The warring camps of the Episcopal Church USA face off in Durham, N.H., on Sunday, over the installation of the church's first openly gay bishop — a move some say will fracture the church in America and jeopardize the worldwide Anglican Communion.The Rev. V. Gene Robinson, 56, a divorced dad who has lived with his male partner for 14 years, will be consecrated bishop in this diocese at services in the University of New Hampshire's ice hockey arena. It's the only place large enough for 4,000 clergy, local supporters, gay Episcopal leaders, international media and protesters. Consecrating a bishop is like a wedding ceremony with a built-in moment when anyone who objects is invited to speak.
Three miles away, conservative Episcopalians from across the nation will hold an alternative prayer service at the 500-seat Durham Evangelical Church, the nearest, biggest sanctuary they could borrow.
They'll hear preachers and leaders of the American Anglican Council, who say Robinson's consecration breaks with Anglican doctrine. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of Anglicanism.
Brazil has launched a free HIV testing campaign in a nation-wide effort to save the hundreds of thousands of people who are not aware that they have been infected.Free tests will be done in public hospitals and the programme aims to conduct 3.6 million tests by the end of 2004.
The country's Health Minister says he hopes this will better inform people who are unaware that they have the the AIDS-causing virus, who may be unwittingly spreading the disease.
He believes that out of an estimated 600,000 Brazilians with AIDS, 400,000 are ignorant of their condition.
Brazil will also launch a massive advertising campaign for the tests this weekend.
Posters, stickers and media ads will be targeted towards high-risk groups like prostitutes, pregnant women and married women, and to parents worried about their children.
Now the worrying trend in the South American nation is that there is an obvious shift in the demographic of the AIDS patients.
While men constituted the majority of the patients in the past, poor women between the ages of 13 and 29 are most at risk.
According to the World Health Organization, Brazil has a model anti-AIDS programme
Just 68 per cent of Australians classed themselves as Christians in 2001, down from 96 per cent at Federation, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).In the 100 intervening years, the biggest change in people's religious affiliation was the emergence of those who class themselves as having no religion at all – 25.3 per cent of the population.
The ABS said that in 2001, the two main Christian denominations, Catholicism and Anglicism, accounted for 46.5 per cent of the population.
Buddhism accounted for 1.9 per cent (357,813) of the population and Islam for 1.5 per cent (281,578).
In 2001, there were also 95,473 Hindus and 83,993 Jews in Australia.
... But as Brownell travels the country he's beginning to sense a shift in attitudes: "When I first started talking about this stuff, people went crazy," he says. "The biggest change is the issue of taxing food -- not that people are crazy about it, but they've gone from antagonistic to debating about it."People are more open to his ideas, Brownell believes, because of the overwhelming evidence about the consequences of obesity, especially on children: "People have begun to see how children have been victimized. We've created this environment that is destined to make our children sick." A 2000 federal survey concluded that 15 percent of children ages 6 to 11 are overweight, more than double the rate in 1980.
The book chronicles the relentless pursuit of kids by food companies, starting at birth (baby bottles emblazoned with soft-drink logos) and continuing through early years (television commercials), and the school years (fast-food school lunches). It also details efforts by food companies to have products shown in films and TV shows, and to place soft-drink vending machines in schools in exchange for payments to the schools.
Parents are becoming savvier about the influence of marketing on children's attitudes.
"They're becoming more aware of the process these companies use to sell food," Brownell said.
He outlines a typical scenario in which a McDonald's Happy Meal contains a toy version of a movie character, the movie has product placements, and the character eventually becomes a sugary breakfast cereal. "Once they see the sequence, parents are saying, 'This is not what I want from that company.' "
Brownell advocates a ban on advertisements of "unhealthy" products in ads targeting children. And his proposal for a junk-food tax would provide revenue for schools to offset payments from soft drink companies.
Some of Brownell's biggest skeptics are now standing with him on the front lines.
"When Kelly came out with the whole idea of food taxes I was absolutely against it," says Judith S. Stern, vice president of the American Obesity Association. "I felt he was singling out one part of the economy that was contributing to obesity. But as I see the epidemic getting worse and worse, and I see the irresponsibility of food companies, I'm thinking, 'Gee, Kelly, we need more of you.' "
Narcotics trafficking, organized crime, money laundering and terrorism are inextricably linked and coordinated on American soil and in many countries allied with the U.S., according to the author of a new book on the financing of terrorism.Rachel Ehrenfeld, who wrote Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It, also asserts that this nexus of wrongdoing continues to take place in the midst of the U.S. public, its institutions and elected officials, even in the post-9/11 world.
Ehrenfeld's book underscores the reality in the aftermath of the worst attack on the United States in its history, what allowed it to happen, what must be done to prevent it from happening again and how the window of opportunity to prevent another 9/11 attack is shrinking.
As director of the American Center for Democracy (ACD), Ehrenfeld is an acknowledged expert on corruption, money laundering, transnational organized crime, international terrorism, drug trafficking and substance abuse. She is also credited with coining the term "narcoterrorism" in her 1990 book, Terrorism.
In Funding Evil, Ehrenfeld alleges that illegal narcotics, principally heroin and cocaine, flow from the Middle East and South America to U.S. and Western European streets before the drug profits are then allegedly funneled through charitable organizations, front businesses, banks (many based in America) and ultimately back to Islamo-fascist terrorist organizations like Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, Hizballah and Hamas.
