department of health policy management at Emory University's School of Public Health. The way we live makes that happen, he argues: the lack of exercise, the marketing of foods high in sugar and fat, the over-large portions. As a result, weight-related illnesses -- diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, asthma -- have risen sharply. ''Once you are sick, we are doing a better job in treatment,'' Dr. Thorpe said. ''The pace of technological development has probably accelerated since 1980 more than in previous generations. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have larger shares of the population who are sick.'' For Dr. Thorpe, the much better treatment is clearly a big improvement in standard of living -- offset, however, by the big increase in the incidence of illness. He estimated that the additional health care cost resulting from the decline in healthiness would total $70 billion this year. ''You can't have a rising standard of living,'' he said, ''if you have people getting less healthy.'' The Rath family had no such misfortune. In Sloan Wilson's hands, the man in the gray flannel suit enjoyed an ever more prosperous life -- a happy ending that many middle-class families can't seem to match today. Correction: July 17, 2005, Sunday An article on July 3 about changes in standards of living in the United States misidentified the Massachusetts employers of two profiled workers, Tom and Marie DeSisto. Mr. DeSisto is a teacher at Waltham High School, not in Newton, and Mrs. DeSisto is director of nursing for the public schools of Waltham, not Framingham.

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Aged and in Wood: Boats From the Gilded Age

and take a rowing lesson. For just $15, visitors can cruise in the Miss Thousand Islands, a triple-cockpit reproduction of a 1929 Hacker runabout. Demand for the rides, which last nearly an hour, is so high that advance booking is recommended. Inside, the museum shows old films of boat races and interviews with boat builders. It has a collection of outboards, including a French motor built in 1903 that is believed to be the oldest such engine in existence. It also displays samples of the everyday implements used when several trains stopped here each summer day to disgorge tourists. ''We're basically a museum about the history of pleasure,'' said John Summers, the chief curator. Robert Osborne Cox, a founder of the museum, takes a less expansive view. He grew up here, often dining and staying on La Duchesse with a boyhood friend, Teddy McNally. ''This is a marine version of an antique car museum,'' he said, ''and it attracts people who can say, 'Hey, looky over there, my daddy had one of those.' It's not for battleships or any of that. It's for people who like antiques.'' Those who venture onto the water can see how nearly every rock and piece of land that make up the Thousand Islands -- there are actually about 1,800 -- has a shack or cabin or cottage or mansion. Heart Island even has a castle, although it is unfinished. George C. Boldt, a poor immigrant from Prussia who had become rich in the hotel business as the manager of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York and owner of the Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia, was building the castle and outbuildings as a Valentine's Day gift to his wife, Louise. But when she died in 1904, Mr. Boldt abandoned the castle, which deteriorated over decades of harsh winters. Restoration began in 1977, and on most summer days Heart Island is thick with tourists inspecting the complex. At the Antique Boat Museum, a stone building that once was the powerhouse for a lumber mill is used to build replicas and restore old boats. Aaron Turner, this summer's boat builder in residence, is making a replica of a Roaring 20's skiff putt, a lean open 25-foot boat modeled on the original resting a few feet behind his workbench. The first such boats relied on oars, but once motors fueled with gasoline, naphtha or diesel came in they were fitted with

1686139_0

Report Says Mitterrand Approved Sinking of Greenpeace Ship

Twenty years ago, two French secret service frogmen attached mines to the hull of a ship owned by the environmentalist group Greenpeace as it lay anchored in a New Zealand harbor, and the explosions ripped large holes in it. The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior before it could set off to protest French nuclear tests in the Pacific killed a Greenpeace photographer on board, provoking much embarrassment in Paris and the resignation of top officials. Much has become known about the government's deliberate sabotage of the vessel thanks to the tenacious pursuit of the case by the French press. But Saturday, exactly 20 years after the operation, the newspaper Le Monde added another intriguing chapter by publishing what it called the account of the events written by the man in charge of the plan. Adm. Pierre Lacoste, the former head of France's General Directorate for External Security, the French foreign intelligence agency, said in a 1986 report that he personally obtained approval to sink the ship from the late president François Mitterrand. French press reports and books have previously said Mr. Mitterrand was informed of the operation in advance , but cited no sources. Le Monde has now published long verbatim excerpts from what it calls a 23-page handwritten report written by Admiral Lacoste that had remained secret until now and was never even circulated within the government. The text provides a rare insight into the hatching of a secret operation, the plans for its deniability, the subsequent attempts to cover it up and, not least, the pleas of ignorance by high officials, including President Mitterrand himself. Devoting an entire page to the affair, the story begins on the front page with a large cartoon of Mr. Mitterrand, dressed as a frogman, a snorkel on his head and a bomb under one arm, telling schoolchildren studying history: ''At that time, only presidents had the right to carry out terrorism.'' Le Monde does not say where it got the document, but Admiral Lacoste, now 81, has himself given several newspaper interviews in recent days. His report says he discussed the plan with Mr. Mitterrand -- it is customary in France that the head of the secret service reports directly to the president -- in a meeting on May 15, 1985. ''I asked the president if he gave me the authorization to put into action the neutralization plan (for the ship) that

1686413_2

A Freedom Tower Restarted From Scratch; For the Design Team, a Desperate Rush

the trade center site, said: ''We were back to Square 1. But the discouragement led to a new resolve.'' First, the key designers -- including the Skidmore team; Mr. Silverstein's staff; Cantor Seinuk, a structural engineering firm; and Weidlinger Associates, a security consultant -- had to determine whether a wall could even be created to protect a skyscraper from a large explosion. Then there was the question of whether the multilayered laminated glass surrounding the tower could be manufactured in quantity, ''and whether it would be available in the marketplace,'' Mr. Lieber said. More than 40 people at Skidmore began a desperate seven-day-a-week effort to assess concrete strengths, steel weights, window materials and glass technology. A short workday was 12 hours. A long one, 18. To Mr. Gottesdiener, the challenge was ''to build a great urban building that did not look like a concrete bunker,'' he said. The design's evolution was annoyingly slow. ''There was never a eureka moment, just a series of confidence builders -- ideas we knew would work.'' Reconfiguring the building ''was a three-dimensional problem,'' Mr. Gottesdiener said, ''like an architectural Rubik's Cube.'' But the team realized that many of the north and south columns of the original tower, already laboriously configured to thread through the PATH tracks that ran underneath, could be retained. And when the large parallelogram base was pared to a smaller square, the tower's distance from West Street could increase from 25 feet to anywhere from 65 to 125 feet. It took ''four weeks of furiously intensive work,'' Mr. Silverstein recalled, to address basic foundation and other matters. Then, on May 4, Mr. Silverstein and his team gathered in a conference room next to Gov. George E. Pataki's office in Midtown. With the governor at one end of the table and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at the other, Mr. Silverstein made this pitch: The building could be reborn. Mr. Childs, the architect, had armed Mr. Silverstein with drawings illustrating how squaring the original tower's base could satisfy some security requirements. But there were no renderings of the tower's fortifications; the actual building had not been designed. Afterward, the governor announced that a new Freedom Tower was needed to meet ''security standards,'' adding: ''I have no doubt that David Childs will come up with yet another magnificent design that will once again inspire the nation.'' Mr. Silverstein told the governor that ''we could do

1699735_1

For Victims, News About Home Can Come From Strangers Online

database of satellite photos. By the end of last week, a grass-roots effort had identified scores of posthurricane images, determined the geographical coordinates and visual landmarks to enable their integration into the Google Earth program, and posted them to a Google Earth bulletin board -- the place ZuluOne turned for help. Most of the images originated with the Remote Sensing Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has been posting them to its Web site (noaa.gov) since Wednesday. Taking inspiration from the online volunteers, Google, NASA and Carnegie Mellon University had by Saturday night made the effort more formal, incorporating nearly 4,000 posthurricane images into the Google Earth database (at earth.google.com) for public use. ''It was 100 percent a reaction to what they were doing,'' John Hanke, a general manager who is in charge of the Google Earth service, said on Sunday. ''They knew about the NOAA data before Google did.'' The ready availability of such images to any Web user shows not only the reach of the Internet but also the strides that have been made in the photography. Mike Aslaksen, acting chief of NOAA's Remote Sensing Division, said that while it took a week to process and make public images taken of the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks four years ago, the post-Katrina images have been available within 24 hours. They are not satellite photos, but aerial images taken from a Cessna Citation jet. Still, they can be readily patched into the Google Earth database as overlays. The images are not crystal clear, and if an area appears to be flooded, it is hard to tell how deep the water is. But the photographic overlays give a sense of a home, street or neighborhood's condition. ''People who have a reason to be personally concerned with what's happening there are motivated to do it,'' Mr. Hanke said. Yet many who have no particular personal connection to the hurricane's devastation joined the effort. Douglas Hillman, a disc jockey and dance instructor who lives near Chicago, created some 80 overlays. He said he was fascinated by Google Earth and also interested in ''the results of a natural disaster, in the way people react to it, and also in the technology used to cover it.'' As for methodology, Mr. Hillman says he downloads an aerial image from the NOAA Web site to his computer, then tweaks it with

1702404_0

Frayed Nerves and Visions As Two Worlds Compete

IT'S surprising, when you're stuck in traffic because of some 150 world leaders, what you notice about New York. For instance, the Avenue of the Americas in the 30's is the fashion accessories district. It's where people who are called ''trade'' go to buy wallets and gold sequined handbags. There is Kichi Handbags, Ya Ya Sunglasses, Trend-n-Styles Trading and Jonny Trading, which advertised itself as an ''importer and manufacturer of formal dress hats and caps.'' But it might have been closed. Fashion people go to the tents at Bryant Park, where the 2006 collections conclude today, just as the 150 world leaders wrap up their business and go home. It takes a lot of voodoo terminology to explain the difference between Kichi and Ya Ya and, say, Phi and J.Mendel, which presented collections on Thursday. Gilles Mendel had an impressive line of socialites in his front row, and what you notice most about socialites is that they have better posture than editors. Apparently years of looking at clothes makes you shorter. Many of Mr. Mendel's fabrics looked worn and frayed, and jackets and vests in gold-flecked silk canvas or white broadtail were purposely shrunken. The designer said in his show notes that he wanted to create ''modern heirlooms.'' So he took scraps of almond-colored organza and worked them into the fur vest, showing it with a pleated chiffon skirt that resembled the color of nylon stockings. Fashion people like things that look old. Jonny probably liked things that looked new. Although Mr. Mendel's clothes conveyed a more relaxed attitude this season, and a short-sleeve coat in natural pearl mink looked glamorous, the fit was often punitive. And deconstruction and frayed edges are last spring's trend. Any fashion person will tell you that. At Phi, the designer Andreas Melbostad's grid floral prints suggested Peter Max illustrations, with saturated deep blues and poppy reds that worked best on short silk and rayon dresses and teacup skirts. But while cropped jackets in black stretch cotton looked fine, Mr. Melbostad has an annoying habit of forcing extremes into a single look. His many-layered skirts, with insets of pleating, are similar to a style Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby of Boudicca showed last season, without their finesse and sense of surprise. And can we have a ban on white organdy skirts with chains of flowers embroidered at the hem? The look has trappings of table

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World Briefing | Africa: Somalia: Relief Ship Released

Gunmen who held a ship with United Nations food relief for nearly three months released the vessel and 940 metric tons of rice donated for the country's 28,000 tsunami victims. Piracy is common along Somalia's coastline but this was the first instance of a hijacking of a ship working for the World Food Program. Marc Lacey (NYT)

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A ban on same-sex attraction and sexual activity could be a crucial issue for Catholics' attitudes.

News reports surrounding the review of Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States that the Vatican has organized have focused on the possibility that Rome plans to bar gay men from ordination to the priesthood, regardless of their readiness to remain faithful to their pledge of celibacy. Such a ban would have serious consequences, of course. It would reverberate far beyond the gay candidates for ordination whom it might directly affect and even beyond the celibate gay priests who would inevitably take it as a judgment on their own calling and years of service. In fact, the Catholic Church's moral stance on same-sex attraction and sexual activity may well prove to be a touchstone issue for the next generation of Catholics' attitudes toward church authority, just as the renewed papal condemnation of contraception proved to be for Catholics in the 1970's and 80's. But important as that question may be, it is not the only matter at stake in the official scrutiny now beginning of Catholic seminary education. The Vatican instruction outlining the project contains 96 questions ''as a guide'' for the teams of visitors who will interview students and faculty members at approximately 200 seminaries and submit their findings to Rome. The thrust of these questions is to assure that future priests are fully prepared to live celibate lives, as well as morally disciplined and prayerful ones, and that they are thoroughly committed to church teachings, especially as laid out in recent official documents from the pope and Vatican offices. There are no explicit questions about the seminarians' capacities for initiative, creativity or imaginative and consultative leadership, although some of these qualities are undoubtedly taken up in the various church documents found in the footnotes. There is no explicit question about concern for social justice, unless that could be assumed under a single reference to ''apostolic zeal.'' By comparison, there are numerous questions specifically asking about recitation of the rosary, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to Mary and the saints and many other ''exercises of piety.'' A single question asks whether seminarians are being taught ''a proper understanding of the role of women in ecclesial life'' and ''the proper models of clergy-lay cooperation.'' The next question makes clear that what is ''proper'' is to be found in statements by Pope John Paul II and his Vatican officials. Of the 96 questions, just these two address the intellectual potential

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World Briefing | Africa: Somalia: Hijackers Back Down On Deal

Gunmen who seized a ship carrying relief food off the coast of Somalia on June 27 continue to hold the ship, its 10-man crew and 850 tons of rice despite an announcement last week that the hostage crisis had been resolved. The hijackers had agreed to end the crisis last week in a deal struck with the World Food Program. But the agency said the hijackers had issued fresh ransom demands. Marc Lacey (NYT)

1705750_3

Abuse of Electroshock Found in Turkish Mental Hospitals

sits on the joint European Union-Turkish parliamentary committee. He said he would bring up the report as part of the membership negotiations, because to join, a nation must be judged to follow democratic principles, respect human rights and be on its way to meeting certain economic and institutional standards. The report, which includes testimony from former patients and videos taken inside some institutions, reported other abuses as well. Much of the documented abuse took place in orphanages and rehabilitation centers for children with developmental or intellectual disabilities. Investigators saw emaciated and neglected children, many of whom had behavioral problems that were likely to have been the result of mistreatment rather than pre-existing illness, Mr. Rosenthal said. ''We saw children who were essentially abandoned, starving, tied down to their beds,'' he said, adding that investigators had not been allowed to see the worst wards. Photographs and videos taken at the Saray Rehabilitation Center, the largest of Turkey's government-run rehabilitation centers, show skeletal children, some with plastic water bottles taped over their hands to prevent them from biting their fingers. Other children with only minor disabilities are mixed in with the rest. Although the center keeps no mortality records, a footnote in the report notes that the large number of admissions without a corresponding number of discharges suggests that many children die at the center. ''We believe there's a very high death rate in these facilities,'' Mr. Rosenthal said. Officials at Turkey's Directorate for Social Services and Child Protection could not be reached for comment. The report said that there were no enforceable laws in Turkey to protect mentally ill people from arbitrary detention or forced treatment and that there were virtually no community services that might keep them out of institutions. As a result, according to the report, thousands are institutionalized for life. Mr. Rosenthal founded Mental Disability Rights International in 1993. It now has a staff of nine people, including one in Turkey. Massacres of Armenians Recalled STRASBOURG, France, Sept. 28 (Reuters) -- The European Parliament gave only a grudging blessing on Wednesday to membership talks with Turkey starting next week and said Ankara must recognize the massacres of Armenians during the years around 1915 as genocide before it can join the Euopean Union. The resolution, which is nonbinding, was a political slap for Turkey, which insists that the killings, carried out by the Ottoman Empire, did not constitute genocide.

