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Princeton in the News
May 24, 2000
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HIGHLIGHTS
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Economic Scene/Work visas are allowing Washington to sidestep immigration reform.
BYLINE: By Alan B. Krueger; This column appears here every Thursday. Alan B. Krueger is the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and editor of The Journal of Economic Perspectives. Four economic analysts -- Professor Krueger, J. Bradford DeLong, Jeff Madrick and Virginia Postrel -- rotate as contributors.
THE inscription on the Statue of Liberty is quietly being rewritten: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; I'll also take your skilled employees under the temporary visa program, H-1B."
The H-1B visa was established in 1990 to permit foreigners with a college degree or higher to work in the United States for a renewable three-year term for employers who petition on their behalf. In 1998, the program was expanded to allow 115,000 workers, up from 65,000, to enter the United States in fiscal years 1999 and 2000. Demand for H-1B visas by employers is high, particularly among high-technology companies. This year the limit was reached just six months into the year. President Clinton and many members of Congress would like to increase the limit to 200,000 a year the next three years.
The expansion of temporary work visas should be evaluated in the context of overall immigration policy. But immigration reform, replacing Social Security, has become the new third rail of American politics. So instead of tackling the issue head on, Washington has come to rely on temporary work visas as a substitute for addressing the economic and social shortcomings of current policy.
The United States is in the midst of the "Second Great Migration." The first occurred between 1880 and 1924, when 26 million immigrants arrived on our shores. The second began in the late 1970's: more immigrants have come to the United States since 1980 than in the previous 60 years. …
Who should become an American? The question is profound, involving more than economics alone. But economic considerations obviously play a role.
Theoretically, the economics of immigration is straightforward. If more workers are admitted to the country -- as permanent immigrants or temporary workers -- the earnings of native American workers competing with them for jobs should fall. At the same time, the price of goods and services they produce should decline, and the profits of businesses should rise. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 20, 2000, SaturdayNAME: John C. Sawhill
HEADLINE: John Sawhill, Ex-N.Y.U. Chief Who Led Conservation Group, Dies at 63
BYLINE: By DAVID STOUT
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 19John C. Sawhill, a former president of New York University who advised three presideJohn C. Sawhillnts on energy policy and for the last decade of his life was president and chief executive of the Nature Conservancy, died on Thursday at a hospital in Richmond, Va. He was 63 and lived in Washington and Virginia.
The cause of death was diabetes, the Nature Conservancy said.
Mr. Sawhill became head of the conservancy, which describes itself as the world's largest private conservation group, in January 1990. The organization's mission is to preserve animals and plants by acquiring land and water to protect the environment from development.
The conservancy said in a statement today that during Mr. Sawhill's tenure it had protected more than seven million acres of land in the United States; that the conservancy work force had tripled, to about 3,000, and that its membership had more than doubled, to 1.1 million people.
The conservancy said that in 1995, under Mr. Sawhill's direction, it completed the largest fund-raising campaign in the history of the conservation movement, raising $315 million. Last March, Mr. Sawhill announced the start of a $1 billion campaign.
Mr. Sawhill was president of New York University from 1975 to 1979. When he took office, the university, like its hometown, was mired in debt and its very future seemed in danger. Mr. Sawhill, who was a professor of economics while serving as president, led a huge fund-raising drive and was widely credited with putting the university's finances back in order. …
John Crittenden Sawhill was born in Cleveland on June 12, 1936, and grew up in Baltimore. He graduated cum laude from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1958 and received a doctorate in economics from New York University in 1963. …
NOTE: Additional notices for Mr. Sawhill appear in the Obituaries section of the digest below.
OTHER HEADLINES
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
May 25, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: Big Money For Math's Unsolved Mysteries; Institute Offers 7 $1 Million Prizes
BYLINE: Charles Trueheart , Washington Post Foreign Service
DATELINE: PARIS, May 24Anyone who wants to be a millionaire, and happens to be a genius at mathematics, now has seven chances to become one.
The Clay Mathematics Institute, a nonprofit foundation based in Cambridge, Mass., unveiled seven brain-bending problems here today and a corresponding number of $1 million "Millennium Prizes" to anyone who can provide an "approved" solution.