According to Ehrenfeld, information culled for the book did not come from classified documents or undercover sources, but rather from government documents, congressional committee testimony and executive agency reports, all of it available to the public.
The clandestine operations were conducted in places like Herndon, Va., Charlotte, N.C., and Quincy, Mass., as detailed in the book.
"Since I have been following this - I started with drugs, money laundering and criminal organizations and terrorist organizations - I've been doing it for 18 years," Ehrenfeld told CNSNews.com. "When I see a name, I immediately make a contact. Thank God I have a good memory. It is interesting that many of the same people are still operating, and this is why it is easy for me to identify many of the suspects."
... Under recent rules mandated by Congress following the 2001 collapse of Enron Corp. and similar corporate accounting fiascos, publicly traded companies are now required to have at least one financial expert on their board audit committees. In addition to the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange also sought to improve corporate governance by insisting that a majority of board directors be independent of the firm.The net effect of the new regulations is that chief financial officers — along with other executives like Jeffries with extensive financial experience — are hot properties for companies looking to select new board members.
“All of a sudden, CFOs are sexy,” said Bob Rollo, leader of the global board practice for Highland Partners, a national executive-search firm with offices in Minneapolis.
But actually landing that financial expertise isn’t always easy. Many public companies keep a tight rein on board participation by their executives, usually limiting them to one outside board. That’s particularly true for CFOs, who often have to tend to the finances at their own firms at exactly the same time other companies and their boards are reviewing their quarterly and annual reports.
With demand for specific skills on the rise, coupled with the added responsibilities and commitment that new and sitting directors are facing, many firms are turning to executive recruiters to help them fill board vacancies.
“There’s no question that Sarbanes-Oxley is changing how boards are structured and the way companies select directors,” said Susan Boren, head of the Minneapolis office of SpencerStuart, another national search firm with a significant board practice. “Maybe the biggest change is that there’s a lot more interest in retaining someone who can do an independent search rather than trying to do it themselves.”
... An increasing proportion of the American labor force is working an alternate shift instead of the traditional 9-to-5 workday. The biggest change is that half of the 24 million shift workers now are in white collar occupations, says David Mitchell of Circadian Technologies, a shift work consulting and research firm. On average the night shift pays more: an additional 84 cents per hour.Here's another interesting fact: 40 percent of single moms work the night shift, according to Mitchell.
Michelle Lashley, a single mom, says she has reasons other than just family needs for preferring the night shift. She says working 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. at American Express' center in Weston allows her to take classes for her master's in business administration.
At night, Lashley, 38, supervises associates who are processing credit-card payments. When the sun rises, she heads home to eat breakfast with her son, get sleep, pick her son up from school, and tackle her homework and his. Her Sunday through Thursday work schedule gives her time for school on Friday nights and Saturdays. Her parents spend the night while she's at work.
''It wasn't a hard adjustment because I'm a night person,'' Lashley says. ``It's worked out better for my life and my professional goals.''
... The 1,366 workers at Elpida's factory here were told to stop addressing each other by their titles and simply to add the suffix -san to their names.Yukio Sakamoto, the president and chief executive in Tokyo, believes that using titles like "department chief" impedes decision-making and innovation.
"To call someone `president' is to deify him," said Mr. Sakamoto, who was influenced by the 28 years he worked at Texas Instruments. "It's part of Japan's hierarchical society. Now that has no meaning. If you have ability, you can rise to the top and show your ability."
Many Japanese companies, traditionally divided rigidly by age and seniority, have dropped the use of titles to create a more open — and, they hope, competitive — culture.
The long economic slump has forced companies to abandon seniority in favor of performance, upsetting the traditional order. This has led to confusion in the use of titles as well as honorific language, experts say.
The shift also mirrors profound changes in Japanese society, experts say. Equality-minded parents no longer emphasize honorific language to their children, and most schools no longer expect children to use honorific language to their teachers. As a result, young Japanese have a poor command of honorific language and do not feel compelled to use it.
"There's confusion and embarrassment," said Rika Oshima, the 43-year-old president of Speaking Essay, a school that instructs new employees on the use of honorific language. "Junior staffers aren't strict about using respectful forms to their bosses, whereas bosses want their staffers to use respectful forms to them, but bosses cannot say that."
What is clear is that the use of honorific language, called keigo, to elevate a person or humble oneself, has especially fallen out of use among young Japanese.
Japanese, perhaps more than any other language, has long taken account of social standing. While French speakers must decide between the familiar "tu" and the formal "vous" in addressing someone in the second person, in Japanese, there are many ways to say I or you, calibrated by age, circumstance, gender, social position and other factors. Verb endings, adjectives and entire words also shift according to the situation.
... Many conservatives, however, strongly object to the president's position on Boykin. In an article entitled, "Conservative leaders defend Gen. Boykin for speaking truth," crosswalk.com quotes former Reagan aide and prominent neoconservative Frank Gaffney, who says Boykin clearly put his finger on the truth when he said "his God is bigger than the god of Islam." The Bush administration, Mr. Gaffney says, should not reprimand Boykin for "telling the truth."Liberal columnist Michael Kinsley writes in Time magazine that it's OK to think your God is the biggest (afterall, he says, isn't that what religion is all about), and that Boykin was just saying what he believes in. But the biggest problem for President Bush, says Mr. Kinsley, is that Boykin's comments undermine one of the greatest accomplishments of the Bush administration: "... a greater appreciation that Muslims and their religion add to the richness of our great ethnic stew. And without Bush's special emphasis, the opposite might easily have happened."