1705904_0

World Briefing | Europe: France: Troops Storm Seized Ship

French commandos stormed a ferry off the Corsican coast that was hijacked Tuesday by striking seamen protesting the possible privatization of a government-owned Mediterranean ferry company. No passengers were aboard when it was hijacked in Marseille. Rappelling down ropes dropped from five Puma helicopters, 50 soldiers arrested the 30 or so seamen who had commandeered the ferry, the Pascal Paoli, which usually travels between Marseille and Corsica. The army team steered the ferry to the military port of Toulon, since strikers continued to block the port at Marseille. John Tagliabue (NYT)

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West Presses for Nuclear Agency to Rebuke Iran, Despite Russian Dissent

to walk away from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty altogether. The treaty, which Iran has generally observed except for failing to disclose certain elements of its program, requires signatories with civilian nuclear programs to submit to international inspections to ensure that they are not also building nuclear weapons. American and European officials said the situation with Iran had been fluid for days. Despite a unanimous feeling among the top envoys of Britain, France and Germany, which have been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program, that Iran's nuclear activities should be taken up at the Security Council -- they signed an op-ed page column in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday to that effect -- there was still no consensus on how to proceed, they said. 'We have not decided what we are going to do,'' a senior European official said. Some European officials were said to be contending that it would be a mistake to try to ram through a resolution that did not have the support of Russia and China. ''We think it's very important that a broad body of governments in Vienna stick together,'' said a European negotiator. ''We don't want this to be a north-south issue. This is one that should concern the board of governors as a whole.'' By north-south, he meant that he did not want the board to be divided between the industrialized and the poor countries of the world. Less-developed countries control about a third of the board and they are disinclined to take punitive action against Iran. They contend that such a move would backfire and that while Iran has failed to be candid on nuclear matters, there is no proof that it is developing a weapons program. Iran, meanwhile, said Thursday that it was willing to continue its negotiations with Britain, France and Germany but that it also was going to negotiate with other countries over its nuclear program. A spokesman for Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Aghamohammadi, also said the Europeans had been ''forced to withdraw from their positions'' seeking referral to the Security Council. But European and American officials said his comment was premature and could prove incorrect. In another development Thursday, European Union diplomats walked out on a march in Tehran marking the anniversary of the beginning of the war with Iraq in 1980 after ballistic missiles rolled past carrying anti-American and anti-Israel banners, Agence France-Presse reported.

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Brazil's Lofty Promises After Nun's Killing Prove Hollow

continues as if nothing had happened,'' said Bishop Erwin Krautler of the Xingu, as this region straddling the Trans-Amazon Highway is known. Early this month, representatives of an army unit sent in August to survey the boundaries of every plot of land in the region by year's end met here with leaders of peasant and religious groups. Gabriel Domingos do Nascimento, a leader of the local peasants' union, asked that the army be more assertive in going after the hired guns who since the 1980's have killed more than a dozen priests, nuns and community leaders and driven scores of peasant families off the small plots of land they have carved from the jungle. ''It's been like this for 30 years, and we can't stand it any more,'' he said. ''We're desperate. Even with the army here, the land invasions and the deforestation continue.'' The community liaison officer for the topographic team, Sgt. Mauro Sergio Vieira, responded that as technicians, the survey unit could not resolve those problems. ''Our task is not repressive,'' Sergeant Vieira said. ''We are here to solve a social problem. I know that people want answers now, but it takes a while.'' The army topographers have been called in because over the years ranchers and loggers in the Amazon have developed an elaborate system of generating fraudulent deeds in order to gain control of parcels of land they covet. Sister Dorothy's offense was to challenge that system both in court and on the ground, encouraging peasants to resist spurious land claims and demanding that authorities take action to revoke them. ''We had no computers, our maps were outdated, and we had no budget or personnel,'' Bruno Kempner, the regional director of the official National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform, said when asked about the slow pace of reform. ''It was a way to make us unable to act. Even now, there are areas we can't enter because there are chains across the road, and anyone who enters will be killed, including us.'' In Brazilian slang, those who forge land titles are known as ''grileiros,'' or ''cricketeers.'' The name comes from the well-established practice of sealing fabricated documents in boxes filled with insects for as long as it takes to give the papers a worm-eaten and therefore aged appearance. But that is hardly the only device that the grileiros use to forge their claims. Sometimes they

1700973_4

The Codless Seas

finds a way of life barely changed for 400 years: bare-boned houses built by hand, residents happily surviving off caribou and sea birds. Many villages, with ''schools for three and bars for one,'' have no police presence or doctor, and depend on a weekly supply boat. When even that lifeline is canceled, outporters stoically float their saltboxes to another cove, ''dodging the feuds and finding the sun.'' Gimlette evokes much in few words. The Minister of Fish ''wafted me into a slug of leather.'' A bungalow ''glowed like a cheese.'' At a party, there were ''little trails of grand-children and turkey over every surface.'' On a bus, he meets a passenger with ''an ear so loathingly pierced that it could probably be unzipped in times of trouble and stashed away until things improved.'' In a few places the author gets carried away with these descriptions, and his frippery undermines comprehension. (For example: A cathedral looks like a cave, but ''instead of bats, it was decorated with local politicians, all spouting rainwater in times of civic urgency.'') He has a habit of starting scenes with a cryptic, apparently foreshadowing, sentence. It's meant to be dramatic, but sometimes it's a little confusing. Most of ''Theatre of Fish'' is larkily lighthearted, as if Gimlette were whistling in the province's eternal dark. But one act, sad beyond measure, defies even his optimism. In Labrador, the author finds the native people living in smashed towns defined by alcoholism, murder and suicide. Having lost their old customs -- hunting and migration -- and rituals, they despise the new ways, in which they're utterly dependent on the government. Gimlette doesn't know what to make of the situation. ''It was easy enough to ascertain the different parts but I could never assemble the whole.'' He's fine with that, but fears he's become impervious to the place's horror. ''Perhaps the voyager is no more than the voyeur, seeking pain and beauty that's always someone else's?'' Gimlette isn't one for summing up. His great-grandfather trekked through the region to enact reform; Gimlette, a hapless audience member, came merely to observe. Whether the drama of Newfoundland and Labrador is comedy or tragedy, he wisely refuses to say. Elizabeth Royte is the author of ''Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash'' and ''The Tapir's Morning Bath: Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest and the Scientists Who Are Trying to Solve Them.''

1701365_2

As Recovery Slowly Starts, Some Lights Go On and Some Mail Is Delivered

receive several hours of training and that many would be sent to the Gulf Coast to staff the many shelters in the region. Foreign governments and overseas private organizations have pledged more than $700 million in cash and material assistance to storm victims, including two tons of disposable diapers from South Korea, according to a State Department official. Joseph G. Sullivan, the United States ambassador to Zimbabwe, is running a small State Department office in Baton Rouge to coordinate aid from foreign donors and to locate foreign citizens displaced by the storm. He said that several hundred foreign visitors remain unaccounted for, but that there have been no confirmed deaths. Ambassador Sullivan said 115 countries and 12 international organizations have pledged aid to the United States. He said an elderly woman in Lithuania, grateful for past American assistance to her country, sent her life savings of 1,000 Euros. Across the Gulf Coast region, efforts to restore basic infrastructure continued, if haltingly. The Postal Service said that it had resumed limited mail service in some areas affected by the storm. In Mississippi, work began on Friday on a temporary road to handle two-way traffic on U.S. Highway 90, which runs along the state's Gulf Coast and was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Federal transportation officials said the first phase of that project is to be completed in 90 days. In Louisiana, officials were set to begin work on the Interstate 10 Bridge, which connects New Orleans with Slidell. They hoped to have one-lane, two-way traffic flowing within 45 days and two-lane, two-way traffic within 120 days. When completed, the project will restore road access into New Orleans from the east, officials said. In New Orleans, power was being restored bit by bit to parts of the city, including the central business district. And by the end of Saturday, a rail link to New Orleans was expected to be reconnected, the Federal Department of Transportation said. Norfolk Southern Railroad has been working to repair a bridge across Lake Pontchartrain to reconnect the city by rail from the east. In stark contrast with the lawlessness that took over the city in the immediate aftermath of the storm, police officials said Saturday that they had fully restored order in this sodden city. ''We have complete control over the city at this time,'' said Edwin P. Compass III, superintendent of the New Orleans police. ''I think

1701234_12

Laughing All the Way From the Bank

of low-income borrowers, continued even after regulators warned the bank to stop such activities. There were also glaring conflicts of interest that analysts said derived in part from Mr. Weill's relentless desire for Citigroup to produce double-digit financial returns. Glass-Steagall, the hoary law that Citigroup's creation helped to displace, was intended to prevent conflicts among consumer, commercial and investment banking. Yet Citigroup became a focal point of nearly every investigation that examined such conflicts, most notably in relation to its role in the collapses of WorldCom and Enron. The bank eventually paid more than $4.65 billion to settle regulatory inquiries and class-action lawsuits. The scandal that may have done the most damage to the reputations of Citigroup and Mr. Weill was the investigation of questionable corporate research produced by the bank's star telecommunications analyst, Jack Grubman. E-mail messages unearthed in the investigation indicated that Mr. Weill might have done favors for and put pressure on Mr. Grubman in exchange for glowing coverage of AT&T, which Citigroup wanted as a major client. Although the scandal forced Mr. Weill to withdraw as a candidate for the board of the New York Stock Exchange, to this day he says he did nothing wrong. ''Some e-mails surfaced from Grubman that he, under oath, has said many times, that the e-mails didn't have any basis in fact but were done to impress another person,'' Mr. Weill said. He learned, he said, about ''the danger of free-form e-mails where people are walking down the street BlackBerrying to one another -- God knows what they're saying -- and then taking part of what they say out of context to make a point.'' Amid the papers and magazines piled high on Mr. Weill's U-shaped desk is a sign with the word ''e-mail'' slashed out in red ink. Mr. Weill also dismisses accusations that Citigroup landed in the middle of numerous investigations because it had grown too big to manage or that the model had too many inherent conflicts. He said he was confident that steps the bank has taken recently to erect tighter boundaries between its businesses and to instill stronger ethical standards would limit abuses in the future. ''The financial industry has always been an industry with lots of financial conflicts,'' he said. ''We relied on our lawyers and our compliance people and our standards of how to do business and the ethics of the people we

1701216_0

Dangerous Talkers

Here's a new road game to play when the children start getting restless in the back seat. Get them to count the number of drivers who have one hand on the wheel and the other holding a cellphone to the ear. The game will probably be more fun if you don't spoil it by telling the youngsters what a hazard those one-handed drivers really are. Or that you, their harassed chauffeur, must maneuver with extra care because of all those driver-talkers blithely breaking New York State law. Almost four years after New York lawmakers established the first state ban on driving while using a hand-held cellphone, an awful lot of people are flouting the law. Even the worst of those flouters knows that using a cellphone is a hazardous distraction while driving. At the University of Utah, researchers found that talking on a cellphone reduces the response time of a young driver to that of your average pensioner. Response times for older drivers fared even worse. A Harvard analysis estimated that drivers using cellphones cause about 2,600 deaths a year nationwide and 330,000 moderate to critical injuries. And the most recent study, reported this summer by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, provides evidence that a driver using any cellphone -- hand-held or hands-free -- is four times more likely to get involved in a crash serious enough to inflict injury. Let's face it. Behind the wheel is no place for multitasking. Yet, as automobiles become mobile offices or rolling homes, there are more and more distractions -- dashboard navigation systems, complicated CD players. After an accident in Alaska last year, police discovered a television set positioned so that the driver could watch movies while cruising down the highway. Cellphones might seem less troubling -- if they weren't in practically every driver's pocket or pocketbook. (One Japanese study found that more than 40 percent of accidents attributed to cellphone use occurred when drivers were trying to answer them). At some point, it may make sense to ban their use in cars altogether. Current law forbids using a hand-held phone except in emergencies. More than half a million tickets have been issued, with a standard fine of $100. But in a state with with nine million cars, there are obviously still too many drivers with their ears glued to a phone while their minds wander far from the highway.