"We are convinced that the resolution of these problems will open up a whole new world that we cannot yet imagine," said Andrew Wiles, a Princeton University math professor known for cracking a 350-year-old problem called "Fermat's Last Theorem" in 1995. Experts say solving the problems could lead to breakthroughs in encryption and other fields.
The contest pays homage to a list of 23 math problems announced in Paris 100 years ago by mathematician David Hilbert. These problems taxed the greatest minds in the field for decades, and three remain unsolved. …
The Associated Press
May 25, 2000, Thursday
HEADLINE: Solve the world's toughest math problems, walk away a millionaire
BYLINE: By JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: PARISIf square-root signs and algebraic theorems never looked appealing before, consider this: A group of the world's top mathematicians is offering $7 million for solutions to some of the world's hardest equations.
After puzzling for years over seven unsolved math problems, a U.S.-based mathematics foundation put the "Millennium Prize Problems" challenge to the world via the Internet on Wednesday.
Experts say solving the problems could lead to breakthroughs in encryption and aerospace - and open areas of mathematics as yet unimagined.
The Clay Mathematics Institute posted the problems on its Web site, http://www.claymath.org at the same time it unveiled the contest in Paris at its annual meeting.
"The seven mathematical problems stand out as great unresolved problems of the 20th century," said Andrew Wiles, a Princeton University math professor known for cracking a 350-year-old conjecture known as "Fermat's Last Theorem" in 1995.
"We hope that by attaching prizes to them, it will incite and inspire future generations of mathematicians," said Wiles, 45, who told a news conference that he first came across Fermat's puzzle in a comic book at the age of 10.
The group has posted a $1 million prize for each of the seven problems. …
The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA.)
Copyright 2000 Capital City Press
May 24, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Teach for America corps beneficial for Louisiana
BYLINE: LANNY KELLERImagine you are running a business in an extremely tight labor market. You don't have a lot of money for recruiting, and you don't pay very well.
Now, imagine a nonprofit corporation will recruit bright young college students to work for you for two years. Their recruits are screened and interviewed, graduated from some of the best universities in America; only one in four of their applicants are accepted for you.
The young people are given an intensive, hands-on training program in your business, and follow-up support while they work for you for two years.
What a deal: That's what Louisiana is getting through a program called Teach for America. Over 10 years, TFA has placed more than 800 teachers in schools in several south Louisiana parishes.
Some of the alumni continue to work in Louisiana schools, although not necessarily in public education. Tragically, however well the young teachers perform, there are nearly insuperable barriers to their becoming certified teachers in Louisiana. …
The national program was started by another prodigy, Wendy Kopp, who conceived the idea for TFA while an undergraduate at Princeton University. …
Lanny Keller is an editorial writer for The Advocate.
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 2000 Bergen Record Corp.
May 24, 2000, WEDNESDAYHEADLINE: CHINA TRADE: WHAT WE SAY VS. WHAT WE BUY; IT'SDECISION TIME IN THE HOUSE
RIGHTS AND JOBS ATSTAKE
BYLINE: THERESA FORSMAN, Staff WriterSeventy-nine percent of Americans are opposed to granting permanent, normal trade relations to China, a Business Week poll shows. But 79 percent of Americans are not opposed to buying goods made cheaply in China.
"If they were, there would be no toys under the Christmas tree," said Michael Merrill of the New Jersey AFL-CIO. Or sneakers in the locker or jeans in the drawer, he might have added. …
As the House prepared for a final vote today on whether to grant permanent trading privileges to China, making it easier and cheaper for American companies to do business there and giving the Chinese population the means to buy Western goods, opponents of such status cite China's mistreatment of its political dissidents and the onerous conditions for many of its workers. …
High-tech companies especially have been lobbying hard for passage of the trade bill. They targeted, among others, first-term Rep. Rush D. Holt, D-Hopewell Township, because he was a physicist at Princeton University before his election to Congress.
