New York, Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. retailers posted their worst December sales gains in at least a decade after fierce price-cutting during the holiday season failed to get shoppers to buy.
Too many stores, worried consumers, bad weather and an absence of must-have fashions had retailers cutting prices to no avail. By slashing prices, stores earned less on each sale they did make.
Analysts said the lackluster sales also reflected a consumer more willing to spend money on expensive items like computers and jewelry than a new wardrobe. Confirming the grim picture, a slew of retailers today warned that their earnings would be disappointing in the fiscal fourth quarter.
``We can't count on the consumer to be a strong engine of growth in 1996,'' said Dana Saporta, an economist with Stone & McCarthy Research Associates.
Today, Dayton Hudson Corp. warned that its fourth-quarter earnings would be 21 percent lower than last year's. Other retailers issuing warnings on earnings were Gymboree Corp., Talbots Inc., Catherines Stores Corp, Goody's Family Clothing Inc. and Musicland Stores Corp.
``The potential for positive earnings surprises will be few and far between; the potential for negative earnings surprises will be plentiful,'' said Philip Abbenhaus, an analyst with Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.
Sales were almost uniformly bad. J.C. Penney Co.'s department stores posted a 4.2 percent decline in sales at stores open at least a year.
Best Buy Co., the nation's second-biggest seller of consumer electronics, posted a lower-than-expected same-store sales gain of 3 percent. Industry leader Wal-Mart Stores Inc. eked out a 1.1 percent increase, its lowest monthly gain this year.
December same-store sales rose 1.7 percent, the smallest increase for that month in 10 years, according to the Bloomberg Same-Store sales index and Stone & McCarthy Research Associates. That's down from November's 2.49 percent gain.
Some retailers bucked the trend. Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s sales gained 6.8 percent on higher sales of women's apparel, fine jewelry, shoes, consumer electronics and home-improvement items. Neiman Marcus Group, with tony stores like Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, posted a 6.5 percent increase.
Same-store sales are considered the best measure of a retailer's sales strength because they don't include the effects of store openings, closings and expansions in the past year.
Helping to slow spending last month were snowstorms that belted the Northeast several days before Christmas, cutting traffic to stores and malls. Consumers, who increasingly wait until the last few days before Christmas to buy, either put off their purchases to the last minute or just didn't bother.
Consumers are carrying heavy debt loads and facing skimpy wage increases, while many fear they will lose their jobs.
Retail sales growth in the fiscal fourth quarter is the weakest in ten years of tracking results, said Stone & McCarthy's Saporta.
Wal-Mart's discount stores posted same-store gain of 2.7 percent, while its Sam's Club wholesale operations showed a decline of 3.8 percent.
Natwest Securities Corp. analyst Robert Buchanan yesterday trimmed fourth-quarter earnings estimate for the nation's biggest retailer to 46 cents a share from 48 cents. It earned 45 cents a year ago.
Kmart Corp. said its sales rose 4.5 percent for the month, with its U.S. discount stores gaining 5.5 percent. Its Builders Square home-improvement chain posted a decline of 7.4 percent.
Dayton Hudson's Target unit posted a sales increase of 5.3 percent, driven by post-Christmas clearance sales and low-margin businesses.
Dayton Hudson's department store group posted a decline of 1.7 percent, while its Mervyn's unit dropped 1.4 percent, its seventh month of declining sales.
The company said it expects fourth-quarter earnings of about $3 a share, down from last year's $3.81. It was expected to earn $3.61 a share, the average estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research.
Sears' sales gain was its biggest since July. The retailer said it recorded its first $1 billion sales week, even with the snowstorm in the Northeast. December was also its biggest month ever for apparel sales.
Federated Department Stores Inc., which operates Bloomingdale's, Macy's and Sterns, posted a 1.3 percent sales gains for the month.
Same-store sales dropped at specialty-apparel retailers, with many reporting larger-than-expected declines. Consumer-electronic retailers, which were expecting double digit sales increases thanks to demand for computers, were also a disappointment.
Talbots Inc. reported a December sales decrease of 7.7 percent, its fifth straight month of declines. Limited Inc. posted a sales decline of 5 percent, its third month of declining sales.
Gymboree's comparable sales fell 19 percent and the retailer said it expects fourth-quarter earnings to be about 32 cents a share, lower than last year's 33 cents and analysts' expectations of 36 cents a share, according to Zacks.
Tandy Corp. posted a 2 percent same-store gain and said sales of computers at Computer City and Incredible Universe stores didn't meet expectations. Tandy will cut back on the openings of both stores.
There were some specialty retailers who bucked the poor sales trend. Pier 1 Imports posted a 16 percent same-store sales increase for the month, while Sunglass Hut International Inc. posted a 10.3 percent same-store sales gain.
Men's Wearhouse Inc. posted a 7.1 percent increase in comparable sales for December. Gap Inc., which reported a 6 percent comparable sales increase, its best showing since January. The retailer discounted later in the season, helped it preserve profit margins, analysts said.
WASHINGTON &MD; Starting Wednesday, Americans are going to hear a lot of talk about simplifying the federal tax system, but even the movement's leaders concede that action will not come until after the presidential election &MD; if then.
If a Republican defeats President Clinton, a flat tax could be enacted ``within weeks'' of inauguration, predicted Audrey Mullen, executive director of Americans for Tax Reform. However, if Clinton is re-elected, a Democratic president and Republican Congress will stalemate on changing the tax code just as they have on balancing the budget, she said.
The debate ratchets up a notch on Wednesday when the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform releases recommendations for changing the the federal income tax system.
Headed by Jack Kemp, this largely Republican commission was privately financed. Its members were appointed by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan.
The commission's report ``will be a useful contribution'' to Congress in forming legislation, said Iri Fleischer, a spokesman for the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
Committee Chairman Bill Archer, R-Tex., has said 1996 will be ``the beginning of the end'' of the federal tax code. He has declared his intention to pull up ``by the roots'' the current system of ``taxing work.''
Instead of taxing income, Archer favors taxing consumption through a federal sales tax or other means.
Beyond Archer's proposal, there are a wealth of plans for changing the nation's complicated and unpopular tax system, with its scale of higher tax rates for higher incomes and its myriad of deductions and exemptions.
Perhaps the most widely discussed reform is a flat tax. All working Americans would pay the same percentage of their wages. Capital gains, dividends and other unearned income would not be taxed. Most deductions &MD; which many taxpayers see as mainly benefiting the rich &MD; would be eliminated.
Using the flat tax as the centerpiece of his long-shot presidential campaign, Steve Forbes has managed to position himself as a Republican candidate to be taken seriously.
Forbes' flat tax plan is similar to the legislation introduced in the House by Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Tex., and in the Senate by Richard Shelby, R-Ala.
Under the Armey-Shelby proposal, there would be a flat levy of 17 percent on taxable income and most deductions would be eliminated, including home mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and state and local taxes.
However, there would be exemptions: Individuals would pay no taxes on the first $13,000 of income. Couples filing jointly could exempt $26,000 from taxes. There would also be an exemption of $5,000 per child. Individuals would not pay taxes on interest or investment income, and businesses could not deduct the cost of fringe benefits.
Some Democrats say it would require a relatively high tax rate near 20 percent to produce sufficient revenue. They believe that they can make political gains by attacking such a plan's elimination of popular deductions, and they would have several powerful allies.
The nation's real estate industry, for instance, argues that eliminating the mortgage interest deduction could send the housing industry into a financial depression.
And governors and city officials are unlikely to embrace the idea of ending the deduction for state and local taxes, especially at a time when Congress is shifting the responsibility for many social programs to the states.
Some flat tax advocates &MD; including presidential candidate Phil Gramm, a Republican senator from Texas, favor a tax that allows the home-interest deduction.
Another Republican presidential candidate &MD; Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana &MD; has proposed using a national sales tax to replace the federal income tax.
Advocates such as Archer say the plan is simple, taxes spenders rather than savers and would be similar to the familar sales taxes already imposed by 45 of the 50 states. The tax would be collected at the point of retail sales.
Critics point out that a sales tax is regressive, and supporters counter by suggesting that low-income taxpayers could get rebates.
The third major reform proposal is the Unlimited Savings Account or USA Tax proposed by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga.
The plan aims to reward saving and tax consumption. Individuals and couples filing jointly would pay a progressive tax on their ``consumed'' income. They would not pay taxes on the income that they put into savings, but this money would be taxed when withdrawn by adding it to taxable income. Thus, all savings would be treated similar to the present tax-deferred individual retirement accounts.
Businesses would pay a ``value-added tax'' on the price of goods at each stage of production.
Tax reform is likely to be examined exhaustively in the coming campaign season. ``It's going to be a wonderfully exciting endeavor,'' said Fleischer, the Ways and Means spokesman.
But he said no plan is likely to be enacted into law until at least 1997.
``It's going to take a presidential change to implement it,'' he said.
New York, Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve arranged overnight repurchase agreements, or repos, to inject money to the banking system, a central bank spokeswoman said.
In repos, the Fed temporarily buys U.S. Treasury and agency debt from banks and securities firms, injecting money to the banking system for a set term.
The Fed uses such actions to drive fed funds rates back towards the target rate, now 5.5 percent. With fed funds trading at 5 11/16 percent, analysts surveyed by Bloomberg Business News expected the central bank to set up repos.
To keep fed funds on target, the Fed needs to add about $2.5 billion to the banking system a day in the last two days of the current two-week bank maintenance period, according to analysts at R.H. Wrightson & Associates, a New York economic research company.
Friday, with fed funds below target at 5 7/16 percent, the Fed arranged matched sales, selling securities to drain reserves from the banking system over the weekend. Markets were closed yesterday in observance of the Martin Luther King holiday.
Bolstered by strong sales of memory chips and some favorable year-end accounting, Advanced Micro Devices reported earnings yesterday that bested Wall Street expectations.
The Sunnyvale semiconductor company said it earned $55.6 million (52 a share) in the fourth quarter, compared with $38.2 million (39) in the same period a year ago. Sales rose to $593 million from $545.2 million.
Last month, AMD officials said earnings would be lower than the 56 a share analysts were expecting at the time. Net income came in above revised estimates of around 46.
``The company's execution was a little better than expected,'' said analyst Thomas Thornhill of Montgomery Securities.
AMD noted that fourth-quarter income benefited from a lower tax rate. The company reduced the rate on earnings to 10 percent in order to adjust overall taxes for the fiscal year ended December 31. ``If you take that tax rate back to a normal rate, the earnings per share would have been more in line with expectations,'' Thornhill said.
As in previous quarters, sales of personal computer microprocessors were disappointing, due to severe price pressure and the shift in the market toward Intel's higher-powered Pentium chips.
But strong sales of flash memory, as well as other kinds of chips, helped offset that, company officials said.
``With the exception of Microsoft Windows-compatible microprocessors, our product sales increased by 8 percent sequentially and more than 36 percent for the year,'' said chief executive Jerry Sanders.
For the full year, AMD earned $300.5 million on sales of $2.4 billion, up from profits of $294.9 million and revenues of $2.1 billion in 1994.
Separately, a federal filing showed that Fidelity Investments, the nation's largest mutual fund group, has sold most of its 9.49 percent stake in AMD.
Fidelity, which owned 9.9 million shares of AMD as of September 30, held just 153,618 shares on December 31, according to a report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday.
&UR; STORY FIRST SENT: -01-11-96 1943EST
CONCORD, N.H. &MD; Like a scorned lover obsessing about a broken heart, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole continued Saturday to mull over his dismal performance in his response to President Clinton's State of the Union address.
During campaign stops, in which he talked to law enforcement officials and firefighters, Dole alternately blamed the messenger for his lackluster delivery and waxed philosophical about the national TV appearance. He just couldn't let it go.
``I don't know if you saw my response to the State of the Union address Tuesday, but the media didn't like it because we didn't talk about their issues and we didn't talk about their values,'' he said.
But Dole insisted that while the media may not like him, the people of Iowa and New Hampshire do. He insisted that he really didn't care about the reporters and commentators. What he really cares about is America.
``They're having little heart palpitations about my speech because it wasn't the liberal message they wanted to hear,'' Dole said. ``If you don't sing their song, you don't get good reviews.''
Later, in front of a group of firefighters and their families, Dole seemed to acknowledge that there might be some truth to the criticism he took from his Republican opponents and from many political pundits. He joked: ``I gave a fireside chat the other night and the fire went out.''
But Dole still had to jab the press once again. He said he could only imagine how the press would have reacted to his first draft &MD; ``before I took out the tough stuff.''
Then he gave his audience a reprise of his speech, going over the points he had made. This time, Dole talked without notes, without a teleprompter, without the uncomfortable demeanor that overwhelmed his message last week.
``What I said on Tuesday night was the truth,'' Dole said. ``President Clinton is the rear guard of the welfare state.''
Congress, he said, sent the president a balanced budget. The president vetoed it. Congress, he said, sent the president a welfare reform bill. He vetoed it. Congress, he said, worked to return power to the states and to the people. In fact, Dole seemed even more upset with the president for stealing his themes than he was with the press.
``Every time, President Clinton says, `No, no, no.' Then he stands before the American people and he talks about a balanced budget and he talks about welfare reform and he talks about Medicaid reform and he talks about crime and truth in sentencing,'' Dole said. ``I wonder where he's been for the last three years.''
Dole said he thinks there must have been a mix-up when Clinton got ready to give his annual speech. ``I think what happened was when he left the White House he grabbed the wrong speech,'' said Dole. ``He got a Republican speech.''
Although Dole is still grappling with the possibility of a serious primary opponent in Steve Forbes, he spent most of the day blasting Clinton.
He was particularly miffed with Clinton for appropriating his own attack of the entertainment industry for its gratuitous sex and violence.
``The administration's found its best friends among the entertainment industry's elite,'' Dole said. ``When he needs a couple million dollars he goes out and Barbra Streisand raises it for him.''
Dole spent the day traveling with New Hampshire Gov. Steve Merrill, Sen. Judd Gregg, and Representatives Bill Zeliff and Charles Bass. Gregg said there is a reason for Dole to continue to talk about that fateful night.
``The theme of that speech was right on point,'' Gregg said. ``The national press let the president make a speech that was totally contradictory'' from what he has done in office.
Merrill echoed his sentiments. ``I think the reception of the president's speech highlights the fact that the president gives a great speech and doesn't follow through when it's over.''
Dole did not completely forget Forbes. He challenged the magazine publisher to release his tax returns as Dole has done. ``We're all in this together, Steve, don't be timid,'' he taunted.
Merrill jumped into the fray, too, promising to spend only 30 seconds on Forbes. ``My mother said, `if something sounds too good to be true, it is,''' Merrill said, pointing out that it would be impossible to give everyone in New Hampshire and in the country a tax cut.
Not everyone was swayed. Janice Barnes, of Salem, said she is more conservative than Dole and plans to vote for Pat Buchanan. ``I think that he compromises too much,'' she said of Dole.
But her husband, Arthur Barnes, a firefighter, said he would vote for Dole. ``I think he has the best chance of winning. I don't agree with him on everything.''
Taipei, Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Taiwan stocks plunged on a report in a Hong Kong newspaper that Beijing will soon announce a timetable for reunification with Taiwan, analysts said.
``Prices fell sharply after word of this report spread,'' said Chris Ni, chief dealer at International Investment Trust Co.
The main index of the Taiwan Stock Exchange lost 169.98 points, or 3.5 percent, to 4691.55, according to provisional figures.
Declines were led by companies that would be most hurt by strained relations with Beijing, including transportation companies and petrochemical companies.
Evergreen Marine Corp., one of the world's largest shippers, fell as much as NT$1.60 to NT$41.50. Formosa Plastics Corp., one of Taiwan's largest plastics makers, dropped NT$1.20 to NT$38.00.
Besides the Hong Kong news report, word of an attack on a Taiwan freighter by a China-flagged vessel near Taiwan's coast over the weekend hurt prices. That incident followed U.S. Navy confirmation last Friday that the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz passed through the Taiwan Straits on Dec. 19.
It was the first time an American aircraft carrier had passed through the area that separates Taiwan from mainland China since Washington ended diplomatic ties with Taipei in 1979, according to the China Times, a Taiwan daily newspaper.
The U.S. action comes amid rising military tension between Beijing and Taipei. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Beijing plans missile attacks against Taiwan if Taipei doesn't tone down its effort to gain increased international recognition.
``Christians, Muslims, Jews &MD; their prophets had visions in the desert.''
Carl Hammerschlag, a Phoenix psychiatrist whose 1993 best-seller, ``The Theft of the Spirit,''focused on the power of Indian healing, said the pressures of modern life also may play a role.
``Legends and myths we make ourselves because the normal is not so believable,'' he said.
``Modern legends are a way of coping. But they scare the hell out of me. Black helicopters, extraplanetary voyagers speaking to us in channeled voices. Give me a break!''
Legend had, in fact, been part of the Arizona scene long before the first Spanish settlers stumbled through in search of gold.
For Indians, these tales are not mere myth, but religion.
Hopi prophecies, for example, say that the tribe's long lost white brother, Pahana, will one day return from the east to restore harmony on Earth. A yarn? Don't tell modern Hopis that.
To Navajos, the terrain of their homelands is not a collection of hills, mountains and ravines, but the corpses of monsters slain by an ancient god-prince.
When Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and the first Spanish conquistadores arrived in 1540 in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold, Arizona Indians quickly discovered the best way to get rid of these invaders.
``We were told that the gold lay over the horizon by these people,'' Coronado complained of his Hopi and Zuni hosts, ``but there was none, only wastelands.''
GREED AND GULLIBILITY
``Mix greed and gullibility,'' said Tucson sociologist Jim Cooper, ``and you make the leap from gold to real-estate fraud. I don't care if it's the Spanish or snowbirds. Get them out here and show them a cactus, and they lose all sense of reality.''
Since Coronado's time, the list of yarns has grown and grown. Some current ones:
&MD; The devil has been sighted by some members of the Ak-Chin and Gila River Indian Community tribes, hanging around outside the immensely profitable casinos.
``He uses the power of money to corrupt,'' said Ben Garcia, a Maricopa Indian who lives in Scottsdale. ``People are really concerned they voted to let casinos in.''
He has not seen the devil himself, Garcia said, ``but some of those gamblers have, I bet.''
&MD; Romanized Jewish explorers founded the settlement of Calalus on the banks of the Santa Cruz River in Tucson in 700 A.D., or so a cache of 30 crosses, scepters and spear points found in the mid-1920s indicated. Byron Cummings, then-chairman of the University of Arizona archaeology department, eagerly supported the notion that the items were genuine, leading to an academic brawl.
UA's James Reid said that the rumor lives on and that the artifacts, with their Latin and Hebrew inscriptions, disappeared but may be in the Phoenix area.
``I would dearly, dearly love to have them,'' he said.
&MD; Copies of the 1976 book, ``The R Document,'' by Irving Wallace, are being snapped up at the Atalanta Bookstore in Bisbee because, owner Joannie Werner said, ``Bisbee is mentioned as a place the military uses to make guinea pigs of people, and we have Fort Huachuca nearby, and people are thinking there's a connection, although I don't know what.''
``The R Document'' is fiction.
&MD; Jack Schumacher, a Safford gunsmith, says that whenever copper is mined nearby, ``we get those UFOs.''
``My wife says some women got pregnant recently for no reason they want to admit, and these extraterrestrials must be responsible,'' he said.
``It's like, `I'm sorry, honey. Something happened in my sleep.' ''
&MD; The legend of the lost city of the Grand Canyon, based on an April 5, 1909, news story in the ``Arizona Gazette,'' a forerunner of ``The Phoenix Gazette,'' is so current that it's on the Internet.
``This is the most important story of the century, and there is a cover-up,'' Rose Cox of Scottsdale lamented in one electronic news group, after posting the entire text of the tale.
According to the 1909 story, the Smithsonian Institution had determined that the city, housed in a series of vast caves, was Egyptian.
``The mystery of the prehistoric peoples of North America, their ancient arts, who they were and whence they came will be solved,'' the story said. ``Egypt, and the Nile, and Arizona, and the Colorado will be linked by a historical chain running back to ages which staggers the wildest fancy of the fictionist.''
Sorry, said a Smithsonian spokesman. It was a hoax, he said, one probably dreamed up by the newspaper writer.
Brussels, Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The European Commission proposed new rules to increase its authority to regulate European corporate mergers and takeovers.
The proposal involves lowering sales thresholds, so that more mergers in the 15-nation European Union fall under the sole jurisdiction of the commission, the EU's executive agency.
``There is a whole series of sectors which slip through the net,'' Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert told journalists. He cited publishing and chemicals as examples of industries in which companies with relatively low sales could gain market shares that strangled competition.
The proposal, which must be approved by the EU's industry ministers, is likely to be blocked by countries such as Germany and Britain, which have independent antitrust bodies and don't want to devolve more power to Brussels.
``This is not in the bag,'' Van Miert said, adding that approval is likely to rest on ``politically motivated noises rather than arguments based on the facts.''
The commission currently evaluates mergers in which the two companies involved have combined EU sales of more than 250 million European currency units ($308 million) and worldwide sales of more than 5 billion Ecu. It wants these thresholds to be reduced to 100 million and 2 billion Ecu, meaning that smaller mergers will fall under EU scrutiny.
Company officials and merger specialists said any moves by the commission to increase its power to review cross-border investments are unlikely to reduce merger activity.
``Brussels hasn't been anti-takeover in the past and they don't aim to stop it now,'' said Julian Franks, a finance professor and mergers specialist at London Business School.
Van Miert said the proposal was backed by companies because ``businesses are not interested in dealing with umpteen (national) authorities'' and therefore favor the commission as ``a single-stop shop'' for merger plans.
At present, companies involved in smaller cross-border mergers or joint ventures must often refer to several national authorities administering differing regulations, Van Miert said. ``It is much more logical for the commission to process this sort of case.''
If ministers turn the proposal down, the commission will put forward a compromise plan to extend its supervision over merger cases that fall under more than one national authority, Van Miert said.
Companies said they will take whatever rule changes are made in their stride.
``It's not going to stop us from doing what we want to do,'' said Derek Welsh, the director of business development for Courtaulds Plc, a worldwide chemicals maker.
The commission handled 109 antitrust cases last year, about double the number investigated in 1993. The changes could almost double its workload, it said.
Merger and acquisition activity is likely to increase in coming years, as Europe becomes more integrated, particularly with the planned introduction of a single currency, according to Franks of London Business School.
Companies and governments have until the end of March to comment on the proposed legislation. Van Miert said he hopes EU ministers will vote on a final text before the end of the year.
The commission has recently attached conditions to proposed mergers. While rarely blocking them outright, it has forced companies to divest units, to reduce their market share. For example, AB Volvo agreed to sell its Hansa drinks unit as part of a beverage merger with Orkla SA.
Van Miert rejected the idea that more powers would increase the EU antitrust authorities' workload, and therefore slow the decision process.
Companies have said the length of inquiries often means they lose money, because they cannot implement rapidly required operational changes.
For example, Scott Paper Co. of the U.S. complained to the commission that its sales were declining because an EU inquiry delayed the implementation of its purchase by Kimberly-Clark Corp. The purchase was cleared by the commission this month, having been notified in July.
``We have adopted a very consistent and honest line in our merger policy,'' Van Miert said. ``When a merger is leading to the biggest company in the market, you have to be careful and take your time.''
At present, the commission has a month to complete a preliminary inquiry into a merger once it is notified. If it is still concerned that the merger could hurt competition in the industry, it starts a detailed investigation. That can last as long as four months.
The commission's proposals also include an attempt to make its regulatory handling of mergers and joint ventures more consistent.
Washington, Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. unemployment rate rose two-tenths of a point to 5.8 percent in January as the economy lost more jobs than it has in any month in the last five years, the Labor Department reported.
The decline of 201,000 jobs last month, partly related to unusually severe winter storms in the East, leaves the economy flirting with a possible recession, analysts said.
``Some of these numbers look recessionary,'' said Carl Palash, chief economist at MCM Moneywatch in New York. ``It's a combination of a slowing economy and being hit badly by weather.''
Clinton administration officials also blamed the Blizzard of '96, and predicted a rebound in February. ``I don't see any recession in the wings whatsoever,'' said Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Joseph Stiglitz, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, added: ``Our economy will recover fully from the blow dealt by Mother Nature.''
To be sure, Clinton's political foes in this election year were quick to jump on evidence of a faltering economy: ``Without the weather, we'd still be down,'' said Brian Wesbury, chief economist at the Republican-controlled Congressional Joint Economic Committee. ``The economy is in a weak state.''
U.S. bonds initially surged on the news of the job losses, then fell back after investors digested the news that average hourly earnings rose 6 cents last month. That raised inflation concerns, even though the government reported yesterday that consumer prices rose only 2.5 percent in 1995 and commodity prices have been declining. On Wall Street, the benchmark 30-year bond was down 9/32 in afternoon trading, pushing the yield up 2 basis points to 6.09 percent. Stocks and the dollar were mixed.
Speculation that the loss was exaggerated by the Blizzard of '96 and a New York City janitors' strike also weighed on bonds. The benchmark 30-year bond was unchanged in recent trading to yield 6.08 percent. Stocks and the dollar, meanwhile, were mixed.
Last month's job loss was the largest since April 1991, the government said, while the jobless rate was the highest since last April. Both numbers surprised economists, who had forecast an increase of 46,000 jobs last month.
The sputtering of the nation's job creation engine comes on the heels of other reports showing widespread weakness in consumer spending, confidence, manufacturing and retailing.
A University of Michigan study released today, for example, showed consumers grew less upbeat about their finances and economic prospects last month. The university's index of consumer sentiment for January fell to 89.3 from 91.0 in December, according to people with access to the report. The preliminary reading, reported on Jan. 19, was 89.9. The index is based on 100, set in 1966.
Both reports underscore the risk of a rapid deceleration in growth which prompted the Federal Reserve to cut two key interest rates a quarter point Wednesday to help restore some of the economy's lost luster. The Fed's policy-making panel next meets on March 26 and further interest rate cuts are likely, analysts said.
For the Labor Department, last month's storms made it ``difficult to determine whether a change has occurred in underlying labor market trends,'' said Katharine Abraham, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
By industry, service industries lost 141,000 jobs in January while factories lost 72,000 jobs, the report said. Construction was the bright spot, with builders adding 13,000 jobs.
In December, meanwhile, the economy added a revised 161,000 jobs, initially reported as a rise of 151,000 jobs, following revised increases of 212,000 in November and 68,000 in October. Revisions in the October and November figures were delayed by the shutdown.
In contrast to the rise in average hourly earnings last month, average weekly hours worked fell to 33.7 hours during the month from 34.3 in December. The Labor Department attributed that to the winter storms.
``I don't think the economy is as weak as that (jobs lost) number would reflect,'' said Andrew Brenner, senior trader at Nomura Securities International in New York, citing the wage growth number in the report.
Yet inflation concerns may be overstated. The government said yesterday consumer prices rose a smaller-than-expected 0.2 percent in December and just 2.5 percent in 1995, the smallest increase since 1986. And key industrial commodity prices have fallen in the past month, suggesting inflation remains subdued.
The outlook for U.S. labor markets is mixed. While major companies from AT&T Corp. to Readers Digest Association Inc. have announced plans to fire workers to save money, analysts say smaller businesses continue to hire workers, especially in technology-intensive industries.
Yesterday, the Conference Board said help-wanted advertising in major newspapers rose in December.
``The rise in advertising volume may, in fact, indicate that employers are planning to hire,'' said Ken Goldstein, an economist at the New York business research group.
``Pippo: A Little Dog Finds a Home'' by Annette Langen, illustrated by Sigrid and Sven Leberer (Abbeville, $12.95)
Pippo the puppy tells his own story, and it's a sad one at first, involving neglect, hunger and abandonment.
Luckily, however, there's a happy ending: adoption by a loving family, whom Pippo loves, entertains and protects in return. Some proceeds from the book are being donated to the Humane Society of the United States. Ages 4-7.
``Bee My Valentine!'' by Miriam Cohen, illustrated by Lillian Hoban (Dell, $4.99 paperback)
Jim likes everything about Valentine's Day, especially giving and receiving cards with big-eyed bumblebees that say, ``Bee my honey!'' But the day is not so happy for his classmate George, who doesn't get as many cards as the other kids do.
It's a common-enough occurrence, but it hurts as any kid who has ever counted valentines knows. In this simple, sweet-natured story &MD; one in a series about Jim and his first-grade friends &MD; the kids manage to make things right for George. Ages 5-8.
``Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Stories'' by Virginia Hamilton, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon (Scholastic, $19.95)
A woman slave, when she finally had some time to herself late at night, ``let her tired mind fly free to remember good times,'' Hamilton writes in her introduction. ``And when there weren't any, she made up what such times would be like.''
The results of such nights are what fill Hamilton's book &MD; stories by turn poetic, frightening and humorous of a girl who joins her beloved Redfish under the sea, of another rewarded by talking eggs for her goodness, of a tough 7-foot-tall female keelboat operator.
The 19 stories, accompanied by the Dillons' haunting art, won this year's Coretta Scott King Award. The awards are given for outstanding children's literature by African-American authors and illustrators. Ages 6 and older.
``The Itch in a Hitch: Humorous Stories From Highlights'' compiled by the editors of ``Highlights for Children'' magazine (Boyds Mills, $3.95 paperback)
The title story, by Marilyn Bissell, sets a high standard for this collection of 16 short stories. The plight of a girl who accidentally drops Mexican jumping beans into her leg cast and tries everything to retrieve them should make almost everyone laugh &MD; or at least groan.
But the other stories are fun, too, including the fantastic ``The Worst Day in the World'' and ``Miff and the Magnet.'' Can so many incredible things really go wrong in a single kid's life? Ages 7-10.
``When Dinosaurs Ruled the Basement'' by William L. DeAndrea and Matthew DeAndrea (Avon, $3.99 paperback)
Dinosaurs. A time warp. Tentacled, green-eyed beings from another galaxy. Three kids trapped by them and unable to return home.
All the elements, in other words, for a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat adventure. Smart, likable characters and crisp writing turn what could have been routine science fiction into exciting and funny reading. Ages 8-12.
``Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger'' by Louis Sachar (Avon, $4.50 paperback)
Fans of the first two Wayside School books probably would say the school couldn't get any stranger. After all, we're talking about a 30-story school building that has only one classroom per floor and a woman named Miss Zarves teaching on the 19th floor, which doesn't exist. (But that's no problem because there's no Miss Zarves either.)
Just wait, though. In 30 short chapters, the new book introduces us to a substitute teacher with three nostrils, an elevator that only goes up and another that only goes down, a hypnotized boy who thinks a girl's ears are candy, and many more of the zany situations Sachar's readers have come to expect. Ages 8-12.
Tokyo, Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The number of personal computers shipped to Japanese homes in 1995 was almost double that of 1994 as falling prices and more entertaining software sparked a surge in interest, a research company said.
PC makers shipped 1.862 million units to homes last year, 95 percent more than 1994, according to IDC Japan Ltd., a unit of U.S. research company International Data Corp. Some 11.1 percent of households had PCs last year, up from 8.6 percent in 1994, IDC said.
Although Japan is the second largest PC market in the world, worth 1.35 trillion yen ($12.8 billion) last year, few individuals have taken to computers because of high prices and the perception that machines were tools only for specialists or business.
In the U.S., by comparison, over one third of households have a PC, and over half of all white-collar workers have a machine at work. Children have been learning about computers in school for almost 20 years in the U.S., while Japan's schools began teaching the subject around three years ago.
Falling prices coupled with greater availability of entertaining software and a surge in interest in the Internet and other online information services is behind the rise in shipments, IDC said. Older people have also taken to computers in a big way, boosting sales, IDC said.
The PC market as a whole rose 69.8 percent to 5.76 million units in 1995, IDC said. Japan now accounts for 9.6 percent of the world PC market. In 1996 the growth will be 45.7 percent on year to 8.39 million units.
Shipments to businesses, meanwhile, rose 63.6 percent to 3.44 million units thaks to efforts by companies to computerize operations to cut costs and speed efficiency, IDC said.
NEC Corp. was held the top share of the Japanese market in 1995, with 40.1 percent, followed by Fujitsu Ltd., which surged to the number two slot with 18.4 percent from fourth last year thanks to its range of low price machines.
Last week, Dataquest Japan K.K., an arm of California-based market research company Dataquest Inc. and a competitor to IDC, said 5.71 million PCs were sold in Japan last year, worth 1.3 trillion yen ($12 billion), up 71 percent in unit terms and 46 percent in value from 1994. STORY FIRST SENT: -02-06-96 0435EST
Washington, Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- A Ford Motor Co. finance unit filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today to sell stock to the public for the first time in the form of Class A shares.
While the Ford financing unit, called Associates First Capital Corp., said in the filing that it would sell at least $100 million worth of stock, the amount could ultimately go higher than $1 billion based on other figures provided in the filing.
The company said the proceeds raised from the offering would be used to repay short-term debt to be incurred when Associates repays a $1.75 billion intercompany note issued by Associates to another Ford unit.
The Irving, Texas-based unit reported net receivables of $39.7 billion last year, total assets of $41.3 billion, net earnings of $723.1 million and stockholder's equity of $4.8 billion. As a separate company, the unit is the second largest independent finance company in the U.S., according to the filing.
Last year, the company said it provided its vehicle-related financing services to 9.5 million consumers and 143,000 businesses in the U.S. and internationally.
Goldman, Sachs & Co., CS First Boston, Merrill Lynch & Co., J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., Lehman Brothers and Salomon Brothers Inc. will underwrite the sale.
Terms of the securities will be available in a later prospectus, according to the S-1 shelf registration statement. A shelf registration permits a company to register securities in advance and then ``take them off the shelf'' to sell them when financing needs arise.
Ford shares were trading at 30 1/4, up 3/4 today.
Tokyo, Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar fell against the yen after Japanese Finance Minister Wataru Kubo hinted Japanese interest rates may rise, traders said.
Kubo said at a Diet budget committee meeting that while Japanese rates have been pushed lower to stimulate the economy, they are hurting people who live on interest payments, Japan's Jiji Press reported.
``Foreign investors misunderstood (Kubo's comments to mean) that the Japanese discount rate will rise,'' said Yasuhiko Matsunaga, head of foreign exchange trading at Industrial Bank of Japan. ``Then they sold dollars.''
Lower Japanese rates often hurt the dollar by making yen-denominated deposits more attractive. Japan's discount rate, at which the Bank of Japan lends money overnight to banks, is a historic low of 0.5 percent, last cut on Sept. 8.
The dollar fell as low as 105.86 yen, down from 106.18 yen in late New York trading Wednesday. It was quoted at 105.92 yen.
The U.S. currency was little changed against the deutsche mark as investors waited to see whether the Bundesbank will cut German interest rates at a policy meeting later today, traders said.
Lower German rates often help buoy the dollar by making mark-denominated deposits less attractive.
The dollar was quoted at 1.4645 marks, up from 1.4636 marks in New York.
``The market will move after it sees the Bundesbank's decision,'' said Masahiro Yamaguchi, manager for foreign exchange at Tokai Bank. ``By yesterday the consensus was that the Bundesbank won't change key interest rates at its council members' meeting today.''
Expectations for an immediate cut in German rates faded after Ernst Welteke, a member of the Bundesbank's policy-setting council, said Tuesday the central bank probably would leave official interest rates unchanged until late March.
The Bundesbank last cut the discount rate, the floor for German money market rates, to 3 percent from 3.5 percent and the ceiling on the Lombard rate to 5 percent from 5.5 percent on Dec. 14. Both are at their lowest levels since July 1988.
``Those who think the Bundesbank will lower rates today are the minority,'' said Naohiko Nakajima, manager of the financial markets advisory group at Bank of America. ``Should the Bundesbank lower rates, that may prompt people to buy dollars.''
After doubts about German rate cuts pushed the dollar down by more than 1 percent from about 1.48 marks earlier this week, the dollar is unlikely to fall much, even if the Bundesbank doesn't act today, traders said.
If the dollar keeps trading above 1.46 marks after the Bundesbank's decision is known, it could resume rising, Tokai Bank's Yamaguchi said.
Bank of America's Nakajima said he doesn't expect the dollar to fall below 1.4550 marks this week.
Traders said they also were paying attention to political turmoil in Italy, another reason for the dollar's recent slump against the mark. The dollar often suffers when the mark rises against other European currencies because investors seek all opportunities to buy marks.
The mark surged against the Italian lira yesterday after Italian Prime Minister-designate Antonio Maccanico gave up his mandate to form a government. That prompted investors to dump the Italian currency and seek safety in the mark, historically the most stable currency in post-World War II Europe.
The mark was recently quoted at 1,083.65 lire, little changed from 1,084.31 lire late yesterday. It was at 1,067.59 lire late Tuesday.
The dollar was little changed against a basket of 10 major currencies tracked by Finex, a financial futures exchange. The Finex dollar index was last at 86.42, down from 86.43 late yesterday. Its record low was 78.19, set Sept. 2, 1992.