In the conservative Weekly Standard, David Gelernter writes that, "of course" America is a Christian nation.
But, some people argue, that was long ago. Demographics and beliefs have changed. We have changed our minds about religion. Says who? Since when? Of course this is no longer the almost exclusively Christian nation it was in 1776. But does anyone doubt that it remains an overwhelmingly Christian nation nonetheless? We are solemnly warned that, nowadays, public expressions of Christianity are "controversial." Among whom? Look up "controversial" and you will find that "upsetting to the Los Angeles Times" is not the definition.
Overlooked in the controversy about the religious remarks made by Boykin, writes E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post, is that fact that "the general was no doubt expressing the views of tens of millions of Americans."
For the administration, it's not just that Boykin presents a political problem, because the most loyal part of Bush's base is made up of evangelical Christians, many of whom share Boykin's views. Even more important, it is highly likely that Bush himself, a genuinely devout Christian by all accounts, agrees with at least some, perhaps much, of what Boykin said. In particular, it's pretty certain that Bush believes that Satan is in some way implicated in the troubles the United States now faces. That is not an eccentric view among Christians. It is rather orthodox.
For atheists, agnostics, and liberal Christians, Jews and Muslims, Dionne continues, toleration is "an easy reach." Yet as Boykin's statements show, the very idea of religious liberty is theologically difficult for many people, regardless of the faith they follow.
... Like their neighbors, Carl Kurtz and his wife, Linda, have been spending long hours on the combine. Rather than corn or beans, however, the fruits of their labors - spread out in billowy piles on their barn floor - bear a striking resemblance to fluffy gray dust."Here's a tick trefoil. And a little bluestem. And Indian grass," says Mr. Kurtz, sifting through a handful of the gray fluff to easily identify nearly microscopic seeds: coneflower, rigid goldenrod, Canada wild rye.
Kurtz still farms the 255 acres his father bought in 1930, where the family raised pigs, chickens, cattle, and corn when he was a boy. Today, aside from 90 acres he rents out for the traditional corn-and-bean rotation, nearly all of the land is used to grow prairie. He sells the seed to homeowners, businesses, and towns that, more and more, want to plant their land so it looks the way it did 150 years ago.
While his stands of prairie are a rarity among the huge tracts of commodities that surround them, Kurtz is far from the only person growing grass seed. What is unusual is the way he grows it. Unlike nearly every other seed farmer in Iowa, he's not interested in monocultures. Instead, he sells seed in a bulk mix that includes at least 40 or 50 different species.
Kurtz, a former freelance photographer who was trained as a biologist, originally started growing prairie this way for economic reasons. Far cheaper to grow than monocultures, it meant he could offer it at much lower prices to customers. What he hadn't guessed was how many ecological benefits he'd see.
"With a monoculture it never really stabilizes," he explains. "I had a friend who had butterfly milkweed, which he planted on his hands and knees, and he only got seed out of it one year."
Kurtz's current philosophy: Nature knows what's best. The less he tries to control what he grows, the less weeding he needs to do, the more interesting the prairie looks, and the
Looking to the fastest-growing segment of the world television market, Sony announced Tuesday a $2 billion joint venture with Samsung, to produce liquid crystal displays, commonly known as flat-panel screens. With production to start in South Korea in 2005, the 50-50 joint venture would wed Sony, the world's largest producer of televisions, with Samsung, the world's second-largest producer of flat screens.Demand for flat-panel screens is expected to leap in coming years, from 4 million this year to 14 million in 2005 and to 30 million in 2007, the two companies estimated. The alliance of the two electronics giants to produce seventh-generation flat-panel screens should lead the way toward standardizing the global TV monitor format, the companies said.
The drop-off, unlike in most kindergartens, is quick and sob-free.
Soon after Karin von Huson kisses him goodbye, Jonny, his name written on a sticker stuck on his chest, settles into a plush couch with his friend Günter. The two nip at the drinks on the table in front of them and leaf through a pile of magazines - their wives happily off to shop in downtown Hamburg.Welcome to Männergarten, Germany's first day care for men wanting to avoid hours in department-store dressing rooms and checkout lines. The brainchild of the Nox Bar in the heart of Hamburg's shopping district, the Saturday event provides two drinks, lunch, TV sports, and male bonding, all for just 10 euros ($11.81).
"It's a great idea," says Ms. von Huson, before rushing off with her friend. "It gives us time to ourselves, where we can talk and think in quiet."
Since its debut last month, Männergarten has welcomed as many as 30 men into the back section of the bar, says manager Alexander Stein.
Behind a velvet rope, Mr. Stein has set up a sort of big-boy's playroom. Board games are stacked on ottomans in front of large couches, men's magazines cover the coffee tables, and two fish tanks built into the wall of the upscale bar emit a soothing glow.
On a recent Saturday, a playpen set up by a toy company as a promotion was put to use by a camera team that wasted no time coaxing men into the pen for the perfect shot.
Not a Saturday has gone by, in fact, in which reporters - whether from the local rag or from French television - crowd into the back room, hovering boom mikes over a card game in progress, or asking participants to play with a remote-controlled car while the photographers shoot away.