1701122_1

Dangerous Talkers

you, their harassed chauffeur, must maneuver with extra care and concern because of all those driver-talkers blithely breaking New York State law. Almost four years after New York lawmakers established the first state ban on driving while using a hand-held cellphone, an awful lot of people are routinely flouting the law. Even the worst of those flouters knows that using a cellphone is a hazardous distraction while driving, and research supporting such common sense is mounting steadily. At the University of Utah, researchers found that talking on a cellphone reduces the response time of a young driver to that of your average pensioner. Response times for older drivers fared even worse. A Harvard analysis estimated that drivers using cellphones cause about 2,600 deaths a year nationwide and 330,000 moderate to critical injuries. And the most recent study, reported this summer by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, provides evidence that a driver using any cellphone -- hand-held or hands-free -- is four times more likely to get involved in a crash serious enough to inflict injury. Let's face it. Behind the wheel is no place for multitasking. Yet, as automobiles become mobile offices or rolling homes, there are more and more distractions -- dashboard navigation systems, complicated CD players, places for food and drink and the hand-held computer. After an accident in Alaska last year, police found the driver's car outfitted with a television set positioned so that he could watch movies while cruising down the highway. On the face of it, cellphones would seem to be less hazardous, except that nowadays virtually every driver seems to have one. (One Japanese study found that more than 40 percent of accidents attributed to cellphone use occurred when drivers were trying to answer them). At some point, it may make sense to ban cellphone use in cars altogether. Current law forbids a driver from using a hand-held phone except in emergencies, but it hasn't been easy to enforce. In almost four years, police have issued more than half a million tickets, with a standard fine of $100. These include 48,000 tickets in in Nassau County, 32,000 in Suffolk, 34,000 in Westchester and 333,000 in New York City. But in a state with almost nine million cars, there are obviously far too many drivers with their ears glued to the phone while their minds wander far from the highway in front of them.

1701143_1

Dangerous Talkers

with extra care and concern because of all those driver-talkers blithely breaking New York State law. Almost four years after New York lawmakers established the first state ban on driving while using a hand-held cellphone, an awful lot of people are routinely flouting the law. Even the worst of those flouters knows that using a cellphone is a hazardous distraction while driving, and research supporting such common sense is mounting steadily. At the University of Utah, researchers found that talking on a cellphone reduces the response time of a young driver to that of your average pensioner. Response times for older drivers fared even worse. A Harvard analysis estimated that drivers using cellphones cause about 2,600 deaths a year nationwide and 330,000 moderate to critical injuries. And the most recent study, reported this summer by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, provides evidence that a driver using any cellphone -- hand-held or hands-free -- is four times more likely to get involved in a crash serious enough to inflict injury. Let's face it. Behind the wheel is no place for multitasking. Yet, as automobiles become mobile offices or rolling homes, there are more and more distractions -- dashboard navigation systems, complicated CD players, places for food and drink and the hand-held computer. Even more absurdly, after an accident in Alaska last year, police found the driver's car outfitted with a television set positioned so that he could watch movies while cruising down the highway. Cellphones are obviously less distracting than a television screen, except that nowadays every driver seems to have one, readily at hand or resting in a pocket or pocketbook.(One Japanese study found that more than 40 percent of accidents attributed to cellphone use occurred when drivers were trying to answer them). At some point, it may make sense to ban their use in cars altogether. Current law, which forbids a driver from using a cellphone except in emergencies, has not been easy to enforce. In almost four years, more than half a million tickets have been issued, with a standard fine of $100, including 48,000 in Nassau County, 32,000 in Suffolk, 34,000 in Westchester and 333,000 in New York City. But in a state with almost nine million cars, there are still far too many drivers with their ears glued to the phone while their minds wander far from the highway in front of them. The City

1701236_1

Thwarting a Cough, With Decorum

product's introduction in 2001, according to Information Resources, the market research firm. Whatever their payloads, all strips begin as vats of syrup. It is only late in the manufacturing process that the syrup is spread out to harden into strips. InnoZen went through 75 to 100 syrup formulations before finding a recipe for strips that melt instantly upon hitting a moist tongue but hold their shape when cradled in the palm of a hand. Particular attention was paid to the flavor. A panel of three flavor experts tested hundreds of variations and made detailed notes as to whether they exhibited, for example, ''nice top notes'' or ''nice green notes.'' (A green note, Mr. Kehoe said, tastes like slightly underripe watermelon.) InnoZen settled on a minty flavor that counteracts the bitterness of dextromethorphan, the active ingredient. The mintiness is reminiscent of toothpaste gel -- pleasant enough, but not exactly the sort of thing you'd add to a sundae. That was precisely InnoZen's goal, said Matthew Burns, the chief operating officer of the company. ''Gary made one flavor so that it tasted exactly like a cherry Lifesaver,'' he said. ''But we didn't want people to eat these as candy. So we stepped back and we made it more medicinal.'' InnoZen, however, doesn't want to limit its target market to consumers suffering from serious, hacking coughs. It has also developed an herbal strip that uses menthol instead of dextromethorphan; Mr. Burns described this version as ''a Whole Foods type of product'' that can be taken as an everyday throat soother. The strip was given a honey lemon taste, though there are also strong notes of ginger and brown sugar. The two versions of the Suppress Cough strips, which first appeared on the West Coast last October, sell for $2.99 a pack -- 32 strips in the dextromethorphan version, and 24 in the herbal one. InnoZen had hoped that the strips would benefit from several new state laws requiring cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine -- an ingredient that can also be used to make methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug -- to be placed behind a counter. ''We thought that was going to open up big spaces in the cold aisles,'' Mr. Burns said. But many drugstores have simply replaced boxes of such cold remedies with vouchers, which are then redeemed for the medicines at the pharmacist's counter. Suppress Cough strips may yet catch on, but

1706017_2

A Letter From the Shores of Iraq

other day, an Iraqi officer suggested to his British adviser that a misbehaving sailor be buried in sand up to his neck. The biggest challenge, explained Capt. John Clink of the Royal Navy, is getting middle-management Iraqis to take the initiative, especially when things go wrong. This requires a huge cultural shift. Saddam's tyrannical rule over nearly three decades conditioned people here never to assume responsibility. ''There is a huge problem with fear of blame, fear of failure,'' Captain Clink said. ''The result is a tendency to look away when a problem arises, to ignore it or just not do anything in the hopes that it will all go away.'' A vast majority of Iraqi military personnel, Captain Clink added, ''have had the initiative kicked out of them by decades of repression. When Patrol Boat 1 breaks down, it is amazingly difficult to get them to decide how to get around the problem. They want to refer everything to the operational commander. ''At the younger level, though, the 25-year-olds, you start to see a completely different outlook on life. They are not superstars, but you see better English, more initiative, better leadership. And these are the guys out driving the patrol boats.'' The problem is that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense in Baghdad is so dysfunctional that it is next to impossible to get these Iraqi junior officers promoted. And one month last summer the whole Iraqi Navy didn't get paid. The Iraqi government ordered three new fast patrol boats from a contractor in Baghdad for millions of dollars. They are being finished on the dock in Umm Qasr, but no one knows whether they will stay afloat, because of all the extras that were added by the Iraqis without regard to seaworthiness. The Iraqi Navy has a couple of terrific, dedicated commanders -- real leaders, respected by their men. But when they go back home to lawless Basra, they never know whether masked men will attack them, as has happened to colleagues. And behind these few real leaders, there is no effective middle management. So yes, we've trained a lot of Iraqi soldiers in the last 18 months, but that is not the relevant number. The relevant number is how many will be paid on time, how many will get promoted when they've earned it, how many will show up for training after lunch, how many will follow when

1706019_2

The Way It Is

trip was Representative Bob Ney of Ohio. It's not possible to attribute any one weather event to global warming. But climate models show that global warming will lead to increased hurricane intensity, and some research indicates that this is already occurring. Tyco paid $2 million, most going to firms controlled by Mr. Abramoff, as part of its successful effort to preserve tax advantages it got from shifting its legal home to Bermuda. Timothy Flanigan, a general counsel at Tyco, has been nominated for the second-ranking Justice Department post. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is awash in soldiers and police. Nonetheless, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Blackwater USA, a private security firm with strong political connections, to provide armed guards. Mr. Abramoff was indicted last month on charges of fraud relating to his purchase of SunCruz, a casino boat operation. Mr. Ney inserted comments in the Congressional Record attacking SunCruz's original owner, Konstantinos ''Gus'' Boulis, placing pressure on him to sell to Mr. Abramoff and his partner, Adam Kidan, and praised Mr. Kidan's character. James Schmitz, who resigned as the Pentagon's inspector general amid questions about his performance, has been hired as Blackwater's chief operating officer. Last week three men were arrested in connection with the gangland-style murder of Mr. Boulis. SunCruz, after it was controlled by Mr. Kidan and Mr. Abramoff, paid a company controlled by one of the men arrested, Anthony ''Big Tony'' Moscatiello, and his daughter $145,000 for catering and other work. In court documents, questions are raised about whether food and drink were ever provided. SunCruz paid $95,000 to a company in which one of the other men arrested, Anthony ''Little Tony'' Ferrari, is a principal. Iraq's oil production remains below prewar levels. The Los Angeles Times reports that mistakes by U.S. officials and a Halliburton subsidiary, which was given large no-bid reconstruction contracts, may have permanently damaged Iraq's oilfields. Tom DeLay, who stepped down as House majority leader after his indictment, once called Mr. Abramoff ''one of my closest and dearest friends.'' Mr. Abramoff funneled funds from clients to conservative institutions and causes. The Washington Post reported that associates of Mr. DeLay claim that he severed the relationship after Mr. Boulis's murder. Public health experts warn that the U.S. would be dangerously unprepared for an avian flu pandemic. As Walter Cronkite used to say, That's the way it is. Op-Ed Columnist

1706049_0

Turkey's Disabled

The treatment of the mentally disabled has fundamentally changed in recent years. The awareness that people with mental retardation or psychiatric diseases can thrive with proper therapy and attention has led doctors to abandon huge institutions and to let patients live with or near their families and get care in their communities. Electric shock therapy is used only in certain cases, with anesthesia. But these reforms have bypassed Turkey, says a new report by Mental Disability Rights International, a Washington-based group that studies the treatment of the mentally disabled. The group convincingly documents, with heartbreaking photos and video, practices that it calls ''torture.'' Turkey's psychiatric system, the group found, makes widespread and indiscriminate use of unmodified electric shock therapy -- electroshock that is administered without muscle relaxants or anesthesia. Such therapy is frightening, painful and dangerous. Electroshock therapy can be useful against some mental diseases, but Turkey uses it on nearly a third of its patients with acute mental disorders, including children. The group quoted the director of the electroconvulsive therapy center at one hospital as saying the therapy is effective only without anesthesia because patients need to feel ''punished.'' Turkey should immediately ban unmodified electric shock therapy and limit the use of modified therapy to cases in which it is medically indicated. It should never be used as a first resort, and never on children. It will be more difficult to reform the country's practice of warehousing retarded or mentally ill children. Investigators found giant buildings -- supposedly rehabilitation centers -- filled with children confined to their cribs or living in total inactivity. When children begin the self-destructive behaviors that are a product of such boredom and abandonment, staff members tape plastic bottles over their hands so the children cannot use them. The staff in one institution told investigators that children who cannot feed themselves are left to starve to death. How can such medieval practices thrive in a modern country? One reason is that these institutions are virtually hidden. In addition, Turkey lacks a widespread culture of rights, and its citizens do not often challenge the practices of a state that has at times given them good reasons for fear. Some in Turkey's establishment have complained that the report was released just before Turkey was to begin formal talks to move toward joining the European Union. But the talks are an opportunity for European mental health experts to

1705950_0

Recycled

SOME designers know a good thing when they see it in the trash. Creating attractive items for homes or fashion using everything from recycled glass to used bicycle tire tubes, they're proving that twice-used can look twice as good. So, this fall, green up your getaway in style. BETHANY LYTTLE WASHED ASHORE -- Sea glass dinnerware by the Riverside Design Group is created by refiring discarded glass at high temperatures. The pieces are available in several shapes and a dozen hues. The Santa Fe collection shown here includes a 13-inch freeform plate in black; a 10-inch wave dish in pearl; a 7-inch triangle plate in gold; and a 7-inch bowl in copper. $150 for one set. (800)872-6618 www.pangaya.com DRINK TO THIS -- Salvaged white oak staves from discarded 70-gallon wine barrels are used to create this adjustable folding chair. The seat can support up to 600 pounds. Each chair is branded with the name of the winery where the barrel was used. Suitable for indoor or outdoor use. $125. (707)822-7307 www.mcleodchair.com CARDBOARD -- This modern barstool is made by alternating horizontal and vertical layers of corrugated cardboard. Water based, non-toxic adhesive secures the layers. The stool is 30 inches tall, has a suede-like texture and has a built-in footrest. $345. (919)672-4192 www.cardboardchair.com LEATHER REVIVAL -- Recycled leather is used to cover this flexible wool felt container, which is flat until it is folded upward into bowl-like shapes and secured with fasteners. Use several of the containers to hold office supplies, jewelry or keys. They pack flat, making them ideal for travel. Available in various colors. 5-inch is $16; 10-inch is $35. (718)625-2955 www.plydesign.com ON THE ROAD AGAIN-- Shannon Hames's messenger-style bags are made from reclaimed mid-century modern vinyl and bicycle inner tubes donated by cyclists and bike shops. The tubes form the sides and bottom of the bags. The large bags shown here have two inside pockets, front flaps with Velcro closures and two-inch-wide adjustable shoulder straps. Available in 10 colors, $79 each. (250)352-2080 www.flat-bags.com NOUVEAU BAMBOO -- Hand-cast in California from recycled aluminum, these bamboo-inspired vases are available in three sizes: the 12-inch tall narrow vase is $120; the 12-inch tall wide vase is $250; and the 20-inch tall wide vase is $360. (866)458-1017 www.twokh.com SHOPPING