In other trading, the dollar was quoted at 1.1950 Swiss francs, unchanged from late New York trading Wednesday. The British pound was quoted at $1.5400, down from $1.5419 in Wednesday's New York trading, and the mark was at 72.40 yen, down from 72.55 yen in New York.
New Delhi, Feb.23 (Bloomberg) -- Rolls-Royce, maker of some of the world's most expensive luxury cars, has returned to India, the car company's best market before World War II, said Derek Davies, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd.'s regional manager.
``Rolls-Royce is now back in India,'' he said.
The company is looking for distributors in India, and arrangements with two or three companies are likely to be finalized before the end of the year, he said.
``The market is quite small for new cars,'' Davies said, adding that new car sales were likely to be five to 10 cars a year, and 20 to 30 used Rolls-Royce cars could be sold annually in India.
``In the last 18 months to two years, 30 to 40 used cars have come into India,'' he said.
Imported Rolls-Royce cars are expected to cost 2 million to 6 million rupees ($55,000 to $165,000).
Before World War II, Davies said, India was the biggest market for Rolls-Royce cars.
Most of the owners of the cars were princes and maharajahs. Some 700 qs-Royce cars came into India before the war and about half of them are still around.
The government has banned the export of cars older than 40 years although some have been smuggled out of the country.
Rolls-Royce, part of Vickers Plc of the U.K., makes 1,600 cars a year.
SAN FRANCISCO &MD; Newspapers may be cutting costs and trimming staffs, but the prospects of selling their news and advertising over the Internet has opened their purses as never before, even though no one yet knows how, or even whether, today's plans to publish on the World Wide Web will ever make money.
At this week's conference on electronic journalism, Interactive Newspapers 96, the mood of the 700 people attending was ``What's Next?''
To hear three days of speakers tell it, the answer was, ``We don't know, but it's coming.''
``This is all a little bit like the blind leading the blind, because none of us knows how all this is going to shake out,'' said Bill Densmore, president of the Clickshare/Newshare Corp. of Williamstown, Mass., which is developing systems for billing Internet users.
Yet it is a movement everybody has to join, the several hundred publishers and business managers who attended the conference were told. It was the seventh annual gathering here, in the suburbs of Silicon Valley, by the Kelsey Group, the weekly Editor & Publisher, the National Newspaper Association and several other newspaper trade groups.
``This is a matter of protecting one's market, protecting one's turf,'' said Chris Tucher, business manager for publishing at the Netscape Communications Corp. whose Navigator Web browser is the most popular Internet software..
``We believe that the Net is going to transform the way people get information,'' said Tucher whose company has a strong stake in the success of the Web. ``To put it coarsely, if you don't do it, somebody else will. Whether it's finding a plumber or buying a car or selling your house, some one will find a way to make money using the Internet.''
This was the thinking behind Philadelphia Online, a creation of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, which are owned by Knight Ridder Inc.
``We're doing it because some day, when we're smart enough, it will be the answer to our prayers,'' said Tom Sims, who heads the venture.
The National Newspaper Association lists 162 newspapers that currently have electronic pages on the Web, triple the number in 1994. Admittedly, the list includes publications like The Bingo Bugle, of Vashon, Wash., which is more devoted to the board game and to dream interpretation than to the news. But the giants are also there, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune.
What drives this rush is ``fear and greed,'' said John F. Kelsey 3rd, a Princeton, N.J., electronic media consultant whose Kelsey Group was a sponsor of the Interactive Newspapers 96 conference here this week.
The fear comes from the threat to newspapers' advertising base, especially the classifieds, from the electronic world's point-and-click technology and ability to search through piles of information and get an answer complete with pictures and sound.
Greed, Kelsey said, because if a system is ever invented that accurately counts and categorizes each visitor to a newspaper's Web site, publishing on the Internet could become a very profitable marriage of newspapers' advertising base and franchise strengths.
Publishers also hope that their venture into the chaotic and culturally baffling world of the Internet may help papers struggling with an aging and declining readership, and with a corresponding declining share of advertising dollars.
There are two main barriers that keep the Internet from becoming profitable. The first is that the number of people who use the online services is still relatively small &MD; in the millions daily &MD; compared with newspaper readership.
The second problem begins with the first rule of the Internet, that everything on it is basically free. People pay the phone company for the use of the lines that hook their computers to the Internet, and they pay the access providers like Compuserve, or small local companies, to connect them to it, but efforts to get people to pay to visit a Web site have generally failed.
Just as they use advertisers to pay nearly three-quarters of the cost of publishing a daily newspaper, publishers on the World Wide Web hope that advertisers will pay for the cost of their Internet presence. Newspaper people at the conference heard estimates that advertisers spent $55 million in on-line advertising last year, and that that figure would reach $5 billion by 2000.
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. &MD; Perhaps word was getting around that you could disrupt Marcus Camby's game if you employed a Bruno Sammartino brand of defense.
The University of Massachusetts star center certainly has been guarded more aggressively in recent games &MD; and it had probably led to his shooting woes. The leading candidate for national Player of the Year honors entered Saturday's game against Louisville shooting 38 percent from the floor and complaining he was being played more physically.
Another subpar outing Saturday and the opponents' game plan would have continued. But Camby bucked the trend. Constantly swarmed by Louisville defenders, Camby connected on 8 of 18 shots and hit 7 of 7 free throws. Despite turning the ball over four times, Camby finished with 23 points and added 8 boards and 5 blocks (he now has 305 career rejections).
Camby returned to the form that gave UMass an unstoppable offensive option. Recently, the Minutemen have struggled from the perimeter and Camby struggled inside, forcing UMass to shine on defense. Saturday, Camby set the tone at both ends of the floor.
``He is as good as there is,'' said Louisvile coach Denny Crum. ``He can score, block shots, rebound and he's a good passer. He reminds me a lot of (current Celtic and former Louisville center) Pervis Ellison. They both are thin players but they're tough and they have good moves around the basket.
``When things are down (for UMass), they go to Camby. That's pretty good thinking. He makes things happen for them.''
As much as the Minutemen play on national television, it's doubtful many teams haven't seen the big fella. Camby knew if he didn't overcome the tough defense, opponents in the NCAA tournament would play him physically.
``I think the calls were going both ways, they were getting calls and we were getting calls,'' said Camby. ``But we made the plays down the stretch. Games like this help us for the tournament.''
UMass coach John Calipari said after Wednesday's St. Joseph's game, he felt Camby doesn't always get the calls he should. ``The (officials) are always talking about verticality, and what they're all doing is looking at bodies and Marcus is getting hit on the arm,'' said Calipari.
``And he's getting hit and hit and hit, and they keep saying `verticality.' I don't know. I always say you shouldn't even know officials are in the game. At the end of the game, you should say, `Who refereed that game?'''
Although he picked up a technical for the fourth time in six games, Calipari said Saturday's contest was consistently physical. ``That was one of the most physical games I've ever been a part of,'' he said. ``But it was consistently physical and I can live with that. We just beat the crap out of each other. As coaches, all we're looking for is consistency.''
BROWNSVILLE, Texas &MD; Two years ago, a jury in this border town sentenced the wife of a prominent doctor to life in prison after convicting her on murder charges. Prosecutors said she had given a fortune teller $3,000 to arrange the murder of a high school honor student she blamed for jilting her youngest daughter.
Now, as the third anniversary of Albert Joseph Fischer Jr.'s killing approaches, the woman, Dora Garcia Cisneros, walks free, the result of a prosecutor's error and a Texas appeals court that ordered her acquittal.
On Feb. 22, Mrs. Cisneros, 58, was released from a Texas women's prison after appellate judges ruled that prosecutors in Cameron County had presented evidence of a murder conspiracy, and then effectively asked the jury to convict her of direct participation in the crime.
``I'm just absolutely livid that they're going to allow this lady to move back to town and take up life like nothing ever happened,'' said Buddy Fischer, the victim's father.
His 18-year-old son, known as Joey, was a popular student at his high school when he was shot on March 3, 1993, in the driveway of the family's suburban home.
Testimony in the 1994 trial painted Mrs. Cisneros as a mother obsessed because Joey Fischer had ended a relationship with her daughter; she was said to have offered him $500 to get back together with her daughter Cristina.
Evidence pointed to a conspiracy that led from the mother, through a fortune teller, Maria Mercedes Martinez, and another of her clients, to two men the Texas authorities say were the gunmen. The men, Mexican nationals, are being held in Mexico on other charges.
Mrs. Martinez pleaded guilty to murder conspiracy and is serving a 20-year sentence. She was an important witness in the prosecution's case against Mrs. Cisneros.
In its January ruling, the appeals court ordered Mrs. Cisneros acquitted, so she cannot be retried for the killing on state charges. Although the court agreed she participated by giving money, a photograph and instructions to the fortune teller, it said there was no evidence that she had contacted the killers herself, and insufficient evidence that they were the ones who had carried out the crime.
Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz, who declined to be interviewed about the case, has appealed the latest ruling to the state's highest appeals court.
Two lawyers who are advising the Fischer family said that the prosecutors had made a ``rookie error.''
``Do not hold the law responsible,'' said one of the advisers, David Berg, a Houston trial lawyer. ``This is not a technicality or a fluke in the Texas law. This was negligence.''
Cathy Herasimchuk, a Houston lawyer who specializes in appeals and is an adviser to the Fischer family, is more charitable.
The Texas statute on murder-for-hire, Ms. Herasimchuk said, ``is really very difficult to use when the paymaster, the mastermind, insulates herself from the triggerman.''
Fischer, however, holds the appeals process responsible. ``What the court of appeals has done is overturn what the jury decided,'' he said. ``The appeals court didn't hear the case; the jury did.''
Mrs. Cisneros' husband still practices medicine in Brownsville, and declined to be interviewed. The family's eldest daughter continues in her job as assistant principal of a Brownsville school. Cristina Cisneros attends college out of town.
In instances when family members have spoken publicly, they have said that Mrs. Cisneros is innocent.
Fischer said: ``How do you tell your children that we live in a society where murderers go free?''
Brussels, March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Technology equipment and services sales in Western Europe will rise 8.5 percent this year, after rising 8.1 percent in 1995, driven primarily by the telecommunications market, the European Information Technology Observatory said.
In 1995 the information technology and communications market rose to 304 billion Ecu, the group said. In 1994, the market grew 7.1 percent in Europe.
In the 1995-1997 period, the European market for information technology and communications -- PCs, mainframes, workstations, printers, modems, communications equipment, computer software and services -- is expected to grow at a higher rate than the U.S. and Japan, the group said.
The average growth for the 1995 to 1997 period in the U.S. is expected to be 6.5 percent and for Japan 6 percent. For Europe, that rate is expected to 8.7 percent.
EITO, whose members include most European technology companies, said spending on the telecommunications industry will rise 8.7 percent in 1995 to 162 billion Ecu ($204 billion). That is expected to grow 10 percent this year and 11 percent next year, bringing the market to 198 billion Ecu by 1998.
The telecommunications market represented 53 percent of the overall technology market in Western Europe in 1995.
For information on a contract, or to purchase this article as a ``one-shot,'' please contact one of these New York Times Syndicate sales representatives:
&MD; U.S., Canada and the Pacific: CONNIE WHITE in Kansas City at 1-800-444-0267 or 816-822-8448, or fax her at 816-822-1444.
&MD; Europe and Asia: KARL HORWITZ in Paris at 47-42-17-11; fax, 47-42-80-44 or 47-42-18-81; telex, 282-942.
&MD; Latin America: PAUL FINCH in Los Angeles, 310-996-0075; fax, 310-996-0089.
THE OLD RULES FAIL
The bipartisan groping for a message to connect with economic discontent comes at a time of fundamental political uncertainty. Just as factory and middle-management jobs have become more insecure, so, too, have elected officials', and many politicians argue the two developments are related.
For years &MD; though political scientists constantly recalculated their formulas &MD; it was a simple truth that if the economy was good, the party in power won re-election.
An ailing economy in 1976 and 1980 was a critical factor in those elections, and congressional seats have regularly been won and lost over unemployment and inflation. One has to go back to 1968 &MD; in the middle of the Vietnam War &MD; to find an exception.
But in 1992, the rules failed. The country was at peace, the economy was in a recovery, and yet George Bush was badly defeated.
Two years later, the old rules performed no better. Once again the country was at peace and the economy was expanding. The models could not account for the devastating defeats that cost the Democrats control of both the House and Senate.
There are undoubtedly other factors at work besides changing economics. Innumerable polls suggest that voter volatility is a product not just of economic trends, but also of social trends, like concern over moral decline and a loss of confidence in government.
But increasingly, politicians of both parties argue there is a profound connection between what is happening in the voting booth and what is happening at corporate headquarters and on factory floors.
The old models of voter behavior no longer work, these politicians argue, because they were fashioned at a time when economic growth translated directly into increased wages and job security. Yet for many middle- and lower-income workers, this is no longer the case. A low unemployment rate means little when a factory worker loses a $15-an-hour job and has to settle for one paying half as much.
``The people who have seen their wages and benefits erode and their job security vanish, they are politically up for grabs,'' Reich said. ``They're not liberal, they're not conservative, they're anti-establishment. They blame whoever's in power.''
But they have not turned off on government. The New York Times poll showed that 10 percent of the public had gone through a ``major crisis'' in their lives because of a layoff, either their own or a family member's.
That group, as big as the flock of 19 million who voted for Ross Perot for president in 1992, is hostile to the economic system, to immigrants and to both political parties.
But its members are dramatically more likely than other Americans to say that government can and should do something about the layoff problem. In these days of disgust with Capitol Hill, 78 percent of them said they believed that Congress could do something about the loss of jobs.
Those who have experienced a major crisis as a result of a layoff are also politically available. They are only slightly more Democratic than the rest of America, and a bit more educated.
Bob Teeter, a Republican pollster, said the data suggested that the experience of layoffs had heightened their attention to government, and that they were a reasonable target for all politicians just because ``they weren't overly anything.''
Looking back, economists now say that the nation's current economic problems actually began back in the early 1970s. That is when the growth that had followed World War II began a 20-year slowdown, and when middle-class incomes began to lag.
Similarly, political analysts now go back to the early 1970s in an effort to understand today's uncertain environment. One of the defining traits of American politics over the 25 years has been the defection of working-class white voters, especially men, from the Democratic Party. These voters, who had been drawn into the party with the New Deal, left it for largely social reasons.
But some of those reasons had an economic undertone; many saw their party as too concerned about blacks and the poor, ignoring the struggles of other working families.
Repeatedly Republicans have defined their success with this group as the prelude to an emerging political realignment, only to see their gains wash away in harder times, like 1982 and 1992.
One of the lingering &MD; and central &MD; questions about the 1994 election is: Was this the portent, finally, of a permanent realignment or will the coalition once again fragment under economic stress? The group that swung most dramatically in 1994 was white males, or ``angry white males'' as they were quickly dubbed &MD; particularly white men without college degrees. Exit polls showed their support of Democrats dropped in two years from 59 to 40 percent.
It is no coincidence, some analysts argue, that this is the group that has fared the worst recently. According to Lawrence Mishel, research director of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, wages of white men with only a high-school education have dropped 17 percent since 1979.
In an article last fall in the liberal journal The American Prospect, Ruy Teixeira, the Economic Policy Institute's director of political science and Joel Rogers, a professor of law, sociology and political science at the University of Wisconsin, argued that the Democrats lost control of Congress because these voters had embraced the theory that wasteful government spending and high taxes were responsible for their declining standard of living.
To win working-class white men back, the two said, the Democrats must offer ``an alternative story that shifts the blame to other targets.''
By some accounts, at least, this is precisely what Buchanan has done. And notably, Buchanan's support is highest among working-class white men. In the New Hampshire primary, about a third of his votes came from white men without college educations, and among this group he was far more popular than any of his rivals.
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Celtic Arms, who had given Rodney Rash his last victory, Saturday became the first of Rash's horses to win since the 36-year-old trainer's death March 1.
The French Derby-winning turf specialist went into the $300,000 Pan American Handicap as the fourth choice of bettors at Gulfstream Park near Miami, and rallied from fourth to beat favored Broadway Flyer, Flag Down and Awad.
The same horses had finished 1-2-3-4 in the Gulfstream Park Breeders' Cup Handicap on Feb. 17 &MD; the last time Rash appeared in a winner's circle.
After Celtic Arms crossed the finish in front by 1{ lengths in the 1{-mile Pan American, Mike Smith pumped his right arm excitedly and later blew a kiss to the sky.
The victory was the first for Ben Cecil, 27, the former Rash assistant who now trains the 33-horse barn based at Santa Anita.
``I'm thrilled to have my first win, of course, but it is not quite as I would have it,'' Cecil said. ``We've had long faces for a few days, but everyone has gone on with their jobs. It has been a very tough week.''
Celtic Arms, owned by Gary Tanaka, lifted his earnings over $1 million with his fifth victory in 22 starts.
``We are happy, of course, for Ben for getting his first win, but we are happy for Rodney,'' Tanaka said. ``He always had great confidence in this horse, but we couldn't get him to produce.
``Rodney was ecstatic when he won last time. He knew he had the ability all along.''
Rash, a former Charlie Whittingham aide who opened his own barn five years ago and trained 1995 Santa Anita Handicap winner Urgent Request, died three days after being hospitalized with a rare blood disease.
Celtic Arms paid $9 at Gulfstream and $9.60 in simulcast betting at Santa Anita.
Cecil will be at the Fair Grounds today to saddle Gold and Steel, another former Rash trainee owned by Tanaka, for the $250,000 New Orleans Handicap. It will be simulcast to Santa Anita.
&UR; Ladies' day: &LR; Two of Santa Anita's biggest races for fillies and mares share the marquee today.
In the $300,000 Santa Margarita Handicap for 4-year-olds and up, Jewel Princess is an 8-5 favorite to win her third straight race and give trainer Wally Dollase his eighth stakes victory of the meet.
In the $200,000 Santa Anita Oaks for 3-year-olds, the morning-line maker thinks the fans will see a two-horse race between even-money Antespend and 6-5 Cara Rafaela.
&UR; She is gone: &LR; To B. Super, owned by a trio of baseball-player agents, might want to renegotiate her contract after rallying for her first stakes victory Saturday, the $106,850 La Habra.
Claimed for $20,000 in September by trainer Roger Stein for Jeff Borris, Ken Gurnick and Dan Horwits, the 3-year-old filly sprinted down the hillside turf course to win for the sixth time in 14 starts. Corey Nakatani rode.
The owners, who race as Big Fly Stable, got into racing last year after client Bobby Bonilla bought some horses.
``Every single horse (they've owned) has been a profit,'' Stein said.
To B. Super, making her turf debut, paid $19.60. Staffin finished second. Third was Hear the Music &MD; whose owners include former Dodgers pitcher Matt Young.
``I didn't know that's how you get into horse racing, is through baseball,'' said Gurnick, a one-time Daily News and Los Angeles Herald-Examiner sportswriter who covered Young with the Dodgers. Gurnick now is an analyst and publicist for the Beverly Hills-based company headed by agent Dennis Gilbert.
&UR; Notes: &LR; Alex Solis rode the winners of the third (Passion Flower), fourth (Grumpy Gramps) and fifth (Little Brass) &MD; but remained 12 behind Corey Nakatani, who was aboard Jamboree John and Pugnacious, as well as To B. Super. ... John Van de Kamp, the former California attorney general and Los Angeles County district attorney, has been named president of Thoroughbred Owners of California, starting April 1.
HEREFORD, Texas &MD; Willa Cather's books are on display, as are the platinum records of Patsy Cline. There is a display on Wilma Mankiller, the former head of the Cherokee Nation, and a bronze statuette of Sacajawea, the Shoshone interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition.
And 125 other honorees have their due: there are the pink and turquoise cowgirl hats of Gertrude Maxwell, an Idaho rancher and historian, and a photo exhibit on Mamie (Mae) Francis Hafley, the daredevil rider, and her Arabian mount, Babe, who performed their act 628 times from 1908 to 1914.
For the people in this Texas Panhandle town who dreamed up the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center and nurtured it these past 21 years, these are bittersweet times, the founders almost victims of their own success. The entire gallery is about to be moved out of Hereford and into Fort Worth, almost 400 miles away.
It is not that people here oppose the move, which will transform the museum and its $60,000 annual budget into a $5 million tourist attraction in the middle of Fort Worth's cultural district.
But having watched the museum grow up from a one-room display in the basement of the Deaf Smith County Library, having held their annual ``Rhinestone Roundup'' induction ceremonies here and even seen their hall inspire the opening of the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame restaurant in Manhattan, people here say it is a little tough to realize that the hall's Hereford days are over.
``You can liken it to your child going away to college,'' said Wenonah Barringer, the office manager of the hall, which occupies several rooms of what used to be a private home in this farm and ranch town. ``It's a national treasure, and we're sorry that Hereford is losing it.''
And there have been some ruffled feelings during the transition, as the people in Hereford (pronounced HUR-furd) have not always seen eye-to-eye with the new curators in Fort Worth on how their collection should be treated and displayed.
Margaret Formby, 66, the hall's founder and its former president, acknowledged the tensions, though she insisted, ``We had controversy, but that's been ironed out.''
Now, she said, she feels sad that the museum is leaving but pleased to know that the hall's yearly attendance, around 2,000, will almost surely grow, perhaps to 100 times that, perhaps even outpacing the 274,000 mark set last year at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, in Oklahoma City.
``We could never draw that many people because it's such a hassle to get over here,'' Mrs. Formby said of Hereford, which is 50 miles from Amarillo. ``We're just a bunch out of the way.''
The move to Fort Worth is, at least in part, the product of a growing interest in women's history, evident in scholarship and in other museums that are in the planning stages, like the Women of the West Museum in Boulder, Colo.
Two years ago, after deciding that it was time for the museum to move from Hereford and after entertaining offers from 29 cities and six amusement parks, the directors here settled on Fort Worth. Increasing the museum's visibility was a goal.
``We began to feel that we were doing a little bit of disservice to the women of the West,'' said Roger Eades, Hereford's mayor pro tem and a former chairman of the hall's board. ``They have a story to tell, and we're such a small town we were not able to get that out.''
Perhaps, although anyone who made it out here would probably have concluded that the museum was telling its story well. Whatever it lacks in interactive displays and Imax movie screens it more than makes up for in lyricism and sheer attention to detail in the exhibits.
``Broncs before breakfast, babies after 40, life without pay, death without warning, God as her guide and a ballad on her wind-blistered lips, Woman in all her greatness gave flower to the great American West,'' proclaims the brochure that Mrs. Barringer handed to a visitor.
It continues: ``In homes and hospitals and churches of adobe or ocotillo wattles or pine logs or river rock, in dugouts with sod roofs, snakes landing in her lap or apron flapping in the wind &MD; `Comes a tornado!' &MD; fighting grasshopper hordes, prairie fires and her young-uns' fever, she created a circle of love.''
(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS)
The hall honors 69 cowgirls and 60 other women in its Western heritage section. Nearly half of the honorees are still living.
Among other things, the transfer to Fort Worth has provoked a licensing dispute between the owner of Manhattan's Cowgirl Hall of Fame restaurant and the new directors of the hall.
The owner, Sherry Delamarter, who also has a Cowgirl Hall restaurant in Santa Fe, N.M., said the dispute had held up expansion plans for Nashville, Tokyo and at least a dozen other cities. Ms. Delamarter, a native Texan said she had never had disputes with the people in Hereford.
The hall here will close on March 28, and the moving vans come the next day. The new museum will probably open in three years, and in the meantime the cowgirl collection will be part of a traveling exhibit, said Bill Boecker, the new vice president in Fort Worth.
Dixie Mosley, 65, a 1982 honoree and former trick roper and rodeo clown, said, ``It was wonderful in Hereford, but we outgrew Hereford.'' She recalled that honorees would stay in private homes, singing and swapping stories late into the night.
``It was more like a big family gathering,'' she said. ``Over at Fort Worth, it'll be the big city.''
At Lehman Brothers, Miron Mushkat, the firm's chief economist for Asia, said it remained difficult to disentangle the factors behind the plunge in Hong Kong's stock market.
Concern over U.S. interest rates and worries about China and Taiwan ``seem to be reinforcing one another,'' he said, moments before the market gasped to a close. ``I think the impression here locally is that because of the Chinese saber-rattling and arm-twisting, the crisis has escalated to a level above expectations.''
``And what complicates things is the fact that all this Chinese pressure is in vain,'' he said, referring to the surge in the polls for Lee's candidacy in Taiwan &MD; the opposite effect China has sought.
``No one would like it to get out of hand. It will only take a junior field commander issuing wrong instructions for things to get out of hand. It's a factor in market behavior.''
Even so, many economists here say that a certain measure of common sense may prevail in Beijing. ``China recognizes that its most important asset is the risk of conflict, rather than the conflict itself,'' Mulcahy of UBS said. ``It has achieved a lot of objectives by forcing the independence movement to back away.''
And, he added, it is not in China's interest to alienate the United States, one of its biggest trading partners. ``At the end of the day,'' he said, ``China still needs the U.S. from an economic standpoint.''
Caracas, March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuela's state oil company gPetroleos de Venezuela SA said domestic gasoline prices are expected to rise to between 25 bolivars and 50 bolivars ($0.09 to $0.17) a liter, from between 5.20 and 14 bolivars currently.
The Venezuelan government subsidizes gas prices, a handout that costs the government hundreds of millions of dollars a year, PDVSA officials said.
``The timing is in the president's hands,'' said PDVSA President Luis Giusti.
President Rafael Caldera said in a morning address to Congress he would soon raise gasoline prices to help narrow the country's fiscal deficit.
Increases may be phased in over several steps, PDVSA said.
A public transportation subsidy proposed by the government also has to be ``clear and direct,'' Giusti said.
Nearly 80 percent of the country's 21 million population use public transport, Giusti said.
When our vertebrate ancestors debuted about 520 million years ago, they didn't take the world by storm.
Inches long and jawless, they grabbed helpless worms with their lips, much as a toothless, armless man might eat a hot dog.
Only when fish developed jaws 460 million years ago did Earth see serious predation.
``As soon as jaws evolved, there was a revolution,'' says Jon Mallatt, a zoologist at Washington State University. ``You got all these giant-jawed vertebrates that were at the top of the food chain and eating really big things &MD; just mean, nasty carnivores all of a sudden.
``One of these groups gave rise to the land vertebrates. So jaws were a big event. Without them we wouldn't be here.''
Paleontologists have believed that jaws evolved precisely because they made fish better predators.
But now Mallatt has called that view into question.
The predatory prowess afforded by jaws, he argues, was an evolutionary bonus.
Jaws evolved in the first place, he says, not for better biting but for better breathing.
The conventional view dates to a 19th-century German anatomist named Karl Gegenbaur.
Gegenbaur noted a resemblance between the jaws of embryonic sharks &MD; among the more primitive of jawed fishes &MD; and skeletal arches, behind the mouth in all fish, which support the gills.
Gegenbaur proposed that the front-most gill arches had become enlarged in some jawless fishes, allowing the mouth to clamp down on a wriggling victim.
This innovation gradually led to full-blown jaws.
Gegenbaur focused on bones. Mallatt, on the other hand, has looked at the soft parts of fish.
To analyze the transition to jaws, he has compared sharks with lampreys, a surviving jawless fish.
Like sharks, he has found, lampreys have big cheeks and lips, which house the muscles that control the mouth. The similarity extends to their cartilage, nerves and arteries.
And while fossils of extinct jawless fish provide few details, they too have traces of the same features.
In other words, cheeks and lips seem to have originated before the jaw and remained intact as the jaw evolved.
That observation is hard to square with Gegenbaur's theory.
If the protojawed fish had large cheeks and lips, its gill arches must have been too far from the front of its mouth to have been useful for grabbing, even if they became enlarged.
``It would be as if the cartilage in our voice box suddenly started grabbing food,'' Mallatt say.
Yet Mallatt thinks Gegenbaur was right about the gill arches becoming jaws. It's just their initial use he got wrong.
The arches support gills, after all &MD; and gills let a fish breathe.
After a fish draws water into its mouth, it squeezes the arches to force the water over the gills at the back of the mouth.
Blood vessels in the gills pull oxygen from the water and dump carbon dioxide back into it before it flows out the gill slits.
The animal then relaxes its gill arches, drawing in more water.
Jawed fish have more powerful arch muscles than lampreys. They can suck water in quickly, get more oxygen and swim faster.
But to prevent the fast-flowing water from regurgitating out, they shut their mouth with each breath.
Mallatt argues that the earliest protojaws evolved as a first step toward this breathing system.
With enlarged front gill arches &MD; still useless for eating &MD; a fish could stop the backwash by clamping the arches together, sealing off the gills from the front of the mouth.
The enlarged arches and their more powerful muscles, though, also let fish suck in prey as well as water, and pin the wriggling prey with their protojaws.
They could thus attack bigger, faster prey, and an evolutionary feedback began &MD; culminating in full-blown jaws that extend to the front of the mouth and can bite.
Mallatt sees signs of the origin of jaws even today in almost any modern fish.
``Most fish don't really use their jaws for biting so much as they use them for clamping down on prey they've suction-fed in.
``The real evidence is that feeding in almost all jawed fishes is an exaggerated ventilatory act: Suck 'em in and close the mouth.
&MD; &MD; &MD; &MD; &MD; &MD; &MD; &QC;
&UR; (Carl Zimmer is a senior editor for Discover magazine.)
------- &QC;
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( &MD; U.S. and the Pacific: CONNIE WHITE in Kansas City at 1-800-444-0267 or 816-822-8448, or fax her at 816-822-1444.
( &MD; Europe and Asia: KARL HORWITZ in Paris at 47-42-17-11; fax, 47-42-80-44 or 47-42-18-81; telex, 282-942. &LR;
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CYCLING
Tour DuPont champion Lance Armstrong faces tough competition as he tries to defend his title. Tony Rominger has been added to the field for the 12-day U.S. race. Rominger, the No. 2-ranked cyclist in the world, was the world's top rider in 1993-94 and has won more than 100 professional races, including the 1992, '93 and '94 Tours of Spain and the '95 Tour of Italy. He rides for the Mapei-GB team of Italy, the world's No. 1- ranked squad. The 1,200-mile Tour DuPont, which will finish in Cobb County on May 12, is the highest-ranked cycling race outside of Europe.
DIVING
The U.S. trials are still three months away, but a meet in Rockville, Md., this weekend could be a sneak preview. The HTH Classic, the first major event of the U.S. season, will feature more than 30 athletes who have been designated ``Olympic hopefuls'' by U.S. Diving. The results won't have a direct bearing on the trials in June, but could help some divers establish themselves as favorites with the judges who will keep score there.
EQUESTRIAN
Michelle Gibson, a dressage rider from Roswell, Ga., proved that she and her mount Peron may be capable of the equestrian equivalent of the U.S. hockey team's victory against the Soviet Union in 1980. Gibson and Peron, training in Germany, won the Grand Prix Special at a recent dressage competition in Bremen. They had the best international score of their career &MD; 74.42 percent. Even better, they beat Germany's Nicole Uphoff-Becker and Isabell Werth, gold and silver medalists in 1992. The Germans have been considered virtually unbeatable in dressage. ``This was the most brilliant and outstanding performance I have yet seen them do,'' dressage judge Voker Moritz said. ``If they produce a ride like this in Atlanta, they have a good chance of a medal.''
FENCING
The U.S. women's foil team of Ann Marsh, Felicia Zimmermann and Suzanne Paxton is ranked No. 1 in the world after finishing second in the World Cup in Moscow last weekend. When the women fenced at the World Cup in Atlanta last spring, they were ranked eighth. They got a boost in January when they defeated the Russians to win the gold at a World Cup event in Havana. Later that month, they were sixth in a World Cup event in Budapest, Hungary.
FIELD HOCKEY
After a month in Australia, the U.S. women's team is home to stay until Olympic competition begins July 20. The next test comes in the form of the German team, which arrives next week for four test matches at the Clark Atlanta University Olympic site. All are free and open to the public. The first match is at 6 p.m. March 22, followed by 10 a.m. matches March 26-27. A 9 a.m. match March 29 completes the series.
GYMNASTICS
Cincinnati's Amanda Borden is back, and this time, she hopes it's for keeps. Borden, who will attend Georgia next fall, is a confirmed entry for the Budget Invitational April 6, her first international competition in 11 months. Fully recovered from a broken hand sustained in training Feb. 2, Borden will join Jaycie Phelps, Jennie Thompson and Alecia Ingram in Miami for the men's and women's dual meet against France. Her return is timely. Borden has been out of circulation since a broken foot forced her to withdraw from the U.S. Nationals in August. That injury bumped her from any chance of qualifying for the 1995 World Championships, the best springboard into an Olympic year. Then all chances to compete this winter were ended when she broke a bone above a knuckle in her right hand while training on the uneven bars.` . . The rest of the men's team has been named for the Budget meet. Jerrod Hanks (Norman, Okla.), Drew Durbin (Columbus, Ohio) and Jeff Levelle (Stamford, Conn.) will join Mihai Bagiu, John Roethlisberger and Kip Simons in Miami.
JUDO
Jason Morris (171 pounds) is the dealer for the U.S. judo team. That's dealer as in ``dealer bets a buck.'' The '92 silver medalist is the card-carrying member of the team. When traveling, and Morris often logs more than 1,200 miles a year training and competing, the Scotia, N.Y., resident always carries a couple of decks of cards and poker chips. On the road, when the day is done, the guys play poker. During the tour so far, Morris has been the big winner. Team turkey? Brian Olson (189 pounds) of Colorado Springs. .
London, March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Dorling Kindersley Holdings Plc, a U.K. reference book and CD-Rom publisher, said first-half pretax profit rose 54 percent, buoyed by higher sales from its two largest divisions, adult and children's publications.
The publisher said pretax profit for the six months through Dec. 31, 1995 climbed to 8.1 million pounds ($12.4 million) from 5.3 million pounds as sales rose 32 percent to 80.5 million pounds. The company said this was slightly above analysts' expectations.
Growth ``is coming across the world,'' said Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Kindersley on the Bloomberg Forum. ``That's what really makes us so strong as a company, that we're not dependent on any one market.''
He said the progress is expected to continue in the second half.
Shares in Dorling Kindersley closed up 4.2 percent, or 21 pence, at 516p. Some 477,000 shares were traded, equivalent to the average daily trading volume over the past six months.
Sales in the U.K. rose 31.3 percent while U.S. sales increased 31.9 percent. Sales outside those two countries rose 34 percent.
``With the continuing substantial growth of our U.S. publishing activities, profit will be more first-half weighted this year than in previous years,'' said Kindersley in a statement. At present, 29 percent of its sales come from the U.K, 41 percent from the U.S. with the remaining 30 percent made up of sales from other regions.
``People are beginning to recognize that we have a real brand,'' said Kindersley. ``There are very few brands in publishing. We're a very strong brand now. Our books sell and we get very few returns.''
Sales at DK Adult publications increased 14.2 percent. In the U.K., sales of its adult publications division fell 8.1 percent ``principally as a result of the decision to withdraw from certain low margin sales activities'' to protect the growth of DK Family Library.
Established in the U.K. in 1992 and in the U.S. in 1993, Family Library sells directly to homes and schools rather than through Dorling Kindersley's standard retail outlets.
Family Library, is ``Tupperware for books'' said Kindersley, referring to the method in which books are sold at a ``party'' of individual consumers in the same way that Tupperware storage containers were originally sold. ``It's working extremely well in America,'' he said.
Sales from this distribution channel, which will be extended to Australia and Russia within the next year, almost doubled to 9.1 million pounds.
Dorling Kindersley said it maintained the level of sales to the book trade in the U.K. even though it didn't discount its books following the demise of the price-fixing net book agreement. The voluntary pact, under which publishers set a minimum price for their books, fell apart when the U.K.'s largest publishers withdrew and sparked a discounting war.
Sales at DK Children's division rose 33.2 percent including sales from Henderson Publishing, which was acquired in June 1995. Excluding the acquisition, the unit's sales climbed 16 percent.
Henderson gives Dorling Kindersley access to the ``pocket-money'' market, where children purchase books for themselves. Dorling's own strength lies in children's books that parents buy for their children.
Underlying sales of children's books were boosted primarily y|by the growth of Family Library, the company said. The unit's two best selling titles were ``The Dorling Kindersley Illustrated Factopedia'' and ``Children Just Like Me'' published in association with UNICEF to celebrate the charity's 50th anniversary.
Multimedia sales rose 134 percent to 9.8 million pounds and now comprise 12 percent of the company's total sales. The division, started in September 1994 has a 300-strong staff in London. It has already released 13 titles, with eight more coming this year and further titles in production.
Six of these titles were among the top 10 revenue earners across the whole company, the publisher said. Yet, since the outset, retail prices have been under pressure and competition for shelf space has been fierce in the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, in the U.K. it said.
``We have a very good foothold indeed,'' said Kindersley. ``There's a lot of potential for growth.''