Still, mail from Holt's district is running 2-to-1 against the bill, said Steve Maviglio, a spokesman. …
The Times (London)
Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Limited
May 24, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: The Royal Society
The Royal Society has announced the election of its annual intake of new Fellows and Foreign Members, and an Honorary Fellow: Fellows: Professor Roy Jackson, Princeton University, USA
U.S. Newswire
Copyright 2000 U.S. Newswire, Inc.May 23, 2000, Tuesday
HEADLINE: President Clinton Names Three to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 23President Clinton today announced his intent to appoint Stanley M. Chesley, Barbara W. Grossman and Mel Levine to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Congressman Mel Levine, of Los Angeles, California, is a partner in the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP. Earlier, he served as a member of the United States Congress from 1983 until 1993 and as a member of the California Assembly from 1977 to 1982. Levine was named as one of the "100 Most Influential" lawyers in California in 1999. He serves a Chair of the U.S. delegation to the U.S.-Israel-Palestinian "Anti-Incitement" committee established by the Wye Plantation peace agreement and as a U.S. government appointee to the U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Advisory Commission. …
He received a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Council was established in 1979 to provide for the annual commemoration and observance of the Days of Remembrance of the Holocaust, and to construct and operate a living memorial to its victims. The Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in 1993.
The Boston Globe
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
May 23, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: SCIENCE BRIEFS Stephen Reucroft and John Swain are experimental particle physicists who teach at Northeastern University.;
COSMIC LOST AND FOUND
BYLINE: By Stephen Reucroft and John SwainOne of the big mysteries of physics these days is that about 90 percent of the matter in the universe seems to be invisible. Now Todd M. Tripp and Edward B. Jenkins of Princeton University and Blair D. Savage of the University of Wisconsin in Madison may have found some of it.
Using the light from a distant quasar as a sort of cosmic flashlight, they've found what look like clouds of nonluminous interstellar gas. Just how much of the total dark matter in the universe can be accounted for by these clouds is still under investigation, but additional observations are expected soon and should shed yet more light on the mystery of dark matter.
Fulton County Daily Report
Copyright 2000 American Lawyer Media, L.P.
May 23, 2000, TuesdayHEADLINE: Savannah Judge Mikell Picked by Barnes for Court of Appeals Slot
BYLINE: Linda Daniels, Staff ReporterThe latest appointment to the Georgia Court of Appeals shows Gov. Roy E. Barnes again promoting from the bench and embracing geographic diversity.
Barnes Monday picked Chatham Superior Court Judge Charles B. Mikell Jr., 58, from five candidates to fill the vacancy created by the recent retirement of Presiding Judge William L. McMurray Jr. …
Mikell, a native of Savannah, has served as a Superior Court Judge in the Eastern Judicial Circuit since his election in 1992. …
After graduating from Princeton University in 1963, Mikell entered the Army as an intelligence officer. He served five years and was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service in Vietnam. …
THE HINDU
Copyright 2000 The Hindu
May 23, 2000HEADLINE: The Hindu-Editorial: Human development in Andhra Pradesh
POVERTY ALLEVIATION has been on the national policy agenda for more than 50 years. What is the record of Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) in poverty removal and human development? According to the expert group (Lakadawala Committee) estimates for the State, rural poverty has declined from 48.4 per cent in 1973-74 to 15.9 per cent in 1993-94. During the same period, urban poverty declined from 50.6 per cent to 38.33 while total poverty declined from 48.9 per cent to 22.2 per cent. These numbers show that there has been significant improvement in the reduction of poverty in A.P. However, there is a controversy over the poverty figures in A.P., particularly those on rural poverty. The ground situation does not seem to support the statistical finding that the rural poverty ratio is only 16 per cent in the State. One of the reasons for this could be the expert group pegging the poverty line lower for rural A.P. The rural poverty line (Rs.163.02) in 1993-94 for A.P. was only 79 per cent of the all-India level (Rs.205.84).
In a study on prices and poverty in India, Angus Deaton of Princeton University provides an independent set of price indices for different States for the years 1987-88 and 1993-94. The study shows that the rural poverty line for A.P. is more or less similar to the all-India level. According to one of his estimates, A.P.'s rural poverty ratio was around 33 per cent in 1993-94. Urban poverty was around 21 per cent in the same year. If we accept Deaton's estimates, A.P.'s total poverty comes to around 30 per cent. In absolute terms, 21 million people were below the poverty line in 1993-94. It shows that A.P. has a long way to go in eradicating poverty. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times CompanyMay 23, 2000, Tuesday
HEADLINE: From Curtain Calls to Ivy Halls;
Top Colleges Take Notice of Special School's Young StarsBYLINE: By KATE ZERNIKE
If you are Anthony Roth Costanzo, your year looks something like this:
Sing solo with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Perform in "The Marriage of Figaro" with the Santa Barbara Grand Opera. Accept the Independent Spirit Award for best debut performance in a feature film. Sing the narration for dance performances in Italy and Athens.