1698920_1

Documenting New York Places, Both Then and Now

Now a recent landmark in rephotography history titled ''New York Changing: Douglas Levere Revisits Berenice Abbott's New York'' is on view at the Museum of the City of New York. The show presents 50 cityscapes from the Modernist photographer Berenice Abbott's 1939 book ''Changing New York,'' each paired with a picture shot from the same perspective with the same model large-format camera by the commercial photographer Douglas Levere between 1997 and 2003. Mr. Levere's project is impressive as a feat of photographic craftsmanship and professional stamina, though perhaps only other photographers will fully appreciate its degree of difficulty. For the rest of us, the interest is mainly in seeing and comparing how New York looked then and how it looks now. The differences between Abbott's pictures and Mr. Levere's range from nearly imperceptible to almost total. A large brick warehouse appears unchanged but for its new windows, the building having been turned into a luxury condominium, according to the wall label. A statue of Lafayette in Union Square remains the same, but a tree in the middle distance has grown up. The monumental Beaux Arts-style allegorical sculptures outside the Custom House in Bowling Green are still there, but the Victorian facade behind them has turned into a shiny, 50's-style Modernist grid; a pedestrian bridge between two office buildings at Exchange Place and Williams Street is no longer there, and the antique street lamps have been replaced by modern, streamlined lights. The Skyport, where seaplanes that taxied executives from Westchester County to Wall Street used to dock, is now a ferry terminal. This is all so absorbing that a viewer risks incurring whiplash from looking back and forth between images. Whether Mr. Levere's rephotography is deeply compelling as art or as history, however, is a more complicated question. He is not, after all, revealing or expressing anything that in a general sense we don't already know. Abbott, by contrast, was using photography to convey an experience of what was to her an amazingly dynamic new world. Her vertiginous views of soaring skyscrapers and sunlit metropolitan canyons, pictures of Art Deco towers looming behind low, 19th-century buildings, and worshipful visions of mighty, river-straddling bridges are all about the euphoria of modernity and its seemingly limitless possibilities. Mr. Levere does produce a kind of extension of Abbott's larger project. His pictures in combination with hers do convey the experience of ongoing flux and

1698950_0

Farewell, Octane. Hello, Volt!

GEORGE WESTPHAL'S sky-blue 1985 Nissan Sentra has braved two decades of harsh winters in Pearl River, N.Y. -- and looks it. Spots of rust litter the hood. Door hinges creak. A thick stripe of duct tape holds a cracked dashboard together. But inside, this unassuming old car holds some hidden surprises. Behind the fuel door, where a thirsty black hole used to be, is a three-pronged plug. Pop the trunk, and eight lead-acid batteries reveal themselves, aligned neatly in two rows. Where the engine used to be are two more batteries, along with a platform of wires and electronic casings. Sit behind the wheel to find an amp meter and a battery indicator in place of fuel and oil-pressure gauges. Mr. Westphal's ex-gasoline drinker has taken on a new identity. It's a purely electric car -- and he did the conversion himself. With gasoline prices soaring -- in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, they went well above $4 in some states this week -- drivers are taking a new interest in electric cars. Many have already turned to hybrid gasoline-and-electric models like the popular Toyota Prius, though the wait can be overwhelming. In the discussion forum hybridcars.com, most hybrid buyers said they had waited several weeks for their cars -- 64 weeks in one case. But anyone interested in buying an all-electric car from a major carmaker is essentially out of luck. Manufacturers have canceled work on vehicles like the Toyota RAV4-EV, the General Motors EV-1 and the Honda EV+. (According to Toyota's Web site, it discontinued its vehicle because of a lack of demand and technical problems. For now, converting a gasoline-powered car is the best -- and for most, the only -- way to get an all-electric car. Any car can be converted, from a Hummer to a Geo Metro, and parts are available from several suppliers. Most components can go in most cars, and only about a dozen or so main parts -- including an electric motor and an adapter to connect it to the transmission -- are necessary for the conversion. The needed parts are available from several suppliers and are sometimes even sold as a kit -- typically for $5,000 to $15,000. (Optional parts provide for power brakes and steering, air-conditioning and heat.) You could hire a mechanic or pay a specialty company to convert a gas-burning car to electric. Or you could buy one

1700385_3

Alarm Growing On Storm's Cost For Agriculture

devastation wrought by the storm -- and the ensuing economic impact on farmers both near the gulf and several states away -- could alter the debate in Washington and hamper crucial trade talks scheduled for a December meeting of the World Trade Organization in Hong Kong. ''Without question, this makes the reforms that a lot of the rest of the world would like to see happen here in the U.S. a lot more difficult,'' said Clayton Yeutter, a former secretary of agriculture and United States trade representative. ''The general psychology of the event is clearly negative.'' In recent weeks, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns has been crisscrossing the nation talking to farmers. His message is the need to reduce farm subsidies both to open more export markets to American farmers and to comply with international free trade agreements. ''There is a real conditioning going on here,'' said Keith Bolin, a corn and hog farmer and president of the American Corn Growers Association, who attended a session last week in Decatur, Ill., three days after the hurricane. ''Get used to less, get used to less. That's the message.'' After two failed efforts at trade negotiations in the so-called Doha round, another failure in Hong Kong could be devastating to developing countries, which are desperate to lift their economies through access to markets in Europe and the United States. The World Trade Organization is working to remove $280 billion in subsidies among the world's richest countries. Of that, American taxpayers and consumers paid $47 billion to farmers last year, an amount equal to about 20 percent of farm receipts, according to the World Bank. But Mr. Yeutter and others said the emotional and financial impact of the hurricane on farmers will be tough to ignore in Washington. The American Farm Bureau Federation estimated that Louisiana would lose two million tons, or 20 percent, of its sugar cane crop. That would reduce the total United States sugar harvest by 3.5 percent, according to the analysis. In Franklinton, La., a milk-processing plant is struggling without power to dump 60,000 gallons of stored milk that has gone bad. At some nearby Louisiana dairy farms, farmers have continued to milk cows, but with nowhere to sell the milk, they have simply dumped it down the drain. Some 25 million pounds of milk at plants in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi could be lost over the next month if

1700298_3

Seeking Justice, of Gods or the Politicians

into traditional religious theodicies. But this did not mean, of course, that theodicies faded away. Ms. Neiman argued that for philosophers theology had been replaced by history. The fates of peoples and nations reflected other forces, and disruptions were given other forms of explanation. Hegel saw history as an evolutionary series of transformations in which destruction was as inevitable as birth. Marx believed other kinds of economic and human laws accounted for destruction and evolution. This mostly left natural disasters for the growing realm of science: if they couldn't be prevented, at least their origins could be understood. Now though, with the prospect of thousands of dead becoming plausible with reports from New Orleans, other forms of theodicy also taking shape. Much debate is taking place about the scale of human tragedy, about procedures and planning and responsibility. And none of that should be ignored. But it is remarkable how this natural disaster has almost imperceptibly come to seem the result of human agency, as if failures in planning were almost evidence of cause, as if forces of nature were subject to human oversight. The hurricane has been humanized. I don't want to push this too far, of course; human actions, as the Portuguese prime minister knew, are crucial. But this is still an important change in our views of the natural world. In a way, it inflates human knowledge. It confidently extends scientific and political power into the realm of nature. It doesn't really explain catastrophe, but it attempts to explain why we are forced to experience it: because of human failings. There is a theodicy at work here, in the ways in which the reaction to natural catastrophe so readily becomes political. Nature becomes something to be managed or mismanaged; it lies within the political order, not outside it. Theodicy, if successful, does not overturn belief but confirms it. So, for some commentators, the flood and its aftermath provided confirmation of their previous doubts about the Bush adminstration. Actually, in some respects, this theodicy has gone even beyond the political: just as a religious theodicy might have shown natural catastrophe to be the result of human misdeed, many of the early commentators about the flood did the same, creating a kind of scientific/moral theodicy in which human sin is still a dominant factor. Last week, for example, Germany's minister of the environment, Jürgen Trittin, said: ''The American president

1699898_2

Is This the Gaze of an Endangered Species or an Evil Croc?

navigate Amazon waters. Asked for an estimate in an interview with the magazine Epoca, Eduardo Braga, governor of Amazonas, replied, ''The only thing I can say is that the presence of the caiman is intimidating and immensely greater than the human population'' of the state, which is 2.8 million. The animals have become so plentiful that some fishermen have begun using caiman meat as bait to catch a particular catfish known as the vulture of the waters. Brazilians themselves refuse to eat the fish, so it is exported upriver to Colombia, where it is considered a delicacy. Mr. Magnusson puts the total caiman population at ''tens of millions,'' but government officials defend the hunting ban, arguing that to lift it would bring about a return of the same predatory practices that nearly drove the caiman into extinction in the first place. They say the campaign to resume hunting reflects the peasants' desire for more income and a prejudice that stems from mankind's ancestral fear of reptiles. ''Mosquitoes transmit malaria, which kills a lot more people than caimans ever have,'' said Henrique Pereira dos Santos, regional director of the government's environmental agency. ''I think you have to take the semiotics of all this into account.'' What may well be the largest concentration of crocodilians anywhere in the world can be found here at the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve. ''At this time of year, there are some places where the caiman concentrations are so thick that if they just sat there and didn't move, you could walk across their backs to dry land,'' Mr. Magnusson said. At the reserve, which is supported in part by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the government now permits a limited harvest of caimans. One linear inch of the hide of the prized black caiman can be worth up to $25 on the international market if properly skinned, and the meat fetches 30 cents a pound. The skin of spectacled caimans goes for about $3 a square foot. But the program is still experimental, and scientists have doubts about extending it to other places. ''You can't allow hunting all over, only in particular areas and at certain times of year, where and when concentrations are the largest,'' cautioned Professor da Silveira, who is involved with the project. ''You must be selective and at the same time convince the residents of the region that there is something in it

1699877_1

Stunning News of a Tumor Serendipitously Discovered

I'd been feeling wonderful and was back to my full schedule of walking, jogging and teaching yoga. I had no hearing loss, balance problems or other symptoms associated with this rare kind of tumor. Sitting in my doctor's office, her voice seemed far away, and I grabbed onto a few reassuring words: ''noncancerous,'' ''slow-growing.'' I recall little of what she said that day, other than that, if my tumor grew, I might need brain surgery. Driving home, I was exactly the same person I'd been that morning, except suddenly everything was different. Now I was someone with a brain tumor. Advances in imaging technology have made it increasingly common for healthy, asymptomatic people like me to learn of such a disturbing ''incidental finding.'' ''Suspicious brain anomalies have been reported in as many as 20 percent of research participants recruited as healthy controls in research studies, with clinically significant findings occurring in 2 to 8 percent,'' said Judy Illes, a biomedical ethics expert at Stanford. Varying from harmless cysts to life-threatening malignancies, incidental findings can have a host of medical, financial and emotional consequences, including additional testing, increased insurance costs and considerable anxiety. Yet despite the frequency of incidental findings, only about half the researchers surveyed by Dr. Illes had procedures to handle them. Earlier this year, she was co-chairwoman of a workshop on the subject sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. ''There are significant ethical issues involved,'' Dr. Illes said. ''We need more research to understand the incidence of clinical abnormalities and explicit protocols to manage findings that are accidentally discovered.'' Increased use of scanning technology raises the likelihood of the ''serendipitous detection'' of abnormalities, said Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of the Department of Veterans Affairs in White River Junction, Vt., and Dartmouth Medical School. ''This is a side effect of our ability to see things so well,'' he said, ''and it's a double-edged sword. The conventional wisdom is that early detection improves health. But this assumption may be wrong.'' While some people benefit from early detection and treatment, others gain little but anxiety, and they may be hurt by treatment for a disease that would never have affected their health. ''Some diseases progress so slowly that people die of other causes long before the disease generates symptoms,'' Dr. Welch said. ''Other diseases may not progress at all. Have we done people a service if all we do is

1699884_6

High-Tech Flood Control, With Nature's Help

that the $4.5 billion effort will prove ineffective while threatening to kill the fragile lagoon in which Venice sits. In theory, the gates are to be completed by 2010. ''People fight doing things like this,'' said Dr. Bras, of M.I.T. ''But when disaster strikes you realize how important it is to think ahead.'' Planners did just that in Bangladesh after a 1991 hurricane created huge storm surges that killed more than 130,000 people. World charities helped build hundreds of concrete shelters on stilts, which in recent storms have saved thousands of lives. In Japan, a continuous battle against flooding in dense urban areas has produced an effort to develop superlevees. Unlike the customary mounds of earth, sand and rock that hold back threatening waters, they are broad expanses of raised land meant to resist breaks and withstand overflows. The approach being tried in California relies on a technology known as time-domain reflectometry. It works on the same principle as radar: a pulse of energy fired down a coaxial cable bounces back when it reaches the end or a distortion, like a bend or crimp. Careful measurement of the echoes traveling back along the cable can disclose serious distortions and danger. Dr. Kane, of Kane GeoTech, has installed such a system in the Sacramento River delta, along a levee that is threatening to fail. Could such a system have saved New Orleans? ''It would have given them more information,'' said Charles H. Dowding, a top expert on the technology at Northwestern University. ''The failure of a levee would have been detected.'' But experts say it is still unclear whether such a warning would have been enough to prevent the catastrophic breaches. Dr. Bras says sensor technologies for detecting levee failure hold much promise. But he adds that less glamorous approaches, like regular maintenance, may be even more valuable, since prevention is always the best cure. ''We have to learn that things have to be reviewed, revised, maintained and repaired as needed,'' he said. ''To see a city like New Orleans suffer such devastation -- some of that was preventable.'' He added that no matter how ambitious the coastal engineering, no matter how innovative and well maintained, the systems of levees, seawalls and floodgates were likely to suffer sporadic failures. ''Nature will throw big things at us once in a while,'' he said. ''There's always the possibility that nature will trump us.''