On April 15, Dorling Kindersley will open a ``site'' on the Internet which will be expanded as technology improves and will eventually cost money to use. The address of the site will be put on all publications.
Dorling Kindersley's direct mail and television program units, DK Direct and DK Vision, had combined sales of 5 million, up 85 percent.
Kindersley said acquisitions will play a roll in the company's future.
``We look all the time really at what might be out there that might be of interest to us, mostly things that we don't have or don't already do,'' said Kindersley.
Currently, Dorling Kindersley's net cash balance is at 3.9 million pounds and, due to continued investment, should fall to about 2 million pounds by the end of the fiscal year, said the company's finance director Peter Gill.
The company, which tends to pay one-third of its total dividend in the first half, said it will pay a first-half dividend of 1.5 pence, up from 1.3 pence a year earlier.
Earnings per share rose to 6.9 pence from 4.8 pence per shares.
No one could hate the Communists in Beijing more than me, the writer Pu Naifu boasted with undisguised pride over a meal in Taipei last week. Now in his late 70s, Pu had spent decades in and out of labour camps on the mainland before joining his brother in Hong Kong in 1983 and then settling in Taiwan a year later.
Pu, who likes to compare himself with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, continues to write angry and bitter works of fiction and reportage about the misdeeds of the Communists.
One of his latest exposes the 18 million people who, he claims, were killed by Mao Zedong not long after the Communist Party took power in 1949.
Yet Pu has little sympathy or interest in the cause of democracy in Taiwan or Taiwan independence. ``It is not that important,'' he said. ``To be honest, I haven't paid that much attention to this election.''
In fact, few prominent dissidents have ever spoken up in favour of self-determination for Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia or any other part of the Chinese imperium.
Even in Taiwan, where President Lee Teng-hui has legalised pro-independence activities, the ruling Nationalist Party still operates a Commission on Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs.
The Taiwan Government still claims that Mongolia is part of China although even Beijing has recognised it as a sovereign state.
The depth and strength of Chinese nationalism is such that among ordinary citizens in Beijing, even those who hate the current regime, the military threats against Taiwan have proved extremely popular.
Friends who normally think of nothing else but getting themselves or their children out of China, are nevertheless convinced that it is quite out of the question for the Taiwanese or anyone else to opt out of the imperium.
It is hard to get people even to consider the argument that the Taiwanese would still be Chinese if they had their own state.
The ideas being aired in Taiwan of creating a federal state or a kind of European Union strike the average Chinese as outlandish. Instead, people in Beijing are rather thrilled by the idea of China using its military strength to bring the renegade Taiwanese to heel.
The notion that China itself could be acting like an imperialist power meets with incredulity, so firmly rooted is the conviction that China has only ever been the victim of Western and Japanese imperialism.
Under both Nationalist and Communist governments, Chinese have been brought up to believe that Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau and Mongolia were temporarily lost to China at various stages through the weakness of the late Manchu dynasty. So Taiwan was handed over to the Japanese in 1895, through the historical aberration of a militarily weak government.
For China's neighbours, this is the most worrying aspect of the Taiwan crisis. Now that China is growing strong again, what other claims will it raise?
China could claim Mongolia, which came under Moscow's control after the collapse of the Manchu dynasty in 1911. Parts of the Russian Far East were also ceded to Tsarist Russia under unequal treaties. Japan controls the Diaoyu Islands (Senku Islands) which were also gained in 1895.
China still claims parts of Indian territory and has in the past shown reluctance to recognise the annexation of Sikkim or the independence of Bhutan. Then there are the Spratly Islands which China disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines and others.
Not all of these territorial claims are ongoing disputes, but China's neighbours worry about its readiness to project its influence beyond its borders.
It is not so long ago that the Manchu empire wielded suzerainty over vassals like Korea and Vietnam, and dominated Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.
Under Mao, China was already reasserting its traditional influence, sending over one million troops to Korea and 400,000 to Vietnam.
He also sponsored pro-Chinese communist guerilla armies in every state in Southeast Asia, notably in former Malaya and Cambodia, where Chinese advisers did much to help the Khmer Rouge.
Under Deng Xiaoping, China gradually wound up its support for such insurgents but its power has re-emerged in a new form as it develops into a major trading nation.
Even leaving aside the influence of the ethnic Chinese communities who exert such a big role in the industry and commerce of the region, the size of the Chinese market is enough to guarantee China respect.
Last week Thailand, for example, was quick to detain members of Amnesty International, who were promoting a new report condemning China's human rights record.
Under Mao, China's influence was counterbalanced by that of the Soviet Union and the fact that some overseas Chinese communities were still affiliated to the Nationalists.
The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about the decline of Moscow's influence, especially in Vietnam, Laos and the rest of the region, just as British and French influence had earlier waned. All this has served to magnify the significance of China's growing strength as its power expands to fill the gaps left by the retreating European powers.
The crisis in the Taiwan Strait has grown into something more than the fate of Lee Teng-hui or democracy in Taiwan.
By pitting China against the United States, it shows whether the last remaining outside power is able to impose itself and its battleships against China.
And secondly, if Beijing does succeed in bringing Taiwan into its orbit, it conjures up the prospect that one day no one in the Chinese world would dare to raise a voice against the Communist Party in Beijing.
After all, on the mainland all opposition voices have been almost completely silenced. At the National People's Congress, it was noticeable that this year almost no one dared lodge an unofficial petition.
When Hong Kong returns to China next year, the Communist Party will certainly no longer allow its critics to use it as a base, ending a long history in which dissidents like Sun Yat-sen and Zhou Enlai, could find safety in the British territory.
Neighbouring countries are also almost certain to be even more intolerant of opponents to the Party in Beijing.
The prospect of a monolithic and imperial-minded China re-emerging after a century or more of diversity may seem unduly alarmist, but it could be presented as a great nationalistic endeavour which would appeal to even those Chinese who prefer to live outside China.
Other countries have also seen former communist leaders becoming ardent nationalists. In Russia, the post-Soviet Communist Party is successfully bolstering its support by appealing to voters to restore the old imperium. Even Solzhenitsyn argues in favour of restoring the old Russian empire, and President Boris Yeltsin has not hesitated to use force against the Chechens.
The communists in the former Yugoslavia have also switched from communism to nationalism with even more catastrophic consequences.
Having staked its claim on Taiwan with such vehemence, Beijing, too, might find it tempting now, or in the near future, to deploy its troops in a military adventure.
Despite the absence of opinion polls, everything suggests the military exercises have been the most popular thing the Party has done for years.
The election may be over, but the Taiwan Strait crisis may have only just begun.
He signs autographs, ``Antonio Tarver, Atlanta '96.'' His phone machine answers, ``Hi, it's 1996, the Centennial Olympic Games. . . . ''
``He's the light at the end of the tunnel for these kids,'' Harris said.
Harris wasn't talking about boxing.
Gwendolyn Tarver, a single mother of four and a driver for a transportation company, was rushing out the door for work eight years ago. Her 19-year-old son, sitting in a chair in the living room, asked her to wait, please wait. He wanted to talk.
Gwendolyn: ``Does it have to be now?''
Antonio: ``Mom, I have to tell you something and it's gonna hurt you so bad.''
Gwendolyn shuddered in anticipation.
Antonio: ``Mom, you don't have any money.''
Gwendolyn started laughing.
``I thought it was a big joke,'' she recalled. ``I said, `Tony, I just got paid yesterday.' Then he said, `Mom, sit down. I don't want you to criticize me. I need you now. I need you to be strong for me.' Then I started worrying because I saw he wasn't smiling.
``I started thinking somebody got killed or something. Then he says, `Mom, I'm on crack.' I said, `What is crack?' He said, `It's a drug, Mama. It's an addictive drug.' ''
Gwendolyn was in shock as Antonio filled in the details. He had spent all of his money and had been taking hers. ``I wouldn't say he stole it,'' she said. ``That was the addiction.''
Antonio had been depressed. He felt pressure to provide for his son, born out of wedlock to a neighbor's daughter in 1988. He was working dead-end jobs. He had graduated from high school without reaching his goal: an athletic scholarship. Drugs were his escape.
``I cried all the way to work,'' Gwendolyn recalled. ``I was shaking.''
She was sent home that day, and she cried some more. And she prayed. She took Antonio to St. Mary's Missionary Baptist Church and had him baptized again. ``Do you want to be the kind of father your father was?'' she asked Antonio. ``Don't give up. What you gonna do if you come home one day and I'm dead? What you gonna do then? Who's gonna take care of little Tony and your sisters?''
The words struck even deeper than Gwendolyn expected. Growing up with three sisters and no father, Tarver felt responsible for his family. ``I felt I had to be the man,'' he said.
``He was always so serious,'' his mother said. ``I remember him sitting out on the front porch one day, saying, `Mama, one day I'm going to be rich.' I don't know what he was talking about. He was 5 or 6 years old.''
Tarver entered a six-month rehabilitation program and got clean. He learned about the 12-step programs, which spell out physical, emotional and spiritual recovery for substance abusers.
It worked for Tarver. ``I've got a beautiful chance at life now and I'm loving it to the utmost,'' he said.
He prefers not to dwell on his past problems. ``That was a short period in my life when I didn't have any direction,'' he said. ``I wallowed in self-pity. Pressures of life got to me. After high school, no one was there. I had nowhere to turn. All I knew was sports. It was a major, major struggle, working two jobs at times, trying to provide for my son. Everything just accumulated and contributed to my mishaps. I was a young guy and felt like an older guy. But I couldn't lay in that. So I got up and brushed myself off.''
They know Tarver's story at Frontline, and they know it at Southwest Boys Club, where he first boxed at age 9 and recently returned to speak.
``I can relate to them because I've been there,'' he said. ``A single parent, not having a father. The peer pressures. Drugs. Crime. I'm from the inner city. You don't have the YMCA or after-school programs. What are you left with? Nothing but the street corner. They can look at me and I can say, `Look, I busted my butt and I'm here.' ''
But he doesn't look back with regret. ``If that's what I had to go through to get to where I'm at, it was worth it,'' he said. ``It was a life experience and I'm a better person for it.''
There's no telling where Tarver might be if he hadn't quit boxing. He won about two dozen tournaments between the ages of 9 and 14. But he often rebelled, breaking his trophies or giving them away ``to hurt me,'' his mother recalled.
Gwendolyn Tarver moved the family to a better neighborhood, about 25 miles from the Boys Club. There was no gym nearby, and Tarver lost interest in boxing. It wasn't rekindled until he watched Jones compete in Seoul.
Not everything has been smooth since then. Tarver struggled financially until he landed in an Olympic work program with Home Depot two years ago. He broke up with his girlfriend and found himself moving from place to place.
Three years ago, he was working out at Frontline when he met Ron Smith, a construction worker who was training for an exhibition against actor Mickey Rourke. The bout never materialized, but Tarver and Smith hit it off and became best friends. Smith invited Tarver to move in with him and now is known as the boxer's ``adviser.''
``I needed a stable environment and Ron offered me that,'' Tarver said.
This is how close the two are: At a recent benefit auction, Smith purchased two autographed pictures of Tarver. They hang in their apartment.
``Lou is his trainer,'' Smith said, ``but Tony wouldn't be in the position he is today if he didn't get settled.''
When Tarver fights in Oakland next week, Smith will be there. So will Gwendolyn Tarver and Antonio Jr., who is 8 and lives with his mother near Daytona Beach, about a 45-minute drive from Orlando. Tarver sees him often and provides for him.
``He loves that boy with a passion,'' Gwendolyn Tarver said. ``He's a great father.''
``Everything I do is for him,'' Tarver said. ``He's my support system. ``He's my inspiration.''
There's a lot of that going around.
(Jeff Schultz writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.) .
Let's beat the NBA to the punch and hand out postseason awards today.
MOST VALUABLE PLAYER &MD; Michael Jordan.
You have to consider last year's MVP, David Robinson, along with Hakeem Olajuwon, Karl Malone and Scottie Pippen, and maybe Anfernee Hardaway. Shaq, I suppose. But it's a no-brainer.
COACH OF THE YEAR &MD; Phil Jackson, Chicago.
I like Mike Fratello and Doug Collins, Jerry Sloan and George Karl, too. But none had to manage so many strong personalities and get so many others to understand their roles. This is not a tough choice.
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR &MD; Damon Stoudamire, Toronto.
Michael Finley, Arvydas Sabonis, Joe Smith and Jerry Stackhouse are good candidates. Stoudamire, however, has been excellent.
MOST IMPROVED PLAYER &MD; Gheorghe Muresan, Washington.
Arguably, Cleveland's Terrell Brandon made terrific strides, and Brian Williams (Los Angeles Clippers) and Jayson Williams (New Jersey) are solid candidates, too. There are others. But to me, Muresan towers &MD; at 7 feet 7, he should &MD; above them all.
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR &MD; Gary Payton, Seattle.
There is a lot of sentiment for Denver's Dikembe Mutombo, Robinson, Hakeem, Dennis Rodman, all past winners. Payton has proved season after season that he's the best defensive guard in the league. He deserves this.
SIXTH MAN &MD; Toni Kukoc, Chicago.
Candidates for this award include Tim Legler, Craig Ehlo, Steve Kerr, Jayson Williams, Terry Mills, Antonio Davis, Chris Gatling, Vincent Askew,
and many others. Kukoc appeals to me, however. He handled a difficult situation with professionalism and is a big reason the Bulls are dominant. Testimony &HT;
Stoudamire has burned the Bulls for an average of 24.5 points, his career-high 30 taking the Raptors to that recent 109-108 upset.
``He is someone special, very special,'' said Isiah Thomas, Toronto operations chief.
``We just don't have anybody who can stop him,'' Kerr said.
``He stoned Michael and he stoned me. He's got the speed to go around you, and he can stop and shoot the three. Most guys with great speed can't shoot. Most shooters don't have the speed. Damon's got both.'' More testimony &HT;
Muresan finished with 14 points, 14 rebounds, two assists and a block in the Bullets' recent 96-89 upset of the Cavaliers.
He altered at least a dozen shots.
``He's not afraid of anybody,'' Cleveland forward Chris Mills said. ``He's the type of guy who will look for you on the other end and get you back.'' Select group &HT;
There are seven active players who have spent at least six seasons in the NBA and have yet to appear in a playoff game.
Rex Chapman leads that list, having played eight seasons with non-playoff teams in Charlotte, Washington and now Miami.
Chapman is close as the Heat battles for the No. 8 and final position in the Eastern Conference.
``Obviously, you wish to be on better teams,'' said Chapman, the No. 8 pick in 1988. ``But that's just the hand you're dealt. I can't explain it.''
The other six players?
Terry Davis (7 years), Miami, Dallas; Doug West (7), Minnesota; Duane Causwell (6), Sacramento; Ledell Eackles (6), Indiana, Miami, Washington; Legler (6), Phoenix, Denver, Utah, Dallas, Golden State, Washington; Lionel Simmons (6), Sacramento.
Interestingly, Hall of Fame guards Tiny Archibald and Calvin Murphy had to wait five years before making playoff appearances.
And Tom Van Arsdale, a three-time All-Star guard, never made it to the postseason in his 12-year, 929-game NBA career. In waiting &HT; Starting lineup for the two-time defending world champion Houston Rockets recently has been, drum roll, please. . . .
Sam Mack at small forward, Chucky Brown at power forward, Tracy Moore at shooting guard, Kenny Smith at point guard, Mark Bryant at center.
Are they dead because of the injuries to Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Robert Horry, Mario Elie and Sam Cassell?
``You could win a title with the guys we have out,'' said Coach Rudy Tomjanovich.
(Pssst, Rudy, you did. Twice.)
``Guys are disappointed, but we've been here before,'' he added. ``We know what we can get out of it if we hang together and understand there's a big picture.''
Chances are, the Rockets will.
``The team will still keep it together, and we're still in a very good position,'' Olajuwon said. ``It's very similar to last year, with everyone (injured) scheduled to be back just before the playoffs.''
You don't have to remind the Suns about that.
Emilie Schindler held her tongue for 68 years.
When her husband, Oskar, cheated on her, she always took him back.
When he partied with murdering Nazi Storm Troopers, she let him drink himself into a stupor.
When, in his famous act of heroism and opportunism, he employed more than 1,200 Jews and thereby saved them from wartime death camps, she was a willing accomplice.
When he later abandoned her as a penniless refugee in Argentina and returned to Germany, she built a quiet and modest life for herself.
As Oskar's legend grew &MD; Thomas Keneally published ``Schindler's List'' in 1982; Steven Spielberg's movie version was released in 1993 &MD; she shunned attention.
But last week Oskar's frail, 88-year-old widow emerged from behind her husband's fame.
Why now?
``I want to take revenge against all those people who believe that Oskar did everything,'' she told Newsweek.
In her memoirs, published in Spanish and released last Saturday, Emilie Schindler wants revenge against someone else as well: her husband.
In a harsh and bitter portrait, she depicts a man who, except for a few brief years during the war, lived entirely for himself and used other people solely for his own pleasure. The 19-year-old boy who had charmed her into marriage in 1928 never grew up.
She insists he was no hero but, rather, a man who did what anyone should have done, even if few did. The Schindler of Keneally and Spielberg she finds almost unrecognizable. Fed up with his ``lies, constant tricks and repeated and false repentance,'' she often fantasized about leaving him.
But she feared being left alone, first in Nazi Europe, then in Argentina. ``I had no alternative but to adapt myself, close my lips and shut my eyes to Oskar's neglect and indifference,'' she writes. ``I cried many and bitter tears for him.'' She ended up hating him.
And seething as, over the last two decades, the world honored Oskar's remarkable courage and overlooked hers. In the Spielberg movie, she is relegated to a minor role. But in the real story, she argues credibly, her valor was as crucial as Oskar's.
She came through at critical moments, begging food for the ``Schindler Jews'' from a rich neighbor and nursing the hundreds who were shipped frozen and starving on cattle cars to Oskar's Czech factory in the winter of 1945.
Her account is supported by surviving Schindler Jews. ``She stayed next to him and helped him finish the job that he started,'' says Leopold Pfefferberg of Los Angeles, a Schindler Jew who inspired Keneally's book. ``Without her help, not too many people would have survived.''
While Israel recognized Oskar as a ``Righteous Person'' in 1962, a state honor reserved for particularly worthy Gentiles, Emilie received the same award only in 1994. Since then, she has been honored in the United States and at the Vatican.
With the publication of ``Memoirs,'' her fame is sure to grow. And it should. She was every bit the hero Oskar was.
OAKLAND, Calif. &MD; Dollar signs and silk suits began swirling around Oscar De La Hoya long before the lightweight with the Pepsodent smile won Olympic gold.
If he wasn't going to be boxing's next superstar, the crowd of power brokers that surrounded De La Hoya at competitions in Barcelona at least assured he would be the sport's next gold-card holder.
``Got a million bucks to sign out of the blocks,'' said Lou Duva, the longtime manager-trainer, who was among those trying unsuccessfully to lure De La Hoya.
That is how important the U.S. Olympic Boxing Trials &MD; and the Games themselves &MD; mean to a boxer's financial future.
De La Hoya stepped into immediate riches and will make $1 0 million to fight Julio Cesar Chavez in June. Close friend Raul Marquez, a light middleweight, did not win a medal in Barcelona, received a $50,000 signing bonus to turn pro and averaged $30,000 for his first four purses.
The Trials, much like an NFL scouting combine, are crawling with pro boxing's money men: Duva, Emanuel Steward, Shelly Finkel, representatives of Bob Arum. They are ready to rush up to high-profile amateurs after the Olympics with a bag of cash.
Some already have. Fernando Vargas, labeled the next De La Hoya, nearly lost his amateur status by signing a pro contract with a Los Angeles agent last year. The deal included a $20,000 signing bonus, $4,000 per month, training expenses and a $200,000 bonus if he won a gold medal. When word of the deal leaked, Vargas returned the bonus and his amateur status was reinstated.
International eligibilty rules are loose. Amateurs are not allowed to sign pro contracts but can sign letters of intent. And there is no limit on how much money a boxer receives through his trust fund at USA Boxing. Vargas and light middleweight David Reid are receiving $4,000 monthly allowances apiece from Arum.
A promoter/manager is not allowed to give money directly to an athlete but may purchase such things as equipment, meals, plane tickets and clothes for him.
Only an elite core of amateurs &MD; those perceived as having lucrative potential as a pro &MD; attract the bidding wars and the benefits. (Finkel and Steward are battling over top light welterweight Zabdiel Judah.)
Brandon Mitchem represents the flip side. The 147-pounder from Augusta said he was ready to turn pro after losing his opening Trials bout. Arum's Top Rank is preparing to sign him but for a modest $40,000 or so in purses for his first four fights.
``Nowadays you have to win a gold medal to get the big money,'' Mitchem said. ``A lot of guys are turning pro and not getting any signing bonus. Look at (Augusta 139-pounder) Vernon Forrest. He didn't win a medal and turned pro, but you're only now starting to hear about him.''
Said Duva, ``He's wrong. He's only 18. He should wait until the (2000) Olympics and then turn pro. It's not worth it to go now.''
Light heavyweight Antonio Tarver took a risk not turning pro after failing to make the 1992 team. But as a possible gold medalist in Atlanta, the gamble may pay off, even at age 27. ``What was the point of turning pro back then?'' he said. ``For 100 bucks a round?''
(Jeff Schultz writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.) .
NEHALEM, Ore. &MD; Thousands of acres of silt, deposited by February's raging floods, have devastated the coastal dairy farms in Tillamook County, Oregon's poorest county.
Restoring the pastures will take a year or more, as many farmers are only now able to plant grass that will enable their cows to return to grazing.
``The adrenalin rush is over,'' said Steve Neahring, who lost 112 cows to the flooding. ``The overwhelming part is starting to come now. You take a quarter of my milk production away, it's not going to be a lot of fun around here.''
The floods in early February killed three people in Oregon and one in Washington state and forced the evacuation of thousands of people.
In Tillamook County, about 40 miles west of Portland, 19 inches of rain fell in four days. As many as 700 cows drowned and more than 7,000 acres of range land was buried under silt and debris. Many farmers had to dump thousands of pounds of hay, and flood-damaged rail lines made the importing of feed even more costly.
Farmers are faced with replacing 75 miles of downed fences, at a cost of more than $300,000.
Nearly all of the milk produced here is used to make cheese. The Tillamook County Creamery Association, the county's largest employer, has an annual revenue of about $85 million. The cheese maker, owned by the farmers, has been able to increase the amount of milk it buys from outside the region. But the county's farmers, with production down and expenses up, are hurting.
The reseeding of the pastures is the most formidable job facing them. Because Tillamook is not a major crop-growing region, the farms do not have the heavy machinery necessary to dig and plant. Even as the silt dries out, a slimy zone under the surface makes plowing difficult.
In a normal year, farmers by now would have turned their cows out to the fields after a winter in the barns. Instead, they are buying corn and alfalfa, at a much greater expense. Last week farmers received their checks for the milk they delivered in February.
``Mine is $16,000 less than the month before,'' said Jack Thayer, a farmer. ``Last month my expenses were up $10,000. This month they're up $18,000.''
On Thayer's 350-acre farm, silt covers 250 acres, from a few inches to 2 feet. ``The problem is a long-term problem,'' Thayer said. ``The grass comes up in March. We've usually done two or three cuttings of silage by Mother's Day. Even if we get these fields reseeded pretty quick, it's not going to come up in time to fill these tall silos for next winter.''
Tillamook County has seen silt before, although not in the lifetime of today's farmers. Five rivers snake through the tidelands, and over the centuries they have deposited acres of silt that are now Tillamook's soil. With 100 inches of rainfall a year, the ground stays lush and emerald green, and cows can normally graze eight months a year.
A county volunteer flood-relief effort has brought in donated hay, grass seed and equipment. Farmers from Oregon and neighboring states have donated nearly 100 cows. A group of Mennonites has moved into a dormitory and is helping people repair damage to their houses. Church, school and civic groups have given money and moral support through an Adopt-a-Farm program.
Government relief has been slower. The Federal Emergency Management Agency helps only with flooded homes, not farms, and most government assistance comes in the form of low-interest loans.
``These people can't afford another loan,'' said Jim McMullen, assistant general manager of the 164-member creamery association.
NBC executives have openly questioned negotiating tactics that they say have included the spreading of rumors about Ohlmeyer's behavior toward Ms. McDermott. Ohlmeyer has attributed the rumors to Michael Ovitz, the new president of Disney.
Ms. McDermott completely disavowed making any charge about Ohlmeyer's behavior. But the friction between the networks increased when Ohlmeyer, after denying any wrongdoing in his conduct as Ms. McDermott's supervisor, publicly upbraided Ovitz as having stirred up the rumors.
Ovitz has declined to make any public response, but in a call to Welch he denied doing anything improper.
The episode has raised the stakes between the networks and their giant corporate parents. But Wright said: ``I don't think this thing is particularly substantive. I'm looking forward to putting it behind us.''
Looking forward, Wright sees one leap he wants NBC to take in the near future. ``The one weak spot we have here is we don't have another entertainment-oriented vehicle,'' Wright said. Adding a separate entertainment cable channel, along the lines of TNT or the USA Network, is now ``a very specific objective,'' he said.
GE's new objectives, however, clearly don't include a sale of the network. Holding onto NBC is, as Welch put it, ``a no-brainer.''
He noted that NBC was probably worth $6 billion today, a tiny fraction of GE's total market value of close to $130 billion.
``Say we screw NBC up, OK? CBS was the most-screwed up and it was still worth $5 billion'' Welch said. ``The upside for NBC is $15 billion to $20 billion. So if I'm screwing it up, I'm down to 129, OK? If I make it, I'm up to 145 or 150.''
That's $150, as in billion.
A hostile takeover bid, unusual in the utilities industry, was made Sunday for Kansas City Power and Light Co., which already had agreed to merge with another utility.
The hostile bid, of $1.7 billion, came from Western Resources Inc., a utility based in Topeka, Kan. Utilities have been scrambling to find merger partners to meet growing demands from customers for lower rates and to prepare for drives in many states to open the highly regulated industry to greater competition.
Kansas City Power and Light, based in Kansas City, Mo., already has a deal with Utilicorp United Inc. also based in Kansas City, Mo.
Western Resources, which distributes electricity and natural gas to 1.2 million customers in Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma, made its bid in a letter by John Hayes Jr., the company's chairman and chief executive, to Drue Jennings, the chairman, president and chief executive of Kansas City Power and Light, a low-cost producer of electricity that has about 425,000 customers in the Kansas City area.
Representatives of Kansas City Power were not available for comment Sunday.
Utilicorp, a rapidly growing provider of mostly gas in about 18 states, and Kansas City Power have scheduled a meeting for May 22 to ask shareholders to approve their agreed-upon merger, a stock transaction the companies valued in January at about $3 billion.
No utility has been able to bring off a hostile bid in recent years, though several have tried.
``It's a big, big hurdle,'' Penelope Adelmann, a utility analyst for Gruntal & Co., said, referring to the bid by Western Resources. She added that because such mergers were subject to the approval of regulatory agencies, which often looked for a consensus among themselves, a hostile offer was particularly difficult to complete.
The number of mergers, including friendly ones, that have been proposed in the last few years among utilities have also begun to raise antitrust concerns.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been shifting the way it evaluates mergers, putting more emphasis on whether they will stimulate competition and bring down rates for customers.
Hayes, the Western Resources chairman, said that just because past hostile bids had failed did not mean that his company's did not have a chance.
Hayes said that the bid, which would be in the form of a stock swap, would offer Kansas City Power stockholders about $28 a share, or a premium of 17 percent above the stock's closing price of $23.875, up 25 cents, on Friday.
The proposal, which is to expire next Monday, offers rate cuts of about $210 million over 10 years, in total, for customers of Kansas City Power, Hayes said.
Hayes also said that the two utilities would realize cost savings of about $1 billion over 10 years, with no layoffs in the combined work force of 6,300.
The Western Resources chief said that because of duplication, about 500 jobs would be eliminated but that no employees would lose their jobs because they would be given an opportunity to take newly created positions.
Under the offer made by Utilicorp, estimated savings of about $500 million were projected over 10 years.
Richard Green Jr., the chairman and chief executive of Utilicorp, said at the time of the agreement, in January, that it was too early to tell whether the combined work force of 7,200 at the two utilities would have to be reduced.
Mergers of utilities have generally led to substantial losses of jobs as duplicate departments and services have been combined and the headquarters of the acquired utility has often been phased out.
Sally McElwreath, senior vice president of corporate communications of Utilicorp, said Sunday that the company would have no comment on the Western Resources bid other than to say that she believed that the Utilicorp bid was in the best interests of Kansas City Power shareholders.
In 1992, Western Resources merged with another utility, Kansas Gas and Electric, in a friendly deal worth $454 million.
This is the first of two-part series on the auto industry in Asia.
TOKYO &MD; The increasing attempts by foreign automakers to make inroads in the booming Asian vehicle market are behind Ford Motor Co.'s taking a controlling stake in Mazda Motor Corp. on April 12 according to industry observers.
Some analysts say the giant U.S. company's taking the wheel at Mazda, Japan's fifth-largest car maker, could mark the beginning of a broad reorganization of the Japanese auto industry's 11-company structure, if the Ford-Mazda combination can help create a more competitive company.
The acquisition of Mazda's development and manufacturing expertise for small and compact cars &MD; the very vehicles said to be most in demand in Asia &MD; is a significant step forward in Ford's Asian strategy. It brings Ford back into contention with General Motors Corp., which had already set up an Asia-Pacific general headquarters in Singapore in 1993 to promote its sales in the region, and vaults Ford past some other import companies.
''The aim of the enhanced strategic relationship is to leverage the capabilities of the two companies in terms of product marketing,'' new Mazda President Henry Wallace said at a news conference in Mazda's Hiroshima headquarters April 12, where the companies announced that Ford is increasing its share holding in the company to 33.4 percent.
''We'll be able to have more products on a worldwide basis,'' said Wallace, whom Ford first sent to Mazda as an executive in February 1994. Ford had held a 25 percent interest in the Japanese company since 1979.
With the United States, Europe and Japan, the world's top three automobile markets, having reached their maturity, Asia is now seen as the next great market for vehicles. Automakers are eager to get into position to enter markets like China, with its 1.3 billion people, and the fast-growing economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
In China, for example, about 320,000 vehicles were sold in 1995, but that number is expected to reach 1.5 million vehicles in 2000, just four years away.
GM made significant headway in China when it announced last October that it would soon open a joint-venture vehicle production operation in Shanghai.
On the other hand, Ford has led the way among the U.S. Big Three auto companies in tackling the Japanese market. Ford also has owned a 45 percent stake in Mazda's auto sales company Autorama Inc. since December 1992, and sold its cars through the Autorama dealership network. Ford also has consigned some of its models to other dealers affiliated with Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co., Japan's two leading car makers.
However, Ford has, expect for a compact truck production plant in Thailand, not moved to set up Asian production of vehicles targeting the region, which is significant in order to keep car prices low enough so that consumers in developing nations can afford to buy them.
Ford's increased emphasis on the Japanese market will pay dividends for the company elsewhere in Asia, says Ford Motor Co. (Japan) President Konen Suzuki.
''The toughest rivals in the Chinese and other Asian markets are Japanese-made vehicles,'' Suzuki said. ''If we cannot beat Japanese cars, there will be no victory in Asia for us.''
A high-ranking official of Sumitomo Bank Ltd., which has handled most of Mazda's transactions and was the second-largest Mazda shareholder behind Ford, complained back in 1993 that ''Ford pokes into Mazda's management but doesn't offer any money (in order to prop up the ailing car maker).''
But in the end, Ford, bowing to the potential of the vast Asian market, did decide to make a major financial commitment, industry analysts say.
MONTREAL &MD; Brian Leetch was one of the first Rangers to leave the ice after practice on Saturday, and one of the last to leave the locker room after receiving attention from the team's medical staff.
His expression was grim and his mood seemed glum even as he tried to say positive things about his bruised right instep.
``It feels better today skating than it did the other day,'' Leetch said as his team prepared for Game 3 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals Sunday in the Molson Center. ``Actually, I wouldn't say `better.' We're on less medication, so `similar' means `better.' ''
Leetch performed below his usual high standards as the Rangers lost the first two games of their four-of-seven-game Stanley Cup series at Madison Square Garden.
He has no goals and no assists, and he has been on the ice for five Montreal goals, including one that began when Leetch turned over the puck during a Ranger power play.
He hurt the foot last Sunday when struck by a puck in the regular-season finale in Florida.
``I don't think it's affecting what I want to do out there,'' he said. Leetch said the Rangers remain confident and unconcerned about having won only once in their last 24 games &MD; playoffs and regular season combined &MD; in this city. Their last regular-season victory here was in 1991. Their last playoff victory was in 1979.
``You've lost half the battle if you think it's all going to happen again,'' Leetch said. ``We can lose anywhere. We've proved that. Now, we've got to prove we can win anywhere.''
The other crucial injured Ranger, the captain Mark Messier, seemed friskier than he has been all week while recovering from a rib injury. In practice, he skated briskly and showed improved speed on his wrist shots, although he wasn't slapping the puck.
``Certainly not in practice,'' Messier said. He discounted the team's history here by joking that the roster has changed since the finals of 1979. Trying to sound optimistic, Messier said: ``There comes a time you've got to look down the barrel of the gun and pull the trigger,'' before changing metaphors and clear up misconceptions. ``We were the hunted,'' he said. ``Now, we are the hunters.''
He spoke while standing in a corridor next to a small wooden stand that Coach Colin Campbell used as a podium. ``I'll stay off the soap box,'' Messier said.
Campbell smiled ruefully when one of the television technicians noted he was standing with his ``back to the wall'' when he stepped up.
Asked about replacing the injured Sergei Nemchinov, out with a cut on his leg, Campbell declined to elaborate.
Had he spoken with the goal-less Luc Robitaille about the turnover and temper display that led to Montreal's second short-handed goal in Game 2? ``Eighteen thousand, two-hundred people were talking to him,'' the coach said, referring to the booing Garden fans. ``God knows we've had enough talks this year. He has to cut through the pressure.''
Robitaille agreed. ``The guys who score goals make a lot of money,'' said the left wing, who is being paid $19 million on a six-year contract. ``They should take pressure.''
Despite the defeats, many Rangers seemed confident they won't be swept. ``We knew, going in, it was going to be a long series,'' Messier said. ``That's obviously the way it is turning out.''
Sergio Momesso, who scored twice in Game 2, added: ``We don't throw in the towel, that's for sure. There's too much pride. It's bugging us that we're down, 2-0. If we win tomorrow, it changes the whole thing, and the pressure will be on both teams. And they've never had pressure before.''
Across the rink, Montreal's rookie coach, Mario Tremblay, told of using a press clipping to motivate his young players. He said he showed the rookies Saku Koivu and Valery Bure a story quoting Neil Smith, the Rangers president and general manager.
Smith, according to Tremblay, predicted that the bigger, stronger Rangers would eventually wear down the smaller Canadiens.
``I don't think Koivu and Bure liked it too much,'' Tremblay said.
Koivu concurred.
``It affected me,'' he said. ``I want to show them we are a small team, but we can beat them.''
Among other findings in the report were these:
&MD; Child abuse and domestic violence account for about one-third of the total annual costs of crime, a far higher figure than previous estimates. This does not include future costs that are likely to mount as children who have been physically or sexually abused perpetuate a cycle of violence by molesting their own offspring.
&MD; Violent crime causes 3 percent of medical spending and 14 percent of injury-related medical spending. Crime also accounts for as much as 10 to 20 percent of mental health care expenditures.
&MD; Intangible costs, like lost quality of life, are by far the largest cost component for crimes of violence, the authors claim, though they are also the most difficult to measure and therefore subject to the most debate. The study places the ``lost quality of life'' for a murder victim and his family at $1.9 million, while the average cost of police investigation into a murder is only $1,400.
The report calculated the out-of-pocket costs of crime at $105 billion annually, including medical bills, property losses, lost earnings and programs for victim assistance.
To measure the intangible costs of crime, including pain, suffering and lost quality of life, the authors adopted figures from jury awards to crime victims and other statistical studies of the value of life, in addition to including the cost of mental care.
In a separate study by Cohen, now under preparation for the Justice Department, he found that preventing a ``high risk'' young person in a poor neighborhood from a troubled family from turning into a juvenile delinquent and adult criminal would save the country $1.5 million to $2 million.
A new technology is opening up new vistas for democracy, education and personal enrichment, a magazine predicts. ``The government,'' it says, ``will be a living thing to its citizens instead of an abstract and unseen force. ... Elected representatives will not be able to evade their responsibility to those who put them in office.''
The new medium will be like a gigantic school, the magazine declares, and ``have a greater student body than all our universities put together.''
The year was 1922, radio was the new technology, and the magazine was Radio Broadcast.
But it might just as well have been 1996, the technology of the Internet, and the magazine Wired.
These days, Wired chronicles the rise of the digital communications and entertainment on the Internet. And best sellers by champions of technology like Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab (``Being Digital'') and Bill Gates of Microsoft (``The Road Ahead'') portray the wired future as a second renaissance that will bring about a new life for everyone.