... Still, models based on decades of research are often unable to predict a fire's path when weather conditions get in the way. Fire strategy and high-tech devices haven't been able to stop blazes from wreaking havoc in southern California, pointing to the limits of fighting and forecasting wildfires, especially in a region where gusts of dry winds change direction and speed up with no warning.Case in point: San Diego's mammoth Cedar Fire grew at amazing speeds, allegedly caused by hunter shooting a signal flare into the air east of the city. Whipped by the region's perennial Santa Ana winds, the fire moved too fast to allow firefighters to forecast its path and surround it.
"You've got a fire that went from 1,000 acres to 115,000 in 12 hours," says Bob Wolf, president of the California Department of Forestry firefighters' union. "I've been a firefighter for 22 years and I've never seen anything like it."
Indeed, for the crews throughout southern California, this week's blazes represent what many call a "career fire" - an epic battle that will stay with them through their lives
the ebb and flow of a very old struggle for strategic influence and clout in Asia, China for now is gaining an upper hand over longtime rival Japan, whose dynamism in the 1980s and early 1990s made it the undisputed regional power broker - from Korea to Singapore and Thailand.
A host of economic and diplomatic moves by Beijing in and around Asia has begun to deepen China's strategic position in this region, say well-placed US officials, including former Bush administration specialists.Wednesday, for example, a powerhouse team of Chinese leaders - headed by Standing Committee member Wu Bangguo and rising foreign ministry star Wang Yi - begins a visit to Pyongyang to arrange the timing and agenda of the next round of six-party talks over North Korea's nuclear ambition. Mostly through the urging of the Bush administration, Beijing has seized leadership on what is often called North Asia's most dangerous security problem.
Moreover, China has a host of Asian initiatives and economic deals on the table, from an offer to begin free-trade agreements with ASEAN nations, to reenergizing its influence in central Asia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to its splashy profile at the APEC summit in Bangkok, where President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao both received state-visit honors.
By contrast, Tokyo, which still arguably has the greatest investment and clout in Asia, at times seems on the wane, caught flat-footed and preoccupied with internal business.
"China is trying to take what it feels is its rightful place as the main power of Asia," says a former Bush administration official specializing in Asia. "But Japan will fight back; it is not in the US or Japan's interest to concede Asia to China, at least not yet."
All but the smallest new televisions will have to be able to receive digital TV signals by July 2007 under a government rule upheld by a federal appeals court on Tuesday.The makers of TVs, VCRs and DVD players tried to block the Federal Communications Commission rule, saying it would make sets more expensive and was unnecessary because cable and satellite viewers don't need the tuners.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the FCC, which said the requirement was needed because the industry was not moving quickly enough to make tuners available.
The tuners will be needed to receive over-the-air broadcasts after the nation switches from analog to digital signals. Congress has set a goal of December 2006 for the change.
Circuit Judge John G. Roberts wrote that despite the timeline, the FCC had found that ``a logjam was blocking the development of digital TV.''
``Broadcasters are unwilling to provide more DTV programming because most viewers do not own DTV equipment, and the lack of attractive DTV programming makes consumers reluctant to invest in more DTV equipment,'' he wrote.
The European Union announced a program Tuesday to increase its regulation of chemicals found in many household items.The BBC said the new regulations would require companies to disclose basic data on all the chemicals they produce. Around 30,000 chemicals will undergo tests to prove their safety if the proposals become law in 2005.
The new legislation, known as REACH -- Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals -- has been hailed by supporters as the most important new regulation in 20 years, totally altering the way chemicals are controlled in Europe.
The BBC said REACH plan is designed to identify potentially harmful chemicals and classify them as "substances of very high concern." Such chemicals then would be phased out and replaced with safer alternatives.
Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center has developed a way to use inkjet printing techniques to create cheap, flexible sheets of transistors--a process that could radically change the way flat-panel screens are created.
The fabled technology lab is one of several facilities around the world that have been working to recreate the functions of traditional silicon semiconductor chips with tiny transistors printed on plastic sheets. Using electricity-conducting ink that bonds to a flexible plastic sheet, PARC researchers said Tuesday that they have been able to create arrays of bendable semiconductors that work much like their rigid counterparts.The new printable chips aren't nearly as efficient as their silicon counterparts, but they work well enough to serve as the core of liquid crystal display (LCD) screens and futuristic displays such as electronic paper, the researchers said.
Instead of hugely expensive "clean room" manufacturing facilities, the products could be created in printing facilities that might more resemble a newspaper's printing press, with sheets of transistors scrolling off the high-tech printers, the scientists speculated.
"Instead of smocked people carrying individual (silicon) wafers around a clean room or robot arms carrying stacks of wafers, imagine a person carrying a roll that looks like a 35-millimeter camera cassette, with a roll of film a meter wide and a hundred feet long," said Raj Apte, a PARC research scientist working on the project. "The clean room might even be a dirty room, since the film is going to be on cassettes."
The drive for plastics that conduct electricity has gone on for years, as scientists look for ways to replace the capital-intensive process of traditional chip and display manufacturing. Several other companies' labs, including those of Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs and Philips Semiconductors, are also pursuing the concept.
As the Anglican world waits and watches for the consecration of openly gay Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson on Sunday, the Methodist Church has all but ordered a church trial for an openly lesbian minister.According to the Washington Post, the Methodists' highest court has ruled that Karen Dammann should undergo a new investigation, and that church officials may not simply ignore church law in determining her fate. The decision by the eight-member Judicial Council, which met Oct. 22-24, means that Dammann will almost certainly face a church trial, and will likely lose her credentials as a Methodist minister. Two lower church investigative committees had declined to press charges against Dammann, who is presently serving the congregation of the First United Methodist Church in Ellensburg, Wash.