Oh, and take the SAT's, campaign for student council president (win), apply to Princeton early (get in), star in the school musical, attend the prom, fly back from Italy to attend graduation, and two weeks ago, turn 18.
If you think it is easy to be impressed with yourself, think again, because not only do your classmates have resumes that sparkle as much as yours -- concert pianists who have performed for the heads of the Commonwealth nations, professional ballerinas with perfect SAT's -- but they got into the Ivy League, too. …
GRAPHIC: Photos: Right, Berenika Zakrzewski, a concert pianist and a senior at the Professional Children's School, has been accepted at Harvard University. Faye Arthurs, below, has deferred her entry into Harvard because of a blossoming career with the New York City Ballet.; Anthony Roth Costanzo, center, who has sung with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, appeared in a movie and has been accepted into Princeton . (Photographs by Nancy Siesel/The New York Times)
University Wire
Copyright 2000 Harvard Crimson via U-WireMay 23, 2000
HEADLINE: Harvard president announces resignation
BYLINE: By Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan & Erica B. Levy, Harvard Crimson
SOURCE: Harvard U.
DATELINE: Cambridge, Mass.Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine announced Monday morning that he will leave the university at the end of this coming year.
While some said his announcement came suddenly, Rudenstine emphasized the timeliness of the decision.
"It's exactly the right thing for the University. We start a new planning process," he said. "There's no advantage to be gained by postponing the beginning of that. It seems the right moment for Harvard."
His resignation comes at the conclusion of a six-year capital campaign that has marked his tenure. He has raised $2.6 billion. …
Rudenstine was an undergraduate at Princeton University (and) has served as Harvard's president since 1991. He was a Rhodes Scholar.
Business Times (Malaysia) (Malaysia)
Copyright 2000 New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad
May 22, 2000HEADLINE: IMF made E. Asia recession deeper, longer and harder'
BYLINE: By Hardev KaurWHEN Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad took to task the Bretton Woods institutions - the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank - for causing more harm than good to developing countries, his views were disregarded and he was labelled a "mad man".
Dr Mahathir, the outspoken leader of a developing country, supposedly did not know what he was talking about. After all, the IMF and World Bank had been in the "business" for almost 50 years. They should know their job better. Right?
Well, not so as it turns out. And what's worse, the Fund does not even follow its own advice on transparency and openness.
One of "the Insiders", Mr Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist and vice president of the World Bank, in a chilling account of the "workings" of the IMF, is "appalled" at the handling of the "gravest economic crisis in a half-century". …
As a professor of economics at Stanford University, a post from which he took leave to serve the US President's Council of Economic Advisers and then the World Bank, he says: "Quite frankly, a student who turned in the
IMF's answer to the test question What should be the fiscal stance of Thailand, facing an economic downturn?' would have gotten an F!" …
Writing in The New Republic on "What I learned at the world economic crisis", Stiglitz says secrecy, poor expertise, inexperienced staff, wrong diagnosis, arrogance, an undemocratic process and a lack of transparency are commonplace in the IMF.
The IMF likes to go about its business without outsiders asking too many questions. …
IMF "experts" believe that they are "brighter, more educated and less politically motivated" than the economists in the countries they visit. But, Stiglitz says, "economic leaders from these countries are pretty good in many cases brighter or better educated than the IMF staff, which frequently consists of third-rank students from first-rate universities".
Stiglitz, who has taught at the Oxford University, MIT, Stanford University, Yale University and Princeton University, says the IMF almost never succeeded in recruiting any of the best students. …
Business Week
Copyright 2000 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
May 22, 2000HEADLINE: LEARNING FROM HORATIO ALGER
BYLINE: BY GENE KORETZ
HIGHLIGHT: Self-employment can aid the poorIn these heady times, few doubt the prototypical American myth that one can get ahead in life by striking out on one's own. Indeed, many experts believe that encouraging entrepreneurship could significantly improve the economic status of poor blacks in urban ghettos.