Veterans of previous outbreaks of technological euphoria, though, are skeptical. ``Each time a new medium comes along, great hopes are raised,'' said Erik Barnouw, a professor emeritus at Columbia University and a media historian. ``But the lesson of history is that every new medium provides new opportunities for selling as well as for education, for monopolists as well as for democracy, and for abuse as well as for benefit.''
There is some recent evidence that the rush to the information age is slowing, at least temporarily. Economics, social attitudes and sheer exhaustion with the torrid pace of technological change are all cited as reasons.
Still, in a nation that is second to none in embracing what is new, the notion of an all-encompassing technological renaissance is being reconsidered rather than rejected wholesale. It's possible that a few people are tossing out their personal computers, but there are not many.
Yet, a small but vocal community of anti-technologists would like to stir up a backlash. And they have demonstrated that people are paying attention. Witness the cottage industry of naysayers, led by authors like Clifford Stoll (``Silicon Snake Oil'') and Kirkpatrick Sale (``Rebels Against the Future'').
Indeed, today's Luddites (the followers of the 19th-century English machine-smashers who resorted to sabotage and assassination) are suddenly gaining respect.
Last weekend, 350 people gathered in Barnesville, Ohio, for the Second Luddite Congress. Even the Unabomber, today's most famous Luddite, has struck a chord, though his methods are deplored.
Scott Savage, who was one of the organizers of the Barnesville congress and is the publisher of Plain Magazine, a journal of the simple life, said, ``Our message to people is that they don't have to live in some virtual Disneyland, which is where so much of society seems to be headed. People can make choices about technology and reject it.''
Sale, who is trying to rehabilitate history's image of the Luddites, sometimes sets the tone for his anti-technology lectures by destroying a computer with a sledgehammer.
He calls personal computers ``a mounting intrusion.'' He calls television ``stultifying junk.'' And, he says, he finds that increasing numbers of people share his politicized view of technology.
``More and more people are seeing their jobs being eliminated and their skills being devalued because of technology,'' said Sale, who shuns computers but owns a telephone and a car. ``It's not Republicans or Democrats, Bush or Clinton. It's the technology.''
For most people, though, technology decisions are based on practical considerations. Is it affordable? Is it easy to use? Is it an essential tool? Or, if not that, is it at least fashionable and fun?
Acquiring a personal computer is the initiation fee to join the technological club. Sales of computers to American households are expected to slow down this year, growing at 8 percent, after three years of growth in the 20-to-40 percent range, according to Dataquest, a research firm in San Jose, Calif.
Roughly one third of American households have personal computers. And that is a lot for a relatively short period of time. After all, home computers only took off less than a decade ago. But analysts say that gaining ground from now on will be more difficult because so many affluent households already have personal computers and the less-affluent ones resist shelling out $2,000 or more for a computer.
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ATLANTA &MD; When planning for the Olympic Torch Relay began three years ago, ACOG officials had few firm ideas. That is, beyond the particularly American impulse to make it the biggest ever.
Big it is. The relay will cover 15,000 miles in 42 states and include 10,000 torchbearers &MD; among them 400 cyclists and 300 Pony Express riders, a 19-car train, a Mississippi River steamboat and just about every other transportation mode imaginable.
To foot the bill, reportedly around $12 million, ACOG recruited Coca-Cola, a company considered more American than apple pie internationally, as the ``presenter.''
Los Angeles mounted the longest relay in Games history in 1984, making it to 33 states in 82 days. From the get-go, Billy Payne and other Atlanta leaders considered that record toast. They did, however want to pay tribute to Los Angeles and the only other American city to host the Summer Games &MD; St. Louis &MD; making those and Atlanta the only givens at the beginning.
As the last U.S. city to host the flame, Los Angeles struck them as the right place to start, sentimentally as well as logistically.
Beyond bringing the Olympic flame to as many Americans as possible, the idea became to make the relay a celebration of Americana, showcasing landmarks, from the Hoover Dam to Graceland, and reveling in regional charms. While it was essential to hit the big-city population bases, Payne and his initial planning team &MD; ACOG managing director Ginger Watkins, relay director Hilary Hanson and senior manager Rennie Truitt &MD; wanted the flame to saunter down lots of small- town Main Streets.
Nation's road systems get hard look
They started calling Chambers of Commerce, requesting maps and brochures. Home addresses were used and their affiliation disguised, so as not to build up false hopes or encourage lobbying efforts.
The Atlantans researched what previous relay organizers had done and also took a hard look at America's road systems. They mostly ruled out interstates, which Los Angeles had used, because people wouldn't be able to watch from the shoulder. Instead they chose old U.S. highways, such as Route 66 in Arizona.
Alternative modes of transportation appealed because they not only conveyed history, they also offered ways to quickly visit some of the less populous states.
In early 1994, they started drawing rough lines on maps, picking out rail lines before they even knew who operated them. The timing calculations they applied were even rougher. They guessed their lines equaled 80-something days. Eighty-four became a goal when it dawned on them that and the 16 days of the Games would equal 100, appropriate for the the Centennial Olympic Games.
``We started to put together the route in terms of `Wouldn't it be nice to do these things?' but we never had any idea if any of this stuff would work,'' says Truitt, who was promptly assigned to to find out.
`Rennie's Big Adventure' charts course
The iconoclastic, bow-tie wearing Truitt was perfectly cast for the 55-day drive in summer 1994 that soon was dubbed ``Rennie's Big Adventure.'' The native of Luling, La., had made many a cross-country sojourn as a kid to visit grandparents in North Dakota.
``It was a 2,000-mile trip, so the parents would always want to entertain you by stopping at some grotto or cave or Rock City or Wall Drugs in South Dakota. . . . I came to have the liberal arts major's tendency to want to explore.''
That he did, poking around less-traveled places such as Ponca City, Okla., where he discovered the Frontier Women's Memorial (which the relay now passes), crossing the Lewis and Clark Trail in several states and chatting up Mississippi Delta sharecroppers. He was a sponge for information &MD; about where people gathered and the places they were proudest of.
All of this he and an assistant included in daily faxes to ACOG, which were promptly devoured by Payne and the others. ``A turning point,'' Hanson calls Truitt's trip. ``It's where the project became real.''
Even though 20-hour days were frequent and he gained 25 pounds gorging on McDonald's and Hostess snack foods, Truitt says he had a blast. ``For a boy from the swamp, it was miraculous,'' Truitt says.
Exciting prospects
Seventy-five percent of the basic town-to-town mapping he did remains in place, though it's been considerably refined over the last 20 months by six teams of regional advance managers. In addition to determining the precise points where one torchbearer will light another's torch, the teams have worked closely with local officials on everything from crowd and traffic control to the celebrations that will greet the relay.
All along the route, but especially in the smaller, frequently overlooked burgs, organizers express excitement about the flame's visit.
``We've had sort of a rocky history the last couple of years, so we're excited about the prospect of being able to show off the positive side of Union,'' says Vicki Shields, a United Way official in the quiet South Carolina town jolted by the Susan Smith case.
Relay officials have no estimate more precise than ``millions'' of how many people will queue up to see the torch. But Hanson, whose office wall sports a photo of her bearing the torch in snow boots in Lillehammer, knows firsthand that they can count on throngs.
``The flame is one of the few pure symbols we have left, and I think people are looking for that,'' she says. ``People have enough things to be worried about every day and here's something that for a moment everyone can be a part of.''
She pauses and ponders how better to explain the torch's appeal. ``It's hard to know what the magic is of the flame. I guess that's why it's magic.''
The commissioner then threw it back to the education staff. The plan for Regents testing had been kicked around for several years, but it had foundered in the bureaucracy, as had a plan to revamp the curriculum. He made the issues seem urgent and asked the department to speed them along.
``He has quickened the pace,'' said Saul Cohen, a regent from Manhattan. ``Follow-through is always the biggest issue. We pass resolutions all the time and nothing happens. But this isn't happening now. It's a managerial style that expects results.''
The new curriculum guidelines, which place a stronger emphasis on critical thinking and analysis, are intended to help prepare students for annual Regents exams, to be required for all.
Though the Regents exams have been the primary measure of high school achievement in the state for more than a century, most graduates, including 80 percent in New York City, take a far less demanding Regents Competency Test after less difficult course work.
Predictably, as in Vermont, Mills has encountered opposition. At a recent public forum at a Syracuse high school, one teacher, in a pique, complained that teachers were frustrated because they were not certain what kind of instruction would be useful for the new Regents exam.
The school superintendent said he was worried about a lack of preparation by teachers, students and families.
``What he's trying to do is the right thing; it's how it's going to be accomplished,'' said Syracuse Schools Superintendent Robert DiFlorio. ``I'm not sure whether he fully understands everything that goes into the implementation of the standards.''
The Commissioner's style is nonconfrontational, even as he is meting out his own brand of educational justice. On several occasions, he has quietly brought members of his staff to New York City, sometimes on weekends, to meet with aides to Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew on issues ranging from special education and low-performing schools.
``It isn't just issuing edicts from on high,'' said Stephen K. Allinger, the lobbyist for the New York City Board of Education in Albany. ``You sense he is going to do this with us, not to us.''
With his flat, reassuring Midwestern cadence, Mills sometimes sounds more like a motivational coach. An M.B.A. recipient, he is a proponent of Japanese management techniques, which, applied to schools, views students as ``customers'' and focuses on ``continuous improvement,'' not punishment.
``It's important to understand who the customer is &MD; the parents and the children &MD; and it's important to listen to them,'' he said recently.
Born in the farming community of Paris, Ill., on Nov. 28, 1944, Richard Paul Mills was the grandson of a Welsh coal miner with a fifth-grade education. He grew up the child of teachers: his father taught school before entering the insurance business. A grandmother and a sister were taught in public schools.
Mills remembers the moment when he knew that he, too, loved teaching. As a freshman at Middlebury College in Vermont, he was asked to talk to his English class about a selection of poetry.
``It was electrifying,'' he recalled. ``I looked out on a class of 18 to 20 students. I started to ask questions and it suddenly occurred to me. It wasn't the poetry that got me. The experience of teaching got me.''
It was also at Middlebury College that he met his wife, Judy, 53, who is now a computer systems analyst. They are both avid cross-country skiers and own a canoe. The couple, who have no children, live in Clifton Park, a semirural suburb 15 minutes from Albany.
Of her husband, Mrs. Mills said: ``He looks for consensus in people. He has a very clear idea of what things ought to be done in education.''
At the Onondaga Library in Syracuse a few weeks ago, the commissioner sat at opposite ends of a conference table from Carl T. Hayden, the chancellor of the state Board of Regents, who was elected by a one-vote margin last year.
Although the two men are markedly different &MD; Mills is lean, tall and circumspect, while Hayden is big, ruddy and garrulous &MD; Hayden said:
``We're joined at the hip. We're a team. We've come to a deep understanding of each other's beliefs. He has few ideas that I don't have.''
Hayden and the other regents are hoping that Mills will provide the leadership that the education system needs. ``What everyone feared was that he was too vanilla,'' Hayden said. ``He may come from plain vanilla, but he sees the rainbow. He wants all kids to do well.''
Racing through the streets of Syracuse recently to squeeze in as many visits to schools as possible, the commissioner dropped by a forum of lively, opinionated student leaders at Nottingham High School.
As Mills was rushing out, he was trailed by a guidance counselor, who told him that about a third of the students at the forum would not be able to afford college if the Legislature cut tuition assistance by $100 million, as the governor proposed.
The counselor's emotional plea went into a notebook the commissioner fills with such anecdotes &MD; and later made its way into testimony before the Legislature.
``That's a perfect illustration of why I need to be out there,'' the commissioner said, settling into a waiting car. ``I'll have numbers and facts, but what will carry the day will be the images.''
NEW YORK &MD; The music started at 6 p.m. and stopped at 2 in the morning. In length, that adds up to ``Tristan und Isolde'' with the first act of ``Parsifal'' thrown in.
James Levine was celebrating his 25th anniversary of conducting at the Metropolitan Opera, and so Saturday night (and Sunday morning) became an operatic party of extravagant proportions.
I counted 57 performers, 43 numbers and three sets. Cecilia Bartoli, Marilyn Horne, Luciano Pavarotti and a few others didn't make it, but almost everyone else did.
Like a man who not only cuts his festive cake but bakes it too, Levine conducted every item on this program. The largely faithful audience weakened before the performers did. Along about 1:15 a.m., one sensed listeners as eager to applaud and yell as before but no longer having the strength.
Levine and his crew played on. Indeed, the evening's greatest tribute came from his players in the pit, who seemed as attentive &MD; and as refined and sophisticated &MD; at the end as they had in Wagner's ``Rienzi'' Overture many hours earlier.
Deborah Voigt's clear and striking ``Dich, teure Halle'' from ``Tannhauser'' began the singing. Birgit Nilsson's brief Valkyre hoot to Levine, preceded by a few admiring words and followed by the finale to ``Die Meistersinger,'' wound up the program. Not every performance in between sounded good, but most did. Some were exceptional.
With so much music at one sitting, contrasts were to be expected: Gabriela Benackova's straight-from-the-soul ``Song to the Moon'' from ``Rusalka'' against Ruth Ann Swenson's shining smoothness in Juliet's Waltz from ``Romeo et Juliette''; flattening power by Dolora Zajick in ``O don fatale'' against Renee Fleming's fastidiously calculated ``Depuis le jour''; Dawn Upshaw's fine, slender Mozart in ``Deh! vieni, non tardar'' against the frightening intensity of Waltraud Meier in Isolde's Narrative and Curse.
There were voices from the recent past: dignified Alfredo Kraus in Massenet's ``Pourquoi me reveiller,'' a luxurious-sounding Grace Bumbry singing from ``Samson et Dalila'' or Gwyneth Jones storming Puccini's ``In quest reggia'' with full artillery blazing. Then there was Carlo Bergonzi, a portly, dignified presence at 71, who gave no quarter in Verdi's ``Quando le sere al placido'' and brought down the house.
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The Met's splendid basses showed up: James Morris in Wotan's Farewell, Samuel Ramey singing from ``Nabucco'' and ``Faust.'' (Ferruccio Furlanetto's ensemble appearance was all too brief).
Tenors old and young were to be had. Placido Domingo, the Met's faithful friend, sang in a duet and a trio. Roberto Alagna, in better health since his recent Met debut and celebrating his marriage to Angela Gheorghiu, handled largely unstressful repertory with appealing taste and style. If Alagna can disentangle himself from press agents, record executives and television producers, he will give us much pleasure in future years.
Lists are boring but some striking performers belong on one: Jane Eaglen, Karita Mattila, Catherine Malfitano, Dwayne Croft, Aprile Millo, Vladimir Chernov, Kiri Te Kanawa, Raymond Gniewek (the orchestra's concertmaster), the fine Met chorus.
What everyone seemed to share was a deep respect for Levine's ability. In opera conducting, no one accompanies better than he. In the orchestra work, elegance without preciosity and transparence without thinness comprise some of the miracles he works night in and night out.
It is hard to recognize legends while they are still among us, but rest assured Levine will be one. He was born to an age in which technique and textual clarity took on lives of their own. His career is a response. It reassures us that craftsmanship, spirit and command of style can indeed coexist. And then there are the words of Christa Ludwig who could not come on Saturday but sent a letter in appreciation. ``You breathed with me,'' she writes, ``because you love the human voice.''
New York, May 1 (Bloomberg) -- Walt Disney Co.'s Capital Cities/ABC Inc. unit said its radio division reorganized its management structure.
As part of the changes, Bart Catalane, executive vice president of the ABC Radio Networks, was promoted to executive vice president of the Capital Cities/ABC Radio division.
John Mitchell Dolan, president of WPLJ-FM, was named to the additional position of president of WABC-AM, replacing Don Bouloukos, who's leaving the company to pursue other interests. Both stations are in New York.
Capital/Cities also promoted Maureen Lesourd, senior vice president of affiliate relations of the ABC Television Network Group, to president of KABC-AM, KMPC-AM and KLOS-FM in Los Angeles.
The changes will be phased in over the next month. The executives will report to Robert Callahan, who was named president of the company's radio group last month.
``I have organized the division to reflect the operating style that worked well at the Radio Networks,'' Callahan said.
John McConnell, vice president of news for ABC Radio Networks, was promoted to the new position of vice president of programming for WABC Radio.
Capital Cities/ABC also gave Norman Schrutt responsibilities to develop the company's international radio operations. Schrutt will continue to oversee the company's Atlanta stations.
Capital Cities/ABC radio division consists of 21 radio stations in nine markets and the ABC Radio Networks.
Stockholm, May 6 (Bloomberg) -- Trelleborg AB, a Swedish mining and metals company, said first quarter profit fell 26 percent as metals prices declined and general operating costs rose.
Pretax earnings were 356 million kronor ($52 million), below the 366 million kronor analysts had forecast.
Trelleborg also announced it bought Caoutchouc Manufacture et Plastiques de Palport SA, or CMPP, a French maker of rubber industrial tubes and rubber sheeting. Based in Clermont-Ferrand, CMPP has annual sales of 600 million kronor and 750 employees.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Trelleborg's most recent mining announcements have been about gold. Last week, it won prospecting and exploration rights in Russia's Kola peninsula, where three gold deposits have been found.
In February, it discovered the largest gold deposit in Sweden in 70 years.
While prices for metals such as copper fell 12 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, based on average daily prices, gold prices rose 6 percent in the same period.
B shares in Trelleborg rose 2.5 kronor, to 96.50, on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.
The company's sales fell to 5.163 billion kronor in the first quarter, from 5.318 billion. Net earnings per share slipped to 2.15, from 2.50.
Adjusted for currency fluctuations and changes in metal prices, sales volume was unchanged from the same period a year ago, Trelleborg said.
A stronger krona makes the company's income in foreign currency worth less when it is translated into kronor.
At the end of the first quarter, the krona had appreciated 9 percent against the dollar and 16 percent against the German mark, compared with the end of the first quarter of last year.
Sales at the company's largest division, mining and metals, were little changed at 2.2 billion kronor. Operating profit in the division dropped to 152 million from 223 million because of lower metal prices and lower metal densities in mined ore.
The company made 62 million kronor from financial activities, mainly due to a near elimination of net debt in 1995. In the first quarter of last year, it had financial costs of 162 million kronor.
ARLINGTON, Texas &MD; The Rangers have been merciless on left-handed pitchers this year, and none has been more ruthless than Rusty Greer.
About this time last season, Greer was sitting against left-handers while Jack Voigt started. Now opposing left-handers would probably have more success against Albert Belle or Ken Griffey Jr. than they're having with Greer.
Detroit left-hander Scott Aldred was the latest casualty. Greer made him pay for two two-out walks with a first-inning grand slam last night that started the Rangers on their way to an 11-7 victory against the Tigers before 42,732 at The Ballpark in Arlington.
Kevin Gross, given an 8-1 lead after two innings, went 61/3 innings to get the victory and improve his record to 5-3. Mickey Tettleton mixed in two home runs among the Rangers' 18-hit attack.
The victory was the Rangers' eighth in their past 10 games, giving them a 24-12 record that's the best in the American League and the best after 36 games in club history.
``We're playing good baseball right now,'' Tettleton said. ``We're playing good defense. The starters hit a little funk, but now they're giving us quality innings and have picked us up, and the offense is scoring just enough runs to win.''
Greer finished with four hits and five runs batted in, both career highs for one game, but the grand slam was the decisive blow.
The Tigers took a 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning, and Aldred retired the first two Rangers he faced. But Will Clark bounced a single up the middle, and Tettleton and Dean Palmer worked walks to load the bases. Greer then hit the first pitch he saw into the right-field bleachers.
``We get behind one run, and Rusty has a big at-bat,'' manager Johnny Oates said. ``Deano was real selective. He didn't chase (ball four) and took the walk. They wanted to pitch to the left-hander.''
If so, that was a mistake. Greer is hitting .448 (13-for-29) with two homers and 11 of his 24 RBI against left-handers. Last year, he had only 78 at-bats against left-handers, hitting .244 with two homers and nine RBI.
``Basically, (hitting coach) Rudy (Jaramillo) and I have been working in the cage on staying aggressive against left-handers'' Greer said. ``I'm just trying to have a good at-bat, get good pitches and hit the ball hard.''
The Rangers as a team have shown considerable improvement against left-handers. Last night's pummelling of Aldred, who allowed eight runs in 11/3 innings, gave the Rangers a .349 average against left-handers. They hit .261 against them last year.
The Rangers needed all of that and more last night. They led 9-2 after four innings, but, by the ninth, the Rangers had closer Mike Henneman working in the bullpen after Travis Fryman's three-run homer made it an 11-7 game.
Oates wasn't particularly pleased with Gross, who allowed three runs on nine hits and two walks while striking out eight. Oates pointed out Gross needed 127 pitches to make it through 61/3 innings.
``He threw way too many pitches,'' Oates said. ``We were on the field way too much. We got the win &MD; that's the bottom line &MD; but he struggled with his command. ... With an eight-run lead, it should be `Let 'em hit it.'''
Gross fared better than Aldred. Tigers manager Buddy Bell announced after the game Aldred was being sent to the bullpen.
Faced with the major broadcast networks' plans to offer free television time for political statements by the presidential candidates in the fall, the Federal Communications Commission on Monday announced steps it would take to help the networks avoid prompting equal-time demands from fringe candidates.
In response to a request on April 25 from the Fox Broadcasting Network, the commission has asked for written comments on whether the network proposals should be exempt from equal-time laws. It also said it would hold a public hearing in June to ``afford further public exploration of these important issues.''
Fox proposes to give each candidate a half-hour of free time on election eve, and to broadcast 10 one-minute statements from each during the seven weeks before. ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and CNN have also announced such plans.
Federal law requires that when a broadcast television station allows one candidate to appear outside the context of a news program, the station must provide ``equal opportunities'' to all other candidates.
In a presidential election, that could include candidates like Ross Perot, who ran with a substantial following in 1992, and those from small fringe parties.
In formulating their plans, the networks have said they would include any major third-party candidate, like Perot.
Dallas, May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Texas stocks rose for their fourth straight day, led by Clear Channel Communications Inc. and EmCare Holdings Inc.
The Bloomberg Texas Index rose 0.95 to a record 147.06. The index is a price-weighted list of 390 stocks in companies with significant operations in Texas. It is designed to reflect the performance of the state's economy.
Shares of 174 companies rose, while 132 fell and the rest were unchanged.
Texas stocks rose in tandem with U.S. stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 42.11 to 5624.71 on optimism that lower interest rates will pave the way for steady earnings gains in the coming months.
San Antonio-based Clear Channel led the gains among Texas stocks, rising 5 1/4 to 72 1/2 after Montgomery Securities analyst Gordon Hodge raised his rating on the stock to ``buy'' from ``accumulate.''
Several analysts have raised their ratings on Clear Channel in the last week, after the company said it would acquire 19 stations from Radio Equity Partners LP for $235 million in cash.
``This puts them in a position where they can eliminate competition and effectively increase their advertising rates,'' analyst Niraj Gupta of Nomura Research Institute said at the time of the announcement.
Another San Antonio broadcasting company, Argyle Television Inc., rose 1 3/4 to 25 3/4.
Shares of medical service companies also rose. Dallas-based Emcare climbed 3 1/32 to 31 25/32, and Physician Reliance Network Inc., also of Dallas, rose 2 1/2 to 50.
Technology issues also got a boost. CompuCom Systems Inc. of Dallas rose 1 5/8 to 13, Dell Computer Corp. of Austin climbed 1 1/2 at 47, and Cyrix Corp. of Richardson, the subject of takeover speculation, rose 1 1/4 to 31.
Texas stocks outperformed the national average, rising 0.7 percent, compared with a 0.6 percent gain by the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, up 4.09 at 665.60.
Norwood Promotional Products Inc. of San Antonio led the declines among Texas stocks, falling 1 1/2 to 21 1/2.
Other decliners included Dallas-based Sterling Software Inc., which fell 1 3/8 to 78, Whitehall Corp., which lost 1 3/8 to 36, and Gadzooks Inc., which dropped 1 1/4 to 54.
J.C. Penney Co. fell 7/8 to 50 3/4 after the company reported its sixth consecutive decline in quarterly profit. The Plano-based retailer's apparel sales have faltered amid competition from Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
``Penney's is going to have to completely revamp and reposition itself,'' said Thomas Regner, chief investment officer for the Kemper funds group in Chicago. ``They've got to put excitement back in their line.'' -- Loren Steffy in Dallas (214) 335-8910 with reporting by Karen Fessler in the Princeton newsroom through the New York newsroom (212) 318-2300 /fm (Story illustration: To see a graph of the recent performance of the Bloomberg Texas Index, type BTXX US Index &QR; GPO.
(For more information on the companies in this story: GADZ US, SSW US, CCU US, ARGL US, EMCR US, PHYN US, DELL US, CMPC US, CYRX US, NPPI US, WHT US, JCP US Equity &QR; CN, BQ, ERN. For news on Texas: NI TX. For news on local stock indexes: NI LSI.) 17:26 -0- (BBN) May/14/96 17:27 EOS (BBN) May/14/96 17:27 86
NEW YORK &MD; Two Federal Express drivers were held hostage in their truck in the Diamond District by two armed teen-agers, who drove them to Harlem, then stole more than $100,000 in jewelry from the truck, the police said Thursday.
The incident, the second midtown jewel robbery this week, began about 7:40 p.m. Wednesday, when the two youths pulled out .45-caliber revolvers and forced their way into the truck near the corner of 46th Street and Fifth Avenue.
The Federal Express employees were held at gunpoint as the assailants drove the truck to 128th Street and Eighth Avenue. There, they met a third man in a red Isuzu truck, unloaded packages containing $100,000 in jewels and drove off, said Officer Debra Kearns, a department spokeswoman.
The victims, 46 and 35, were left unhurt in the truck, the police said.
On Monday afternoon, two gunmen disguised as hotel employees robbed an Israeli gem dealer and his wife at the Wentworth Hotel on West 46th Street. The gunmen wore suits and ties and pretended to be delivering room service, but once inside the room they pulled out guns and handcuffed Salom Archel, 31, and his wife, Osnat, 29.
The men stole $30,000 in cash plus an estimated $1 million in jewels that the couple had planned to sell, the police said.
Detectives said they do not believe the robberies were committed by the same men.
SAN ANTONIO &MD; Preliminary findings of this year's airdrop of 1.3 million vaccine-laden baits over part of South Texas indicates the effort may have been more successful than the first year in immunizing coyotes against rabies, health officials say.
And the Texas Department of Health now is discussing whether to blanket all of South Texas with the baits over the next two winters &MD; a strategy that could eliminate the deadly canine strain from Texas three years earlier than planned.
Details of the oral vaccine campaign were discussed Wednesday at a rabies seminar for military veterinarians at Fort Sam Houston.
In January, health officials launched the second phase of their campaign to stop the northern spread of canine rabies from pushing into San Antonio and beyond, dropping 1.3 million baits over a band across the state, as well as a narrower band along much of the Texas-Mexico border.
In addition, they dropped 1.2 million smaller baits in an arc extending around an outbreak of fox rabies in West and Central Texas
The $4 million, state-funded effort this year used a genetically engineered oral rabies vaccine, Raboral V-RG, which received conditional approval earlier this year for use in raccoons, but still is considered experimental for coyotes and foxes.
``One of the things I like to tell the politicians is that, at this rate, we're vaccinating each coyote at a cost of about $30, which compares real favorably with some veterinary clinics,'' said Dr. Keith Clark, head of zoonosis control with the Texas Department of Health. Zoonosis is an animal disease that can infect humans.
Dr. Gayne Fearneyhough, who heads the oral vaccine project for the state health department, said tests on 160 coyotes after this year's drop found that 51 percent had an immune response against rabies.
That compared to 42 percent after the initial airdrop of 830,000 baits in February 1995.
And despite a minor outbreak last fall of seven rabid coyotes in Atascosa County, which was treated with a supplemental airdrop of 25,000 extra baits, the rabies epidemic has not moved farther north.
The state legislature approved $2 million this year and $2 million next year for the project. The Texas Department of Health came up with an additional $2 million from internal funds this year. For next year, health officials are seeking the remaining funds from federal and private sources.
``To date, we have funding in place for the coyote portion of the project next year,'' Fearneyhough said. ``I think it's a reasonable assumption we'll be back in Central Texas again as well.''
If funding is secured, health officials will try to bait all of South Texas for two years, rather than continue moving the vaccine barrier south to the border, Fearneyhough said.
Los Angeles Dodgers center fielder Brett Butler, who is scheduled for cancer surgery early Tuesday morning, will check into Atlanta's Emory University Hospital today in preparation for the procedure that is expected to take up to 3{ hours.
Butler, who expected several visitors Sunday night, including Atlanta Braves pitchers John Smoltz and Greg McMichael, said his throat remains sore from the May 3 tonsillectomy, but that he has gained most of his weight back. The tonsillectomy revealed the cancerous tumor and mandated the upcoming surgery.
``I feel fine,'' said Butler, 38. ``I'm more anxious for the results after than anything else, because you don't know.
``The first eight days were difficult. After that, I seemed to have the understanding of perspective. And my wife (Eveline) has been a rock.''
Doctors are expected to remove lymph nodes and a mass of muscle tissue from Butler's neck. Biopsy results will take four or five days, according to Butler, who will remain in the hospital, about 30 miles from his home in Duluth, Ga., for nearly a week.
Only recently Butler's son, 8-year-old Blake, asked him, ``Daddy, do you still have cancer? It doesn't seem like it. You seem OK.''
Butler laughed.
``I realize (God) is watching over me,'' he said. ``I really have a peace. I really do.''
London, May 22 (Bloomberg) -- European gasoline prices tumbled as much as 9 percent as rising U.S. inventories made sales of European gasoline in the U.S. less attractive.
Eurograde 95-octane gasoline, the benchmark grade for northwest Europe gasoline prices, was assessed as low as $213 a ton, $22 less than yesterday's $235 closing price.
That's after the American Petroleum Institute yesterday reported an unexpected rise in U.S. supplies. The main gain was on the Atlantic Coast, where most exports from Europe, which produces more than it consumes, are marketed.
``The API statistics were a trigger for European prices to decline,'' said Ben von Geyr, managing director of Gekol Mineraloelhandel GmbH, an oil trading company in Hamburg. ``Prices were due to drop, as they were maintained high by the fact that gasoline was exported to the U.S.'' The inventory figures showed East Coast reformulated gasoline inventories, the grade against which New York Mercantile Exchange futures contract are deliverable, rose three million barrels, or 15 percent, in the latest reporting week. The report helped push down the price of the June gasoline futures contract in New York by 1.40 cents a gallon today to 63.55 cents a gallon in early trading, a 2.1 percent loss from yesterday's price.
That closed the door on European imports by making European shipments to the U.S. less profitable and by cutting U.S. demand for imports.
Including today's declines, U.S. gasoline is priced at the equivalent of $225 a ton, $12 more than today's $213 a ton price in Europe. That's not enough of a difference to make European exports to the U.S. profitable, once transport and insurance costs are included.
As a result, supplies in the European market have increased, causing prices to decline, a situation made worse by fading local demand, traders said. Europe produces more gasoline than it consumes.
Even in Germany, the largest consumer market in northwest Europe, refiners have ample supplies to meet demand although demand is reported to be rising. As a result, prices are expected to continue weak.
ANAHEIM, Calif. &MD; When Chuck McElroy joined the Angels Wednesday, it was in mild anticipation of his first looks at some of the marquee left-handed hitters in the American League. Well, at least updated looks.
``I faced Ken Griffey in the minor leagues,'' said McElroy, the lefty reliever acquired from Cincinnati on Monday for disgruntled Lee Smith. ``Struck him out four times. Saw Mo Vaughn, too. But that was a long time ago, before they learned how to hit.''
Fresh arms: Relief pitcher Mark Eichhorn is expected to return to the active roster when starter Mark Langston comes back Friday.
Eichhorn, the middle reliever who has been on the disabled list fighting off rotator-cuff tendinitis in his right shoulder, pitched off a mound for 10 minutes Wednesday without incident.
Langston, who has made a lightning return from knee surgery, is scheduled to face Baltimore that night at Anaheim Stadium.
Pitching coach Chuck Hernandez said Langston will be limited to 60-70 pitches, which should be good for 5-6 innings. ``We're not going to wear him out,'' Hernandez said of Langston, who hasn't pitched since April 30.
Rehab date: Steve Ontiveros, the would-be No.4 starter who opened the season on the disabled list, is expected to make his first rehabilitation appearance Friday, for Single-A Lake Elsinore.
American Movie Classics is a cable service best known for presenting Hollywood's golden oldies the way ``they were meant to be seen,'' as the sales pitch goes, unsullied by commercial breaks or garish coloring.
But as the commercial networks watch warily, AMC has been edging into other entertainment areas, most notably co-productions or acquisitions offering profiles on stars like Marlene Dietrich and Marlon Brando.
Going even further, AMC now has its own weekly drama series. ``Remember WENN'' did so well in terms of reviewer and audience response to its four-episode debut this year that AMC went back into production for nine more installments.
The first, featuring Molly Ringwald as guest star, has its premiere Saturday night.
Conceived by Paula Connelly-Skorka, AMC director of original program development, and written by the author and composer Rupert Holmes, ``Remember WENN'' is set in a Pittsburgh radio station.
The year is 1939. Taking their cue from those Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney movies that perkily clung to the tradition that the show must go on, the station's small staff works feverishly to bring its listeners radio's magical ``motion pictures of the mind.''
Scott Sherwood (Kevin O'Rourke), the remarkably level-headed boss, oversees a staff that includes Betty Roberts (Amanda Naughton), a neophyte from Indiana who proves to be a producing whiz; Mackie Bloom (Christopher Murney), man of a thousand voices and not sure which one is really is own; Hilary Booth (Melinda Mullins), a former Broadway star who is not about to let anybody forget it; Jeffrey Singer (Hugh O'Gorman), Hilary's young husband with a keen eye for bubbly blondes; Euginia Bremer (Mary Stout), the organist indispensable for soap operas, and Foley (Tom Beckett), the sound-effects genius who can conjure a river out of a flushing toilet.
On a budget that seems on a par with the fictional station's (described as ``the sparest of threadbare''), ``Remember WENN'' uses a handful of period props and costumes to evoke a past that, even as a world war looms, vibrates with boundless innocence and gumption. Anything is possible, as Orson Welles was proving with his milestone ``War of the Worlds'' broadcast.
Short, round and balding, Mackie can don a smoking jacket and become ``The Vagabond Lover,'' inviting listeners to his lavish bachelor quarters and seductively whispering that ``I hope you don't mind if I put some Champagne on ice.''
Things get complicated when one fan, Angela (Ms. Ringwald), writes a letter asking to meet this wonderful combination of Clark Gable and Ronald Colman. Worse, she actually does show up at the station. But then it turns out that Angela is blind, giving the use of the medium still another spin. Angela explains, ``I can see the characters on radio as clearly and vividly as anybody else can.'' Ms. Ringwald herself is the daughter of a blind jazz musician.
Angela's visit plays itself out in a plot that involves tickets to a Benny Goodman concert and the radio transmission of George Gershwin's ``Rhapsody in Blue.'' It's all rather obvious but sweetly diverting.
Gentle and naive, ``Remember WENN'' probably wouldn't last much more than a week in the rough-and tumble must-see shenanigans of network prime time. But its AMC niche is just about perfect. A second season is being prepared for the fall. The series presents an engaging alternative, which once was thought to be what cable is all about.
PRODUCTION NOTES
REMEMBER WENN
Sight Unseen
AMC, Saturday at 9 p.m., ET
Written and composed by Rupert Holmes. Howard Meltzer and Frank Doelger, producers; Juan Jose Campenella, Meltzer and Mr. Doelger, directors; David Sperling, director of photography; Carolyn Grifel, costume designer; Rowena Rowling, set designer; Paula Connelly-Skorka, executive producer.
Cast: Christopher Murney (Mackie Bloom), Tom Beckett (Foley), Melinda Mullins (Hilary Booth), Hugh O'Gorman (Jeffrey Singer), Amanda Naughton (Betty Roberts), Margaret Hall (Gertle), John Bedford Lloyd (Victor Comstock), Dina Spybey (Celia Mellon), George Hall (Eldridge), Mary Stout (Euginia Bremer), Molly Ringwald (Angela). NYT-05-30-96 1514EDT
Dr. Cuthbert C. Hurd, a computer scientist and entrepreneur who was instrumental in helping IBM develop its first general-purpose computer, died May 22 at his home in Portola Valley, Calif. He was 85.
Hurd was a mathematician at the Atomic Energy Commission laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., when he joined IBM in 1949 as its director of applied science.
A year later, after the outbreak of the Korean War, he was one of two people assigned to determine how IBM could contribute to the war effort.
Making a bold proposal, Hurd and his partner, James Birkenstock, recommended that the company design and build a general-purpose computer, bearing the heavy expense itself so that IBM would own the patents.