Dammann's brush with Methodist law began in February of 2001, when she came out of the closet in a letter to Seattle Bishop Elias Galvan. Dammann, 46, who was on leave from the pulpit of a Seattle church at the time, determined that she could no longer disavow her life partner and their three-year-old son, asking Galvan to reinstate her with full knowledge of her family and her life.
Instead, Galvan filed an official complaint, noting that Dammann's confession was a violation of the Methodist Book of Discipline, which bans "practicing" gay and lesbian clergy. But after surviving hearings last year before the Pacific Northwest Committee on Investigation and the Western Jurisdiction Committee on Appeals, Dammann ran out of luck before the top court last week.
... States across the country, often in response to cash incentives offered by the federal government, have been under intense pressure in recent years to move children through their foster care systems and into permanent homes. Indeed, the number of annual adoptions nationally almost doubled from 1995 to 2001, and New Jersey adoptions more than doubled in an even shorter time, to 1,364 in 2002 from 621 in 1998.But the effort to increase adoptions of the largely poor and minority children in the states' care has not been met with any surge of ideal families waiting to take them in. Instead, the already thin ranks of foster parents are being pushed to take up the slack, with states using federal money to subsidize the costs of formally adopting the children. The payments to parents willing to adopt can amount to hundreds of dollars a month per child. The Jacksons, with six adopted children and one foster child, received more than $30,000 in government payments last year.
The adoption of needy children is in many cases a good thing, and often the foster families they wind up with as adopted children are those they have lived with for years. But some state officials and child welfare experts say they worry that the current push is, in essence, transforming adoption into an extended form of foster care and a possible peril to children.
Once children are formally adopted, for instance, the state is no longer entitled to closely monitor their well-being. And having extended money to the foster parents willing to formally adopt — a greater amount is paid to the families who adopt medically fragile or psychologically troubled children — the risk exists that families take on more than they can handle, sometimes just for the additional money.
"Have we gone too far too fast?" asks Gary Stangler, executive director of Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative, a private foundation in St. Louis focusing on getting children out of foster care. "I worry that with all the applause going to the increasing numbers of adoptions, that we are possibly putting these young people into families not equipped or prepared to handle them."
Experts are quick to caution that the case of the Jacksons of New Jersey may prove to be distinctly aberrant, and data concerning abuse or other problems experienced by children who have been adopted in recent years is still developing.
One year ago, almost to the day, Samuel J. Palmisano, the chief executive of I.B.M., delivered a speech in New York that sketched his company's vision of the future of computing, which he called "on-demand computing."Today in Los Angeles, Bill Gates, the chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, will present his company's notion of where things are headed, which the software maker calls "seamless computing."
Behind the marketing shorthand is a kind of war of ideas over what can be thought of as "the Internet, Act II," a technological evolution that has been gathering speed. The next-generation development of the Internet has been helped by the continuing and remarkable progress in hardware. But probably more important has been the embrace of a set of software standards - rendered in a nerdy alphabet soup of acronyms, like XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI and so on - that open the door to widespread machine-to-machine communication across the Internet.
Over the last couple of years, I.B.M. and Microsoft have cooperated closely to reach agreement on the software standards, known as Web services, necessary for this next step. The two companies, however, agree on little else.
The Internet Act I was mainly about e-mail programs and downloading digital information to look at or listen to - Web pages, animations, video and music. Act II should bring all kinds of automated transactions among businesses and individuals. And those transactions will be able to include a hint of computer-aided intelligence.
Confidence in Russia's economy and leadership fell dramatically Monday after the weekend arrest of its richest man, with the ruble losing value against the dollar and shares of the biggest oil producer being pulled from trading because their worth plunged by one-fifth.President Vladimir Putin defended prosecutors' decision to arrest Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whom special forces seized in a stunning operation at a Siberian airport. But fears were high that the move could stall the Russian economy, which recently has seen robust progress back from the 1998 collapse of the ruble.
TOKYO (AP) - Sony Corp. and Japan's top mobile phone carrier, NTT DoCoMo, plan to cooperate in developing a system that will allow people to use their cell phones to pay for train tickets or buy items in stores.They plan to create a FeliCa Networks joint venture, to be set up in Tokyo in January, that will develop a new chip that integrates mobile phones with smart card technology developed by Sony, the companies said Monday.
The smart cards, which have an integrated circuit chip embedded in them, can communicate with special equipment that allows card-owners to pass through train station gates or make payments at cash registers in stores.
Sony will be a 60 percent investor in the 6 billion yen ($55 million) venture, and NTT DoCoMo will invest the other 40 percent.
Two students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a system for sharing music within their campus community that they say can avoid the copyright battles that have pitted the music industry against many customers.The students, Keith Winstein and Josh Mandel, drew the idea for their campus-wide network from a blend of libraries and from radio. Their effort, the Libraries Access to Music Project, which is backed by M.I.T. and financed by research money from the Microsoft Corporation, will provide music from some 3,500 CD's through a novel source: the university's cable television network.
...
While listening to music through a television might seem odd, it is crucial to the M.I.T. plan. The quirk in the law that makes the system legal, Mr. Winstein said, has much to do with the difference between digital and analog technology. The advent of the digital age, with the possibility of perfect copies spread around the world with the click of a mouse, has spurred the entertainment industry to push for stronger restrictions on the distribution of digital works, and to be reluctant to license their recording catalogues to permit the distribution of music over the Internet.