1702214_3

Venting Ideas, Then Hiding Them, Turns Out to Be a Tall Order

but a model prepared for internal use, showing the plaza peppered with vents, helped focus their attention. They now estimate that 80 to 90 percent of the potentially intrusive shafts have been relocated. Some shafts will be incorporated within -- and disguised by -- structures like the cultural building at the northeast corner of the plaza and the museum entrance pavilion on the west. Others might sit on the West Street-Route 9A median. Because there are no structures at the southeast corner of the plaza, relocating the shafts there has posed the greatest challenge, Mr. Cahill said. Planners are therefore casting their eyes to parcels outside the memorial quadrant. Some shafts might run through the commercial buildings known as Tower 3 and Tower 4 on Church Street. There is also a possibility of running them through Tower 5, on the site of the former Deutsche Bank building, at 130 Liberty Street, said Charles J. Maikish, the executive director of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center. And Kenneth J. Ringler Jr., the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said the PATH terminal might house some ventilation shafts. Each solution carries its own complications. Costs increase as the route of the ductwork grows longer and more tortuous. If located in other buildings, the shafts would take floor area away from museum space or revenue-generating commercial space. ONE way or another, however, they must be accommodated. ''When you think about the thousands of people who could be below grade at any particular moment,'' Mr. Cahill said, ''the ability to provide for their public safety is of utmost importance.'' Though the agencies may have begun with differing objectives -- the authority sought the most straightforward engineering solution, the corporation sought the most pristine plaza -- they are now ''working fantastically well together,'' Mr. Cahill said, adding, ''That has not always been the case.'' Mr. Ringler said he expected that Anthony G. Cracchiolo and Steven P. Plate of the authority's priority capital programs office would find a way to relocate the last shafts from the plaza in the next few weeks. ''I turn to my miracle workers,'' Mr. Ringler said. ''I say that half-jokingly, but there's no question it's a challenge.'' At the corporation, Mr. Pryor sounded hopeful, too. ''Each of the parties,'' he said, ''is now engaged in that part of the process labeled 'trust but verify.''' BLOCKS

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Global Poverty, Anemic Response

To the Editor: The needs that Nicholas D. Kristof writes about are indeed pressing, and the response of the developed countries is regrettably inadequate to supply the food, water and medical care needed in many parts of the world. But the problems mentioned are in many ways due to the fact that the countries where the needs are greatest are not capable of supporting the populations that now exist. Any effort to make the changes required to avert the needless deaths that now take place should be supplemented by strong programs to limit the growth in birthrates, or any benefits will be completely wasted. Myles Williamson Wyckoff, N.J., Sept. 13, 2005

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For the Gulf Coast, A Rehabilitation Effort

THE National Trust for Historic Preservation plans to announce an initiative today to send damage assessment teams to the Gulf Coast region to survey neighborhoods and report on what can be saved, according to Richard Moe, president of the trust. After the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of badly damaged historic buildings on the Gulf Coast are now threatened with demolition. Some local officials are planning to bulldoze entire historic neighborhoods rather than rebuild them, Mr. Moe said in a telephone interview, citing informal reports he has received from the region. ''We want to ring alarm bells,'' Mr. Moe said. Based on the experience of past disasters, he said, the threat of demolition is serious. As a first step, volunteer teams of architects and engineers will work with state and local officials, building inspectors and historic preservation groups. The goal, Mr. Moe said, is to gather facts so informed decisions can be made on rebuilding. While some buildings are probably beyond repair, he said, ''many more can be saved than what most people think.'' Several hundred volunteers are ready to go. The trust, a nonprofit organization in Washington dedicated to saving historic places, has raised several hundred thousand dollars to pay for the program. Part of the money is coming from the J. Paul Getty Foundation in Los Angeles. Based on preliminary information, many historic buildings, as well as large swaths of neighborhoods with vernacular architecture in New Orleans and Biloxi, Miss., were heavily damaged by winds, floods and looting. These include designated historic landmark districts and historic houses, as well as privately owned houses built in a traditional style. Preservation experts agree that there is often a knee-jerk reaction after a catastrophe: level buildings and start anew. ''It's instinctive for people to be overenthusiastic about post-disaster cleaning up and rebuilding,'' said John Stubbs, the vice president for field projects at the World Monuments Fund, a nonprofit group in New York that works to save imperiled art and architecture. In such cases, ''buildings are lost unnecessarily in places that are famous for their architecture,'' Mr. Stubbs added, citing reconstruction in Bosnia after the war ended in 1995 and in Mexico City after a 1986 earthquake. It is expensive to restore damaged buildings. While a commercial operation like a hotel or restaurant may qualify for federal preservation tax credits to rehabilitate a building, individual homeowners usually rely on their insurance. Many

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Protestants Say Anger and Alienation Are Fueling Riots in Belfast

announced an end to its 36-year armed campaign to drive Britain out of Northern Ireland, prompting Prime Minister Tony Blair to declare a new era of peace. But many people said the clashes were the result of a more significant rift between the British government and Protestants, who are in the majority here. Britain wants to restart the local legislature set up by the 1998 peace accord to share power between Catholic and Protestant parties, but the rioting shows how resistant Protestants are to the idea. On Wednesday, the police dispersed a roadblock in a gritty residential area. Davy Reid, a 28-year-old protester, said he was responding to a ban on a parade by the Orange Order, a Protestant organization, through a Catholic neighborhood last weekend. He listed other grievances, including the closing of a hospital maternity ward and the lack of a shopping mall nearby. Those services were available in Catholic areas, he said. ''The government hasn't been listening,'' he said. Nelson McCausland, a Belfast politician and a member of the Democratic Unionists, a hard-line Protestant party, said: ''There is a fundamental anger and alienation. That sense of being marginalized and disempowered runs very deep.'' No prominent unionists, who are largely Protestant and want the province to remain part of Britain, condemned the violence. After members of the Orange Order attacked police officers, Robert Saulter, the group's grand master, said, ''Ordinary, decent and reasonable men have been goaded into behaving out of character by the authorities.'' Mitchell B. Reiss, the American special envoy for Northern Ireland, criticized Protestants' failure to speak out against the rioting. ''All of us are pretty disappointed with the abdication of responsibility by many unionist political leaders,'' he said. Protestants held a privileged position in Northern Ireland for centuries, with access to better jobs and housing. That status has gradually eroded since the 1960's, when a civil rights movement began putting Catholics on an equal footing, and Protestants continue to feel slighted. Protestants are also infuriated that Britain has rewarded the I.R.A. -- by dismantling British military bases and releasing an imprisoned bomber -- before the terrorist group fulfills its promise to disarm. ''We've given a lot over the last few years,'' said Reggie Spencer, manager of a community center. ''I personally feel that we've given enough,'' he said, adding that the concessions to the I.R.A. had convinced most Protestants that violence was politically effective.

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At the Vatican, Exceptions Make the Rule

in Italian cities will appreciate the point. No law, most Italians believe, can capture the infinite complexity of human situations, and it's more important for the law to describe a vision of the ideal community than for it to be rigidly obeyed. Italians have tough laws, but their enforcement is enormously forgiving. Not for nothing was their equivalent of the attorney general's office once known as the Ministry of Justice and Grace. The British historian Christopher Dawson has described this as the ''erotic'' spirit of cultures shaped by Roman Catholicism. Catholic cultures are based on the passionate quest for spiritual perfection, Dawson writes, unlike the ''bourgeois'' culture of the United States, which, shaped by Protestantism and based on practical reason, gives priority to economic concerns. As one senior Vatican official put it to me some time ago, ''Law describes the way things would work if men were angels.'' This value system means that while Vatican officials often project a stern moral image on the public stage, in intimate settings they can be strikingly patient and understanding. Policymakers in the Vatican tend not to get as worked up as many Americans by the large numbers of Catholics in the developed world who flout church regulations on birth control, for example. It's not that Vatican officials don't believe in the regulations. Rather, they believe the very nature of an ideal is that many people will fail to realize it. Of course, one can debate whether a ban on birth control, or on gays in seminaries, ought to be the ideal. The point is that although Vatican officials will never say so out loud, few actually expect those rules to be upheld in all cases. Some in the Anglo-Saxon world see this as a form of hypocrisy: the church apparently issues laws while winking at disobedience. But Vatican officials view it instead as a realistic concession to fallen human nature. On background, some such officials have said that the point of the forthcoming document is to challenge the conventional wisdom in the church, which holds that as long as a prospective priest is capable of celibacy, it doesn't matter whether he's gay or straight. Vatican policymakers and some American bishops believe that's naïve. In an all-male environment, they contend, a candidate whose sexual orientation is toward men faces greater temptations and hence a greater cause for concern. That's a debatable proposition, but it

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OBSERVATORY

has become a real headache, particularly in zoology, with its 1.5 million animal species described so far. With the explosion of research in recent decades and the discovery of more new species (15,000 to 20,000 animal species are named every year, for example), it is difficult for biologists to keep up. Descriptions and names for new species are published in hundreds of different journals. Perhaps the Internet can bring order out of the chaos. A group of zoologists led by Andrew Polaszek, executive secretary of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, is proposing the creation of a universal Web-based registry of animal names, to be called ZooBank. Writing in Nature, the group suggests that it be made mandatory that all new species names be entered in the registry. Eventually, existing names would be entered as well. Access would be open to all, and scientists could sign up for e-mail alerts when a new species of interest to them is named. Because the registration would be accomplished by filling in Web-based forms, the registry would also help eliminate names that do not conform to the rules, a perennial problem in biological nomenclature. Winds of Mars Mars may no longer be an active volcanic planet, but it's still a happening place. Monstrous winds can spawn huge dust storms, obscuring vast swatches of territory. The winds can also create smaller changes. The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, for example, has spotted fresh gullies in new images compared with ones taken several years ago. They were probably formed when deposits of frozen carbon dioxide vaporized and the wind eroded the sand underneath. The images can be seen at mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/gallery/PIA04290.html. A Devil's Garden, Tended by Ants In the song ''High Hopes,'' a lowly ant moves a rubber tree. That's absurd, of course, because anyone knows an ant can't move a rubber tree plant. But in the Peruvian Amazon, there is an ant that is a remarkable landscaper. It clears out all except a single species of tree from patches of the rain forest. That's the finding of Megan E. Frederickson, a doctoral student at Stanford, who studied what are known locally as devil's gardens, areas up to about a third of an acre that are dominated almost entirely by one type of tree, D. hirsuta. Local legend has it that the patches are the work of a forest spirit. Scientists had two theories: D. hirsuta itself

1705350_0

The I.R.A. Finally Risks Disarmament

A singular opportunity in the bloody strife of Northern Ireland is at hand with word from an independent monitor that the Irish Republican Army has in fact scrapped its hidden arsenals of war weaponry. Vast amounts of murderous tools from the modern Troubles have been rendered unusable and sealed away, according to John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general who spent the last seven and a half years laboring to make the balking leaders of the I.R.A. deliver on the disarmament promise of the Good Friday peace accord. ''That can be the end of the use of the gun in Irish politics,'' the general said. For this to prove true, Northern Ireland needs a comparably dramatic step from leaders of the Protestant unionist majority. Thus far, however, Ian Paisley and his Democratic Unionists have grievously tolerated rioting, bombing and gunfire from their side of the sectarian divide, carried out by paramilitary thugs dedicated to foiling the I.R.A. and feeding the North's deep ties to London with fresh blood. It's important to note that the governments in both London and Dublin quickly hailed the I.R.A. disarmament as believable. Mr. Paisley no longer has grounds to shrink from agreeing to a power-sharing executive cabinet with the I.R.A.'s political wing, Sinn Fein, the party with the support of the northern Catholic minority. Some 3,500 lives were lost across three decades in the modern revival of Ireland's centuries-old blood feud. Civil rights protests by the suffering Catholic minority were met by violence, and a violent I.R.A. offshoot formed. Extremists ravaged peaceful neighborhoods on both sides, while I.R.A. terror reached the heart of London and beyond. The landmark Good Friday accord of 1998 was hardly helped by the I.R.A.'s years of delay before finally disarming. The procrastination helped Mr. Paisley pull Protestant constituents away from the path of political moderation. But the I.R.A. has disarmed now, so Mr. Paisley should step forward and demand an end to the mayhem by his community 's extremists. Neither side can afford to let this pivotal disarmament step die on the vine. Editorial

1705371_0

Haves, Have-Nots and College

To the Editor: David Brooks (''The Education Gap,'' column, Sept. 25) is looking at society through the wrong end of a telescope. The gap in college degrees is the outcome of the disparity in wealth, not the cause. The increases in tuition, book costs, and room and board have made college attendance unaffordable for increasing numbers of would-be students. Many who start are compelled to drop out; those who try to return later, after marginal earnings in bottom-level jobs, are then older, with family responsibilities of their own. Financial aid, scholarships and institutional endowments cannot keep up. These changes developed concurrently with changes in business practices and government deregulation that brought about lower salaries, no pension plans, unstable market returns for ordinary investors and obscene wealth for corporate executives. The disparity has been further worsened by tax decreases for the top echelon of income earners. The beneficiaries of that federal largess apparently believe that they don't owe anything to the country in return. Frieda A. Stahl Pasadena, Calif., Sept. 25, 2005