The new machine, the IBM 701, cost $3 million to develop and was introduced with great fanfare in 1952, putting IBM on the path to becoming the dominant force in the computer industry.
Hurd went on to help develop several other IBM computers and served as a consultant to the company for years after leaving in 1962 to become chairman of the board of Computer Usage Co., the first independent computer software company.
He was later appointed chairman of Picodyne Corp., which specialized in educational software, and in 1984 he co-founded Quintus Computer Systems, which was devoted to the commercialization of artificial intelligence. At the time of his death, he was the chief scientist of Northpoint Software Ventures Inc., a developer of risk management software.
Born in Estherville, Iowa, Hurd graduated from Drake University in 1932 and received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois in 1936.
He is survived by his wife, Bettie, also of Portola Valley; a son, Steven Hurd of Everett. Wash.; four daughters, Diana Shaper of Pleasanton, Calif., Susan Hagemann of Rio Dell, Calif., Elizabeth Nowicki of Los Altos, Calif., and Victoria Lukanovich of Palo Alto, Calif., and six grandchildren.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. &MD; With seven people, including a couple of millionaires, running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate here and four Democrats vying for the party nomination to succeed retiring Sen. Howell Heflin, Alabama should be inundated with political activity this spring.
Not so, said William Stewart, a professor of political science at the University of Alabama who described the public's response to the party primaries Tuesday so far as listless.
The number of candidates is one reason, he said, asserting that it was confusing to voters who are less and less enamored of politicians. It is also confusing because some in the Republican field ran as Democrats in recent years, before it was fashionable and politically acceptable to be a Republican.
Beyond that, the campaigns in both parties have taken on a hedgehog quality as challengers try to emerge as the second candidate and advance to a likely runoff in both party primaries.
This end-game strategy among several candidates has meant a husbanding of scarce resources, a tendency to avoid negative campaigning and a focusing of their appearances largely on courthouse visits.
``It's so similar in both parties,'' said state Democratic Party chairman Joe Turnham. ``The public rallies are lightly attended, and I think people feel inundated with the crowded ballot.''
Michael Burton, the executive director of the state's Republican Party, said that because most of the candidates in his party had similar positions on issues like abortion (oppose) and a balanced-budget amendment (favor), there was ``an absence of the controversy and bloodletting.''
At stake is the seat being vacated by Heflin, who is retiring after 18 years in the Senate. Heflin has been the model of the conservative and pragmatic Democrat who seemed both comfortable with the policies of Republican ADministrations and able to preserve spending on federal programs in the state. Alabama's junior senator, Richard Shelby, had a similar profile until 1994, when he left the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans after they took control of Congress.
By most accounts, as well as a few newspaper polls in the state, the front-runner in the Republican field is state Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions III, 49, whose office has given him wide name recognition. In the Democratic field, state Sen. Roger Bedford, 39, is viewed by most, including his opponents, as the front-runner.
Early on, Bedford, who first won his state Senate seat when he was in his mid-20s, corralled endorsements from an important state labor group, two major black political organizations and the state's trial lawyers &MD; all vital and active constituencies in the state's Democratic primary voting.
But in both parties, the polls and political experts suggest that from 30 percent to 50 percent of the voters remained undecided as campaigning entered its final week.
Among the Republicans vying for those undecideds are Sid McDonald, 58, a telecommunications company owner from Arab, Ala., and former state senator who once ran for governor as a Democrat. McDonald said he expected to spend $1.7 million, largely of his own money, on the Senate campaign.
McDonald's spending is likely to be matched by Charles Woods, 74, from Dothan, Ala., who owns a construction company and a radio and television station.
Woods has run for office as a Democrat and a Republican seven times here and in Nevada, where he also has a home. A World War II bomber pilot who was burned over 70 percent of his body in a crash of his plane, Woods' advertisements stress patriotism and call for the abolition of the Federal Reserve Board.
Rounding out the field with less money and even less name recognition are Frank McRight, 56, a Mobile corporate lawyer who has been endorsed by several newspapers as the embodiment of integrity and of a citizen lawmaker; Walter D. Clark, 50, a Birmingham podiatrist and decorated Vietnam War veteran who is making his first run for public office; state Sen. Albert Lipscomb, 45, a farmer from Magnolia Springs who stands out as perhaps the most unabashedly religious and vocally anti-abortion candidate among the Republican aspirants; and James D. Blake, a doctor and Birmingham City Councilman for the past three years. Blake has made a reputation for his frequent and often racially polarizing fights with the city's mayor, Richard Arrington, who is black and a Democrat.
Although Bedford has much of the traditional support that is usually needed to win the Democratic primary, the Democrat with the greatest name recognition in the race is Rep. Glen Browder, 53, a former secretary of state and two-term congressman. Browder is perhaps the most ``Heflin-like'' candidate, said Stewart, the political scientist, and will attract ``those conservatives who are hanging on to the Democratic Party.''
But Browder appears to be running second with Natalie Davis, 49, the dean of graduate studies at Birmingham Southern College. Ms. Davis is a longtime Democratic consultant and pollster making her first run for office. She travels about the state flogging ``old-style politics'' and exhorting Democrats to adopt a message and a program that do not simply parrot the Republicans.
Also competing in the Democratic field is Marilyn Quarles Bromberg, a teacher from Springville who has done little campaigning and has run no advertisements.
London, June 4 (Bloomberg) -- The following stories appeared on the front pages of major British newspapers this morning. British Telecom's Tough Price Controls Reduced by Regulator
The U.K.'s telecommunications regulator, Oftel, announced a pricing regime for the period 1997 to 2001 that was less rigorous than many had feared. Exploratory proposals by Don Cruickshank, Oftel's director-general, had led British Telecommunications Plc and others in the industry to expect a pricing regime little different from the existing tough controls. Oftel currently imposes a cap equivalent to the rate of inflation minus 7.5 percentage points on charges for 60 percent of BT's annual services, whereas the final proposals cover only a quarter of BT's revenues and reduce the price cap to inflation minus 4.5 points. (Financial Times, Times, Daily Telegraph) KPMG Drops Legal Challenge for Facia to be Put in Receivership
The collapsed Facia Group's shoe shops were put into administration after accountants KPMG Peat Marwick withdrew a legal challenge to have them placed in receivership along with other parts of the group. KPMG and United Mizrahi Bank of Israel, which has lent 7 million pounds ($10.85 million) to Facia, agreed to drop the challenge after long out-of-court negotiations. Consequently about 380 shoe outlets, including Freeman Hardy Willis, Trueform and Curtess will be managed by Price Waterhouse, the accountancy firm appointed as administrators. Supermarket Chain Tesco Introduces Own Direct Debit Card vPM Tesco Plc introduced its own direct debit card, Clubcard Plus, which pays annual interest of 5 percent on credit balances. The payment card, effective from June 17, will enable customers to pay for shopping with a standing order from their bank account. Tesco's unexpected move preempts a plan by J. Sainsbury Plc, a rival retailer, to introduce its own card in the next few weeks. (Daily Telegraph) Ireland's Robinson, Tipped as Next UN Head, Arrives in U.K.
Mary Robinson, president of the Republic of Ireland, arrives in London today on the first official visit to the U.K. by an Irish president. Robinson, who is considered a strong candidate to take over from Boutros Boutros-Ghali as United Nations Secretary General in January, was denied the chance of speaking to the U.K. parliament. Government officials said this was not a snub and it is thought their decision is influenced by the delicate negotiations underway in preparation for next week's all-party talk's on the future of Northern Ireland. (Independent)
Vienna, June 5 (Bloomberg) -- OPEC ministers made no decisions about how to accommodate new oil flows from Iraq on the first day of their 100th meeting.
Talks at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Country's headquarters broke up minutes after the meeting started.
The group met as Iraq's oil minister suggested oil prices will fall once his country resumes crude exports later this month for the first time in six years.
Amer Mohammed Rasheed Iraqi oil will fetch about $16 a barrel. That includes pipeline charges, leaving about $14 a barrel for Iraq.
Before Iraq was banned from exports in 1990, its exported oil fetched about $2 a barrel less than U.K. North Sea dated Brent crude, the international benchmark.
Rasheed's $16 figure implies he thinks Brent crude, which is currently at $18.04, will fall about 70 cents a barrel when Iraqi exports resume.
Rasheed is the first of the group's ministers to suggest prices will fall. Others have said the market can absorb new flows from Iraq without requiring them to cut their own output to keep prices from falling.
Indonesia's oil minister, Ida Bagus Sudjana, said today OPEC members won't be cutting individual production quotas to make room for Iraq within the group's current output ceiling.
Oil prices have fallen about 15 percent since reaching five-year highs in April as traders anticipated the return of Iraqi oil will add to the world's supply. Still, prices remain on average about 12 percent higher than the average for last year.
Rasheed said Iraq will pump 1.5 million barrels of oil a day by the end of June, including 800,000 barrels of new exports through a pipeline in Turkey and an old export terminal in the Persian Gulf.
Iraq is set to resume exports after the United Nations lifted its export ban last month, allowing the country to sell up to $2 billion worth of crude oil for the next six months to pay for humanitarian aid. It was banned from exports after invading Kuwait in 1990.
``It works (out to) $16 a barrel,'' Rasheed said as he left his Vienna hotel for a meeting with Iran's oil minister, who is staying in another hotel.
And Iraq is interested in producing more oil. Rasheed told journalists today he aimed to boost the nation's ability to produce oil to 3 million barrels a day soon from 2.5 million barrels a day currently. The amount of oil it can export must be approved by the U.N.
OPEC will discuss whether to adjust its nominal production cap of 24.52 million barrels of oil a day now that Iraq is resuming exports. OPEC members actually pump more than 26 million barrels a day because some ignore their self-imposed quotas.
Analysts have said the resumption of Iraqi exports probably will push down prices because the amount of oil from outside OPEC is expected to rise faster than demand, although some OPEC officials dispute that prediction.
Gary N. Ross, chief executive of PIRA Energy Group, figures production from the North Sea will be 1.3 million barrels a day higher in the second half than it was last year, and OPEC itself is pumping almost 1 million more a day than a year ago.
``Where is all the crude going to go?'' said Ross, who is attending the Vienna meeting.
Mohammed Abduljabbar, an economist at the Petroleum Finance Co. who is attending the meeting, said U.S. West Texas intermediate crude oil could fall to $15 or $16 a barrel later this year.
An aid to Iranian oil minister Gholamreza Aghazadeh said OPEC should raise its oil output ceiling by 1 million barrels a day, or 4 percent, to accommodate the new oil flows.
Such comments, together with those of ministers who said the market can absorb Iraqi crude without adjustments to their own output limits, shows the group remains unwilling to pump less oil to bolster sagging oil prices.
WTI, the U.S. crude, has fallen more than 16 percent in the past two months after reaching five-year highs of more than $25 a barrel, although prices this year have averaged 12 percent more than last year's average.
Rasheed declined to say whether his country would honor a production cap that was less than 1.5 million barrels a day, or accounted for less than the 800,000 barrels a day of exports.
``We will export according to the memorandum of understanding (with the U.N.) -- 800,000,'' Rasheed said.
Asked which was more important, honoring quotas or pumping the maximum amount of oil allowed by the U.N., Rasheed said, ``We have been a founding member of OPEC, so we want everybody to abide by their quotas.''
Iraq currently pumps about 620,000 barrels a day, mostly for domestic consumption, and already has preliminary agreements with some oil companies to buy some of the increased production. That amount would rise to about 700,000 barrels, Rasheed said.
Iraq had been OPEC's second-biggest producer before the ban was imposed, pumping 3.6 million barrels a day. Iraq's output was largely taken up by Saudi Arabia, the world's largest producer, which refuses to cut back now that Iraq wants to resume exports.
WOODSTOCK, Ill. &MD; The morning we prayed over my mother and buried her the air was the kind of noticeable clean it gets only after a serious rain scrubbing.
In fact, it had been raining for days. The countless nearby fields, freshly planted with corn and soybeans &MD; rich, black Illinois earth like that my parents grew up on and loved &MD; had done their best to sponge up wave after chilly wave of spring storms. But, finally, it was all too much. Brackish, turgid water filled the hollows of fields, an unwelcome, untidy guest.
My mother liked guests, but not the kind that make a mess. Not the kind you have to waste precious time cleaning up after. Time, to her, was too valuable for that. She preferred dainty guests who would nibble on hors d'oeuvres, praise her pot roast and leave at a decent hour.
Mom has passed along to me her preference for decency and order, which may explain why it is taking me so long in this piece to get past the weather and to ponder the brusque reality of having just become, at age 51, an orphan.
My three sisters and I joked a little about being orphans as we gathered with our families to wish Mom Godspeed and to lower her into the muddy earth of Oakland Cemetery here next to my father, who had died in 1992. But, in the end, it is no joke at all, this orphan business. It is, rather, the harsh and inevitable way of a world infected with sin and evil, disease and death.
I do not want you to think for a minute that I believe the world is nothing but pain and gloom. No, no, no. We are given almost unspeakable gifts of grace and beauty, joy and insight, kindness and love. And a life well lived, like my mother's, will be weighted toward those reasons to celebrate.
But we are Pollyanna fools if we don't recognize the part pain plays in our lives, the part evil does, and heartache and disappointment.
So I say it plainly. I am an orphan now and I don't like it. And I wish there were some other way.
Still, as these things go, I've done better than I had any right to expect. My father lived until age 82 and &MD; save for his last two years or so, when senile dementia veiled his active mind with bewilderment &MD; his life was full, productive and fat with purpose.
And Mom, Bertha Amanda Sofia Helander Tammeus, had turned 83 in March. She, too, lived a remarkably productive life until Parkinson's disease and other ailments put her in a wheelchair and in a nursing home a year and a half ago. And as often as not in this frustrating time she was confused about things.
So I have very little room to complain about being left parentless at my age. And yet this is a bad business at any age. It is a pure squealing shout about our own mortality. It's a stern reminder that some day my own daughters will be orphans.
The natural way of things is to be born roughly into this world, shocked &MD; after the comfort of the womb &MD; by the relentless, inhospitable air that grabs us. But after our initial reaction to this rudeness we are soothed to cooing by the loving touch and embrace of the one who gave us birth.
At the other end of life, however, the natural pattern is to go out an orphan and, as we go, to create yet more orphans. Even for those of us deeply convinced that a loving God welcomes us home at our death, this seems like bad planning, a bad design. The Psalmist (in the New Revised Standard Version of Psalm 90) was right: ``Our years come to an end like a sigh.''
So there we were, four orphans saying farewell to their old mother under a spring-blue dome of sky. Fresh flowers did their important work of beauty on her casket. But flowers, too, soon fade and blow away. And the truest thing I can think to say about all this now is that the world simply works this way. And no one &MD; not even an orphan with three orphan sisters &MD; can change that.
(Bill Tammeus is a columnist for The Kansas City Star. This article was distributed by The New York Times News Service.)
NEW YORK &MD; Wayne Ensrud is an artist who has never had an accolade quite so startling as the one he received on Wednesday. A painting that he did for the men's room of La Serre, a 2-month-old restaurant on East 61st Street, simply disappeared during the lunch hour.
And it was on a 48-by-38-inch canvas. The painting, showing two women kissing, was removed from its plywood base, probably with a razor blade, Ensrud speculated Thursday. Actually his specialty is wine: He does the illustrations for the Sherry-Lehmann catalog.
``The stolen work was the smallest of five paintings in the men's room,'' said Ensrud, who has painted 15 other works for the restaurant. ``It must have taken two people at least five minutes to cut it down, and I don't understand how they did it without being seen,'' he said.
To leave the restaurant, they had to carry it down a flight of stairs and out through the dining room.
On Thursday, Ensrud returned to the restaurant for lunch, and on the bare plywood, he wrote: ``The painting on this wall was stolen on June 19 by a most passionate thief. Next time leave your name and number. Apologies while a new painting is created.''
``If someone desires my work that much,'' he said, ``I suppose I'm flattered.''
&UR; c.1996 N.Y. Times News Service &LR; &QC;
Dr. Ismar Schorsch, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, has received honorary doctorates in the past; three of them, in fact. But the one he is to receive June 28 will be far more than a personal honor, he said the other day.
Schorsch's honorary degree will be bestowed by the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow on the day after 17 scholars and archivists graduate with degrees in Jewish history, culture and language, thanks to the seminary in New York.
``Six years ago, we asked Yuri Afanasyev, the president of the university, if he would like us to develop a program in Jewish studies there,'' Schorsch said.
``He said that there were dozens and dozens of religious groups in the former Soviet Union, but no one studied them. The study of religion in any systematic fashion was taboo, and he told us, `You can't study the history of religion without studying the history of Judaism.'
``We created a program of Jewish studies at the university, and today we have over 50 students majoring in Jewish studies, one-fourth of them not Jewish,'' he said.
Eleven of the 17 graduates will pursue doctoral degrees in the field, several of them in the United States.
About the university's decision to grant him a degree, Schorsch said: ``This is more than a personal recognition of what I have done. It is a brave public statement at a time of uncertainty and a revival of anti-Semitic rhetoric.''
After residents had initially voted in favor of a plan to turn Techwood into a mixed-income development, they rejected the same proposal when Phillips arrived.
The residents also held their own planning meetings, sometimes raucous affairs punctuated by rambling speeches and shouted threats. Little was accomplished at some meetings, and there were residents who showed up visibly drunk or high when they bothered to show up at all.
Most were merely intoxicated by the notion of empowerment, but they were woefully unprepared for the responsibilities it demanded of them. ``If I did anything wrong it was in bending too far in trying to accommodate empowerment,'' said Fortson, the former AHA chairwoman. ``In fact, it was public property and it's a privilege to live there, not a right. It was our right to say we are going to revitalize Techwood. I should have told them we want to listen to you out of respect, but you're not in charge.''
In 1994 Glover, an Atlanta lawyer, was named AHA director. By then, none of the original players was still involved with Techwood. The final redevelopment plan, however, had come full circle and is similar in some respects to the mixed-income community proposal drafted years earlier.
At least 60 percent of the 900 newly built apartments at Techwood and Clark Howell will be subsidized and offered at ``affordable'' rates, with some reserved for tenants who qualify for public housing. The remaining units will be leased at market rates. Apartments will have air conditioning, carpeting and dishwashers, with rents ranging from $500 to $900.
Each block will have gated entrances with private parking, street lights and new sidewalks. A new YMCA, library and magnet school are also being built nearby.
The development will be privately managed by the Integral Group and McCormack Baron & Associates, a St. Louis-based developer. The housing authority will lease the land to the joint venture for 55 years. After that, the redevelopment will revert to the housing authority.
The residential portion of the new ``Village at Techwood'' will cost about $64 million in federal housing grants, private mortgages and equity when it's completed. That it won't be finished until 1998 &MD; at least two years after the Games &MD; doesn't bother Glover.
``We determined it was worth the extra time to build a long-term community as opposed to getting something done within an artificial time frame,'' Glover said. ``Has Techwood turned the corner? Absolutely.''
Techwood's challenges are far from over. Chief among them is the task of attracting more upscale tenants to a community that has yet to shrug off its public housing stigma.
And although rents at Techwood will be at or below market rates, the community will be competing against scores of swanky new apartments built in the months leading up to the Games.
But with the Olympic monkey off Techwood's back, Crowder-Jordan said she is even more determined.
Her voice is a raspy drawl worn to a whisper by years of exhorting her neighbors to hang tough. But she's not about to give up.
``Whatever has happened, happened,'' Crowder-Jordan said. ``It was a blessing that the Olympics came to Techwood. But if this had all happened before the Olympics, the high would have worn off. Now we have a mission.''
For the quickest, best and most complete 1996 Olympic information, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Olympic Web site is www.atlantagames.com. .
SCHOTT VICTIMIZED BY MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, THEY SAY
Believe it or not, Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott is being victimized by Major League Baseball fascists.
``Schott Being Victimized by MLB fascists'' is the title of a ``thread'' of conversation in the Internet. It's found in the Usenet newsgroups rec.sport.baseball and alt.sports.baseball.cinci-reds, two of the thousands of forums that draw computer users into cyberspace's information flow.
Many people don't believe the Cincinnati businesswoman, recently suspended from ownership powers by other team owners, is being victimized at all. Mrs. Schott expressed opinions favorable to Adolf Hitler, the leader who restored Germany but also the Nazi dictator and father of death camps that slew millions.
Usenet gives all opinions equal chance to be seen, something like a long-running talk radio show with the opinions not going away with the next caller.
``Most people can be expelled from their professions if they were to make such statements publicly in such a way that intense negative publicity resulted to their business or employer, and don't think they can't,'' posted a baseball fan in a foreign land.
``You're not a lawyer, so stop playing one on Usenet. Especially since you're not even in the right country,'' retorted a defender of the American pasttime.
``Uh, who's been expelled from a profession here?''
``Marge Schott. From operating a professional baseball team, the collective ownership (of that team) of which gave her that authority.''
``Oh, I stand corrected. She can review budgets. Big whoop.''
Attributing quotes to individual users is often difficult with Usenet. Log-on names are like citizen's band radio handles. Usenet postings often include quotations from other people's earlier ones. Not all Usenet access programs separate quoted material from a poster's added, original thoughts. Some contributors lose track of who said what.
But it's the thought that counts, and Usenet contributors who spend thousands on their computer systems generally tend not to waste the money on babbling. They are fairly cogent debaters, whatever side they choose.
The debate on Schott continues:
``She wasn't supporting Hitler. She may have been lacking the proper historical facts, but she didn't appear to me to support Hitler in any way,'' one fan said.
``Except that, between `Hitler was good at first' and `I don't see the swastika as a symbol of evil' and the fact that both of those remarks were gratuitous and unnecessary to explain her ownership of (a Nazi) armband, she was going to great lengths to do what?''
``The Swastika has been around for thousands of years.''
``Not on armbands.''
``Of course, a good interviewer would have sought further clarification of those points ...''
``MLB suspended her in a spineless reaction to their fear of the media's ability to influence the population, which includes their cash cows (us).''
(A common point in the debate is that the media are at fault for the whole flap. They write down and publish Schott's offhand remarks, failing to filter important thoughts of a team owner from ill-considered remarks of a misguided old lady. You make the call.)
``Marge Schott is ... a cheap and vindictive old biddy who tries to get away with things because she is coming off as the Grandmotherly type. ... She is bad for the game, bad for the team, and bad for business.''
``On a slightly related note, is anyone else under the impression that if Montreal, Minnesota or Kansas City had chosen to cancel score updates, everyone would be saying that it was an example of how hard it is to run a team in a small market, but when Schott did it, she's just cheap.''
``Did you hear that Schott was set to petition the league to move the Reds to the AL because she had heard that they have a DH rule? She thought it would be great to have a ... Designated Hitler.''
``She ... leaves the hero of the '90 World Series lying in a hospital bed with a bruised kidney and won't fly Eric Davis home.''
``I also thought this was bad form on Marge's part.''
``She sends re-treaded flowers to John McSherry's funeral.''
``Get your facts straight. The allegation was that she sent flowers that she had received on opening day to the umpires' dressing room because she didn't want to just toss them out.''
``She decides Dave Parker's new contract via coin-flip.''
``Again, get your facts straight. It was Kal Daniels. And I actually thought that this was a cool move on Marge's part. They couldn't agree on a contract, so Marge stepped in and got Kal signed. I wish more owners would work that way.''
``She snips a piece of dog-fur for each of her players as good luck charms.''
``Weird, yes. But what's your point?''
``Personally, I think she's a bigoted, biased, crusty witch, and that's what this really boring game needs.''
``Hey Reds Fans! Enough Marge Schott talk. How about Eric Davis? Another game winning HR Tuesday night in the tenth. Looks like we finally are getting a regular starting lineup. Willie Greene is starting to hit the ball. Taubensee on a hitting streak. But oh that pitching. It's going to be a roller coaster season. Just hope we can stay close for another few weeks. With everyone getting healthy again, maybe we can just score more runs than the other teams. Ha-Ha! Go Reds.''
(Eds.: Pls change the (at) to the proper symbol in this pgf.)
Computer users can read and contribute to Usenet groups via local Internet service providers. Charles Stough is an editor for the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News. His e-mail address is copyboy(at)dma.org.
The real question is whether Atlanta sold its Southern soul to get where it is, or whether it had one in the first place. Forget Tara. Atlanta is what you would have if Detroit got its act together.
The Atlanta that is about to become the most watched city in the world, as 1.4 million athletes, spectators and journalists descend on it for the 1996 Olympic Games, is a place that has invented itself in a stunning combination of civic determination and public relations hype.
Atlantans see the Olympics much less as a chance to make money, as Los Angeles did in 1984, than as a sign from the rest of the world that their city has been accepted into the fraternity of big-time urbs.
``How did we get the Olympics? Confidence and salesmanship,'' says Joel Babbit, an advertising agency head who once served as the city's chief of marketing &MD; a title that in itself says something about Atlanta's priorities &MD; under Mayor Maynard H. Jackson.
``We have always marketed this city like a product. Atlanta's business is self-promotion. We have always sold first, then kept the promises afterward,'' Babbit says.
Truly great cities possess not only ambition and money but also a kind of energy that has nothing whatsoever to do with business. Every great city has a sense of a physical presence that is very much its own which joins with its cultural ambitions to make the place sizzle.
The greatest cities in the world have the ability to create culture and not just consume it. If that makes daily life a little more difficult, well, the success of these cities is based on the belief that the trade-off is worth it.
For all its success, Atlanta is still firmly a great place to do business rather than a great city of the world.
Atlanta sprawls, and its downtown, for all its gleaming skyscrapers, seems less of an urban nexus than a kind of weak center surrounded by ring upon ring of suburban development.
True, downtown has the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, organized around King's tomb and nearby birthplace, and CNN Center, the Cable News Network's headquarters.
But the place that really seems to dazzle the tourists is World of Coca-Cola, a mini theme park in which visitors can spend $4.50 to explore what is really no more than a three-story commercial for Atlanta's richest corporate citizen: not exactly high culture.
The next decade will tell whether Atlanta, having successfully elbowed its way into the company of great marketplaces, can make it all the way into the club of great cities.
It's hard not to think of the city as organized for convention-goers as much as for international travelers, as a business center whose best product is ease &MD; of access, of operation of living.
Nothing to laugh at, particularly given the quality of life in most American cities. But those qualities don't make a place into a great city, however well it sells itself.
Modern Atlanta has been shaped by corporate power since the 1920s, when Robert Woodruff of Coca-Cola first put together the coalition of businessmen and politicians that has governed the city ever since.
Woodruff believed that a corporate agenda and a civic agenda were much the same thing.
It's a belief that Mayors like William B. Hartsfield, Ivan Allen Jr., Maynard H. Jackson and Andrew Young, each a powerful personality in his own right, have deferred to.
Middle-class Atlantans worship at different churches, but the Chamber of Commerce is sacred to all. This attitude has worked wonders in selling the city as a kind of middle-class dream, a place where the good life can be lived by anyone, white or black, who makes a decent living.
Downtown Atlanta, though it struggles for dominance with the growing clusters of office towers outside of town, has a stunning skyline, its pointy-topped skyscrapers as gleaming a sign of '80s prosperity as those of any city in the country.
Most of it is second-rate post-modernism, to be sure, although there are a handful of first-class buildings, such as Philip Johnson and John Burgee's IBM Building.
But it is the work of John Portman, the architect and developer whose Hyatt Regency Atlanta Hotel downtown was completed in 1967, that made Atlanta architecture &MD; and Portman &MD; famous around the world.
The Hyatt revolutionized hotel construction with its atrium and glass elevators. Its success inspired Portman to go on to build Peachtree Center, a multitower grouping that brought tremendous activity to downtown, but all of it, unfortunately, indoors and off the city streets.
Portman saw his mission as making the city safe and palatable for the middle class, and he did so almost too well, for he filled Atlanta with buildings that brought a kind of suburban mall mentality to the center of downtown.
Atlanta is a city in which the suburban sensibility predominates, a city in which making daily life feel smooth is generally a first priority, and where people are most comfortable sticking with their own.
Atlanta strives to provide modest doses of visual stimulation, cultural activity and urban energy but is careful not to let things get out of hand, as if it feared that too much culture and energy could turn the place into New York or Los Angeles, something few Atlantans could abide: these cities are harsh, Something Atlanta never wants to be.
Historically, Atlanta never did have much to sell, other than itself. It didn't even have a normal reason for being, since it started not as a trading settlement or a harbor or a factory town but as the end point of the Western and Atlantic Railroad's new lines in 1837. (The city's original name was Terminus.)
Atlanta grew mighty as a transportation hub, a banking center and the headquarters of the corporation that grew up around the city's most potent invention, Coca-Cola, first served in an Atlanta drugstore in 1886.
Yet today the city is at least as well known for being the headquarters of CNN. Since its founding in 1980, CNN has beamed the name Atlanta 24 hours a day onto television screens around the world, proving that a media center can be wherever someone &MD; in this case Ted Turner &MD; declares it to be.
Atlantans are fond of comparing their city with Birmingham, Ala., just 135 miles west, and the comparison tells much.
As late as World War II, the cities were roughly equal in size and economic strength.
While Birmingham protected its insularity, Atlanta was trying to build the airport that eventually became the world's second-busiest and would turn the city into a transportation hub with few equals in the world.
And while Birmingham was putting all of its resources into a violent fight against integration, Atlanta was putting together a coalition of business and civil rights leaders to oversee peaceful desegregation of its public accommodations.
In Atlanta, appearances have always counted for more than ideology &MD; which is why, for much of the city's business community, integration was less a moral issue than one of sheer pragmatism.
Boycotts, riots and demonstrations meant lost business, cost money and made the city look ridiculous. Atlantans knew in the 1960s what the rest of the nation thought of places like Selma, Ala., and Birmingham. Even those with a private preference for segregation bit their tongues rather than see their city held up to national ridicule.
The city's commitment to using business as a vehicle for social progress has made it something of a national showcase for affirmative action , an effort that began in the mid-'70s, when Mayor Jackson insisted that contractors building Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport take on minority partners.
The Olympic procurement contracts, worth $387 million, have been viewed as Atlanta's biggest affirmative-action opportunity of all: At the insistence of city leaders, 35 percent of the construction contracts have gone to minority companies, which have helped design and build virtually every Olympic structure.
And yet, while its political and commercial worlds have been gradually integrated over the last generation, Atlanta remains almost entirely segregated socially.
Its neighborhoods are almost all either black or white. Blacks meet whites at large public functions but only rarely in smaller, more intimate settings.
Neighborhoods such as the Cascades, a tree-filled cluster of grandiose mock-Georgian villas and French Provincial chateaus on the South Side, are occupied almost entirely by prosperous blacks.
While their haute-suburban luxe stands as a reminder of the economic opportunities Atlanta has afforded African-Americans, these neighborhoods underline the fact that Atlanta, for all its vaunted racial progress, remains a bastion of segregation.
Segregation has always been the rule in Atlanta. True, the city points with well-deserved pride at the size and strength of its black middle class, buttressed by a strong economy and by Atlanta's position as the historical center of black higher education.
Yet white Atlantans historically were so determined to separate themselves from their black neighbors that most of the long north-south streets running through the city were given different names as they crossed the border from black to white areas.
Interstate 85, the main north-south route, was laid out to take a wide loop around the east side of downtown, a circuitous route that effectively separated the business district from the black neighborhood to the east.
There were no black policemen in Atlanta until 1947, and even then, the first cadre of black officers were required to restrict their patrols to black neighborhoods and to change in the basement of the YMCA so as not to integrate the locker room of Police Headquarters. (The city's current Police Chief, Beverly Harvard, is a black woman.)
And blacks were no more welcome at public events in Atlanta than elsewhere in the South.
As late as 1964, when Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize, the city was in a tizzy over a proposal that Atlanta pay him tribute at an interracial dinner in one of the city's major hotel.
It was only after Robert Woodruff, the longtime chairman of Coca-Cola and the dean of the city's business community, sent word of his approval that tickets for the event began to sell.
Those days are long gone. Yet the Olympics, for all the success of affirmative action, have not brought Atlanta to an era of complete racial good will.
Most events will be concentrated downtown, which ought to be a good antidote, symbolically at least, to the city's increasing sprawl, but the downtown focus has caused new tensions with the city's poorer residents.
While Olympic planning has brought cosmetic improvements to some of the residential neighborhoods, most of the improvements have been directed toward soothing the eyes of visitors &MD; making sure, for example, that as tourists walk from stops on Marta, the city's transit system, to the Olympic gyms and stadiums, they will see trees, new street lighting, small parks and elegantly paved sidewalks instead of decrepit streets and rubble-strewn vacant lots.
To some critics, this amounts to little more than an attempt to hide the city's poverty from public view during the Olympic festivities.
Empty the Shelters, a local advocacy group for the homeless, has claimed that 1,676 families have been displaced from public housing around the city to make way for the Olympics.
Where have the displaced residents gone? Not to other housing in downtown Atlanta. While there has been much talk for years about building new housing downtown, relatively little of it has actually gone ahead, even with the Olympic boost.
The 2,000 units in the Olympic Village, which have been built to house Olympic athletes, will become dorm space for Georgia State University after the Games, not housing for Atlanta residents.
People who can afford it, both white and black, have increasingly fled to the suburbs, pushing the borders of the booming Atlanta metropolitan region farther out, and separating themselves from the city's old downtown and from any sense of responsibility for its future.
The city's ``urban fabric,'' such as it is, consists increasingly of new office buildings, shopping malls and hotels out on the interstate, miles from the city center.
The problem of conflict between Atlanta and its surroundings is getting worse, not better: When the Georgia-Pacific Corporation, one of the first major corporations to ride the Atlanta boom, relocated its headquarters from Portland, Ore., in 1982, it built a huge granite skyscraper near Five Points, the historic center of Atlanta's downtown.
But the biggest corporate move of the last few years was made by the United Parcel Service, which told the world it was giving up Greenwich. Conn., for Atlanta but actually set up shop on a huge, wooded campus 12 miles away in Perimeter Center.
For all its fabled success, the city is now looking more and more like the hole in the center of a doughnut, facing the same battles with its surroundings that embitter other large metropolitan areas.
That's much more than an issue of black vs. white, though, since as more and more blacks have achieved middle-class prosperity, they have chosen, like whites, to slip across the border.
Living in the Cascades in the far southwest corner of town may be a shining example of black success, but huge numbers of Atlanta's prosperous blacks now live beyond the city limits altogether and have become a part of the suburban constituency.
The disappearance of the center of the city will be the issue as Atlanta faces its future after the Olympics. There is now a proposal to build a second ring road, even farther out than I-285, the beltway that Atlantans call the perimeter but that increasingly feels like the center.
``If that road gets built, Atlanta will sprawl all the way to Chattanooga in one direction and the Atlantic Ocean in the other,'' says Michael Lomax, a former chairman of the Fulton County board of commissioners whose hopes of becoming Mayor were dashed by Jackson's decision to attempt a return to office in 1989.
``The region is pushing another perimeter road, which will make this place more like Southern California. Will we be willing to invest in more mass transit so we can be a well-planned city around a central core? Unlikely,'' Lomax says.
Lomax is black and hard-edged. Leon Eplan, who as Mayor Jackson's budget and planning commissioner oversaw much of the city's planning in the 1970s and returned to office as the city readied itself for the Olympics, is white, older and more connected to the city's old-style mentality.
In his case, that translates into the belief that Atlanta can still turn itself, physically at least, into a viable urban center and moreover, that it is on the verge of doing so.
His vision of urban greatness is not an Atlanta built on the model of Los Angeles but a cosmopolitan city, almost European in its character.
Trish Deb, a spokeswoman for Empty the Shelters, says: ``The problem with Atlanta is that the corporate agenda has replaced a civic agenda. Atlanta has turned over its power to a coalition of corporations.''
Deb misses the fact that this is how business has always been done here: Indeed, it was Robert Woodruff's notion that a corporation's goal was to convince the city that its interests were the city's own.
But can business leaders them selves make a world-class city?
They have never done so anywhere else &MD; it takes the money and ambition of business people, combined with the vitality (and often the contrariness) of a potent cultural community.
This is still in every way a community driven by business, not by culture: a city still mainly attuned to bringing the good life to suburban middle managers and convention-goers.
Livability is not to be sneezed at, but urban greatness often coexists more comfortably with friction.
Atlanta's success at making life smooth for the middle class may, paradoxically, be something that holds it back from the top tier of cities, rather than pushes it forward.
The problem of Atlanta may not be that it is too difficult but that it is too easy.
(Paul Goldberger is the chief cultural correspondent for The New York Times.)
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Brussels, June 28 (Bloomberg) -- The European Commission said it cleared an alliance between Banque Nationale de Paris SA and Dresdner Bank AG of antitrust concerns, allowing the banks to sell each others' services.
The European Union executive agency, which is responsible for competition policy in the 15-nation EU, said it forced the banks to modify the alliance to remove a clause giving one bank the right to stop the other from forging new alliances.