... Spectators ranging from suave hipsters to modern primitives with facial tattoos and body piercings have turned out to watch a jousting match where bicycles have been converted into warhorses.A diminutive woman wearing combat boots and cut-off jeans rides a 6-foot-high monster bike made of two welded bicycle frames. With footmen steadying her bike, she climbs to the saddle, fits a 10-foot length of white PVC pipe under her arm, and lowers her head. She charges, pedaling furiously, and drops her opponent with a well-aimed lance blow; but she, too, loses her balance. The match is declared a draw.
The products have also ignited protests and boycotts nationwide, highlighting a division in the African-American community over what's an appropriate representation of the black experience.It is part of a larger cultural war among blacks, fought largely along class and generational lines.
"The traditional civil rights model included a kind of politics of respectability, putting the best face of the African-American community forward," says Imani Perry, a law professor at Rutgers University. "There is an absolute refusal in the hip-hop community to adhere to those ideals of respectability, in terms of what the public face of black people should be."
That tension may only heighten as hip-hop goes global and the appetite for edgy products grows. Nelly announced the release of Pimp Juice, named after his hit single, at the MTV music video awards late this summer. Days later, the Rev. Paul Scott, founder of the Messianic Afrikan Nation, launched a local campaign to keep it off shelves in Durham, N.C. He calls the word "pimp" derogatory and demeaning.
"We don't want our young people walking around with Pimp Juice in their lunchboxes, thinking that it's cool," says Mr. Scott, who has joined forces with black leaders nationwide to petition for Nelly to change the name. "Four hundred years ago, black women were being sold into slavery ... and now someone wants to come out with a drink selling women."
In business, there is big, and there is Wal-Mart. With $245 billion in revenues in 2002, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is the world's largest company. It is three times the size of the No. 2 retailer, France's Carrefour. Every week, 138 million shoppers visit Wal-Mart's 4,750 stores; last year, 82% of American households made at least one purchase at Wal-Mart. "There's nothing like Wal-Mart," says Ira Kalish, global director of Deloitte Research. "They are so much bigger than any retailer has ever been that it's not possible to compare."
... All Freecycle members have to do is join the Yahoo list serve and post a message about items wanted or items available. Within days givers are likely to hear from someone who sees their trash as treasure. The service and all items are free.More than 1,000 Portland residents have joined since the service was launched a month ago, giving away everything from cardboard boxes to crockpots to beds. And it's growing.
... Teens living on cul-de-sacs and in small towns are increasingly taking fashion cues from rap music videos. Sales of hip-hop fashion, estimated by the NPD Group, a market information company, to be $2 billion in 2001, are considered one of the fastest growing segments of the apparel industry. That's mostly thanks to mall stores such as Sears, Nordstrom, and Target stocking more urban brands.Rap artists-turned-fashion designers are responding by expanding the scope and reach of the clothing labels they launched in the 1990s. "Having these brands is about having the bad-boy image," says Marshall Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD. "Suburban kids are now thinking 'I don't have to live in nowhere-ville anymore,' "
This commercialization of cutting-edge fashion raises the question: Does urban fashion lose its authenticity - or street credibility - when it goes suburban?
Hip-hop culture began its journey from underground to mainstream in the mid-1970s in the Bronx section of New York City. Hip-hop pioneers were primarily young African-American men. They would express themselves by making and trading rap mix tapes, spray-painting graffiti on buildings and subway platforms, and break dancing.
As hip-hop evolved into a lifestyle, a style of dress emerged. "Hip-hop started with fashion sense," says Nelson George, author of "Hip-Hop America." "It's always been very visually orientated."
For two decades hip-hop enthusiasts appropriated items from mainstream fashion, says Mr. George. Sometimes they would wear accessories in unique ways - Adidas sneakers or Timberland boots with the laces untied. Other times they would lay claim to upmarket brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Polo Ralph Lauren.
More than 100 women have submitted statements to the US District Court in San Francisco, charging discrimination in the form of unequal pay and barriers to promotion. If their request to classify this as a class-action suit is granted, the class would include 1.6 million women who have worked at Wal-Mart since 1998.That would make it the largest employment class-action suit in United States history - one that would have "seismic impact," says Adam Forman, an attorney with Testa, Hurwitz, & Thibeault in Boston, which is not involved in the case.
The potential for a full battle in court ora gargantuan settlement has lawyers and employers alike watching from the edges of their seats. And the case could bring sex discrimination to the public's attention in a way not seen since Anita Hill's accusations against Clarence Thomas in 1991 forced a national conversation on sexual harassment.
However the case is resolved, it raises the specter of gender stereotypes that many assume had disappeared long ago.
"We don't hear very much anymore of people willing to say women should be home with their children, or a man should make more because he's supporting [a family] ... but the notion of women not being interested [in certain jobs] is still quite pervasive," says Joyce K. Fletcher, a professor at Boston's Simmons School of Management and its Center for Gender in Organizations.
Au revoir, film icon Yves Montand, with your Gauloise cigarette drooping from the corner of your mouth. Smoking in France will soon have a new image: grotesquely diseased lungs, displayed in full-color photographs plastered all over cigarette packets.