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AUTOS ON MONDAY/Collecting; From Surfer S.U.V. To Classic Treasure

on the wood, and they became too costly to restore,'' Mr. Trulson said. The need for such frequent refinishing hurt the resale values of woodies, which were often the most expensive vehicles in a car line. Too much of an investment to abandon, but still mechanically sound, many sat unused for years. Until, that is, bargain-hunting surfers started looking for them. Not only were woodies perfect for carrying 10-foot ''longboards,'' they could be slept in. Perhaps just as important, the wood-framed sections would not rust away in the salt ocean air. ''You have to remember woodies were just the original station wagon,'' said Bob Solheim, a National Woodie Club director. ''They were the original S.U.V., used at dude ranches, train stations, estates and so on, to haul people and luggage. In the 50's and 60's, they were just cheap used cars.'' The wood bodies creaked, flexed and leaked, even when new. Held together by dowels, bolts and glue, an old woodie groaned so loudly going down the road it was difficult to hear the Beach Boys crooning surf tunes on the radio, Mr. Trulson said. Wood has been an essential ingredient in cars, either as a structural material or for decorative purposes, since the early days of the industry. Indeed, the first cars were little more than wood carriages or coaches with engines attached. Wood was supplanted only as auto manufacturers learned how to better shape steel sheets into the complex contours of fenders, hoods and doors. Many vehicles were built entirely of steel by the 1930's but wagons retained their wood framing until 1948. The next year, automakers started to simply bolt wood pieces onto steel bodies, a practice that lasted just a few years before man-made materials took over entirely. The 1953 Buick Roadmaster and Super Estate wagons, with trim of white ash and insets of mahogany, were among the last vehicles to use real wood body panels. Other popular types were birch and maple. ''Hardwoods were necessary to give it structural integrity,'' Mr. Solheim said. A popular misconception was that the wood was steamed to make it conform to the curves of car bodies. In fact, the curved swaths of wood over a wheel opening would usually be made of three or more separate boards stitched together with glued joints. This permitted a gentle arc in the finished piece while keeping the grain as parallel as possible

1703318_4

Iranian Leader Refuses to End Nuclear Effort

Iran to the Security Council remains on the agenda.'' France, England and Germany have been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. Mr. Douste-Blazy added that he was ''very concerned'' that Mr. Ahmadinejad reaffirmed his country's desire to develop nuclear fuel technology ''without taking into account the worries of the international community.'' During Mr. Ahmadinejad's address, the American delegation chairs were empty except for one person who was there to take notes. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scheduled meetings in New York with the Japanese and South Korean foreign ministers during his talk. More than an hour after his address, she said in a statement that she had not been able to hear it because she was in meetings, but added, ''Iran's behavior in the past'' has ''left the world with a lack of confidence on Iran's willingness to live up to its obligations.'' Just three days ago, she indicated that the United States had given up on getting a Security Council referral now. ''I think the issue of a referral is something that we'll be working for a while,'' she said in an interview with Fox News. Still, President Bush continued pushing on Friday, saying, ''The world will see to it that Iran goes to the U.N. Security Council if it does not live up to its agreements.'' Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday morning, Ms. Rice made the argument that the United Nations could look weak if it does not stand up to Iran. ''Challenges like that of Iran are fundamental tests for the United Nations,'' she said. ''The experience of recent years has reinforced the universal truth that international institutions are only as strong, and effective, and relevant as their members choose to make them.'' Before Mr. Ahmadinejad's speech, Bush administration officials appeared conflicted over how to proceed. Some were arguing that the United States should push for a vote, even with the outcome uncertain. Others were calling for delay as all them awaited Mr. Ahmadinejad's address, hoping it clarify the situation in one direction or another. His remarks during a visit to Turkey on Thursday caught Washington's attention. There he suggested Iran might share its nuclear technology with other Muslim nations. Mr. Ahmadinejad said, ''Iran is ready to transfer nuclear know-how to the Islamic countries due to their need.'' On Saturday, he asserted that ''the quote was incomplete,'' but did not explain further.

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The Way We Live Now: 9-18-05: IDEA LAB; Talking in the Dark

In fact, disaster-preparedness experts and high-tech inventors are already developing the idea of blanketing cities with what they call a ''WiFi mesh.'' WiFi, of course, is the technology you may use at home or in a Starbucks to connect a laptop wirelessly to the Internet; a mesh is a vast, self-correcting network of WiFi antennas that could work together to provide crucial backup in a disaster. To understand what makes WiFi useful in a catastrophe, consider some frailties of our regular phone-company communications. Phone systems are reliable on a day-to-day basis, but they have a key vulnerability: They're centralized. In any city, a handful of central ''switches'' handle the work of routing local phone calls. During 9/11, several important switches were located across the street from the World Trade Center and were damaged in the towers' collapse, blacking out parts of New York. To make matters worse, phone systems are rarely designed to allow more than 10 percent of the population to talk simultaneously, and far more people than that rush to the telephone in an emergency. In the New York City blackout of 2003, while most land lines continued to function, the cellphone circuits were overjammed. Katrina posed even worse problems. As phone traffic surged, the water was destroying a vast area, including underground phone lines. Mobile-phone networks, too, were ruined, because they're routed through communication towers that crumpled like paper in Katrina's 140-mile-an-hour winds. As a final insult, Katrina knocked out the power grid in swaths of the Gulf Coast -- which was fatal for phone systems that require thousands of watts of juice. The surviving mobile-phone sites in New Orleans could run on diesel-generator backup, but with just one tank of gas each, they were capable of operating for only a few days. Even the mayor nearly lost contact with the outside world. After their satellite phones ran out of power, employees of the mayor's office broke into an Office Depot and lifted phones, routers and the store's own computer server. WiFi meshes elegantly dodge our phone system's central problems. They're low-power and ultracheap -- and decentralized like the Internet itself, which was initially conceived to withstand a nuclear attack. You can use WiFi to build a do-it-yourself phone system that is highly resistant to disaster. In Chicago, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a nonprofit organization, hooked up dozens of households in the neighborhoods of North Lawndale

1702946_0

Out of the Library

To the Editor: In her review of Michael Schmidt's ''First Poets'' (Aug. 28), Camille Paglia paraphrases, ''In the new Hellenistic world inaugurated by the conquests of Alexander the Great, 'cultural authority' shifted from Athens to Alexandria in Egypt, where poetry now 'lived in libraries.' '' She allows to pass unchallenged the conventional notion that while Athenian poetry had been ''language responding to nature, history, the social world,'' Hellenistic poetry was (merely) ''language responding to prior language.'' The most recent classical scholarship, however, has more interesting news about Greek literature under the early Ptolemaic kings of Egypt, finding in it not only a vivid response to the new political situation after Alexander's conquest, but a bicultural mythology that welds Greek traditions to Egyptian royal ideology, right down to bilingual puns. This new mythology has a counterpart in the city of Alexandria itself, which (as archaeologists have only recently learned) combined the architecture and urban planning of classical Greece with the obelisks, sphinxes and other royal monuments native to Egypt. Revitalized from Egyptian sources and from social reality, this Greek poetry was to be the foundation of the imperial Roman poetry of Virgil, Horace and others. Jay Reed Ann Arbor, Mich.

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In the Amazon, Where Our Sister Was Slain

To the Editor: The enormous fight to regain control of the Amazon from gunmen, illegal ranchers and loggers has just begun and is not as rosy as you state in ''A Healthier Amazon Jungle'' (editorial, some editions, Sept. 13). Our sister, Dorothy Stang, tried to halt this robbery, and for this she was murdered in February by those whose destructive practices your editorial stated the Brazilian government is addressing. Dorothy lived in Brazil for 39 years, challenging a system that robs the Brazilian landless of dignity, and the land of its sustainability. The rights-based land reform she championed provides the poor and landless with sustainable livelihoods and empowers them in their own development. It addresses the challenges the editorial mentions: deforestation; peasants pushed to the edge of survival; land grabbers; and murders of peasant leaders. While President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is making progress, these changes are unsustainable without a rights-based land reform. His promise to settle 430,000 landless families remains unrealized, and his gains can be easily erased without such a reform. Whom does the Amazon belong to -- Brazil, or the thieving ranchers, loggers and gunmen? David Stang Marguerite Stang Hohm Palmer Lake, Colo., Sept. 14, 2005

1702941_0

The Shores of Tripoli

To the Editor: Christopher Hitchens makes an error in his review of three books related to raiding on the high seas 200 years ago (Aug. 21). The Muslim sailors who captured ships and enslaved European and American crews were not technically pirates, because they had official permission from their governments to raid the vessels of infidels. True pirates, like the ones covered in ''The Pirates Laffite,'' by William C. Davis, had sanction from no government. The difference was important: men captured from a government-sanctioned raiding vessel, such as those of the North African states, were exchanged for infidel prisoners. Pirates were hanged on the spot. James Vescovi New York

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To Many in the Amazon, Government Comes on a Boat

boat, the Zona Franca Verde -- or Green Free Trade Zone -- are free, with the government even bearing the cost of laminating the documents. In an environment as wet and humid as the Amazon, no one wants to fall into the river, get their papers so waterlogged that they are illegible and have to go through the process of obtaining documents from the bureaucracy all over again. The PAI program is a result of the harsh geographic realities that have always complicated governing the world's largest river basin. Though the state of Amazonas is larger than France, Germany, Britain and Italy combined, it has fewer than three million inhabitants, and half of them live in Manaus, a port and industrial center. Most of the state's remaining inhabitants in the interior are desperately poor, often earning $100 a month or less as they try to support large families on a precarious mixture of subsistence farming, fishing and hunting. They simply cannot afford to make the long trek to Manaus to do the paperwork required of them as citizens. ''These are the forgotten ones,'' said Gilson dos Santos, who processes identification cards. ''Sometimes they are very nervous because it's all new to them. Many can't write straight anyway, they don't have the education, and so they spoil the signature form and you have to start all over again. So you just have to be patient with them.'' Today the PAI program includes three boats that travel the Amazon and its tributaries year round, with a fourth boat under construction and scheduled to begin operating this year. The boat that traveled here is the largest of the fleet, an imposing four-decker, 175 feet long with accommodations for 80 people including 16 crew members, topped by a satellite transmitter that allows data to be sent immediately to the central registry in Manaus. In a place as small and out-of-the-way as this, the arrival of the boat is a major event. Women come aboard in their Sunday finest, accompanied by men in freshly laundered shirts and wide-eyed children with neatly pomaded hair -- including some who need no medical care or documents but just want to stare at visitors from an unfamiliar world or watch videotapes on the big screen in the boat's air-conditioned auditorium. On some voyages, though not this one, the boats also carry a floating courtroom, complete with a judge and

1698767_2

For Its Motorists, Only Parts of Rome Prove to Be Eternal

professor and director of the Center for Cultural Heritage, a preservation institute at La Sapienza University. ''I think it's very difficult to balance the technical advantages and safety advantages with aesthetic advantages. Being an engineer, I prefer not to face this kind of problem.'' For some of the millions of tourists, the repaving seems something of a surrender. After all, the world seems to feel better believing Rome will stay exactly as it is. ''Why would you want to mess with antiquity just to make room for modernity?'' asked Dominic Fabrizio, 35, a waiter visiting here from Niagara Falls, N.Y. ''This is not going to be replaced. Once it's gone, it's gone.'' The truth is that the cobblestones, while old, are not ancient. Experts say they were first put in place in the 17th century, when they replaced the larger and older stones still visible on the Appian Way. And, city officials contend, the time had finally come for another change. The city's mayor, Walter Veltroni, has spoken often about the increasing cost of using cobblestones, which he said was roughly double that of asphalt. Giancarlo D'Alessandro, chief of Rome's public works department, gave other reasons: safety for scooters, which often slide out of control on cobblestones, for example, and noise reduction. Also, cobblestones are more rigid and may generate vibrations that damage monuments and buildings. But with tourism a major industry, Mr. D'Alessandro was eager to make the case that paving would not markedly change Rome because the program would be limited to major thoroughfares. Much of the work, he said, is paving streets that were already a patchwork of asphalt and cobblestone, and for years, the city has been paving over cobblestones outside the center and recycling the stones to streets downtown. ''The architectural charm will remain intact, while we give Rome more functionality, modernity,'' he said. There is, however, at least one man in Rome deeply offended by all this. ''It's a political thing, and only political,'' said Roberto Giacobbi. Mr. Giacobbi, 46, has worked for 28 years as a selciarolo, one of the men who, by hand, break up blocks of volcanic rock into cobblestones of precisely the right size and fit them onto the street. His father did the same work for 50 years, and with two generations of experience to judge by, Mr. Giacobbi said the art of the cobblestone -- and thus making

1698866_0

Senate Panel Plans Hearing Into Reports On Terrorist

The Senate Judiciary Committee announced Wednesday that it was investigating reports from two military officers that a highly classified Pentagon intelligence program identified the Sept. 11 ringleader as a potential terrorist more than a year before the attacks. The committee's chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said in an interview that he was scheduling a public hearing on Sept. 14 ''to get to the bottom of this'' and that the military officers ''appear to have credibility.'' The senator said his staff had confirmed reports from the two officers that employees of the intelligence program tried to contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2000 to discuss the work of the program, known as Able Danger. The officers, Capt. Scott J. Phillpott of the Navy and Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of the Army, have said the intelligence program identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, by early 2000. Colonel Shaffer, a reservist, has said three meetings with F.B.I. agents in 2000 to discuss Able Danger were canceled on the order of military lawyers. Senator Specter's announcement came as the Pentagon said again on Wednesday that while it was not disputing the officers' reports, it could find no documentation to back up what they were saying. ''Not only can we not find documentation, we can't find documents to lead us to the documentation,'' said Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Pentagon spokesman. Other Pentagon officials have suggested that the memories of Captain Phillpott and Colonel Shaffer are flawed and that Mr. Atta could not have been identified before the attacks, a view shared by members of the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. But Colonel Shaffer and military officials involved in the intelligence program say it may not be surprising that documents were destroyed, since the project became controversial within the Pentagon because of potential privacy violations. ''I don't know what kind of documentation they'd be looking for,'' Senator Specter said of Defense Department investigators. ''At this point, you have responsible officials at D.O.D. who have made some pretty serious statements and that ought to be investigated.'' The existence of the intelligence program is potentially embarrassing to the Pentagon since it would suggest that the Defense Department developed information about the Sept. 11 hijackers long before they attacked in 2001 but did not share the information with law enforcement or intelligence agencies that could have acted on it. Senator Specter did not