The commission also limited its clearance to 10 years.
``The commission judges that the development of the (EU) single market demands that banks should be able to use all possibilities to penetrate new markets,'' the EU executive agency said in a statement.
The two banks have progressively strengthened ties. Apart from selling each others' services, the alliance also permits them to expand internationally together and press ahead with plans to jointly develop electronic banking services.
``There are no further obstacles to a deepening of this partnership,'' Dresdner Bank said in a statement after it and BNP accepted the commission's terms for the alliance.
BNP spokeswoman Marie-Dominique Sage said the commission's approval will enable the two banks to expand the scope of their cooperation.
Shares in both banks rose after the announcement. Shares in BNP, Europe's seventh biggest bank, rose 1.8 francs to close at 180.7 on the Paris stock market. Dresdner, the 12th biggest, rose 9 pfennigs to 38.2 marks in Frankfurt.
The two banks yesterday announced the purchase of a Chilean brokerage that was 55 percent owned by Credit Lyonnais SA, a French bank.
The court dealt only obliquely with the further question of whether, in the exercise of its original habeas corpus jurisdiction, the court itself was bound by the restrictive standards that the new law applies to eligibility to file a second habeas corpus petition.
For example, under the law the inmate must be prepared to show by ``clear and convincing evidence'' that he would have been found not guilty if not for a constitutional error in his trial.
``Whether or not we are bound by these restrictions, they certainly inform our consideration of original habeas petitions,'' the chief justice said. He noted that the court's current rules already limit these petitions to ``exceptional circumstances.'' It was clear from the opinion that the court wants to avoid having to give substantive review to every death-row habeas petition it receives.
In decisions over the last several years, the court itself has set so many limits on multiple habeas-corpus petitions that the lower courts have granted very few of them, so as a practical matter this avenue of relief for state-court inmates was already essentially reserved for unusual cases with convincing evidence of innocence.
It was evident that the court did not consider that the inmate in the case Friday, Ellis Wayne Felker, possessed such evidence; any indication of how the court plans to handle such cases will come in future decisions.
PHOENIX &MD; A judge Wednesday chastised federal prosecutors and agencies investigating the Viper Militia, saying they are attempting to try their case in the news media.
At a hearing in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, Judge Earl Carroll said the government's news conferences, interviews, press releases and document filings have violated local federal court rules ensuring fair trials.
And such action will stop, he said.
``If it doesn't stop, there will be appearances with respect to sanctions,'' he promised.
Carroll's comments were made in response to a formal request for a gag order made by Martin Liberman, a court-appointed attorney for Ellen Belliveau, one of 12 militia members arrested Monday and accused of plotting to blow up government buildings and a Phoenix television station.
Carroll said a gag order isn't necessary because a federal court rule already restricts public posturing by prosecutors and defendants in criminal cases.
``If the rule isn't complied with, I expect to hear about it,'' he said.
The defendants remain behind bars pending hearings Friday or Monday.
All 12 are charged with conspiracy to unlawfully manufacture, receive and possess destructive devices made with ammonium nitrate.
Eleven also are charged with conspiracy to furnish instruction in the use of explosive devices and other techniques in furtherance of civil disorder, as well as unlawfully possessing fully automatic weapons.
At Wednesday's hearing, Liberman described some of the news-media accounts of the case as ``horrors.'' One of those so-called accounts, he told Carroll, contained FBI statements that the Viper Militia is being investigated in the fatal derailment of an Amtrak train last year near Hyder.
Liberman filed a brief in support of his motion for a gag order, which essentially would have forbidden attorneys from discussing the case with the news media or public.
Publicity surrounding the Viper case already will make it difficult for his client to obtain a fair trial, Liberman said.
His brief noted several instances in which government representatives made public statements and leaked information to reporters. Among those he noted were:
&MD; Statements by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents at press conferences and during radio interviews that ``the people have had enough'' of militia activity and that the materials found during search warrants at the residences of militia members were ``unsafe and created a dangerous condition.'' ATF agents also made statements that they had built a ``solid case'' against the militia members.
&MD; A radio interview in which Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said other militias were distancing themselves from the Viper Militia because it is very extreme and prone to violence.
&MD; Statements to the press that Belliveau had used her position at AT&T to ``obtain telephone records of prospective members to screen for law-enforcement officers.''
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Hannis told Carroll that prosecutors were attempting to follow local procedural rules.
``We will take back what you said and make sure the local rules are complied with,'' Hannis promised.
Although some of the 12 arrested militia members appeared to support Liberman's motion for a gag order, Patrick McGillicuddy, attorney for Walter Sanville, questioned whether it would help his client.
``Liberman's saying that all the media has been doing is bashing my guys, and they're guilty and we can't get a fair trial,'' McGillicuddy said outside court.
``So now Liberman's saying that after the U.S. attorney has had three days to blab like hell about this, take you guys to watch the bombs get blown up, now we've got to shut up. I don't understand that.''
House Speaker Newt Gingrich's (R-Ga.) legal bills have skyrocketed in the last three months, suggesting increased legal activity as a probe by the House ethics committee's outside counsel intensified.
In his latest campaign report, filed at the end of June and covering the period from April 1 through June 19, Gingrich's campaign committee reported a $142,588 charge for legal fees to the law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding, whose partner Jan Baran represents Gingrich.
By comparison, the Speaker's campaign paid $195,300 to Baran's firm in all of 1995. The fees for the first three months of 1996 were $79,040 &MD; slightly more than half of the amount from the second quarter.
From January 1995 through March 1996, a period when the Speaker attracted a multitude of complaints sent to the House ethics committee regarding his book deal, his use of political associates for staff, and his involvement with various tax-exempt organizations, Gingrich averaged $18,222 a month in legal fees.
Gingrich's campaign also took the unusual step of incurring the latest charge as a debt. The committee reported making $10,000 in payments in the period to reduce the debt to $132,588.
Gingrich's campaign, though, has plenty of money in reserve: It reported $1.6 million in cash on hand in its latest filing and thousands of dollars more were pouring in last week, according to FEC ``48 hour'' reports.
Baran told Roll Call that he does not discuss his fee schedule and he also does not comment on the Gingrich matter.
According to Gingrich aide Lauren Sims, ``The legal fees for the period of 4/1/96-6/19/96 reflect the costs incurred in cooperating with the ethics committee and the special counsel.''
The surge in legal expenses appears to be related to the ongoing probe by James Cole, the outside counsel hired in January by the House ethics committee.
Cole subpoenaed documents in late February and May and has begun interviewing persons involved with setting up Gingrich's college course, which was funded by tax-exempt organizations.
Democrats have charged that the course violated tax law because it was a partisan effort by Gingrich to recruit Republican activists.
Questions have also been raised about whether Gingrich's book, ``To Renew America,'' was improperly derived from the college course because the course was funded by tax-deductible donations and tax law prohibits an individual from benefiting from the work of tax-exempt groups.
In a breakfast session with reporters earlier this month, Gingrich disclosed that ``we turned over 47,000 pages of documents'' to the outside counsel.
``The number of documents are a reflection of the cooperation the Speaker and his office have provided to Mr. Cole,'' Sims said. ``The Speaker is not aware of any documents provide to the special counsel by other organizations. He can only respond for himself and his office.''
Gingrich has refused in recent months to publicly release his responses to the latest charges filed against him, a reversal from last year when his lengthy responses on the college course and book deal were released.
He told reporters this month that the charges against him are ``falsehoods.''
&UR; (This article is from Roll Call, an independent, non-partisan newspaper that covers Congress.) &LR; &QC;
-------------------- &QC;
LOS ANGELES &MD; Los Angeles Dodgers executive vice president Fred Claire said Sunday that he has not been contacted by the Florida Marlins about the services of Triple-A Albuquerque manager Phil Regan.
The Marlins fired manager Rene Lachemann on Sunday and Regan, who was a top candidate for the position in 1993, would likely become a candidate again.
His name has also been brought up as a possible successor to Tom Lasorda.
``I would give permission for them to talk to Phil,'' Claire said. ``But during the course of the season, there are other things we would have to weigh.``Phil is involved in our player development. So we have to take that into account.''
Regan's only major-league managerial experience came last season when he led the Baltimore Orioles to a 71-73 record. He was fired after the season and hired by the Dodgers.
Albuquerque is 7-11 in the second half of Pacific Coast League play under Regan.
He is regarded highly in the player-development department by the Dodgers. He was an advance scout from 1987-93 and managed in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic for 10 seasons.
&UR; Candiotti better: &LR; Tom Candiotti's elbow is improving and the knuckleballer doesn't think he'll miss a start after having it re-examined Sunday. He left Saturday's game after being hit by a Mark Thompson pitch.
``The swelling has gone away, but there's still some fluid in there,'' Candiotti said. ``I think I'll be fine.''
&UR; Blowers' streak ends: &LR; The Dodgers said goodbye to a three-game winning streak and Mike Blowers bid adieu to his 19-game hitting streak with an 0-for-4 effort.
He hit .369 during the streak and erased some doubts about his acquisition from the Seattle Mariners.
``I hope my hitting carries into the second half,'' Blowers said. ``I felt pretty good about the streak.''
&UR; Getting rest: &LR; Mike Piazza hopes his return to hometown Philadelphia for the All-Star Game will not only conjure up memories but some much-needed rest.
Piazza decided not to participate in today's home-run derby but will work out. He hopes to play some innings on Tuesday, then use the remaining time to heal a sore foot.
``I don't feel too good right now,'' Piazza said.
&UR; Good riddance: &LR; Eric Karros wasn't hurt when he slipped on the muddy dirt rounding third in Saturday's 3-2 win over Colorado. But he was sure steamed.
Later in the game, he chatted with one of the groundskeepers about the incident. On Sunday, the dirt was completely dry.
``It was hard as a rock,'' Karros said. ``And I took a ground ball off my chest (for an error). I'm sure glad to get away from this field.''
&UR; Base hits: &LR; Despite allowing two unearned runs, former Simi Valley High pitcher Scott Radinsky lowered his ERA to 2.52 in Sunday's performance.... Antonio Osuna is due back Wednesday after missing Sunday's game attending to his sick mother in Sinaloa, Mexico.... The Dodgers and Rockies combined for a .226 average, 30 runs and four homers in this four-game series after compiling a .378 average, 85 runs and 25 homers last week in Denver.
London, July 10 (Bloomberg) -- European bonds rose with rallying Treasuries amid confidence the Federal Reserve won't raise interest rates this month, even though evidence is mounting that the U.S. economy is picking up.
``The response of the European markets to the strong U.S. data has been very encouraging,'' said Peter Oppenheimer, international investment strategist at HSBC James Capel. If the Fed does cut rates, ``you will see a temporary setback, but it won't be very severe.''
Stocks were mixed, as rate-sensitive financial-services companies were boosted by stronger bonds, while exporters suffered as the dollar extended its slide.
Credit Commercial de France soared 5.03 percent, Germany's Dresdner Bank AG jumped 3.82 percent, and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken of Sweden gained 1.87 percent, while Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands fell 1.96 percent and Nestle SA was Switzerland's worst performer, slipping 0.74 percent.
Oppenheimer said rates across Europe could fall further even if U.S. rates rise, though he doesn't expect the German Bundesbank to act at tomorrow's policy meeting. The Bundesbank has repeatedly said a slowdown of M3 money supply growth, its chief gauge of future inflation, is a prerequisite for lower rates.
M3 growth slowed to an annual rate of 10.1 percent in May, but remained outside the Bundesbank's target range of 4 percent to 7 percent for the fifth consecutive month.
``I think there's a good chance they will cut rates again later in the year,'' Oppenheimer said.
German bunds, which set the direction for Europe's debt markets, gained, pushing the yield on the 10-year benchmark bund down 2 basis point to 6.55 percent.
A benign inflation report also supported bunds. German inflation fell to 1.4 percent in June from 1.7 percent in June, the Federal Statistics Office said.
Stronger bonds lifted shares of banks, which typically have large investments in fixed-income securities. Commerzbank AG gained 3.24 percent and Deutsche Bank AG added 1.83 percent.
``The inflation figures have supported the friendly mood,'' said Juergen Schultz, a trader at BfG Bank AG in Frankfurt. ``There's more optimism in the German market now. But the real lift has come from the U.S. yesterday.''
U.S. Treasuries gained 1/2 point in New York, pushing the yield on the 30-year benchmark bond to 7.13 percent. In today's European trading, the yield fell to 7.11 percent, 10 basis points below the 7.21 percent yield reached Monday, the highest level in 14 months.
``Given the Fed's failure to announce any tightening in the last two days, it is reasonable to assume that (Alan) Greenspan is waiting for further information on June economic conditions,'' said Brian Martin, a senior strategist at Barclays Bank Plc, referring to the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
In France, bank shares rose amid optimism government-controlled financial institutions may lose their privileges.
French Banks
Yesterday, France's banking commission said ``the banking system must operate in a legal, regulatory and fiscal environment that's the same for all.'' It's the first the commission has taken sides in the commercial versus state-owned banks conflict.
``We've been waiting for something to trigger a rebound in banking shares, and the Commission's remarks were it,'' said Veronique Gomez, a fund manager at Jean-Pierre Pinatton Gestion, which has funds worth $714 million.
Societe Generale de Paris gained 3.33 percent, Banque Nationale de Paris rose 2.90 percent, and Compagnie Financiere de Paribas added 2.49 percent.
Meanwhile, Credit Local de France, the country's largest lender to local government, and Credit Communal de Belgique, its Belgian counterpart, agreed to merge into Europe's 19th-largest bank.
Credit Local de France gained 3.59 percent. Credit Communal de Belgique is not publicly traded.
The French 10-year benchmark OAT bond's yield fell 2 basis points to 6.52 percent.
Benchmark indexes rose 0.42 percent in Germany, 0.39 percent in Switzerland, 0.36 percent in the U.K., 0.25 percent in France, and 0.06 percent in Italy. They fell 0.87 percent in Sweden, 0.77 percent in Spain, 0.72 percent in Belgium and 0.40 percent in the Netherlands''~ The dollar fell again after U.S. exporters yesterday said their competitiveness in Japan will suffer unless the U.S. government renounces its pursuit of a stronger dollar. It slipped 0.10 percent to 1.5247 deutsche mark, 0.10 percent to 1.7110 guilders and 0.10 percent to 1.2628 Swiss francs.
The dollar also fell 0.34 percent to 110.07 yen, and has declined more than 1 percent since Donald Fites, chairman of the U.S.-Japan Business Council Tuesday said that the dollar's gains against the yen were ``worrisome and may require government action'' since they risked eroding the inroads U.S. exporters have made into the Japanese market.
Fites, who is also chairman of Caterpillar Inc., a U.S. construction equipment maker, said U.S. and Japanese exporters can agree that 100 yen to the dollar is an appropriate level.
As hail-and-farewells go, this one had to rank right up there.
If this was indeed Charles Barkley's final appearance here as a Sun &MD; and The Chuckster himself says the three-cornered transaction that will send him to Houston and bring Dikembe Mutombo here is a ``done deal'' &MD; the setting hardly could have been more fitting nor the exit more stirring.
It's not often a thunderous standing ovation is launched for a player sitting on the bench. In fact, it's not often there are enough people left in the stands for a game of bridge, let alone a thunderous standing ovation, in the last two minutes of a 61-point blowout.
But both phenomena occurred at America West Arena on Wednesday night.
As far as could be determined by the naked eye, every member of the sellout crowd was still on hand late in the fourth quarter, even though the U.S. Olympic team was leading by from here to China.
To be sure, this was partly because it was enjoying the many-splendored skills of the U.S. team. But it also was partly, maybe even mostly, because it wanted to tell The Chuckster a proper goodbye.
With four minutes left it started chanting, ``We Want Charles, We Want Charles.''
And when it didn't get him, it started the farewell ovation for him anyway, whereupon Lenny Wilkens obligingly sent him back in so he could take his final bow here standing up.
Charles said it made him feel ``very special,'' and reciprocated with a standing ovation of his own. Well, he was standing when he saluted Suns' fans as ``the best.''
Would that he had ended the evening on that high note.
But instead, he went on to serve up yet another helping of the inflammatory, self-serving, and often self-contradictory oratorical fire he's been holding the management's feet to these last few weeks.
He talked about how he's been ``disrespected,'' took another swipe at the team's deals (many of which he liked at the time) and the firing of Paul Westphal (which he in no small measure helped cause), and whined that he deserved to be treated much better than he has been.
He did extend an olive branch of sorts. But it turned out to be just another club to beat the management over the head with.
He might forgive all, he allowed magnanimously, ``if they would come to me and admit they were complete idiots.''
Now it is not my intention to rain on The Chuckster's farewell parade. Nor am I here to defend the management.
But blather is blather, and simple fairness demands it be so labeled.
For openers, I would think I'd died and gone to heaven if I could find a newspaper that would disrespect me for the next four years the way the Suns have disrespected Charles Barkley the past four.
Also, I would like to know how a man can complain bitterly about being questioned daily about trade rumors when he himself has been about 90 percent responsible for keeping that pot boiling.
But then, for a guy who claimed he'd been misquoted in his own autobiography, it's probably a piece of cake.
The exact nature of the club's crime against him is hard to get a handle on.
As far as can be determined by wading through his various frothings, it centers on the fact they were ``shopping him around.''
``I know they've been shopping me around for a year,'' he reiterated bitterly Wednesday night. Only the time frame varies in this theme. Sometimes, the time frame is ``months,'' and sometimes it's only ``weeks.''
But in any case, my question is, ``So?''
Is it a crime for a club that obviously needs some retooling to inquire as to what might be out there in return of a veteran star?
Even his designated new teammate, Hakeem Olajuwon, understands that this is a business and that this is what teams do.
I've got a notion that Charles understands it perfectly well, too. But it suits his purposes (and you can be sure he's had some from the start) to ignore it in his determination to leave no stone unthrown at the Suns' management.
If the Suns in any way, shape, or form have said anything disrespectful about Charles publicly &MD; not just recently, but ever &MD; it has escaped my attention.
If they've been guilty of anything with him, it's sparing the rod. And you know what comes of that.
Right. A spoiled child.
Which may explain why so many of Chuck's latter-day posturings look and sound so much like tantrums.
(Joe Gilmartin can be reached at jgilmar910(at)aol.com for e-mail)
GREENCASTLE, IND., April 29 &MD; Ross Perot appeared on stage here at DePauw University on April 29, and managed to defy my every expectation by not sounding entirely deranged.
There is, of course, considerable evidence that Perot is certifiable &MD; or, at the very least, delusional.
So far this year he hasn't offered up anything as over-the-top as his tales in 1992 about how the North Vietnamese had dispatched assassins to rub him out, or about how the Republican Party was plotting to disrupt his daughter's nuptials.
Earlier this year, though, he did tell Dan Balz of The Washington Post that in 1993 one of the two major parties asked him to donate US$1 million for a ``dirty tricks'' offensive against the other party &MD; the sort of hot-eyed claim that, coming in a relatively cool period in the campaign season, provides a hint of the fevers raging inside Perot's buzz-shaven head.
There were other, subtler hints on display that evening, most notable among them Perot's now familiar tendency to behave like one of those talking dolls that randomly blurts out some prerecorded phrase when you pull a string on its neck.
``Here are the facts!'' he exclaimed on four or five occasions, as well as: ``You do the math!''; ``You just fix it!''; ``I rest my case!''; and, natch, ``End of story!''
On the whole, however, Perot did not seem, as Pat Buchanan would probably put it, ``bonkers.'' Instead, he seemed boring.
For nearly an hour he prattled on about his pet issues (the budget deficit, the trade deficit, electoral reform) and rattled off his litany of complaints (that politics is show biz, that politicians are phonies, that ``the special interests'' are running things in Washington).
He brandished a multicolored chart. He reminisced about how much better things were when he was growing up. He even took two unscripted questions from the audience, and answered them without incident.
The fact that all this seemed stale rather than worthy marks a large change from 1992. Back then, even when he was at his loopiest, Perot's tedium won high marks.
With his charts and graphs, he was able, for a time, to convince millions of voters that he was the only one willing to talk with ``total candor'' to voters about what ailed the country. And, to some extent, it was true.
When the political histories of the late 20th century are written, Perot will be recalled as the figure who pushed the budget deficit to the top of the national agenda &MD; forcing Democrats and Republicans to cope with an issue both would have preferred to ignore.
But Perot's very success has led increasingly to his marginalization. True, the deficit still hasn't been dealt with. Yet for most of 1995 the two parties did engage in a substantive debate about balancing the budget.
In fact, they spoke of little else. And they spoke of it at a level of detail that numbed the minds of many voters, not to mention reporters. (Who can forget that wonderful moment last fall when network TV reporters were forced to pretend on the air that they actually understood the difference between OMB and CBO ``baselines''?)
Meanwhile, Perot's own program has become astonishingly vague. The Reform Party's putative platform is, as The Weekly Standard put it recently, ``a pathetic joke, a one-page chart of sentence-fragment `principles' that would embarrass the average student-government candidate in a suburban high school.''
At DePauw, Perot started his spiel by warning us, ``I'm going to give you a lot of facts and figures; don't get discouraged.'' He did, but we did get discouraged, because the facts and figures were typically bogus or misleading.
And they often sounded pretty meaningless when they were followed not by meaty suggestions of how to fix, say, Medicare, but by his trademark recommendation that the Feds bring together a team of gurus to ``re-engineer'' that program and many others.
All of which is to say, in probably more words than were necessary, that Ross Perot is (a) not going to be elected president this year, and (b) is quite likely to have far less effect on the contest between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole than he did on the one between Clinton and George Bush.
But that doesn't mean he won't make an impact. Indeed, in a close race, the 10 to 15 percent of the vote that may stick with Perot could prove decisive.
This unduckable fact &MD; you do the math! &MD; is the reason so many people in Washington are poring over spreadsheets and crosstabs, trying to divine from whose hide those votes will come; and why the real story at DePauw wasn't what the bat-eared billionaire had to say, but who showed up for his speech, and what they made of it. &LR;
&UR; c.1996 HotWired Ventures LLC. All rights reserved.
&UR; (John Heilemann writes ``Impolitic'' for The Netizen, part of HotWired, Wired magazine's World Wide Web site at http://www.netizen.com on the Internet for election coverage) &LR;
&UR; ------------------ &QC;
&UR; (To publish this ``separate-buy'' opinion column it must be purchased (the rate is not prohibitive) from New York Times Syndicate sales representative CONNIE WHITE in Kansas City at 1-800-444-0267 or 816-822-8448, or fax her at 816-822-1444.) &LR;
Pandro S. Berman, the Hollywood producer whose films brought fame, fortune or both to Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and other stars and skilled entertainment to American filmgoers from the Depression Era through the 1960s, died on Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 91.
The best-known of the scores of movies that he produced in his four-decade career &MD; from 1931 to 1970 &MD; include ``The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' (1939), ``The Blackboard Jungle'' (1955) and ``Butterfield 8'' (1960).
Among the stars who appeared in his movies were, besides Astaire and Rogers, Elizabeth Taylor, who won an Academy Award for ``Butterfield 8''; Bette Davis, who was lofted to stardom in ``Of Human Bondage'' (1934), and Katharine Hepburn, who received an Academy Award for ``Morning Glory'' (1933).
Berman, whose father, Harry M. Berman, was Universal's general manager, was admired for producing films that were entertaining and technically masterful. By one count he produced more than 100 films. His work was done mostly for RKO, where he was seen as a boy wonder, and for MGM.
Pandro Berman was presented with the highest honor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, at the 1977 Academy Awards ceremony.
In 1992 he received the Motion Picture Producers Guild of America's highest honor, the David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award for Motion Pictures.
Berman's Astaire-Rogers musicals included favorites like ``The Gay Divorcee,'' ``Top Hat'' and ``Shall We Dance.''
In a 1988 television documentary, ``Hollywood: The Golden Years,'' Berman recalled that it was difficult to get the two stars to ``make picture after picture,'' and that Irving Berlin, whose films included ``Top Hat,'' was ``tough on money.''
Earlier, Astaire said, ``Berman will say we fought, we didn't.''
In the 1940s, the story goes, Berman prepared for the first of his several Elizabeth Taylor films, ``National Velvet'' (1944), by telling the 12-year-old Miss Taylor that she was too small.
And so, it is said, she began eating steak and roller-skating regularly, and within four months, she was 3 inches taller.
Berman was born in Pittsburgh. His mother was the former Julie Epstein. He attend public schools and, from 1923 to 1928, he worked in Hollywood as an assistant film cutter and an assistant to Tod Browning and other directors.
Berman was with RKO Studios from 1928 to 1940, rising to be a producer in 1930 and head of production in 1937. Later he recalled about his time there: ``In the 17 years I was there, we had at least 17 owners. And none of the owners ever agreed on anything.'' He also remembered RKO as having ``more desire than brains.''
In a 1988 book by Neal Gabler, Berman recalled that after he had produced a series of Astaire-Rogers musicals, he had just signed a new five-year contract with RKO when Louis B. Mayer of MGM &MD; then the ``Tiffany'' of Hollywood studios &MD; called and said, ``I want you to work for me.''
To which Berman said, ``Unfortunately I just made a five-year deal and I'm tied up.'' Mayer replied, ``When your deal is up, I want you to come work for me.'' And so it was.
Berman was a producer with MGM Studios from 1940 to 1967 and turned out some of MGM's most highly regarded films. From 1967 to 1970 he was at 20th Century Fox.
His movies also included ``Gunga Din,'' with Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and the durable Marx Brothers film ``Room Service,'' in addition to ``The Hunchback of Notre Dame,'' which starred Charles Laughton, in the title role, and Maureen O'Hara.
That production had its special technical problems. A 1988 biography of Laughton, by Simon Callow, reported that the makeup Laughton wore in that role took ``months to evolve'' under Laughton's ``impatient direction,'' and that the actor insisted that the artificial hump he wore during the filming be painfully heavy.
Berman's many later films include ``The Picture of Dorian Gray'' (1945), which won an Academy Award for its cinematography; ``The Three Musketeers'' (1948), starring Gene Kelly, as well as ``The Blackboard Jungle,'' which starred Sidney Poitier and Glenn Ford.
In 1970, the year he retired, he produced the drama ``Move,'' with Elliott Gould and Paula Prentiss.
Berman married Kathryn Hereford in 1960, and she died in 1993.
He is survived by three children from his other marriage, to his wife Viola &MD; which ended in divorce; Susan Moshay, Cynthia Schaffel and Michael Berman, all of Beverly Hills, and several grandchildren.
San Francisco, July 15 (Bloomberg) -- Hambrecht & Quist Inc., a San Francisco investment bank that specializes in bringing technology companies public, put its own plans for an initial public offering on hold, four people at the firm said.
H&Q delayed its expected IPO as the almost six-year-old rally in U.S. stocks stalled and demand for shares of newly public companies faltered.
The investment bank had planned to raise as much as $80 million. Securities firms typically go public in robust markets.
Dan Case, H&Q's chief executive, declined to comment. One person at the firm said H&Q never set a marketing schedule for the IPO.
Wired Ventures Inc., publisher of Wired magazine, also said it will temporarily delay its initial public offering.
``We will temporarily stand aside because of choppy market conditions, particularly those affecting the technology sector,'' said Jeff Zilka, a company spokesman.
The Nasdaq Composite Index, filled with such computer-related stocks as Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp., plunged 43.11, or 3.91 percent, to 1060.38 today in its biggest one-day drop since November 1991. The index is down 15 percent since its high of 1254.12 on June 6.
London, July 17 (Bloomberg) -- Iceland Group Plc shares fell to a record low after the U.K. frozen-food retailer said first-half pretax profit will be about 10 percent lower than a year earlier because of tighter profit margins and sluggish sales.
Shares in Iceland fell as much as 18.3 percent, or 26 pence, to 116 pence. The shares, which have been as high as 196 pence in the past year, closed down 24 pence at 118p.
The company said same-store sales for the half would be ``only marginally'' better than in 1995 and that profit margins were reduced because of the launch of a new competitive-pricing initiative. Together, these are expected to have lowered profits 10 percent from 33.6 million pounds ($51.7 million) in the first half of 1995.
``The extent of the profits warning is unexpected, but not the general direction,'' said Bill Myers, an analyst at Williams de Broe. ``Sales have slowed generally in the last couple of years and now there's margin pressure on top.''
Iceland said sales and profit will be further affected in the second half by the temporary closure of about 150 stores for refurbishment. Although the closures had an impact on the first half, the effect in the second half will be greater, said Iceland.
In addition, the ``Pricewatch'' initiative, which began in May, will eat into second-half profit more than in the first half because it will be in effect for the full six months of the period.
``In consequence it is likely that profits for the full year will be below those for 1995,'' the company said.
Iceland posted a pretax profit of 72.6 million pounds in 1995 and analysts had been forecasting profit for 1996 to be slightly higher at about 73.5 million pounds. Analysts said they are reducing full-year forecasts by as much as 15 percent.
``The bigger guys are getting bigger and tougher and the small guys are getting squeezed,'' said Myers. ``It's not an industry where it's good to be small.''
Henry Blyth, an analyst at Gilbert Eliott & Co., said that while Iceland is making changes to both its management and pricing policy, it's ``doing that in a very hostile environment.''
Iceland said the business continues to generate cash and that it plans to maintain its dividend policy. It has increased dividends steadily over the past eight years.
Analysts have lowered their forecasts for Iceland's full-year dividend yet still expect it to be about 10 percent higher than for 1995. Last year, the company increased its dividend 25 percent to 5.25 pence per share.
Iceland is expected to announce its first-half earnings Sept. 3.
Tokyo, July 18 (Bloomberg) -- Japan's merchandise trade surplus shrank 25.5 percent in June from the same month a year ago to 737.11 billion yen ($6.76 billion), the Finance Ministry said.
That's the 19th straight monthly decline.
Economists forecast the surplus would be 514 billion yen, according to a survey by Bloomberg Business News. Projections ranged from 420 billion yen to 600 billion yen.
Japan's trade surplus with the U.S. in June fell 17.9 percent to 296.11 billion yen, the ministry said.
Global imports to Japan rose 20.8 percent to 2.928 trillion yen, while exports increased 7.4 percent to 3.665 trillion yen, the ministry said.
The following is a breakdown of the figures released. June Change on June '95 (bln yen) Year (%) (bln yen) Merchandise trade surplus 737.11 -25.5 989.57 Exports 3665.663 7.4 3413.588 Imports 2928.55 20.8 2424.018 Surplus with U.S. 296.11 -17.9 Surplus with E.U. 96.37 -44.3 Surplus with Asia 578.20 - 9.9 June Change on May (bln yen) Month (%) (bln yen) Seasonally adjusted surplus 693.34 35.2 512.75 Seasonally adjusted exports 3657.277 - 4.6 3835.344 Seasonally adjusted imports 2963.936 -10.8 3322.599
Seasonally adjusted numbers are meant to even out seasonal variations so that changes from month to month can be discerned.
Philadelphia, July 18 (Bloomberg) -- Manufacturers in the mid-Atlantic region said business picked up this month, according to a report by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank.
The Philadelphia Fed said its general economic index, compiled from a survey of 150 area manufacturers, rose to 38.6 for July from 25.6 in June.
Inflation, meantime, remained subdued, the report suggests, with the prices paid index fall to to 12.8 from 15.5.
``Signs of improvement ... again are evident'' for manufacturers in the third Federal Reserve district, which covers eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and southern New Jersey, the Fed said. ``Indexes for both current general activity and current shipments posted healthy increases this month, and the index for current new orders held steady at relatively high levels,'' it said.
In mid-morning trading, the benchmark 30-year bond was little changed, rising 5/32 and pushing its yield down to 7.01 percent, as traders awaited Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's semi-annual presentation to lawmakers on the state of the economy. Fed policymakers refrained from raising the target federal funds rate for overnight bank loans at their last meeting early this month.
Since the end of the two-day meeting, upbeat economic reports have suggested the economy is humming along at a faster-than-expected clip. Investors and economists will look for indications on whether current growth levels warrant Fed action.
Nationwide, manufacturing is one area of the economy that has fared better than expected this spring. Down the road, many economists still foresee ``a slackening, though by no means a massive deceleration'' in manufacturing activity, Kathleen Stephansen, an economist at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, said before today's report.
Economists and -- judging by their decision to leave interest rates unchanged -- Fed policymakers believe Americans, burdened by debt and rising borrowing costs, will swear off their free-spending ways sometime this summer.
Consumer spending fuels two-thirds of U.S. economic activity and, when Americans are less willing to open their pocketbooks, manufacturers and other businesses usually slow the pace of production on expectations of slower sales.
Many analysts use today's index as a bellwether for the National Association of Purchasing Managers' index, compiled from about 300 respondents around the country. The last NAPM report indicated that business at manufacturers improved more than expected in July. The NAPM's next report is due Aug. 1.
While the regional index measuring the prices manufacturers paid for goods declined in June, the index for prices they received, increased to -0.4 from -1.8. That indicator has remained negative for nine months in a row now, suggesting inflation reamains at bay, analysts said.
A full 52.1 percent of the firms polled by the Philadelphia Fed said new orders increased, compared with 20.5 percent that said they decreased. The bank's new orders index was little changed, though, rising to 31.6 from 31.7 this month.
Looking ahead at the next six months, the region's manufacturers said they expect business to continue to improve, though at a slower pace than previously reported. The Fed's index of future economic activity decreased to 34.7 from 37.9 in July.
The indexes measure how many of the manufacturers in the survey reported changes in output or prices. A negative index reading means manufacturers reporting deteriorating business outnumbered those reporting improved business conditions.
PHILADELPHIA &MD; A decision to sell the family-owned Strawbridge & Clothier department store chain to a St. Louis company has workers and shoppers alike worried about changes at the 128-year-old local institution.
Over objections by the company's 82-year-old former chairman, Stockton Strawbridge, members of the Strawbridge and Clothier families voted July 15 to complete the sale of the chain's 13 regional department stores to May Department Stores Co. of St. Louis.
Last year the May company purchased John Wanamaker stores, founded by Philadelphia's other well-known 19th-century retailer, and renamed them Hecht's.
The May company will combine the two merchants and reopen 12 of the 13 Strawbridge & Clothier stores, plus seven others that were part of Wanamaker, on Wednesday. The former Strawbridge & Clothier stores will be called Strawbridge's &MD; the informal name for Strawbridge & Clothier &MD; as will some Hecht's stores. Some Hecht's stores will become Lord & Taylor.
But preserving part of the Strawbridge & Clothier name will not placate a city where tradition is valued strongly.
``It's really sad,'' said Mary Ann Hines, a lifelong area resident who has long shopped at Strawbridge & Clothier's flagship store on Market Street downtown. ``It's the last of the Philadelphia department stores. And it's the end of a whole era of ornate architecture that went along with the great days of retailing.''
Strawbridge & Clothier's well-known brands will be replaced, but other changes, not directly related to shopping, loom larger. For five generations the families who owned the store have been involved in the city's civic life, and so have their employees.
The store has done things like sponsoring employee singing groups that entertained regional audiences and financing the city's first privately supported improvement district on Market Street, the city's retail hub.
The May company has not said what it will preserve among Strawbridge & Clothier's philanthropic efforts and holiday pageants, like a light show that originated at the Wanamaker stores and an exhibit of Charles Dickens' ``Christmas Carol.'' Many shoppers and employees said they would miss the family atmosphere, and many were simply sentimental about local ownership.
Sixteen department stores lined Market Street at its retailing zenith in the 1900s, and city officials built the subway in 1906 with stops at store basements.
Starting in Colonial times, commerce has been concentrated on Market Street, the city's main east-west artery, but the area today is geared toward tourists, with a convention center that attracts out-of-towners to visit, not to shop, said George Thomas, a local historian at the University of Pennsylvania.
On June 15, the last day of shopping before the Strawbridge & Clothiers stores closed for 10 days for the changeover &MD; and the day of the final vote on the sale &MD; visitors at the Market Street store took photographs and looked for keepsakes, taking empty shopping bags or gift boxes with the Strawbridge & Clothier store logo.
(STORY CAN END HERE &MD; OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS)
Innovation and tradition merged in the flagship store, built in the 1930s. The original wooden escalators and pneumatic tubes, used to convey messages or send change to customers, were preserved for shoppers to see long after they had been retired.
A history book published by the company details the brief employment in 1892 of William Claude Dukenfield, who worked as a teen-age runner ferrying change to customers long before he became known worldwide as W.C. Fields.
Despite $1 billion in annual sales, Strawbridge & Clothier never expanded beyond southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. It was unable to match the buying power of national retailers and outlet malls, which offered shoppers greater discounts, or the convenience of catalog shopping.
Before the shareholders voted to sell the stores, Ramune Sileika sat at the first-floor information kiosk. Visitors asked directions to the boardroom where the vote was being held, but the meeting was a formality because the Strawbridge and Clothier families controlled a majority of the shares.
Twelve computers with May Department Stores in orange letters on their screens had already been installed for taking inventory.