But does becoming self-employed really pay off for those making the leap? To find out, economists Douglas Holtz-Eakin of Syracuse University, Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton University, and Robert Weathers of the Social Security Administration analyzed the economic progress of a cross-section of American workers from 1969 to 1990.
On average, they found, those who try self-employment for a year or two suffer a big initial hit in income but tend to catch up with their wage-earning peers several years after they return to ordinary jobs. ''For such workers, the experience of being an entrepreneur doesn't help or hurt much,'' says Rosen.
For those who stick it out for five years or longer, the pattern is different. New entrepreneurs who were earning relatively high wages before jumping ship actually fall a bit behind their salaried counterparts after five years, while average earners come out slightly ahead of their peers. But formerly low-wage earners who remain self-employed do significantly better. And among blacks, the gains are especially large. …
Business WeekCopyright 2000 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
May 22, 2000HEADLINE: Online or Off, the Rules Are the Same
BYLINE: BY CHRISTOPHER FARRELL
HIGHLIGHT: The Web hasn't changed the fundamentals of smart investingLow-cost online trading has opened the world of equities to millions of people who might not have otherwise considered playing the stock market. More than half of American households now own stocks, and about one-fifth of them made their first investment during the past four years, when online trading became a national pastime. But investors haven't always jumped in with sufficient knowledge. ''The lure of online trading seems to be that here is something you can do with no skill, no knowledge, and yet you can make tons of money,'' says Meir Statman, chairman of the finance department at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business.
But the past few weeks have been sobering. Nasdaq is down a sickening 31% from its March high. Thousands of dot-com companies are losing altitude fast. Even blue-chip Lucent Technologies, America's most widely held stock, is down about 17% since early March. True, the stock market has usually rallied after its steepest declines. But after several years of historically low volatility, choppy markets have returned with a vengeance in recent months. …
If you're a recent convert to online investing, you may have learned your first real object lessons. No one is saying you should shut down that E*Trade account -- heck, even Merrill Lynch and its full-service rivals are rolling out online-trading accounts these days (page 150). But if the past few months can teach us online traders anything at all, it's that we need to remember some of the basic rules of investing -- the ones that long predate the Web:
-- Frequent trading can be costly. The average online transaction fee was $23.35 in March, according to Stephen Franco, an equity analyst at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. That may be cheap compared with traditional broker fees, but it adds up quickly even if you're trading as infrequently as five times a week. Then, too, there are the income taxes triggered by profits from active trading. On a quick trade, you'll pay as much as 39.6% of your profits to Uncle Sam. Buy and hold for just one year, however, and you'll qualify for the lower capital-gains rate of 20%. ''Very active trading will be very unlikely to beat a buy-and-hold strategy,'' says Burton Malkiel, the Princeton University finance economist and author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street (Norton, $29.95 cloth, $15.95 paper).
The Independent (London)
Copyright 2000 Newspaper Publishing PLC
May 22, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: ROYAL SOCIETY
Royal Society
The following have been elected new Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society:
Professor Roy Jackson, Princeton University, USA
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
May 22, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: THE 'MORNING AFTER' PILL WORKS FINE IF YOU CAN GET IT
TO REDUCE UNPLANNED PREGNANCIES, ADVOCATES SEEK EASIER ACCESS TO EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTIVES.
BYLINE: SHARI ROAN, TIMES HEALTH WRITERComplaining that emergency contraceptives are still not within easy reach of many women, health activists are trying to improve access to medication that they say could reduce the nation's high rate of unplanned pregnancies.
In Los Angeles, Planned Parenthood's 11 clinics have begun offering most patients a dose of the so-called morning-after pills to take home with them--for a fee of $5--just in case.
And the Los Angeles-based Pacific Institute for Women's Health recently published two guides--one for consumers and one for health practitioners--to promote awareness of the pills.
"We need to very much keep the pressure on and try to make this accessible to the man and woman on the street," says Francine Coeytaux, an associate of the nonprofit institute. "We do have a lot of barriers still." …
The emergency contraceptives, which cause nausea in some women, must be taken within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse. Both are highly effective, giving rise to expectations that the products could make a dent in the estimated 3 million unintended pregnancies and 800,000 abortions that occur each year in the United States. …
Even individuals who call a national hotline listing emergency contraceptive health practitioners often have difficulty getting the pills. A survey of the hotline ( 888 NOT-2-LATE) found that 14% of the calls resulted in failure to obtain an appointment or prescription within 72 hours of calling. The study was published in the February issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
"The vast majority of providers do a good job. But we were certainly discouraged that people who self-selected to provide emergency contraceptives didn't do a better job," says James Trussell, an author of the study and professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and a leading advocate of the method. "The bottleneck in the access process is that physicians don't routinely counsel women or prescribe it in advance."