1698792_2

Millions Said to Be Lacking Phone Service of Any Kind

are in and around New Orleans, where the most equipment is submerged, coverage is only slowly improving elsewhere in the region. In the hard-hit towns along the Mississippi coast, phone company workers -- not to mention ordinary cellphone users -- are having to trek five miles or more inland to get a signal on their phones. Cellular companies have been trying to fix this problem by moving ''cell sites on wheels'' into the area. Verizon, for instance, has 20 of these three-axle trucks, some working in Baton Rouge, La., and some sitting on elevated roadways in New Orleans waiting for a place to go. As with stationary cellular base stations, though, these ''COW's'' have to connect to a wider network to complete calls. Some will connect directly to telephone switching equipment. Others will connect using microwave antennas that beam signals to other dishes that are connected to networks. Many of the New Orleans residents with a 504 area code have been unable to receive calls on their cellphones, even if they have left the region. All cellphones have a home switching office, which keeps billing and service data. When people call a 504 number, the disabled switching stations in New Orleans are unable to route the call. While voice coverage in New Orleans and other areas hit by the hurricane is sporadic, some cellphone customers have been sending and receiving text messages. These messages get through because, unlike voice calls, they do not need to immediately connect to a user on the other side. Rather, the data packets that form a message are small and will wait until a network is free. To circumvent cellular networks entirely, many officials -- including some phone company chiefs -- are using satellite phones. They do not rely on equipment on the ground because they beam their signals to low-orbiting satellites. But the batteries on these phones can provide only about six hours of talk time. Some are equipped with solar rechargers, while others can be plugged into cigarette lighters and wall jacks. Iridium, one of the country's largest suppliers of satellite phones, said the amount of traffic from the region on its satellites had doubled since the storm and was likely to rise further. Some of Iridium's dealers have also been swamped by requests for handsets, which typically cost $1,500 each. Craig Van Wagner, the chief salesman at GMPCS, a distributor of Iridium

1698737_2

Cracks in the Guggenheim Get High-Tech Attention

it's a landmark building, we really can't tear the thing apart to see what's going on there,'' he said. A crucial component of the investigation is studying the cracks, which are typically caused by seasonal temperature fluctuations. To this end, a system of crack monitoring has been designed, using wires that track every expansion and contraction and transmit that information to a computer. ''Our brief is to try to understand why these cracks are occurring and mitigate them as much as possible,'' Mr. Silman said. The cracks will be monitored for a full year of weather cycles ''so we have a day-by-day record of the way the building behaves,'' Ms. Jerome said. The evaluation phase also includes laser surveys of the museum's exterior and interior surfaces. These will give the preservation architects accurate elevations and three-dimensional models of the building to compare against the original drawings. ''There are parts that have moved significantly,'' Mr. Silman said. ''We know this because pieces of the skylight have pulled loose from the concrete.'' Radar studies will determine the location of pipes in the walls, which are made of gunite sprayed through steel reinforcements against a plywood mold. Minimal core drilling will gather samples of the original concrete and other construction materials. Project managers will then have a more complete picture of the concrete's composition: what minerals were used, how much paste, the porosity, the density, whether there are air bubbles. ''It will help us understand how the mixture breathes,'' Ms. Jerome said. ''That is important for when you paint and patch.'' Throughout the restoration, the people involved said, Wright's original intentions will be at the forefront. ''We want to make as limited an intervention as possible to make the building whole again,'' Ms. Jerome said. ''So we're figuring out how the building behaves, what compatible repairs we can make.'' Ms. Jerome and her colleagues have immersed themselves in the Wright archive at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz., studying original construction drawings and Wright's correspondence. ''There are volumes and volumes of material that we're going through,'' Ms. Jerome said. ''In a way you're a building detective.'' Wright's buildings are notorious for structural problems. The Guggenheim is the fourth Wright building Wank Adams has dealt with, ''and every one of them has been a challenge,'' Ms. Jerome said. ''Every building he

1700575_0

A Light in the Forests

The Bush administration has largely succeeded in its systematic effort to roll back environmental protections for America's national forests. It has weakened agreements to protect old-growth trees in the Pacific Northwest, persuaded Congress to adopt an industry-friendly plan for fire suppression and overhauled rules governing forest management in ways that erode safeguards not only for the forests but also for the endangered species that live there. Now, however, a rebellion is brewing where the White House least expected it. Western governors are challenging the most controversial rollback of all: the decision to repeal a popular rule approved near the end of the Clinton administration to protect nearly 60 million acres of remote national forest from commercial development. The attorneys general of California and New Mexico and the governor of Oregon have filed a suit charging that the administration failed to conduct necessary environmental reviews before imposing the new rule. They argued further that the rule would endanger ''the last, most pristine portions of America's national forests,'' leading to excessive logging and destroying essential watersheds. The lawsuit followed complaints from other governors, including Republicans, that the new rule would saddle them with impossible administrative burdens. The rule would requires states to survey all roadless areas within their borders and devise protection plans, then submit the plans to Washington for approval, with no guarantee of success. The rebellion is an embarrassment for an administration that had assumed that the governors would leap at the chance to exercise states' rights. It now seems clear that the governors prefer a uniform national approach to federal roadless areas rather than piecemeal management. The rebellion should also improve the prospects of a bill introduced by Sherwood Boehlert, Republican of New York, and Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, to restore the old roadless rule. Now that the governors have spoken, there seems to be no reason to further indulge the commercial interests of a few timber companies. Editorial

1700552_1

Rail Line to Tibet Is a Marvel, but China Is Oddly Mum

world's highest. For those bored with the scenery, or perhaps just dizzy, there will be other diversions: first-class accommodations include health spas and fancy restaurants. When China's central government embarked on the $3.1 billion project in 2001, it set aside $240 million for environmental protection. When objections arose about plans to build a station within the Gulu Wetlands, in Tibet, a pristine breeding ground for black-necked cranes and yellow ducks, 20 acres of wetlands were created around the perimeter of the original preserve to make up for land lost to bridges. Yang Xin, a prominent environmentalist in Qinghai Province, called the project one of the ''most caring'' he had ever seen. ''We proposed detailed measures on protecting migrating Tibetan antelopes in the morning, and to our surprise we got the government's answer back that very afternoon, less than three hours, later,'' Mr. Yang said. ''This reflects the government's attitude toward this issue.'' One might expect a country that is pulling off one of the world's great engineering feats to be eager to show off its handiwork. If so, no one has told the Railway Ministry, which for a full year refused to answer a reporter's queries by telephone and fax to visit the new line and witness its construction. From the evidence, no one told the local police in Golmud, either. Normally eager taxi drivers in this poky frontier town, not far removed from the dusty backdrops of American westerns, except for its 9,100-foot altitude, waved off a foreigner, saying they would be arrested if they took him down the highway south that shadows the new railway line. The local police, too, were apparently left out of the loop. ''I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do to help you,'' said a supervisor at the city's Public Security Bureau, when an outsider asked for a pass so he could drive into the Kunlun Mountains, toward Tibet. Another officer hinted darkly that the foreigner was breaking the law just by being in Golmud. What could explain such a reluctance to show off this marvel of railway building? As was underscored by events in Lhasa -- where Beijing was celebrating the 40th anniversary of what it calls the Tibet Autonomous Region -- it had much to do with Tibetan aspirations for independence. China's state-controlled press hailed the anniversary with editorials that said things like, ''Tibetans bask in the joy of a bright

1699221_1

On Ruined Coast, the Desperate Cry Out for Loved Ones Still Lost

Agency rated them as zero percent searched, Mr. Spraggins said. There were 105 confirmed deaths in Harrison, Jackson, Pearl River and Hancock Counties. So desperate are people to communicate that when a T-Mobile office in Gulfport put out a sign that said ''free calls,'' 1,500 people lined up over two days, the managers said. There was tearful call after tearful call, with one relieved mother even insisting that her daughter pass the phone to a T-Mobile employee so she could thank him. But by Friday, the office had run out of fuel for the generator that powered its signal tower. One woman, an evacuee from New Orleans, said she was trying to reach her family so they could come get her. Another man was trying to tell his mother, a stroke victim, that he had made it through the storm. Thousands of calls have poured in to a toll-free number set up by The Sun Herald, a local newspaper, which has published items like ''Mary Hudson, looking for half brother, fire chief Tommy Stone,'' or ''Sylvia Hickey, Mobile, Alabama, is fine.'' But that avenue is inaccessible to many, because the power is out and telephone and cellphone service come only in blips. Luanne Thompson, 38, said she had no idea where her infant son might be; he had been in a New Orleans hospital after surgery. ''All I know is what I'm hearing on the radio, and I'm hearing they're evacuating everyone,'' she said. ''Over there they gave me an 800 number for the Red Cross, but other than that I don't know who to call.'' A spokeswoman for the American Red Cross said the toll-free phone line was not yet staffed. But, she said, there was a place on the organization's Web site for families to reconnect. Calls by a reporter to more than 20 hospitals across the South located Ms. Thompson's baby, Sonny Ray Thompson, at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge. ''We didn't know how we were going to find his mother,'' said his nurse, Adrienne Arnold. Ms. Wyrick lost her house to the hurricane and only narrowly rescued her other three children, 2, 3 and 5, in a boat. Her search for her youngest son began with a trip to Gulf Port Estates in Ocean Springs, where Danny's father had lived. But deputies stopped her, telling her the area had been

1699124_1

Meeting School Siege Victims' Kin, Putin Deflects Blame From Kremlin

the grief and anguish in Beslan, a small city in the Northern Caucasus, increasingly turned into protest, led by a group called the Beslan Mothers' Committee. The group has challenged the official version of events and accused the government of covering up a botched rescue attack and failing to punish any officials for wrongdoing. It even told Mr. Putin that he would not be welcome in Beslan during this week's memorials. The meeting was an extraordinary moment for Mr. Putin, who rarely displays empathy in public appearances and still more rarely responds to criticism. On Thursday, the anniversary of the day more than 30 armed militants belonging to a separatist group in nearby Chechnya seized the school, he disavowed what he called ''correct but in this situation superfluous words'' and instead observed a moment of silence. No journalists were allowed into or near Friday's meeting. The three national television channels, all owned or controlled by the government, showed the same images of Mr. Putin's remarks at length, evidently taken by a single camera. None of the discussions with the relatives were shown. Afterward, the leader of the mothers' committee, Susanna Dudiyeva, told one of the channels that she had been able to voice her concerns. ''We spoke about those who perished, those who had their lives cut short,'' said Ms. Dudiyeva, who lost her 13-year-old son, Zaur. ''We spoke about irresponsibility and negligence.'' In his remarks, Mr. Putin put the attack in the broadest possible context, describing the ''enormous damage'' caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, a theme he has used before when discussing the shortcomings of Russia today. The collapse and the conflict in Chechnya, he said, left the military and security services ''in a semi-disintegrated condition.'' ''At the same time, and I want to emphasize and note this particularly, this cannot be a justification for officials performing their official duties inappropriately,'' he said. So far, the Kremlin has not held any senior officials responsible for the events in Beslan, despite demands from the victims and their relatives. Terrorism and other acts of extremism have continued with unrelenting frequency across southern Russia. On Friday, even as he met with the relatives, a bomb exploded in Makhachkala, the capital of the Dagestan region, also in the Northern Caucasus. Russian news agencies reported that at least four people were killed, including two soldiers. At least eight others were wounded.

1705690_0

Paid Notice: Deaths VLAMIS, STEVE ''STAMATIS''

VLAMIS--Steve ''Stamatis'' on September 26. Born in Andros, Greece, in the village of Aprovatro, November 2, 1914. He moved to Athens at age 11 to begin his lifetime career in the food business. At 21, he entered the Greek Navy. After his service tour, he joined the Merchant Marine service as Chief Cook. In the late 30's, he debarked his ship in Galveston, Texas, making his way to New York City and his first restaurant job in America. A few years later, while managing an Upper East Side tavern, he met his future wife, Anne Dalechek, whom he married shortly after. They were married 65 years. Together they opened Steve's Restaurant, a luncheonette that became a mainstay in the neighborhood, famous for its home cooking from WWII years until 1988 when Steve retired to spend more time with his family. He also owned Cafe Taurino, a favorite Italian nightspot under the Queensboro Bridge. He was a loyal supporter and parishioner of Holy Trinity Greek Cathedral, 337 East 74th St, Manhattan, where church services will be held. His greatest gifts to his family was his love of life and learning, his stoicism, his compassionate and forgiving nature, his life-schooled wisdom, and rugged independence. He is survived by his son Anthony, daughter Susan, and grandson Steven Alexander Vlamis. Friends may call Wednesday, 2-4 and 7-9PM at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, 1076 Madison Ave (at 81st St.). Funeral service Thursday, 11AM, Holy Trinity Greek Cathedral. Interment Cypress Hills Cemetery.