``Customers came up to me with tears in their eyes,'' Ms. Sileika said. ``People didn't realize how much of a store family this was until the sale. The human resources people knew everyone by name. Instead of talking to someone here about your schedule, now we'll get a printed schedule from Virginia.''
For some shoppers the last day was business as usual. Paul Clemmons bought a white dress shirt at 70 percent off the regular price.
``It was just a good deal,'' he said.
Houston, July 23 (Bloomberg) -- In an attempt to bolster their playoff chances, the Houston Astros reacquired veteran pitcher Danny Darwin from the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for minor leaguer Rich Loiselle, the team said.
``He (Darwin) played an important role for this organization on the '86 championship team,'' said Astros general manager Gerry Hunsicker. ``We believe he can play a major role in helping us win again this year.''
The Astros are currently two games behind the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Central Division.
In August 1986, the Astros obtained the right-hander from the Milwaukee Brewers and finished the season by winning the National League West Division. Darwin registered a 5-2 record with a 2.32 earned run average over the final six weeks of the season.
This season, the 40-year-old, has started 19 games for the Pirates, collecting a 7-9 record with a 3.02 ERA.
Darwin has compiled a 155-159 overall record with a 3.70 ERA in 16 seasons.
Loiselle, a 24-year-old right-hander, has spent the entire season with the Astros' Triple-A Tucson affiliate collecting a 2-2 record with a 2.43 ERA.
In an unrelated move, the Astros also acquired free agent pitcher Terry Clark after he was released by the Kansas City organization.
Students at the University of New Hampshire are getting an unprecedented opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the space program: Thanks to a $4 million NASA grant, they will get to build, test and operate a scientific satellite to be launched in 1998.
Students at many universities, including UNH, have had opportunities before to work on specific components or instruments for spacecraft such as the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
But this is the first time they have been put in charge of the entire process of producing a satellite from scratch. Two other satellites are now being built at other institutions under the same program.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials hope the program will demonstrate that a satellite can be built at much lower cost this way than through the usual procurement process.
Most satellites launched so far have been ``too expensive to let students get their hands on the hardware,'' said Tom Vestrand, a research associate professor of physics at the university. ``They couldn't afford to risk it.''
With NASA's new project, called the University Space Research Association, he said, ``the idea is to get students involved in projects so they really get hands-on experience intead of just book-learning.''
Levenson added: ``This program can show government and industry that things can be done a lot cheaper than once imagined. This is a new way of doing things.''
The satellite, called CATSAT (for Cooperative Astrophysics and Technology Satellite), will be used to study one of the most enigmatic phenomena in astronomy, called gamma-ray bursts. It will attempt to find out whether these mysterious high-energy flashes come from the sun's immediate neighborhood, the very fringes of the universe, or someplace in between.
David Bartlett, associate director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the university, said, ``This project brings major benefits to both NASA and the university. It provides a first-rate, low-cost science mission that NASA can afford in a time of shrinking budgets, while getting UNH students involved in all aspects of a project.''
David Forrest, the scientist in charge of the project and an associate professor at the university Space Science Center, said that if it had been contracted out in the conventional way, the satellite would probably have cost $20 to $30 million.
``The students are the design engineers,'' Forrest said. ``We're proving that students coming out of this school have the basic skills to do it.''
The satellite, designed to measureX-rays and gamma rays given off by distant astronomical objects, will complement NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, whose observations have only deepened the mystery of gamma ray bursts since it was launched in 1991. One of its scientific instruments was also built at UNH.
The bursts, which occur unpredictably, last anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or more. Some astronomers had believed that they were produced by violent stellar collisions within our own Milky Way galaxy, and that Compton's observations would prove this by showing that most bursts occur in the same region of the sky where we see the galaxy's spiral arms.
Instead, the bursts were found to be randomly spread across the sky. Present theories of their origins range from nearby collisions at the fringes of the solar system to incredibly vast explosions at the edges of the universe. Scientists cannot begin to calculate how much energy is produced in these brief events until they know how far away they are, just as a faint light seen on a dark night could be anything from a small flashlight nearby to a huge beacon miles away.
The satellite, to be built and operated as a collaboration between UNH, Weber State University in Utah and the University of Leicester in England, will be about a yard high and a yard in diameter and weigh 260 pounds. Fifteen students have already been hired to work full time on the project through the summer.
People throughout the nation and the world will be watching, said professor Levenson. ``They'll be asking whether undergraduates and graduate students can really pull this off.''
CHATHAM, Mass. &MD; Back when Bernard Cornwell came over from Britain with his American wife 16 years ago, he couldn't get a green card to work as a television journalist.
So he turned to writing. And that endeavor has so far produced two dozen novels and a 25th he is expecting to have finished in time to get in some sailing before the summer is over.
Cornwell, 52, settled here with his wife, Judy, eight years ago, in a house that &MD; thanks to the success of his series of Napoleonic War novels featuring the British Capt. Richard Sharpe &MD; no longer resembles the small Cape they fell in love with and bought over a weekend.
There is a large open kitchen wing added on one side, then a long narrow wing containing a 48-foot lap pool and connecting to the windowless study &MD; ``a most horrible cellar,'' he describes it &MD; where Cornwell does his writing.
``It is,'' Cornwell quips, ``the house that Sharpe built'' &MD; with help, he could add, from assorted other soldier-heroes, British and American, now including no less a warrior than King Arthur who is the hero of ``The Winter King,'' published last month by St. Martin's Press.
``It's a niche I carved for myself,'' Cornwell said. He knew the historical novels of C.S. Forester, Alexender Kent and Dudley Pope &MD; and, more recently, Patrick O'Brian &MD; with their naval heroes and ``felt there was an equivalent living to be made out of the Army.''
The Sharpe series, chronicling the daring exploits of an infantry captain during the Napoleonic Wars &MD; a series which Cornwell admits borrows heavily from Forester's classic Hornblower novels &MD; is now 13 books long, and has generated three miniseries for British television, one of which was shown in the United States on PBS' ``Masterpiece Theatre.''
The Sharpe series has been interrupted from time to time since the first was written in 1981. In between, there have been the three Starbuck novels set in the American Civil War; ``Redcoat,'' a novel about Valley Forge from the British point-of-view; and four sailing thrillers.
Most recently, there has been the three-part ``Warlord Chronicles,'' which, as the series title suggests, presents a bloodier, more primitive view of King Arthur than that presented by T.H. White's ``Once and Future King.''
But with Arthur out of the way, Cornwell is back to Sharpe, this time with a ``prequel'' to the Napoleonic War books, set in India in 1799.
All of this had its start with two events in Cornwell's life &MD; his coming to America and, somewhat perversely, his family's pacifist background.
Cornwell was working in Belfast as a producer for BBC television news when, one weekend, a scheduled story about economic development fell through. Scouting around for a substitute, he found that the Northern Ireland Tourist Board had a group of American travel agents in town to promote tourism.
``It was the second or third year of `The Troubles' and it seemed a pretty silly thing,'' Cornwell said. ``And when I met the travel agents, I said, `My God, they're dull.' But then the elevator door opened and Judy walked out, and I said to my cameraman, `That's the woman I'm going to marry.'''
Which, in reasonably short order, he did. But there was a problem in that Judy, with school-age children from a previous marriage, couldn't stay in Britain. And that dictated the move to America &MD; where Cornwell couldn't get a green card and turned to writing.
And, he said with a sense of calculation that seems very much at odds with the casual, relaxed air that Cornwell projects, ``If you want to propel yourself into the writing market, you find a gap on the bookshelves.''
The gap that Cornwell found, historical novels whose heroes are soldiers rather than sailors, was probably more pronounced in Britain than in America where the rifleman-as-hero tradition begins with James Fenimore Cooper's ``Deerslayer'' and runs through Kenneth Roberts' ``Rabble in Arms.''
But it was also a curious gap for Cornwell to try to fill because of his upbringing in a family that belonged to a British pacifist sect known as the Peculiar People. They had split off from the Methodists in the 19th century, feared doctors and hated Catholics, and, said Cornwell, ``were not the easiest people to grow up with.
``I think it has everything to do with writing military history,'' said Cornwell. ``Simply because soldiering was forbidden, it became a fascinating thing.''
While there was a grandfather who was imprisoned as a conscientious objectors during World War I, there was also a ``black-sheep uncle'' who had fought in World War II and encouraged an interest in military history. Cornwell himself did a brief stint in the Irish Guards in the last months before Britain abolished compulsory military service.
The pacifist roots may not be completely lost. The next Sharpe, ``Tippoo's Tiger,'' is set in India in 1799 when the British attacked Mysore, a princely state in south India &MD; the death of its ruler, Tippoo, and the sacking of Seringapatam is the incident that triggers Wilkie Collins' classic detective novel, ``The Moonstone.'' It was ``a totally outrageous war,'' Cornwell said. ``The Brits created a casus belli and then attacked. The more I researched it, the more I was ashamed.''
Once he had settled on his new career, Cornwell said, he found that writing books centered around battles was relatively easy &MD; at least the battle parts. Finding out, and writing about, ``what else they did'' requires considerable research because ``it was so commonplace, that nobody thought to write it down.''
This was particularly true, Cornwell said, when it came to writing about King Arthur's Sixth Century Britain, sending him to researching the herbs women used to ease childbirth and the annual cycle of country life.
``But,'' he said, ``I know that when I get to the battles, it's `Down the slope!'''
Despite having lived in America for 16 years and having acquired an American sense of informality (and all-but lost a British accent), Cornwell acknowledged that his books ``are more geared to a British taste.''
``I have a firm body of fans there,'' he said. While Cornwell is a best-seller in Britain, he considers himself so unknown in America that he considers book tours a waste of time &MD; and doesn't do them.
And of course that gives him more time to go sailing.
While the house is the one ``that Sharpe built,'' Cornwell's boat, a 24-foot gaff-rigged Cornish Crabber named Royalist, is the one that Sharpe &MD; in the form of ``a nice advance'' &MD; got shipped over.
Washington, Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Federal regulators unveiled rules today to govern the opening of the nation's $100 billion local phone industry to competition that enable long-distance, local, and wireless phone industries to expand their business --mostly at the expense of the Baby Bells.
Billions of telecommunications industry dollars are riding on the rules, approved unanimously today by the Federal Communications Commission.
The rules are ``the first step in ending 60 years of monopoly-style regulation,'' said Commissioner Rachelle Chong.
The long distance industry won the firm, national rules they say are needed for seamless national competition in local markets. They won steep discounts in the prices they'll have to pay to lease Baby Bell lines to resell service, yet states will have leeway in setting actual prices within certain ranges.
Wireless phone companies, meanwhile, won their battle to get the fees they pay Bells to complete calls slashed. Industry officials predicted that would result in cuts of about 80 percent.
And the local Baby Bell companies, who will now face a host won their fight to keep charging the long distance companies most of today's $20 billion to $30 billion a year to complete long distance calls -- for the time being.
Still, the Bells likely will be unhappy with many of the ~Nrules' details, industry officials predict. They're losing their monopolies, and they want it done carefully -- and in a way that lets them enter the long-distance business quickly. Some Bell officials say one of the local phone companies may file a lawsuit to block the rules -- possibly within days.
``I think we have sufficient cause to be fearful'' of these rules, Roy Neel, president of the United States Telephone Association, a Baby Bell trade group, said last week.
The FCC rules -- which attracted 17,000 pages of comments and run 600 pages -- are as complex as they are significant. The rules are the ``big enchilada'' of this year's overhaul of the nation's telecommunications laws, as Chairman Reed Hundt puts it.
Hundt says industry observers shouldn't pick ``winners and losers'' on the basis of today's rules. That kind of determination can't be made, Hundt says, until the Bells and their competitors sign agreements on connecting and reselling Bell network services, and have taken those agreements to the states, the Justice Department and the FCC to certify that they've opened their markets to competition. That won't be until the end of the year, in most cases.
Long-distance company shares rose in recent trading, with AT&T Corp.'s up 3/4 to 53, MCI Communications Corp.'s up 1/4 at 24 7/8; and Sprint Corp.'s up 3/8 at 37 3/8. So did Bell shares. Ameritech Corp. shares were up 1 at 56 1/2; Bell Atlantic Corp.'s by 5/8 at 59 3/4; BellSouth Corp.'s by 5/8 at 41 5/8; Nynex Corp.'s by 3/4 at 45 1/4; Pacific Telesis Group's by 1/4 at 33 7/8. US West Communications Group's stock was up 1/8 at 30 1/2. Shares in SBC Communications Inc, a wireless company, also rose, by 1/4 to 49 1/8.
The attention the industry and investors are paying to today's rules is intense.
For starters, the Bells seem to have lost their most basic argument on the rules. They fought for loose federal regulations that would let them negotiate individually with would-be competitors and would give states broad flexibility in adapting the FCC's checklist to their particular market.
The rules shaped up more as the long-distance companies wanted: hard and fast, national rules to ensure that the Bells will be forced to open their markets the same way in every market, with little wiggle room.
While the access charge issue attracted the most heated debate, the FCC's rules address far more comprehensive, and potentially equally significant matters. In line with the telecommunications law enacted in February, they set federal guidelines for the opening of local phone markets that allow states some flexibility, particularly in setting prices.
Specifically, they map out a 14-point competitive checklist, mandated by the telecom act, that Bells need to meet to be allowed into the $70 billion long-distance market.
For one thing, the new rules establish that Bells need to resell service on their networks to competitors at a ``wholesale'' rate so they can resell those same services to consumers. The rules define ``wholesale'' as the retail price Bells charge for service, less costs spent on such items as marketing and advertising.
The FCC gives states leeway to determine what the wholesale price is in their individual markets, within a 17-to-25 percent range.
That's about twice the discount the Bells have said is fair. It's also more than four times the discount AT&T has been getting from Rochester Telephone Co. to resell local phone service in that upstate New York market -- and they say they can't do it profitably.
The long distance giant had to stop marketing its local phone service about three months after it started selling it in Rochester in January 1995. The local phone company gives the long distance giant a 5 percent discount, which AT&T says isn't enough to pay for advertising, marketing, and administrative costs -- and make a profit.
A discount in the range of 22 percent would change that equation, a company official said.
A separate discount required under the rules also seems to benefit Bell competitors. The law stipulates that competitors must have access to the Bell's phone lines and network elements at ``cost-based rates'' so they can use pieces of a Bell network to patch together their own service. ``Cost-based,'' as defined by the rules, includes only forward-looking costs, as the long distance industry urged -- and won't include the historical overhead maintenance costs the Bells wanted.
On access charges, Bells are allowed to keep charging the long distance companies most of the $20 billion to $30 billion-a-year they do today. That will last until the first of three dates: June 30, 1997; the date when the FCC completes its overhaul of access charges; or the date Bell markets are certified as competitive.
While the rules limit changes to access charges to long distance companies, they make a bigger impact on charges levied on wireless carriers.
The rules will result in 80 percent to 90 percent cuts in those fees, wireless industry officials predict. The idea is to encourage wireless companies to compete for local phone business the same way their wired counterparts plan to.
``What we're talking about is reducing that charge to something that more closely approximates cost. That is tremendously significant,'' said Tom Wheeler, president and chief executive of the Cellular Telecommunications, in an interview yesterday.
The reduced fees will also let wireless carriers lower their prices to consumers, possibly by as much as 10 percent off of an average monthly bill of $50.
Companies now must negotiate over checklist points on competition. All parties have 135 days from when they start negotiating to complete the complicated agreements, subject to approval by state regulators. If they fail to agree by that time, the disputes go to arbitration. The states, using the FCC's guidelines, will settle the differences.
Once that step is completed, and the states say the Bells have met the checklist, the matter heads to the Department of Justice, which will assess whether the Bell is abusing its monopoly power and if competition has legitimately arrived in a given market.
Then the FCC, armed with the states' and Justice's suggestions, will make the final determination that a Bell has opened itself to competition, and deserves to be let into the long distance business.
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. &MD; Jim Bunning, the right-winging right-leaning congressman, took time away from his Washington concerns Sunday afternoon to accept his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Earl Weaver took time away from the golf course to do the same.
On a hot day, before a crowd of some 8,000 in a meadow here called Clark Field, Bunning, a conservative Republican from Kentucky's Fourth Congressional District, and once a chafing, sidearming pitcher, received the highest of baseball honors.
Weaver, whose battles with umpires were legendary and amusing, and who became one of baseball's most successful managers, was there alongside the congressman.
Bill Foster, a star pitcher in the Negro Leagues in the 1920s and 30s, and Ned Hanlon, a standout manager at the turn of the century, were also inducted. On a day when most of the issues were tinged with nostalgia, as well as praise for families and friends and coaches and teammates, Bunning did have strong words for the baseball establishment.
``Get your house in order,'' he said. ``Stop going to the players and asking them to foot the bill. And get a commissioner &MD; a real commissioner. Come up with a way to share the revenues, and mutually hire someone. Restore the power of the commissioner.
``For over four years now,'' Bunning continued, ``baseball has been rudderless. Find a rudder before Congress gives up on you and intervenes.''
Rudderless? It is just the way the owners want it, with their so-called acting commissioner, Bud Selig, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. The last thing the owners want is a commissioner with independent powers. Fay Vincent can tell you that.
And for the fourth straight year, there was no commissioner in attendance at the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, which carry perhaps the greatest symbolism for the sport, whose yesterdays are as alive as its present, at least.
Oddly enough, while Selig did not make an appearance, Marge Schott did.
The recently suspended owner of the Cincinnati Reds, who managed to make the trip despite having left her usually ubiquitous pet Saint Bernard, Schottzie II, at home, showed up to support Bunning, whose home in Southgate, Ky., is just five miles from Riverfront Stadium.
As for congressional threats, the owners have heard it all before. It comes as no secret to the honorable representative, meanwhile, that baseball teams are private enterprises, though some owners, like Selig, give lip service to it being a ``quasi-public trust.'' And owners like Selig then threaten to move unless the public builds them stadiums.
Among those in attendance who were introduced were Len Coleman, president of the National League, and Gene Budig, president of the American League. One of those in attendance not introduced was Marvin Miller, also there to pay tribute to Bunning. It was Bunning, along with Bob Friend, Robin Roberts and Harvey Kuenn, who were on the search committee in the late 1960s that chose Miller as the executive director for their players union.
Few people have made as great a contribution to baseball as Miller, whose brilliance and leadership helped raise salaries, pensions, benefits and playing conditions. From the nonplayers' side, he is the most deserving person not in the Hall of Fame.
From the players' standpoint, Bunning, in his remarks, cast votes for pitchers Don Sutton and Phil Niekro &MD; ``Do you baseball writers know how hard it is to win 300 games?'' he said sternly &MD; as well as Tony Perez, the great runs-batted-in man.
In a curious note, of the two living men who were inducted Sunday, the one who entered as manager did not succeed as a baseball player. And the other was inducted as a player but was unsuccessful as a manager.
Weaver toiled 10 years as a minor league infielder, never getting past Class AA. Then, after 10 more years as a minor league manager, he got his chance with the Baltimore Orioles, winning four pennants and one World Series.
He was known as a bane to umpires.
``I want to give credit to the group of people who seldom get the credit they deserve,'' Weaver said in his acceptance speech Sunday. ``The umpires.''
The crowd laughed, but Weaver was serious.
``The game has succeeded because the umpires' integrity has been beyond reproach,'' he said. ``And in the 13 years I managed the big leagues, they must have made a million calls. And they were wrong just 91 times.''
The 91 times, that is, that he was tossed out of games. Now he was smiling.
Bunning, after a 224-184 won-lost record &MD; winning 100 or more in each major league &MD; tried managing in the Phillies' organization, but the tough approach that served him so well as a pitcher was found unsuitable in handling the modern young player, and he gave it up after three years. He eventually found his way into the halls of Congress.
After the ceremony Sunday, Bunning spoke about his work in Washington, including his having voted for passage of a welfare bill last week.
Weaver, deeply tanned from his play on the Miami links, was asked if he had an opinion on the welfare bill.
``Are you kidding?'' he said, with a look of disbelief. ``No.''
Elvis Week '96 is upon us. Those who can't make it to Memphis for the official festivities must find other ways to remember the King on the 19th anniversary of his death. Cinemax will present one opportunity Friday, Aug. 16 at 7 p.m., when it airs ``The Burger and the King,'' a documentary based on David Adler's book ``The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley.''
This film, a portrait of Elvis' life through the food he ate and the people who helped feed him, may give new meaning to the term ``oral history.'' Food was the enduring passion of Elvis' life, a passion rooted in the poverty of his boyhood. ``He never got over indulging himself in all the things he was denied as a child,'' says his old friend Bill E. Burk.
Mary Jenkins, who cooked for Elvis for 26 years, says, ``He told me the only thing he got any enjoyment out of was eating. And he liked his food real rich.''
Indeed he did. From a health standpoint, Elvis ate all the wrong things, and he ate lots of them. Fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Cheeseburgers. Chicken-fried steaks. Family-size bowls of banana pudding. A half-dozen eggs and a pound of sausage for breakfast. One of his favorite indulgences, the specialty of a Denver restaurant, was a loaf of toasted Italian bread hollowed out and slathered with a large jar of peanut butter, a large jar of grape jelly and topped with a pound of crisp bacon. Once, on the spur of the moment, Elvis flew a group of friends to Denver and ordered 22 of these sandwiches to go. They ate them on the plane &MD; Elvis ate a whole one himself &MD; then flew back to Memphis.
In a deadpan style reminiscent of Errol Morris, director James Marsh lines up his unsuspecting subjects and grills them, so to speak, about Elvis' eating habits. Drugs may have led to Elvis' downfall, but his diet was nearly as deadly. Jenkins is one of Marsh's prime suspects, but she's only one of a number of friends, acquaintances and employees who may have helped to kill Elvis with kindness by trying to satisfying his passion for artery-clogging foods.
``The Burger and the King'' opens with Jenkins, in an Elvis T-shirt, frying burgers to the tune of ``Are You Lonesome Tonight?'' In the next shot, a dozen Elvis impersonators in full regalia sit at a ``last supper,'' eating cheeseburgers. Marsh moves on to Tupelo, Miss., Elvis' birthplace, for a squirrel hunt. ``Elvis would have eaten squirrel as a boy,'' says one hunter. ``It's just part of your culture.'' An old-timer adds, ``Back in the Depression you'd eat anything that didn't eat you.'' A recipe for fried squirrel is provided: ``First catch a young squirrel ...''
Billy Stanley, Elvis' half-brother and personal assistant, recalls the time Elvis fired him for teasing him about his eating. Apparently nobody dared to say ``no'' to Elvis, especially when it came to food. When he was hospitalized on a restricted diet he had Jenkins smuggle in bags of hot dogs and sauerkraut. And he persuaded his hospital nurse, Marion Cocke, to bring him a big bowl of her homemade banana pudding. ``He didn't even ask me if I wanted any,'' Nurse Cocke says, a little petulantly. ``He ate it all.''
``The Burger and the King'' is fond, funny and poignant. It's also potentially sobering. Some viewers may be moved to re-think their own eating habits. It ends with brief testimonies from three loonies who claim Elvis is alive and that he's now a nondrinking, nondrugging vegetarian. If only it were true. But he wouldn't be Elvis, would he?
(Diane White is a Globe columnist.)
As they struggle to satisfy one constituency after another &MD; the tax-cut wing on Monday, abortion rights opponents on Wednesday &MD; some Republicans are realizing that the burdens of being the nation's majority party are heavier than they expected.
The party's convention, which opens Monday in San Diego, will be the first in 48 years at which the Republicans govern Congress and most of the nation's state houses.
Now, the Republican presidential nominee will share the spotlight with a new crowd of party heavyweights elected in their own right, each one with separate responsibilities and agendas.
Disputes over obscure platform planks will carry new weight because party leaders, through their control of Congress, will not have to wait for a presidential victory to put their plans into action.
Some Republicans, no doubt, will put aside their differences to fight a common enemy &MD; President Clinton &MD; but some of their passion could be missing: For the first time in decades, defeat in the presidential race will not necessarily mean four years of frustration on the back benches of American politics.
``This is a party learning how to govern,'' said Steve Watson, a Republican strategist. ``It's a party learning how to stay together. It's a party learning how to keep true to its conservative principles. And it's harder than we ever imagined.''
Rep. Peter G. Torkildsen, Republican of Massachusetts, said this convention will be ``enormously different'' from the last one he attended, in 1988, because of the new Republican Congress. The immediate loser, he said, could be the presidential nominee, Bob Dole, who will not be able to campaign on a dramatic call for change.
``It's almost overshadowing Bob Dole's campaign,'' Torkildsen said, referring to the health care and welfare changes passed by the Republican-controlled Congress over the past few weeks. ``The Congress has been passing enormously important legislation.''
The Dole campaign, criticized for a series of mistakes in past months, has worked hard in recent weeks to guarantee a unified convention.
On Monday, Dole sought to appease the party's ``supply-side'' wing, which has long advocated sweeping tax changes to spur economic growth. During his decade as Republican leader in the Senate, Dole was a frequent critic of supply-side ideas.
This week, seeking to distance himself from Clinton, Dole outlined a plan for $548 billion in tax reductions over three years &MD; not the flat-tax plan favored by the supply-siders, but a cut big enough, he hoped, to rally pro-growth Republicans behind his candidacy.
Then on Wednesday, his campaign operatives helped engineer a compromise on the abortion language in the party's platform, seeking to satisfy both the party's social conservatives and an outspoken group of Republican governors who support abortion rights.
Many potential disruptions remain, political observers say: Controversy over Dole's running mate, due to be announced this weekend; a divisive appearance by Patrick J. Buchanan, the avatar of working-class Republicans; disagreements between Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
``If you're in charge of real resources and programs, the stakes are much higher,'' said Darrell West, head of the political science department at Brown University. ``That leads to more fighting. So being in the majority makes all the difference in the world.''
West predicts that some congressional leaders will find it difficult to hide their differences with Dole. But he said Dole's demand that speeches be no more than five minutes, and delivered at assigned times, greatly reduces the chance of discord erupting in front of the television cameras.
Such blow-ups used to be the special burden of the Democrats, whose 1968 convention, riven by the Vietnam issue, set an unmatched standard for fractiousness.
Republicans, by contrast, are widely perceived to have stumbled only once, in 1992, when Buchanan's harsh rhetoric offended some moderate voters throughout the country.
Conventional wisdom was that Democrats fouled their own nest, putting individual agendas ahead of party unity. A likelier culprit, some say, is the competition that sometimes breaks out when more is at stake than simply a presidential election. Now that the Democrats are in the minority in Congress and the states, party leaders have filed into line quietly behind Clinton, despite his abandonment of some of their policies.
``Newt Gingrich united the Democratic Party,'' West said. ``They owe him a favor.'' NYT-08-08-96 2146EDT
Boston, Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The Bloomberg Connecticut Index rose for the second week, led by such insurance stocks as Oxford Health Plans Inc., Cigna Corp. and Aetna Inc.
The index rose 1.19 this week to 134, a change of 0.88 percent. The index is up more than 5 percent since the beginning of the year.
The price-weighted index of 152 stocks is designed to measure the performance of the Connecticut area economy. The index was developed with a base value of 100 as of Dec. 30, 1994.
Oxford Health Plan led the index, gaining 7 7/8 since Monday. The HMO reported a 98 percent profit jump on Monday and had its stock upgraded to ``buy'' by Bear Stearns & Co. analyst Gary Frazier Wednesday.
Cigna Corp. rose 5 1/2 to close at 115 3/8 for the week after its stock was rated ``buy'' at Conning & Co. and Salomon Brothers Inc.
Aetna rose 5 1/8 to 64 1/2, W.R. Berkley Corp. rose 5 to 46, and Security Connecticut Corp. rose 3 1/2 to 30 3/8. Five of the index's top six gainers were insurance companies.
Bucking the trend, General Electric Co. fell 2 3/8 to 83 3/4.
The Bloomberg Connecticut Index beat national indicators this week. Its 0.88 percent rise outpaced the Dow Jones Industrial Average's rise of .12 percent, and the Standard and Poor's .28 percent increase.
Children's clothing is a lot cuter now than when we were kids &MD; and it costs a lot more money. It's not unusual to see little outfits with big prices, sometimes what you'd expect to pay for items in your own wardrobe.
Americans spend more than $22 billion a year on everything from designer babywear to familiar-label toddler outfits to clothing for boys and girls that looks just like what adults wear. Depending on where you shop, markups range from around 40 percent to 100 percent.
And designer names, fancy additions such as appliques and more expensive fabrics can boost the cost even more.
But here's how to avoid paying full price when buying clothes for your kids this fall.
&MD; Hit the suburban thrift stores. &LR; It's no secret that secondhand stores can be a gold mine for children's clothing. After all, kids outgrow some items before they're even well-worn, and thrift stores and consignment shops offer great deals &MD; up to 90 percent off the retail price of new duds.
But for the best selection &MD; designer labels and other top-quality clothing &MD; head to the suburbs. A growing number of thrift stores, such as those run by Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army, have joined consignment shops in better-heeled areas.
Local residents tend to unload clothing their children have outgrown at the nearest places, so look for these stores in newer strip malls in suburbia. You'll find them listed in the yellow pages under ``Thrift Stores'' and ``Consignment Shops.''
Of course, neighborhood garage sales and flea markets are also great places to pick up secondhand threads for next to nothing. The best time to cruise these sales is before 10 a.m., so you'll get first crack at the offerings (kids' clothing tends to sell very quickly).
These sales tend to be most common throughout the country in early spring and the fall.
&MD; Shop in August. &LR; If you want to go the retail route, the best time to shop for new children's clothing is in August, just before the school year begins. That's when department stores pull out all the stops in an effort to move goods quickly during their busy back-to-school buying season.
You'll likely find basics such as jeans, T-shirts, casual shirts, sweats and shorts marked at least 25 percent off.
And in communities with many stores, retailers get especially competitive for customers, so prices can drop even lower.
&MD; Ask about a frequent-buyer club. &LR; More retailers that specialize in children's clothing &MD; such as the Kids Mart chain, which is based in California and carries apparel, toys and stuffed animals &MD; now have programs offering across-the-board savings for customers who become ``preferred members.''
The annual fee is about $6 (but may vary, depending on where you shop) and generally entitles you to 10 percent off all regular purchases. Additional savings are passed on to the preferred member through dual-price ticketing: The price tags have two prices, and members pay the lower one.
You're also added to a mailing list for advance notification of special sales, where you'll typically save 25 percent off regular prices. So ask your retailer about these programs.
&MD; Check out off-price stores. &LR; Dollar for dollar, you'll get the most for your money on new clothing at off-price stores such as T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, where children's apparel typically sells for 30 percent below retail prices and some items are marked down as much as 60 percent.
There's no problem with selection, either, because these stores tend to offer a huge inventory of name brands. Late August to mid-November is the time to find the best deals, because these stores often get leftover inventory from department stores.
&MD; Give cards some credit. &LR; If you're shopping for an entire wardrobe for your kids, take advantage of opening a store charge account. At many department stores, you can get a one-time discount of 10 percent to 25 percent off all purchases for one day &MD; even if those items are on sale.
Already have a credit card at that store? Open one in your spouse's name. Some stores overlook dual-card ownership in an effort to get you to buy on credit. Just be sure to pay off the credit card promptly so you won't be walloped with interest charges, which can be over 20 percent.
Shop clearance racks after Christmas. &LR; If you like to cruise the clearance racks but have found slim pickings, maybe your timing is off. These 50 percent and more sales are usually best for most children's clothing just after Christmas, while baby goods tend to be clearance-priced in late October through late November.
Happy days are here again for Arizona State University football. Sort of.
Ask Coach Bruce Snyder whether his program has turned the corner, and he gives you a qualified ``no.''
``I can't say we've turned the corner because we haven't actually done it,'' he said. ``But we are definitely in a position to turn it.''
The college football electorate (Associated Press branch) seconds that notion, having voted ASU No. 20 in its preseason poll &MD; the first time in more than a decade that the Sun Devils have made the top 20 since 1987.
And a few experts have even picked the Sun Devils to go to the Rose Bowl.
``It was fun this summer reading all the magazines and polls saying how good we're going to be,'' he said with a grin. ``But as the season gets closer, you really don't want to hear it.''
Ah, yes. The other side of the praise coin &MD; pressure.
Even before the polls there were suggestions this was a make-or-break year for Snyder.
That while he has earned fairly high marks his first four years in many areas, .500 or thereabouts just won't get it this time no matter how sterling his coaching and caring qualities.
And Snyder acknowledges that he is feeling pressure. But not the kind you think.
``When I recruited players like Jake Plummer and Juan Roque,'' he sa all but promised them they would have at least one big year at ASU. And I want to make good on my word to those kids. That's the kind of pressure I feel.''
Snyder all but guarantees an end to ASU's eight-year bowl drought.
``I firmly believe this team is going to a bowl,'' he said. ``I'm not saying which one, but a bowl.''
The most obvious reason is the return of 41 of the 47 players from the team that missed the Rose Bowl by only eight points last year. But Snyder said it's not the only reason. Maybe not even the main one.
``Talentwise, this may be the best group we've had here,'' he said. ``But I'm not sure it's not that much more talented than the 1992 bunch (that went a troubled 6-5).
``What I like most about this year's team is its attitude.
``These guys are really committed. You could see that in the off-season, which was our most productive one ever. Ninety-nine percent of the guys just busted their butts, and they were angry with the 1 percent that didn't. And it's always a good sign when pget on the guys who aren't hustling.''
Good signs abounded at the annual football media day Wednesday in Sun Devil Stadium.
If you had to sum up ASU football in recent years in one word, ``flat'' would have been a good choice. But the operative word Wednesday was ``pumped.''
Snyder, his staff, the players, even Sports Information Director Mark Brand and his tub thumpers seemed pumped.
The ``book'' on the Sun Devils is they have an electrifying offense, but they will need every watt of it to overcome defensive outages.
Does this mean fans can look forward to a string of wildly exciting 41-38 games?
``I hope not,'' Snyder said, moaning. ``Do you know how hard those kind of games are on coaches?
``Everything tells me we're going to be better defensively,'' he said. ``We weren't very good last year, but the Nebraska game (a 77-28 loss) skewered the whole season's stats and made us look even worse.''
His biggest worry is the defensive front.
``If a team comes in here and says, `We're just going to blow you off the ball,' '' he fretted, ``it just might be able to do it.''
The high expectations make the Washington game here Sept. 7 the most important opener in memory, but Snyder insists victory is not an absolute ``must.''
``A loss would hurt,'' he admits. ``But it wouldn't kill us. Three years ago, Cal beat UCLA in the season opener. But guess who went to the Rose Bowl that year and who didn't go to any bowl at all?''
But while a loss may not be fatal, it would let out a lot of the air that's been pumped into the ASU balloon.
Putting it back in may be like trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube.
(Joe Gilmartin can be reached at jgilmar910(at)aol.com on the Internet.)
Punk rock was born in a maelstrom of rage. Even Bob Geldof &MD; the ringleader behind the mega-charity Live Aid &MD; was in a pop/punk band, the Boomtown Rats, spitting out ``Don't give me peace and love from the good Lord above/You'll only get in the way with your stupid ideas!'' in ``Lookin' After No.1,'' back in the late 1970s.
The alternative rockers of the '80s and '90s knew, or know, rage, too. Husker Du, Jane's Addiction, Ministry, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Green Day. It is part of the currency, perhaps the most common currency.
Perry Farrell, who used to sing and write for Jane's Addiction, knows it well, too. He took it to the top of the heap in 1991, when Jane's headlined the first Lollapalooza tour, which he co-founded.
Lollapalooza rumbles on &MD; a metal-ized version &MD; in 1996, and although Farrell still owns a piece of the tour, he himself has moved to another place. Musically and psychically. He's the leader of Porno for Pyros, a much quirkier, less hard-rock oriented successor to Jane's Addiction. And he's put together another tour, this one called ENIT, a multi-band, genre-crossing bill that is about 180 degrees apart from Lollapalooza.
``It's very strange that we're (going) in such opposite directions,'' says Farrell, from his Los Angeles home before the tour starts. ``I've taken all my money from it and put it into this festival.''
Farrell, who speaks in a nasal voice with a surfer-dude inflection, pauses to ask a question: ``You tell me if you feel this. Do you feel like the youth culture is evolving and that they seem to be kinder? Or do they seem to be ruder?''
Tough to say. Depends on the event, the band, the mosh scene.
``I look at it as currents that are simultaneously running,'' says Farrell, 37. ``I'm from the '70s and you could really offer up that the people from the '70s are what ruined it. Well, I'm trying to be part of the solution here. I really feel that there's a backlash coming up to people that just walk around mindlessly and just complain and destroy. It can't possibly continue.
``Sometimes your dreams, as they start to materialize, you'll find that maybe you were wrong or maybe you were ahead of yourself or ahead of the game. I really want to get away from, let's call it `rageful music' &MD; filled with anger. I've progressed in my life as a human being and I want to have a chance to live out these newer ideas. I'd be a fraud if I kept my dreadlocks and my nose ring and ran around acting as if everything was OK.''