Elsewhere in Europe, where smoking has long been tolerated, the mood is also changing. Ireland, Holland, and Norway will introduce blanket bans on smoking in the workplace next year. Tobacco advertising everywhere is to be largely outlawed. The European Union is studying plans for a Continent-wide, New York-style ban on smoking in bars and restaurants.After decades of relative inaction, "things are coming to a head," because of growing awareness of the high human and economic costs of smoking, says Sophie Kazan, of the European Network for Smoking Prevention. "It's time."
France, where smoky cafes have long defined the country's image (and ruined many patrons' enjoyment of their croissants), took a bold step this week to dissuade the 32 percent of adults who still smoke: it raised tobacco taxes by 20 percent. A one-day strike by tobacconists fearful for their future did not deter the government from announcing another 20 percent tax hike next January, as part of the "war on tobacco" that President Jacques Chirac declared last March.
Mr. Chirac has made cancer reduction one of the top three goals of his mandate, which makes "the struggle against tobacco a necessity, an absolute priority," he said.
Spurred by a similar expulsion of 19 Muslim women from a state school in south Lille in 1994, the first Muslim high school in France opened its doors in September. And it is reenergizing a debate about the status of religion in a secular state.For the center-right government of President Jacques Chirac, the school is an experiment aimed at meeting the demands of France's second biggest religion, after Roman Catholicism, while preserving the state's secular identity and containing the threat of fundamentalism.
The goal of the Lycée Averroés, named after a 12th-century Spanish Arabian philosopher, is to offer Muslim youths an alternative to state education, something Jews, Catholics, and Protestants have enjoyed for many years.
The creation of a Muslim school financed by the state like other private religious schools, will help to integrate France's 5 million Muslims, say supporters. But there is concern, even among Muslims, that it could isolate and radicalize Muslim students.
"We [France] are a democracy and they [Muslims] have the right to open a school, like anybody else," says Jacqueline Costa- Lascoux, an expert on French secularism and a member of a state commission studying the issue. "But democracy is weak in the face of fundamentalism."
Michael Schumacher, the race-car driver who won his record sixth Formula One World Championship on Sunday, may pass almost unrecognized in the United States. But elsewhere in the world, he is one of the best known faces in sport, commanding a reported $40 million annual fee from Ferrari, the team he leads.As the undisputed king of the $4 billion, 16-country F-1 circuit, dominating the world's most expensive, most dangerous, and often most dramatic sport, "Schumi," as he is popularly known, elicits strong reactions: fans either love him or hate him.
But they cannot argue with his record.
"Michael Schumacher is plainly the outstanding talent of his period," says Doug Nye, an English historian of motor racing. "He is undoubtedly the best racing driver in harness, pound for pound, and he has been for too many years."
According to a recent report from the California Attorney General's office, "Gangs have spread from major urban areas in California to the suburbs and even to rural communities." At the same time, their access to guns seems unlimited.This mixture of youth, gangs and guns is helping to fuel a rise in violent crime and bloodshed in Oakland and other communities. Gang-related homicides are rising drastically in California, increasing nearly 61 percent between 1999 and 2001, according to state Department of Justice figures. The gang violence tracks a general increase in homicides, both in Oakland and in the state.
This year, Oakland homicides are on target to more than double the 1999 total of 68, and approximately four out of five murders are committed with a gun. Though Latino gang activity accounted for some of these homicides, the vast majority of victims and suspects continue to be African American.
The number of murder suspects in Oakland 26 years old or younger has increased from 18 in 2001 to 28 during the first nine months of this year. Six of the suspects this year are younger than 18.
When Missouri's new law allowing licensed residents to carry concealed weapons in public goes into effect on Oct. 11, gun shops and firing ranges aren't the only ones likely to see a boost in business.
Holster makers, gun safe companies and dealers of other gun accessories could see more customers as residents react to their new freedoms."I expect more activity," said Larry Nunn, store manager of Simmons Gun Specialties in Olathe.
Smith & Wesson, a name synonymous with handguns and with the American West, has launched its new catalogue range, hoping its brand will help it find new customers.Crossings, as the catalogues and their accompanying online store are called, is all about clothes, furniture, accessories and ornaments, with a discreet flash of the S&W name on only a proportion of the goods on sale.
The move follows a drastic decline in recent gun sales, following the company's 2000 deal with then-US President Bill Clinton to install trigger locks and other safety features on all its weapons.
At the time, gun rights activists said the company was selling out to people who wanted to regulate firearm ownership.
The catalogues, the company says, "tap into the resurgence of American patriotism with a desire to return to a simpler, home-focused lifestyle, and love of the American West".
Brazil's lower house of Congress has passed a bill to tighten gun laws in a country which saw 40,000 murders last year - one of the world's highest rates.
The legislation, which now goes to the Senate for final approval, restricts gun ownership and obliges owners to register their weapons.The bill also calls for a referendum on whether to ban gun sales outright.
But after long discussions, deputies did not set a date for the vote.
Nevertheless, it is quite an achievement for the law, known as the Statute of Disarmament, to have got so far, says the BBC's Steve Kingstone in Sao Paulo.
Greek security preparations for the 2004 Games will be without precedent in Olympic history both in scale and price, organizers said Thursday, adding however that the festive atmosphere of the event will be maintained."Our strategic decision, from the first minute, was to highlight the celebratory character of the games and not have them look like a military zone," said Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, head of the Athens Organizing Committee.