1700762_0

Private Aid To Italian Art Costs an Arm And a Leg

Italians are so blasé about the art all around them that it apparently takes hacking a leg off Michelangelo's ''David'' or rubbing Jesus out of Leonardo da Vinci's ''Last Supper'' to get their attention -- and maybe their money. The images, on television and in newspapers around the country, do require a second look: Pisa without the tower, Rome without the Coliseum, David with his left leg amputated above the knee, propped up with a metal brace. ''Without your help,'' the advertisements read, ''Italy could lose something.'' The images, digitally created and purposely provocative, began flooding Italy this week as part of a monthlong fund-raising campaign with a difficult aim: to persuade Italians to donate their own money, in hard economic times, to preserve their nation's rich artistic heritage. The difficulty is that Italians, who already pay high taxes, have always considered this the job of the state. Floods, sacking and looting, and builders who have quarried ancient marble for homes, have all taken their toll over the millenniums -- and now cultural officials here say they are worried about simple neglect and lack of public money. The fear was underscored recently at one of Rome's most important buildings, Castel Sant'Angelo, the stout, grand papal refuge, after an Italian newspaper documented the budget cuts, lack of staffing and maintenance that one official there said had left the building on the verge of ''collapse.'' The government was forced to earmark emergency money quickly for its preservation. ''We are asking the question, what would Italy be without its cultural objects?'' said Ledo Prato, secretary general of CittàItalia, the private foundation leading the fund-raising campaign. His answer: just another ''anonymous'' European nation. He may be overstating things, since the food, wine and nature here are pretty good, too. But Italian cultural officials are speaking of a deepening crisis. According to the Culture Ministry, the nation's inventory of cultural pieces is 4.7 million, spread out over 600,000 sites around the country. Mr. Prato said that one study showed that Italy's entire cultural budget -- including its funds for personnel and restoration -- was less than half of what was needed just for adequate physical upkeep of its cultural sites and objects. And so, he and other cultural officials say, ordinary Italians need to begin to donate beyond what they already pay in taxes. ''We want to make a step forward, in which the public

1702613_0

By 2050, an Urban Planet

AT most companies, long-range planning does not typically extend beyond the next 12 months. Corporations that take forward thinking seriously might go out to 2010. That's what makes the current issue of Scientific American so intriguing. The magazine projects what the world will look like in 2050, and it is going to be a far different place for businesspeople to deal with. People will be older, on average; more of them will live in cities and wealth will be concentrated in fewer hands. Specific projections include: Worldwide population will be 9.1 billion, up from the current 6.5 billion. While that 40 percent increase looks drastic, it represents a substantial slowing in population growth. From 1960 to today, the number of people on earth more than doubled. ''From 2007 forward, urban people will outnumber rural people'' for the first time in history, Joel E. Cohen writes. Indeed, virtually all the projected population growth ''will happen in existing or new cities in developing countries.'' Here's another way to think of that: ''In effect, the poor countries will have to build the equivalent of a city of more than one million people each week for the next 45 years.'' The proportion of people living in developing countries versus developed ones will have increased. ''In 1950, the less developed regions had roughly twice the population of the more developed ones; by 2050, the ratio will exceed 6 to 1.'' The graying of the global population will not have proceeded uniformly. ''In 2050 nearly one person in three will be 60 years or older in the more developed regions, and one person in five in the less developed zones.'' MENU MODIFICATIONS -- A magazine devoted to the restaurant industry, Chain Leader, imagines a different world as well, one it is all but lobbying to create. Trade magazines report on what is happening in their industry, explain what those reports mean and analyze trends. But in its current issue, Chain Leader goes much further, convinced it has spotted a major market opportunity. Using research from the NPD Group on the eating habits of one generation as its jumping-off point, the magazine urges restaurateurs to change their menu items, in light of the fact that ''baby boomers, particularly those in their 50's, are concerned about their intake of fat, salt, cholesterol and sugar'' and that as a group ''one-quarter of boomers are on a diet and a

1704713_2

Bargain Fares in Europe? Well, Not Exactly

Schönefeld in eastern Berlin, 15 miles from downtown, while most carriers use the larger Berlin International in Tegel, four miles west of downtown. Such secondary airports can be especially inconvenient if you want to make a connection from a major carrier. Last summer, Glenn Cunningham, a management consultant in Boston, arrived at Heathrow on an Aer Lingus flight, then had to transfer to Stansted Airport for a $250 Ryanair flight to Pisa, Italy. A cab would have cost nearly $200, so he took a $35 bus instead -- and the ride took two hours. ''We weren't even in peak traffic,'' Mr. Cunningham said. (He saved about 30 percent on air fare, he said.) An advantage to using secondary airports, said Peter Sherrard, head of communications for Ryanair, is that ''we don't go through congested airports.'' The company reported that 92.2 percent of its flights arrived on time in August. Some budget airlines do use major airports, so bargain hunters need to check routes carefully. Virgin Express, www.virgin-express.com, runs out of the international airport in Brussels, while easyJet, www.easyjet.com, uses both the Orly and Charles de Gaulle Airports in Paris. Another potential budget-buster is the baggage policy. Cris Schenck, an accountant in Los Angeles, took a Ryanair flight from Barcelona to Paris in January. He said he was thrilled with the $55 fare until he arrived at the airport and was told that he exceeded the 15-kilogram (33-pound) limit for checked bags. The charge: $135. He acknowledged he should have seen the policy on the Web site when he bought the ticket, but he still called it ''an expensive nightmare.'' Mr. Sherrard of Ryanair said that his airline's allowance was ''not significantly lower than other airlines.'' Many low-fare airlines limit all luggage to 20 kilograms (about 44 pounds) or less and charge at least 5 euros ($6.25) for each kilogram above that. British Airways allows up to 51 pounds for European flights. It can be hard to avoid checking bags as well. On both Centralwings and the Slovakia-based SkyEurope, www.skyeurope.com, passengers are allowed one carry-on weighing up to 11 pounds. And if you're making a connection to or from another carrier, you won't be able to check baggage through to the final destination. Travelers also can't be too picky about seats, though policies vary widely. Like Southwest in the United States, Ryanair and easyJet have open seating, which means passengers have

1704683_5

Style: The Way We Drive Now: Motoring Toward A Post-Gasoline Age; Cars That Guzzle Grass

be decimated by a widespread popular shift to cars with hybrid engines or hydrogen fuel cells. To Michael Quah, NextEnergy's chief technology officer, the United States (and Michigan's economy, presumably) must pursue a policy of energy diversity so that any of a wide variety of fuels can fill in for another whenever one is scarce. NextEnergy's current projects promote energy diversity across the alternative-energy landscape. These include, for example, working to help create viable markets for an array of biofuels, like biodiesels, that will run the same engines petroleum-based diesel does and that compete economically with petroleum. These fuels derive from crops that are already abundant in the United States (and can be even more plentiful if we choose to cultivate our land for power). Already, ethanol, which in the United States is refined from corn at plants across the farm belt, is a common additive to gasoline sold at the pump; its production has increased significantly in recent years, rising more than 50 percent from 2002 to 2004. Currently only about 2 percent of all liquid transportation fuels in the United States are biofuels, but the recently passed energy bill seeks to raise that percentage. The development of biofuels highlights one of the biggest changes under way in energy production: the influence of industries and disciplines that until now have been far from the center of the energy picture. Agriculture and biotechnology labs, for example, have been enlisted to engineer higher-yielding biofuel crops. One approach involves developing custom-made microorganisms that can digest biomatter into alcohol that can then be used to fuel cars. Another relies on creating new enzymes to help reduce the energy costs of processing corn into ethanol. New technologies are also moving the ethanol industry away from corn and into crops that require less energy and fertilizer to cultivate, like grasses, hays and trees. Energy derived from biomass may not necessarily find its best application inside cars; instead, it could be used to generate the electricity to produce hydrogen. If the hydrogen economy is to liberate us from fossil fuels, hydrogen will probably be isolated by subjecting water to electrolysis, which separates the liquid into hydrogen and oxygen. The great, earth-friendly advantage of electrolysis is that it depends on electricity and is indifferent to how that electricity is generated. It thus opens the door to the expanded use of biomass, not just to produce liquid fuel

1704710_3

A City of Many Pasts Embraces the Future

of European states (talks begin next month on Turkey joining the European Union), or perhaps a land of increasingly fervent Islam. Istanbul's renaissance is one that stretches both high and low. It is a short taxi ride from the narrow streets of the impoverished Fatih quarter, where veiled women avoid eye contact and packs of dogs scamper along dusty alleyways, to glittering Nisantasi, where European and American boutiques compete for customers with bistros and brasseries, and a clerk at the Louis Vuitton boutique solemnly boats that it had the largest sales. Most recently, the high-end art crowd has been drawn to the city for Istanbul Design Week in September, for the Istanbul Biennial through October or by the new Istanbul Modern and Pera museums. These are the prosperous habitués of such trendy night spots as the 360 Club, high above Istiklal Caddesi, whose glass walls and modernist terrace overlook the Bosporus, the Golden Horn and Topkapi Palace and which seems almost within touching distance of the straw-colored steeple of the church of St. Anthony of Padua, Istanbul's largest Roman Catholic church. The old yalis of the Ottoman pashas, the grand homes lining the Bosporus, have been reclaimed by a new generation of wealthy Istanbullus. Along with such traditional expatriate enclaves as Bebek, they have transformed this once-sleepy stretch into a fashionable haven of fancy homes and waterfront cafes, where private boats churn back and forth between the ferries and Russian freighters, and where it is not uncommon to see lavish parties in the old palaces and promenades. Ms. Mermerci, for instance, was recently host to a weeklong series of parties to celebrate the 10th wedding anniversary of her friend, Francine LeFrak, a film producer and a member of the well-known New York real estate family. They had met several years ago in New York, renewed their friendship at Ms. LeFrak's fifth anniversary celebration in Capri and had reunions during Ms. LeFrak's regular visits to Istanbul and Turkey's Aegean Coast. ''I had visited Istanbul only once before, as a 16-year-old, and to me, at that age, it was beyond exotic,'' Ms. LeFrak said. ''But the new Istanbul I found was an incredibly sophisticated place. The city is really humming. It's got a beat. And the people there really know how to have fun.'' The restaurant-and-nightclub known as 360 is the latest of these upscale Istanbul nightspots, and finding it can be

1704686_29

After Life

chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 1940's and interviewed many family members of those killed in the 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire, defined the phenomenon with absolute specificity in a famous 1944 study: ''sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from 20 minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power and an intense subjective distress described as tension or mental pain.'' Tightness in the throat. Choking, need for sighing. Such waves began for me on the morning of December 31, 2003, seven or eight hours after the fact, when I woke alone in the apartment. I do not remember crying the night before; I had entered at the moment it happened a kind of shock in which the only thought I allowed myself was that there must be certain things I needed to do. There had been certain things I had needed to do while the ambulance crew was in the living room. I had needed for example to get the copy of John's medical summary, so I could take it with me to the hospital. I had needed for example to bank the fire, because I would be leaving it. There had been certain things I had needed to do at the hospital. I had needed for example to stand in the line. I had needed for example to focus on the bed with telemetry he would need for the transfer to Columbia-Presbyterian. Once I got back from the hospital there had again been certain things I needed to do. I could not identify all of these things, but I did know one of them: I needed, before I did anything else, to tell John's brother Nick. It had seemed too late in the evening to call their older brother Dick on Cape Cod (he went to bed early, his health had not been good, I did not want to wake him with bad news) but I needed to tell Nick. I did not plan how to do this. I just sat on the bed and picked up the phone and dialed the number of his house in Connecticut. He answered. I told him. After I put down the phone, in what I can only describe as a new neural pattern

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Stark Images of When Steichen Went to War

THE Pentagon's banning of news media photographs of coffins returning from Iraq reminds us that photography plays a pivotal role in a crucial arena of modern war: public relations. Edward Steichen (1879-1973), a successful art photographer and director of the United States' naval combat photography during World War II, knew all about photography's public relations potential. He spent most of the war cranking out propaganda pictures for the Navy. Several dozen of Mr. Steichen's wartime photographs are being shown at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum here. It is a large exhibition, organized to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II and supplemented with photographs by some of the other talented photographers who worked on his team. Mr. Steichen's commission was to make photographs that would help the Navy recruit pilots -- a pressing concern after the United States entered the war in Europe and the Pacific. He did his job with aplomb, fashioning heroic-looking portraits of naval officers and crew, often shot from angles that maximize dramatic effect. But he also interpreted his brief more broadly, photographing aerial combat, naval battles, the seriously wounded receiving medical care, as well as logistical challenges like the storage and transportation of arms. He wanted to shoot all facets of war, explaining in 1947 that he had been curious to explore the way in which the camera ''serves as an instrument for waging war and as a historian in recording that war.'' Perhaps the toughest photographs here show the dead or the imperiled. One, for instance, shows a soldier face down in mud, his youthful body motionless. Another harrowing photograph depicts survivors stuffed into a lifeboat from the aircraft carrier Lexington, torpedoed during the Battle of the Coral Sea. With no room left on the boat, some of the men are in the water, holding on to the sides. Then there are extraordinary photographs of bombs exploding in front of the photographer, or fires flaring on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier after kamikaze attacks. All you see is a meteoric flash, and then flames everywhere. Here, incredibly, the artist is caught right up in the middle of the action. Other images take us into the sky on raids over Japan. One memorable image, by G.A. Heap, shows the cone of Mount Fuji, way above the clouds, through the cockpit of a carrier-based fighter plane. It is like a

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The Breaking Point

A perspective rarely heard in our dialogue on oil concerns the permanent loss of this finite resource by treating it as a ''fuel.'' The best use of petroleum is as a ''material.'' The computer hardware on which I am composing this note and an infinite number of goods we have come to rely on are petroleum products. Most of those products can be recycled. When petroleum is used as fuel instead of as material, it is gone forever. Nelson Johnson Hammonton, N.J.