He's still a little bit punk &MD; yes, he says he still takes drugs &MD; and he's a little bit hippie. But the hippie side is coming to the fore. He says he listens to his body, waits for it to tell him whether the time is right to party or to catch 40 winks. ``If you listen to your body,'' he says, ``and be very, very quiet, your body will tell you what you need to know. It's a cinch.
``The word `love' is a word that we almost kind of cringe over,'' continues Farrell, ``especially as males. It's very hard to palate the word `love,' a difficult thing to grasp in this life, on early, to be able to grasp it and play it out. I think that's the next dimension, the Fourth Dimension, the Love Dimension. I think if we do nothing else, we're supposed to learn about love here.''
Up in heaven, Jimi Hendrix is smiling. Here on earth, Lenny Kravitz is vibing. --- &QC;
What the heck's an ENIT, you wonder? It comes from an obscure book called ``Cancer Planet Mission'' by Ludwig Pallmann. Farrell read about these UFOs in the Peruvian rain forest and how the earth was sick and how an earthling got to escape Earth and ride to distant planets where they held festivals, one of which was an ENIT festival. It ``celebrated self-empowering and the youth culture,'' says Farrell. ``It dealt with music, and it went into other things.''
As does Farrell's ENIT on earth. Well, at least at two spots. There's music: Porno for Pyros, Black Grape, Meat Beat Manifesto, Orb, Rebirth Brass Band, Sun Ra Arkestra, Lady Miss Kier. (Love & Rockets dropped off the bill when their record company, American, dropped them, leaving them without tour support; Buju Bandton dropped out for personal reasons.) DJs will spin between acts. In Los Angeles and New Jersey (Farrell hopes), there will be a ``festival'' atmosphere with tree planting, communal meals and drink, raving till 6 a.m. Here, in Mansfield, the doors are 2 p.m. and it's more of a concert &MD; and over by 10 p.m.
ENIT does not portend to be a smashing commercial success. Farrell has said he stands to lose $500,000-$1 million. The ENIT tour was conceived as a 15-date excursion. It was cut back to eight and then the first two dates were scrapped for ``lack of interest,'' says Farrell, displaying candidness rare in the rock biz.
With ENIT, it would seem Farrell is taking his basic Lollapalooza idea &MD; ``a potential to work society as a science, to experiment'' &MD; and refining it. With Lollapalooza, he says, ``I could put together something that went through this country, a big amount of activity rushing through a city every summer. The youth culture all goes to it. But I started seeing differences in the youth culture. I started seeing reflections, and I said to myself, `Well, God, what a tremendous chance here to really get things working well?' There's plenty of negativity. You can count on getting a good healthy dose of that anywhere. I don't choose to serve it to you.''
Ideally, ENIT will be about community, sharing, just as Porno for Pyros is more of a caress than an attack.
Farrell sees the link between the perfomers, the interweaving of live and prerecorded electronic music, thus: ``I love playing live, but we've got all this great technology evolving now and musicians that have gotten together in the technology putting together some amazing sounds.''
``Without taking this thing to be too heavy-handed or serious,'' says Farrell. ``I truly look at this lifetime as a lesson, a schoolroom so to speak. I don't think we're free, but in the best classrooms you can have an amazing time.''
As to ENIT, ``you've got music that I don't know exactly what you're going to go away with, but I bet you that you won't feel stupid for having listened to it.''
DHERINIA, Cyprus &MD; Little has happened in the past 22 years to spark unrest in this white-washed town hard by the United Nations-controlled border, other than the occasional demonstration at the barbed wire that slices Cyprus into Greek and Turkish Cypriot halves.
The island's unresolved division seemed an accepted part of life here. Cafes offered views of ``Turkish occupied territory'' from rooftop terraces. Billboards spelled out terms for ``Freedom for Cyprus'' in English for tourists.
All that changed last week.
Years of simmering resentment erupted into clashes between Greek and Turkish Cypriots that left two dead and scores wounded in the worst violence Cyprus has seen since the 1974 Turkish invasion.
Coinciding with broader tension between Greece and the Islamic-led Turkish government, the bloodshed has renewed concern about how much longer the question of Cyprus' political future can remain unresolved.
``With all the instability in the area,'' said a senior State Department spokesman in Washington, ``this can't be allowed to just drag on.''
Saturday the Greek Cypriot government appealed to the United Nations, Britain, the United States and the European Union to step up efforts to find a solution to Cyprus' political future.
Until recently, the Cyprus question was in the diplomatic shadows. But after two decades of a peaceful impasse between the Greek Cypriot government and the self-proclaimed Turkish Cypriot state, tensions between the two communities have heightened and evidence has appeared of a build-up of heavy weapons systems. The island already has 30,000 Turkish troops.
Early this year, Cyprus reemerged as a point of contention between NATO allies Greece and Turkey, when the two countries nearly went to war over a dispute over an island in the Aegean. Last week's violence had the traditional foes trading sharp rhetoric again.
Now, there is the growing belief in diplomatic circles that the Cyprus question must be resolved before tensions escalate further. The island may enter the European Union in 1998. Turkey is not a member, and Turkish Cypriots oppose the move.
``The European Union is the fork in the road,'' said Gustave Feissel, the UN chief of mission here. ``The European Union date is going to be a defining moment.''
To jump-start negotiations, the Clinton administration appointed a special envoy to Cyprus and dubbed 1996 the year of the ``big push'' for a settlement. Madeleine Albright, the US ambassador to the United Nations, visited the island last month to coax the process along.
Administration officials have envisioned peace talks along the lines of those that ended the Bosnian war last year. The United Nations has established a framework for negotiations that would lead Cyprus to form a working federation involving both halves.
But the one glimmer of a diplomatic breakthrough &MD; the first-ever meeting between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish military commanders &MD; fell victim to internal squabbling. Since then, little progress has been made.
``If there is a sense of urgency here'' about a settlement, ``we haven't seen it yet,'' a Western diplomat said.
Interviews with Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders reveal their views to be immovable.
At his presidential palace, the Greek Cypriot president, Glafcos Clerides, explained why he no longer wants to meet with his counterpart, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, 72.
``We have been meeting for years,'' said the 77-year-old Clerides. ``Mr. Denktash did not in any way show he was willing to budge even an inch. ... Every time we break off talks without progress, we encourage intransigent elements in both communities to say no solution is possible.''
In his scruffier headquarters in downtown Nicosia, Denktash shot back: ``We have been talking to them for 33 years, and as far as the Greek Cypriots are concerned, the problem is already settled.''
In theory, the two sides did agree on what Cyprus would look like when the country was granted independence in 1960: a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation. But quarrels over the details have dragged on since, exhausting generations of UN negotiators.
The current divide between Greeks and Turks here stems from the island's turbulent history. Smaller than Connecticut, Cyprus' strategic position on the edge of Europe and the Middle East means it has been conquered by the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires. Britain annexed the island in 1914.
The result was an ethnically mixed island with no democratic traditions of self-governance. The two groups lived together harmoniously until Greek Cypriots called for union with Greece and independence from Britain after World War II. In the resulting violence, scores of Turkish Cypriots, the ethnic minority, were killed. In 1960, the country was granted independence and the two ethnic groups established a power-sharing government.
But fighting broke out again, and UN peacekeepers arrived in 1964. In 1974, the Greek Cypriot national guard, backed by Greece, staged a successful coup. Turkey then invaded, occupying the north of the island and expelling some 200,000 Greek Cypriots. The Turkish Cypriot government then declared its own independent state.
Today, only Turkey recognizes the Turkish Cypriot government, while the United Nations and the rest of the international community recognizes the Greek-Cypriot government. The population of 736,000 is 78 percent Greek, 18 percent Turkish.
The result is like a Cold War Berlin, with the Greek Cypriot side of the island the recipient of Western largesse, a modern country with a booming tourist trade. The Turkish side is impoverished and heavily reliant on Turkey. Thousands of Turkish settlers have settled, altering the island's ethnic mix.
In Nicosia &MD; where streets end abruptly in camouflage barricades marking the 180 kilometer-long UN-manned border &MD; twin memorials are testimony to generations of mistrust.
On the Turkish Cypriot side, past the narrow streets filled with Turkish soldiers lounging at cafes in the languid heat, a display of photographs show how Turkish Cypriots were massacred by the Greeks in the 1960s.
``They still want to kill the Turks,'' said Ismail Yumurtaicuglu, 24. ``Nobody can guarantee that if we live together, they won't do to us what they did before.''
Just across the buffer zone, past Benetton's and the ice cream parlor, photographs mounted on a wall show how the Turks massacred the Greeks in 1974. ``You want my opinion?'' said Fanos Panagi, 28. ``The only thing Turks want is war.''
The two sides have virtually no direct contact. Even phone calls from one side to the other must be handled by a UN operator.
Animosity between the two sides has grown after two Greek Cypriots were killed last week, one clubbed to death and the other shot by Turkish forces during demonstrations in the UN buffer zone. Both killings have been condemned by the UN.
For his part, Turkish Cypriot leader Denktash believes his state must be recognized before talks progress. He envisions the federation as two independent states, loosely joined at the top, in which Turkish troops are a deterrent against bloodshed.
The Greek Cypriots, he argues, ``are trying make Cyprus into a unitary Greek Cypriot state in which the Turkish will be the minority.'' Their application to enter the European Union, he said, is simply a way to unify with Greece.
But the Greek Cypriot president, Clerides, argues that Cyprus' future lies in a federation with a strong government that would rule over two communities; security would be provided by an international force. ``We want a federation, not two separate states.''
Behind the war of words is the clash of larger agendas between Greece and Turkey. Diplomats say any solution rests with the newly elected Islamic government in Ankara.
Not all Turkish Cypriots are happy with this, considering themselves Cypriots first, Turks second. They see Turkey's 1974 intervention as resulting in colonization, as more and more Turks move here and the north of the island is seen as an annex of Ankara rather than its own entity.
Many see the need for integration.
``We cannot solve our problems by separation,'' said Niyazi Kizilyurik, a Turkish Cypriot who recently returned from Europe to teach at the University of Cyprus on the Greek Cypriot side. ``Separation is not a solution. It is a permanent war.''
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Old Kent Financial Corp. signed a definitive agreement to acquire Seaway Financial Corp. for $74 million as it aims to expand its presence in southeastern Michigan.
On June 4, the two banks said they signed a letter of intent for Old Kent to buy Seaway. Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Old Kent offered $43.91 in stock for each Seaway share.
The merger would provide ``a natural extension of Old Kent's markets'' into the adjacent St. Clair County, Old Kent Chairman David Wagner said when the companies announced their preliminary agreement. He said the county's growth would boost demand for Old Kent's services.
Seaway, a 14-branch company based in St. Clair, Michigan, operates The Commercial & Savings Bank of St. Clair County and Algonac Savings Bank. It had $362 million in assets at the end of the second quarter.
Old Kent operates 188 branches in Michigan and 25 in Illinois. It had $12.2 billion in assets at midyear.
Old Kent's shares closed at 38 3/4 during trading in each of the last three days. So far this year, its shares have fallen 1.1 percent.
Seaway shares increased 1 1/2 to close at 41 1/2. The stock has gained 15 percent since January.
The merger still requires shareholder and regulatory approval.
San Francisco, Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- A gigantic power outage in the U.S. West earlier this month could have been avoided if western utilities were told of a power outage in Oregon, which happened more than an hour before it spread to other states, power cmpany officials said.
California utility executives said they would have tapped reserve power supplies if they had been told by the Bonneville Power Administration about a malfunction that led to the failure of the Pacific Intertie carries power to California and other states.
``We would have brought online our non-operating reserves,'' James Macias, general manager of electric transmission for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., told members of the California Public Utilities Commission at a hearing in San Francisco yesterday on the outage.
The Aug. 10 blackout affected more than 4 million customers in nine states. An earlier blackout on July 2 cut power to 2 million customers in 14 states. Local power outages can cascade because the West's power system connects 88 utilities in 14 states through more than 112,000 miles of power lines.
Bonneville officials said at the hearing that the initial problem didn't appear to be significant. The blackout started when high-voltage lines drooped and touched trees, sparking a short-circuit that spread in a chain-reaction through the system.
``Whether the dispatcher's judgement (not to notify other utilities) was correct or not is one of the issues we're looking at,'' said Bonneville Chief Executive Officer Randy Hardy.
It is not true at all that I am addicted to the computer game Civilization.
It is merely an educational experience of such depth and complexity that every iteration is a learning experience. Did you know that you can destroy Rome with just two catapults? I did that this morning. Isn't that educational?
So naturally I was excited to learn that the all-new Civilization II was available. Naturally, I tried it immediately. You will probably be reading other reviews of Civ II, and they'll tell you about the graphics and features and the bells (several bells) and whistles (no whistles).
The new features are nice. I love the way the computer-animated envoys from other lands sway their hips when they talk; it's extremely sensual; although odd when they are threatening to crush your puny civilization. Alas, your circle of advisers is portrayed by the usual bad computer game actors. They spout nonsense because, just as they are in the original Civilization, the advisers here are singularly clueless. You stare into their little pixeled eyes thinking, ``Yesterday, you were all waiting tables on Melrose Avenue. And tomorrow, you will be again.''
So I thought I'd give the lowdown on Civ II for people who play the game a lot. If the next few paragraphs sound like gibberish, perhaps you are a Doom person. There are Doom people, who have good hand-eye coordination and enjoy lots of immediate, bloody gratification, and there Civilization people, who have superior planning skills and like to kill people with hardly any fuss. You're either one or the other. I'm the other.
First, you know how when you invent gunpowder and all your barracks are obsolete, and you have to go around the map from city to city changing whatever you're making into barracks? That's so boring sometimes you even delay inventing gunpowder. In Civ II, you can go right from the City Status chart to the City and make the changes. Ever so cool.
Second, you know how all of a sudden you steal conscripts from the Mongols and thus acquire riflemen, but meanwhile back in the former Roman territories you're still building musketeer forces? No more; the game automatically updates your building. So no more damn frigates when you have the capability for modern transports. Also very cool.
Third, you know how extremely ugly the various palaces are? Clearly, the somewhat Turkish one is the prettiest, but it's still pretty lame, and the other two are worse. Even when you mix and match; so you have Moorish turrets next to Cathartic ramparts; it's b-o-r-i-n-g. But aha! Civ II has abandoned the palace entirely for the Throne Room, where you can put up bear skins or heraldic decorations and give it a nice lived-in feel, something every tired tyrant craves.
There are many new military units (crusaders and dragoons and even fanatics, modern kamikaze units on death missions) and many new Wonders, each with its own video clip that looks like a very bad travel documentary.
But still, still, still . . . your damn trireme gets lost at sea if you move away from land. Still. And you have to wait forever to invent the caravel.
Also, with the new pseudo-3-D grid, the slip of a finger on the arrow key can mean tragedy for many diplomats. It's a harsh business, conquering the world; never forget that. Although way fun.
New York, Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Tobacco stocks rose after an Indiana jury late on Friday found in favor of the industry, reassuring investors that cigarette makers aren't doomed to lose all the liability cases pending against them.
Shares of Philip Morris Cos., the world's largest cigarette maker, rose 3 1/8 to 91 1/8 in midday trading of 3.7 million, than the three-month daily average of 2.7 million. It was the third most-actively traded U.S. issue.
RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. shares rose 1 to 26 1/2; the American depositary receipts of B.A.T Industries Plc rose 5/8 to 13 7/8 and Loews Corp. rose 1 7/8 to 76 5/8.
The Standard & Poor's tobacco company index rose 3.2 percent, leading the industry indexes of stocks in the S&P 500.
Investors watched the liability suit closely after a Florida jury's verdict against the industry on Aug. 9 sent tobacco stocks plummeting on concern the industry would lose more cases. While investors may now be more optimistic about the industry's litigation record, tobacco stocks aren't expected to rise back to their levels before the Florida case, analysts said.
``You can't expect the industry to be completely victorious in these cases,'' said Lawrence Adelman, an analyst at Dean, Witter Reynolds Inc. ``The losses that occur have to be viewed as the cost of doing business.''
The verdict comes amid a week of some good news for the industry, as well.
Tobacco stocks rose Friday on relief that regulations approved by President Bill Clinton weren't as tough as some investors had thought, Adelman said. The Food and Drug Administration regulations Clinton approved on Friday imposed restrictions on certain types of tobacco products marketing and advertising and were designed to curb smoking by youngsters.
In addition, Philip Morris is expected to announce a large increase in the dividend and possibly a stock split Wednesday, analysts said, reminding investors that the stock is one of the market's higher-yielding issues.
The stock currently has a yield of 4.4 percent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has a yield of 2.2 percent.
Bogota, Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Colombian stocks were little changed on thin trading as investors waited for Banco Ganadero's equity buyback offer this afternoon.
``Everyone was focused on Ganadero's offer today, so there was little movement in the regular session,'' said Luis Guillermo Ochoa, a trader with Citivalores SA brokerage.
The Bogota IBB index wasn't available due to computer problems at the stock exchange. Traders said it probably fell slightly, on volume of less than 1 billion pesos ($960,000), less than half the daily average so far this year.
Among movers, Banco Ganadero fell 1 percent to 287 pesos. Its preferred shares fell 0.45 percent to 218 pesos. Banco de Colombia fell 0.23 percent to 420 pesos.
Ganadero, Colombia's largest bank has offered to buy shares at 295 pesos per ordinary share in a public offer at 3 p.m. today.
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya of Spain is buying 40 percent of the bank for $300 millon.
In New York, Ganadero's ordinary shares were trading down 5/8 to 26 1/2. Banco Industrial Colombiano was down 1/4 to 18 1/2.
Bogota, Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Colombian stocks rose for the first time in four sessions as a gain in shares of brewer Bavaria SA helped offset worries the economy is slowing down.
``There was some large volume in Bavaria, with foreign investors attracted to the low price,'' said Paul Weiss, trader with Corredores Asociados SA.
The Bogota IBB index rose 3 points, or 0.36 percent, to 835.19, according to a preliminary estimate. For the week, the index fell 12 points, or 1.4 percent, as Banco Ganadero shares fell following an equity sale Tuesday.
Trading volume today was 730.8 million pesos ($702,000), about a third of the daily trading average so far this year.
Bavaria is trading at 5.6 times 1995 earnings, which may be attracting investors, traders said. The stock rose 1.3 percent to 3,750 pesos today.
Among other movers, Banco Ganadero rose 0.38 percent to 263 pesos.
In New York, Banco Ganadero's ordinary shares fell 3/8 to 25 1/2.
Tokyo, Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese bonds rose, driving yields to a seven-month low, helped by investor confidence the Bank of Japan will keep lending rates low following reports last week that showed economic growth remains weak.
The yield on the benchmark bond, the 10-year No. 182, fell 0.015 percentage point to 2.93 percent, the lowest for a benchmark bond since 2.925 percent on Feb. 8. Bond futures for December delivery rose 0.18 yen to 120.90.
``Bonds should continue to steadily rise as investors factor in the outlook for more modest growth,'' said Kunihiro Ishibashi, general manager of the bond trading department at Yamaichi Securities Co.
In a report Friday, the government forecast weak industrial production in the months ahead, reinforcing the outlook that the Bank of Japan isn't likely to raise bank lending rates this year.
Production rose 4.1 percent in July from June, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry said in a report issued after the close of trading Friday.
That was higher than the 3.1 percent average of private economists' forecasts yet lower than the 4.2 percent rise MITI had predicted. However, traders and investors said the report's forecasts of a 1.2 percent fall in August output followed by a 0.1 percent forecast rise in September show the recovery is still weak.
In the morning, bonds that will mature in three years or less rose even more than the benchmark. The yield on the No. 111 two-year bond, for example, fell 0.030 percentage point to 0.745 percent.
That widened the difference spread between the yield on the 10-year benchmark bond and the two-year bond by 2 basis points to 219.
A widening spread typically reflects increasing investor expectations the central bank won't raise interest rates.
Bonds rose to almost seven-month highs last week after the Bank of Japan's ``tankan'' survey showed worse-than-expected sentiment about the economy among managers at major manufacturing companies.
To be sure, rising U.S. Treasury bonds yields will likely cap any rise in Japanese bonds, traders said.
The yield on the benchmark 30-year Treasury bonds rose 8 basis points to 7.12 percent Friday, the highest since July 9. Reports of heady expansion in manufacturing and growing consumer confidence deepened concern that inflation may be heating up.
Last week was the first time since Feb. 14 the benchmark bond closed with a yield below 3 percent. The yield on the No. 182 10-year government bond fell to 2.945 percent Friday from 2.980 percent Thursday and 3.145 percent before the release of the tankan survey.
Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto yesterday said he will decide if the government should compile a supplementary budget for this fiscal year by the middle of this month. In meetings with Finance Minister Wataru Kubo and Liberal Democratic Party secretary general Koichi Kato, Hashimoto said he will make the decision after the Economic Planning Agency releases gross domestic product data for the three months to June.
In 1996, a time of relative prosperity and exciting cultural gains for Latinos in North America, negative media stereotypes persist. We are, to the majority of this country of ours, a subculture riddled with problems of drug addiction, welfare abuse and gang violence.
I understand that drive-by shootings and ritual tattoos are dramatic. They are so fascinating, in fact, it is nearly understandable that the behavior of these young boys blinds people to the reasons the unhappy kids have become who they are.
Step away from the media obsessions &MD; and the justifiable refusal of Latinos to admit these marginal children into our society, and we are confronted with the uncomfortable truth that they have learned their behavior from their elders &MD; their fathers, uncles and older brothers.
There is no question that machismo, the salient defining characteristic of the Latino male in the mainstream imagination, is passed down the generations like a genetic characteristic, or an inherited disease. We must come to understand that the behavior of these young thieves, rapists and murderers is the logical end of a cult of machismo that has survived as long as the history of our people.
The first step in breaking the chain of machismo requires adult men to take responsibility for the future of boys. Graffiti, hand-signals and uzis are components of a world in which male children have been abandoned by silent, absent and sometimes violent men, often their own fathers.
The rage of these boys is that of total emotional repression. The hatred gang members act out on each other is without doubt the re-enactment of their abandonment rage at the men who simply turned their backs on them.
For generations, the male in Latino homes ruled with an iron fist. Frequently absent, often abusive, he set examples of self-destruction.
Where did machismo come from? From 500 years of total suppression by a dominant culture that spoke of honor but which extended no honor to the colonized people of South and Central America, and which acted dishonorably toward them.
Caught between survival realities and powerlessness, further constricted by the dictates of the church, the Latino male became a silent cauldron of unexpressed, justifiable anger.
As colonialism gave way to economic imperialism, the difficulties of meeting family responsibilities in concert with race hatred turned Latino men inward to internalized self-hatred.
Activist poet and former ``gangsta'' Luis J. Rodriguez describes it like this:
``The patriarchal Mexican culture helped build a wide breach between my father and me. The silent and strong man &MD; vestiges of deceit &MD; was revered. Waited on. Accepted.'' This persona is lethal.
Machismo is under increasing scrutiny within the Latino community at a time when all men are looking at their roles as males. Rising political and economic assimilation into American society is causing Latin men to look at the past, to question the legacy left by their own fathers in order to secure a decent future for their sons.
For obvious economic reasons, men and women will not play the same parts in the family dramas of the 21st century. Leaving family responsibilities to women &MD; who were taught that satisfaction lay solely in creating a domestic kingdom for the hard-working household ``patron'' &MD; fails to address the reality of two-income families.
Latino men with successful careers have already entered a mainstream world that has been redefining gender roles for decades.
To rebuild machismo without sacrificing its usefulness in maintaining self-respect in the face of overwhelmingly brutal forces of repression, will require long, hard work. Part of redefining ourselves includes addressing the double sexual standard in our own behavior, as well as in the educational system and the workplace.
In trying to retrain ourselves not to pass the worst of machismo onto our sons &MD; literal as well as symbolic sons &MD; we must never forget to instill the best in our daughters as well.
Confronting and changing the high Latino dropout rate in schools, the rampant use of drugs in our neighborhoods (not only inner city, but also suburban), reducing the number of crimes we commit, as well as those committed against us, will all be part of a new machismo, a machismo of genuine self-esteem rather than a facade of bullish posing.
This reconstruction of the Latin male must take place on the social as well as personal level. A broad confrontation with macho traditions goes beyond an enlightened male attitude toward families and each other. Exploited for centuries, and almost comfortable with our exploitation, we are now poised at point in history when we are at last in position to begin to break old patterns.
We still face crumbling barrios and English-only legislation, and the temptation is great to withdraw into our time-honored, pent-up macho rage. But we have new role models in the millennial America &MD; leaders such as Edward James Olmos and Rodriguez &MD; who know that talking about the things men have done to each other begins acknowledging the anger.
Martin Espada, a poet who worked for years as a tenant-rights lawyer in poor Boston communities, believes that Latino anger ``must come and has to be controlled, directed, creatively channeled, articulated but not all-consuming, neither destructive nor self-destructive.''
To look at new dimensions of machismo and to raise stronger sons as well as daughters, we must not let the anger destroy us. And that may well mean turning to each other for strength.
``As an ex-gang member,'' Rodriguez writes, ``I know I could have looked at myself with more self-esteem if I had had a sense that the men around me &MD; my father, uncles, brothers and homeboys &MD; also felt good about themselves.''
Understanding machismo and refusing to be seduced by its destructive forms can revitalize the young and grown alike. By encouraging the development of emotional bonds between men &MD; beyond the false bonds of gang fidelity &MD; Latinos are expanding the spiritual environment for themselves, as well as creating new perspectives on the state of American manhood in general.
Albert Belle, who does not speak to reporters, tells the film maker Spike Lee in next Tuesday's edition of Home Box Office's ``Real Sports'' that he should have decked Milwaukee second baseman Fernando Vina five innings before he actually leveled him in a May 31 game. The action led to a three-game suspension for the Cleveland Indians slugger.
In the third inning, with Belle on second and a runner on third, Vina tagged Belle running to second for the third out. ``He caught the ball, he came charging in and caught me by surprise,'' Belle said. ``Had I known that he was going to charge me like that, I would have ran him over.''
The Indians' first-base coach, Dave Nelson, chewed Belle out.
``I said, `You cost us a run and should have taken the guy out,' '' Nelson told Lee in the 20-minute segment. ``He said, `I know it.' ''
Nelson said Belle had three options: ``You can stop and let the guy tag you, which we don't advise. Two, you can slide into the guy. Or three, run over him, and the third option is to the best.''
In the eighth, Belle said Vina came at him again. ``I was going to make sure the next time it happens, that I wasn't going to be so lenient,'' Belle said. He defended the action, adding, ``If you run the tape over and over, you'll see I hit him and broke up the double play.''
The Boston homeboys are back. The New Edition, starring Bobby Brown, Ricky Bell, Michael Bivins, Ronnie DeVoe and Ralph Tresvant, has regrouped after years of rumors and platinum side projects. ``The future is unlimited,'' says Bivins. ``I think this is going to be something that we can't stop. And we'd be wise not to.''
A reunion disc, ``Home Again,'' is out Tuesday, boasting a souped-up, '90s mix of hip-hop and soul music. And a tour, still being finalized, is expected to start at Boston's FleetCenter Thanksgiving week. ``There's only one place to kick it off &MD; and that's Boston,'' says Bivins. ``Let our people see it before the world sees it. We don't need to save Boston for later.''
First discovered at a talent show 13 years ago, New Edition was Boston's Jackson 5 &MD; a high-pitched, highly rehearsed teen quintet that even sounded like the Jackson 5, thanks to producer Maurice Starr, who later worked with another Boston teen sensation, New Kids on the Block.
New Edition, which will be on the ``Oprah Winfrey Show'' today, shot to fame with bubbly hits ``Popcorn Love,'' ``Candy Girl'' and ``Mr. Telephone Man.'' The group survived the departure of Brown in 1987 (Brown then topped the charts with ``My Prerogative''), replacing him with Johnny Gill, who's also in the present reunion lineup.
The late-'80s New Edition teamed with uber-producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis for hits ``You're Not My Kind O Girl'' and ``Can You Stand the Rain.'' Then came side projects that ballooned to full careers. Bell, Bivins and DeVoe scored as the multi-platinum, sometimes raunchy Bell Biv DeVoe. And Tresvant sold a million copies of a smooth, self-titled solo disc on Motown Records.
So what sparked the reunion? The answer is part musical, but also part business. Here's a refreshingly honest answer from Bivins, whose industry smarts also led him to discover Boyz II Men during his New Edition hiatus:
``The way I look at it is everybody's second solo album didn't do as well as the first and our manager, Brook Payne, pulled everybody together, especially Bell Biv DeVoe, and told us if we didn't hurry up and do the reunion, we might lose the mystique of New Edition. So we pulled Bobby, Ralph and Johnny to the table and made sure everybody was in sync. It took some time to plan it. And going back to New Edition, we had to deal with old contracts. There was a lot of cleanup that needed to be done before we walked into a recording studio.''
Once in the studio, though, the chemistry returned, because the new ``Home Again'' album is a sure winner. The group's reunion feels genuine from start to finish, from the opening hip-hop ballad ``Oh Yeah It Feels So Good,'' to the closing title track with Bivins rapping, ``Me and the fellas trying to bring this back together like old times/Let's take this record home and this time, let's stay there.''
In between are the heavy-rapping ``Hit Me Off'' (showing some of the raunch of Bell Biv DeVoe), the endearingly offbeat ``Something About You'' (described in an intro rap as ``country-western funk-folk meets New Edition''), Gill's fine gospel song ``Thank You'' and several superb tracks from Brown. They include the sexy ``You Don't Have to Worry'' (``I'll be back in sight, no more lonely nights'') and the bass-driven ``Try Again,'' with its sensual line: ``I've waited for someone like you.''
``Everybody felt the pressure of delivering their part and showing the next person that they had stepped up in their talent,'' says Bivins, the only member of New Edition who stills lives in Boston, though others return frequently to visit family.
``The results come out on the record, because everybody is giving 150 percent. I noticed a lot of the guys saying, `I got to do this part right. I ain't leaving the studio until my part is what it's supposed to be.' And I thought that was a good working attitude.''
Some of the music was again produced by Jam and Lewis, but the rest was by noted urban figures like Sean (Puffy) Combs, Chucky Thompson, Gerald Levert, Silky and Dinky Bingham. The vocal arrangements, though, were handled by New Edition.
``We know whose voice best fits a part and who should do what,'' says Bivins, who's still only 27 years old. ``We don't try too many people on a part. We go, `Hey, this sounds like Ralph, this sounds like Johnny, this sounds like Bobby, this sounds like Ricky.' You know what I mean? We pinpoint where it goes. And that's just from being with each other for years.''
The group also drew the best out of Brown, who has made more headlines lately for his bad-boy behavior (turning up in a striptease club and cracking up the car of his wife, Whitney Houston, for example) than for his music.
``His attitude in the studio is a little different than the Bobby you all see when he's out being Bobby,'' says Bivins. ``When he's with New Edition, he's trying to sing all the parts and do all the routines, you know what I'm saying? He's just giving you all the kind of energy that you would like to have from a member. ... When he's out in the streets, I think he sometimes doesn't make the right decisions. I'm sure he realizes that. But with New Edition, we get another side of him. We get the brother.
``We don't talk to Bobby about what he's been through. We're only here to do what we got to do. And that's how we really deal with it. We don't sit down and discuss his personal life,'' says Bivins.
New Edition has matured as a group, he adds. And though some of the lyrics are a long way from ``Popcorn Love'' and ``Candy Girl,'' they're toned down from the Bell Biv DeVoe days. Referring to the street-edged ``Hit Me Off,'' he says, ``Maybe in another day I would have said, `Slap it, slip it, rub it down.' I would have been all for the freak party. I would have been all for the free fall. But you can't be so open like that today. There's a lot out there that you can't get caught up with. Life isn't just a big old party. Life is a little more serious than that. Now that I'm about to be 28, I realize that.''
In his spare time, Bivins stays active in the Boston area, running day camps, basketball leagues and grooming local talent for his Biv10 record label. He currently has a group called the Top 10, featuring local MCs Little Kenny, the Godfather, Lydia, Terrelle and others. And he's also just made a compilation album of national acts to benefit the Martin Luther King Non-Violence Center in Atlanta (with some proceeds going to the Roxbury YMCA). The album includes Monica, Escape, Another Bad Creation, Immature and the Five Young Men (an Atlanta gospel group produced by Maurice Starr). It will be on Biv10 Records and come out in January in time for the Martin Luther King holiday on Jan. 15.
But his first priority is the New Edition reunion. ``This is not a one-shot album,'' he says of the new ``Home Again'' disc. ``I think there are many more to come.''
Fairfax, Virginia, Sept. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Mobil Corp. said it agreed to buy Exxon Corp.'s marketing operations in Kenya, including 80 retail outlets. Terms weren't disclosed.
Mobil said the purchase represents its re-entry into Kenya after a 10-year absence. The company already markets 120,000 barrels a day of fuels and lubricant products in 41 countries in Africa.
Exxon's current market share in Kenya is about 13 percent, or 100 million gallons of fuels and lubricants a year. Exxon said the transaction completes divestment of its East African refining and marketing operations. However, several ventures in exploration and production will continue. In addition Exxon will continue marketing operations in Egypt and Tunisia, and on the islands of Mauritius and Reunion in the Indian Ocean, the company said.
Other assets being bought include a 240,000-barrel import/ export terminal that will help Mobil supply other East African countries, a 125,000-barrel lubricant oil blending plant and a liquefied petroleum gas filling plant, all located in Mombasa. The purchase also includes refueling service facilities at the Nairobi and Mombasa airports.
Mobil stock closed up 7/8 to 116 1/2. Exxon shares closed up 7/8 to 84.
WASHINGTON &MD; First came shock. Then the titillation and the jokes from the late-night comedians. Now the book deals.
And through it all there has been a curious silence and even expressions of sadness and fealty from those he apparently betrayed.
If the tawdry saga that is the Dick Morris affair seems to teach anything about the ways of the influential, it is this: in an age when politicians prattle on about personal responsibility, some people, even when caught, seem to get away.
And in this case, if an as-yet-undisputed article in a supermarket tabloid is to be believed, they're getting away not only with violations of ethics but criminal behavior.
To be sure, Morris, the former chief political strategist for President Clinton, hasn't gotten off scot-free. He was forced to resign in disgrace after the tabloid Star reported that for a year he had retained Sherry Rowlands as a $200-an-hour call girl, allowing her to listen in on phone conversations with the president and to have advance looks at speeches by Vice President Al Gore and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But beyond making Morris and Ms. Rowlands the butt of jokes, virtually everyone &MD; prosecutors, the taxman, feminists, Clinton &MD; seems willing to give them a pass.
In an average day, the District of Columbia police make 300 to 500 arrests, on a variety of charges, of men and women engaged in prostitution as either ``johns'' or hookers. Yet a spokesman for the Police Department said it had no plans to bring charges against Morris over his reported frolics at the Jefferson Hotel, or to launch an investigation into whether such charges were warranted.
Under D.C. law, having sex with a prostitute is not illegal; soliciting sex with one is. Unless the transaction is witnessed (generally through the use of policewomen posing as hookers on the street), it's difficult to prove a crime has occurred. So the police don't bother investigating.
``As far as we are concerned, he has not committed a crime, other than associating with a prostitute,'' said Sgt. J.C. Stamps, a D.C. police spokesman. ``That's not a crime. It may be a problem ethically, but it's not against the law.''
But the reported actions of Morris, who has neither confirmed nor denied the Star account, and Ms. Rowlands, who was paid by the tabloid as its primary source, conceivably could have spawned other crimes; it is unclear whether that possibility is being investigated.
It does not appear to be against the law to allow a person outside of government to be privy to private conversations with the president, so long as they don't involve classified information. But it could be a crime if such access is used to get wind of pending governmental action and profit from it &MD; new regulations on tobacco, say.
But legal experts say that making an insider-trading case against either Morris or Ms. Rowlands would be difficult. For starters, there is no evidence so far that Clinton and Morris spoke of such matters or that Ms. Rowlands heard of them if they did.
Then there is the question of whether Ms. Rowlands paid taxes on her income from prostitution. Unless exempted by federal statute, all income is taxable whether it comes from legal or illegal activity. Therefore, if she did not report her earnings from prostitution (although it would be doubtful she would say that was the source), Ms. Rowlands could end up doing hard time instead of just ``Hard Copy.''
But Sheldon Cohen, a former commissioner of the IRS, said the agency normally did not pursue those kinds of cases unless the amount of money was significant. And the world's oldest profession is a cash business, so if a call girl reports any income, it's difficult to determine whether she underreported it. As a result the IRS usually doesn't investigate.
``If they chased every prostitute on that basis, they wouldn't be chasing anybody else,'' Cohen said.
Aides with the Clinton campaign, which was paying Morris as a consultant, said a preliminary audit indicated that campaign funds weren't used to pay Ms. Rowlands, thus they do not believe there was any violation of federal election law.
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