Making a formal presentation of the security plan for the Aug. 13-29 Olympics, Angelopoulos-Daskalaki and the Greek police leadership said providing "absolute security" without hampering athletes, officials and spectators was not easy.
"Greece is facing one of the biggest challenges in its history," Public Order Minister Giorgos Floridis said.
The security blueprint, in its final planning stages, has increased by 25 percent to at least euro650 million ($755 million) -- a sum officials said could grow even more as the Olympics approach. The government and organizers have budgeted euro6.5 billion ($7.5 billion) overall for the Olympics.
Greece had originally planned to spend US$600 million on security, but new threats following the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq complicated planning.
"In the face of these demands, our budget is the biggest ever and far surpasses previous Olympic Games," Floridis said. "It is a dynamic amount. We have budgeted euro650 million (US$755 million) at least, but you can't rule out more."
Tweaking genes and hormones in roundworms has allowed them to live and thrive six times longer than normal, to the equivalent of 500 human years.Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco who have been working for several years to increase the lifespan of
Caenorhabditis elegans say that they have now got the worms to live three months or longer as compared to their normal lifespan of 18 to 20 days.
More than 200 Oregonians have lost their driver’s licenses under a new law aimed at getting people with potentially dangerous medical conditions out from behind the wheel.The “medically at-risk” law requires physicians and health-care providers to report to the Department of Motor Vehicles patients with a condition that could hinder their ability to drive.
Patients can get their license back by passing visual, written and driving tests, said Bill Merrill, manager of the driver control unit of the state’s DMV Services division.
Listed individuals also can appeal their case to an administrative judge.
Oregon’s law is part of a national movement to address road safety issues related to medical conditions, said Melissa Savage, a transportation analyst for the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures.
Several states have medical review boards that assess the abilities of specific drivers, Savage said.
Only one state, Pennsylvania, has passed a “medically-at-risk” law that holds providers liable if they fail to place someone on the list and that person is involved in a traffic accident, Savage said.
Oregon’s law, which was initially passed in 2001, made health-care providers immune from civil liability for reporting a patient to the state DMV, said Merrill.
Today's children face a future of heart disease, potentially as early as the end of their teen years, if parents and policy-makers don't urgently address the exploding problem of childhood obesity, a U.S. cardiovascular expert warned Sunday.Dr. David Katz told delegates to the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress the research advances of the past couple of decades, which have improved the prognosis for people living with heart disease, are in danger of being lost.
The threat is obesity and the fact that it triggers Type 2 diabetes. Both are risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
... Despite all those women graduating from law school, they comprise only 16 percent of partners in law firms. Although men and women enter corporate training programs in equal numbers, just 16 percent of corporate officers are women, and only eight companies in the Fortune 500 have female C.E.O.'s. Of 435 members of the House of Representatives, 62 are women; there are 14 women in the 100-member Senate.Measured against the way things once were, this is certainly progress. But measured against the way things were expected to be, this is a revolution stalled. During the 90's, the talk was about the glass ceiling, about women who were turned away at the threshold of power simply because they were women. The talk of this new decade is less about the obstacles faced by women than it is about the obstacles faced by mothers. As Joan C. Williams, director of the Program on WorkLife Law at American University, wrote in the Harvard Women's Law Journal last spring, ''Many women never get near'' that glass ceiling, because ''they are stopped long before by the maternal wall.''
Look, for example, at the Stanford class of '81. Fifty-seven percent of mothers in that class spent at least a year at home caring for their infant children in the first decade after graduation. One out of four have stayed home three or more years. Look at Harvard Business School. A survey of women from the classes of 1981, 1985 and 1991 found that only 38 percent were working full time. Look at professional women in surveys across the board. Between one-quarter and one-third are out of the work force, depending on the study and the profession. Look at the United States Census, which shows that the number of children being cared for by stay-at-home moms has increased nearly 13 percent in less than a decade. At the same time, the percentage of new mothers who go back to work fell from 59 percent in 1998 to 55 percent in 2000.
Taryn Rose loves stylish shoes - so much so that when she was a resident in orthopedic surgery in the 1990's, she regularly walked the hard hospital floors in 2- and 3-inch heels. As she click-clacked down the halls on her rounds, she noticed that many of her patients were women "in a lot of pain, and it often came from wearing fashionable shoes that didn't fit," she said.From this insight came a life-changing idea: Dr. Rose decided to start a company to sell high-quality, handmade shoes that were both stylish and comfortable. In 1998, after completing her residency and becoming certified in her specialty, she turned her back on medicine. Brushing aside the objections of her parents and the skepticism of colleagues, Dr. Rose started Taryn Rose International out of her garage in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
Her market is a niche within a niche of the $15 billion women's fashion-footwear industry - and one with little competition from luxury designers. And while companies like Easy Spirit had started selling shoes combining fashion and comfort long before Dr. Rose got her idea, those shoes were mass-produced, not handmade in Italy, and cost considerably less than the $350 to $400 for a pair of Dr. Rose's shoes. "I felt that women wearing $1,000 suits didn't want to put on $69.99 shoes," she said.
So far, her hunch has paid off handsomely. Revenue for the company, which recently doubled the size of its headquarters in Los Angeles, to 5,000 square feet, was $16.2 million for the fiscal year ended last month, up from $8 million the year before, and she said she expects that to rise to $30 million in the current fiscal year. The staff has grown to 27 from 4 in two years, and she says the company is profitable, though she would not give figures.