The study found that some callers failed to even make telephone contact with the provider, that doctors refused to see women who were not established patients, or that appointments were unavailable. …
Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA)
Copyright 2000, Telegraph-Herald
May 22, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: New conductor gets the double-scoop on Dubuque
BYLINE: Sandye VoightSymphony: Intriligator says he will be inspired by 'the friendly people and beautiful nature'
William Intriligator already has feasted his eyes on the Dubuque Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, joined a local tennis club and tasted his first double-scoop of Betty Jane ice cream.
The Dubuque Symphony Orchestra's new conductor was in town over the weekend to meet with board members and, with his wife, Heather, to look for a place to live.
"We're enjoying looking around at all the beautiful neighborhoods," Intriligator said Friday afternoon, in between a busy schedule of appointments. …
Intriligator, 29, was one of five finalists in line for the position vacated by Nicholas Palmer.
In October, he was the first finalist to serve as a guest director, conducting pieces by Beethoven, Saint-Sans and Shostakovich.
"That first rehearsal with the orchestra really pumped me up," he recalled. "They were a little rusty at first - it was the first rehearsal of the season - but by the end of the rehearsal, they were sounding really good. I'm looking forward to bringing them to a new place and inspiring them." …
He has a bachelor's degree in music from Princeton University and a master's and a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. …
United Press International
Copyright 2000 U.P.I.
May 22, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Stories of modern science...From UPI
NEXT GENERATION SPACE TELESCOPE GETS HIGHEST PRIORITY: A new report from the National Research Council of the National Academies, mapping out the priorities for investments in astronomy research over the next decade, gave the highest nod to the Next Generation Space Telescope. The instrument will be far more advanced than the Hubble telescope and should dramatically increase our understanding of how the first stars and galaxies formed billions of years ago and how stars and planets form today. The report also zeroes in on other projects that have the greatest promise for providing more knowledge. "New discoveries have the potential to shed light on many key challenges in astronomy, including identifying the total amount of matter in the universe as well as its age, evolution, and ability to support life," said Joseph H. Taylor, James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics at Princeton University, Princeton , N.J. "We also may soon understand how black holes are formed and how the astronomical environment affects Earth," added Christopher F. McKee, professor of physics and of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. McKee and Taylor are co-chairs of the committee that wrote the report.
The Weekly Standard
Copyright 2000 The Weekly Standard
May 22, 2000HEADLINE: Great Moments in Academic Freedom
According to a May 8 report in the New York Times, Princeton University's prestigious Chinese language program at Beijing Normal University was attacked by a Chinese academic for "infiltrating American ideology into Chinese Language teaching." As the Times recounted it, "the Princeton -based authors of the teaching materials have always had to adapt their text-book somewhat for use in China. But this year 'was much more unpleasant and specific,' said Professor Chou [of Princeton ]. 'And the changes they wanted were extensive and not negotiable. It was basically a threat.'" Indeed, the Chinese university "demanded that Professor Chou delete eight essays entirely and modify large chunks of other lessons before a contract could be signed. Sections on how the growing use of e-mail promotes free speech and the hazards of walking through Beijing traffic had to be dropped."
Princeton 's response to the threat? It caved. "Professor Chou … is modifying the material and said the program would continue."
The Boston Globe
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: LETTER FROM HAVANA;
PEDDLING OF OLD TOMES HELPS IN FUELING NEW CAPITALISM IN CUBA
BYLINE: By Jordana Hart, Globe StaffHAVANA - The scent of cigarettes and old leather-bound books hangs over Libreria La Victoria in Old Havana, mixing with the aroma of stewed chicken from a stove in the apartment in back.
Opening the doorway from her kitchen to her little storefront bookstore, one of Cuba's emerging entrepreneurs wipes her hands on her plastic apron, and adjusts the curlers under her scarf. Consuelo Ruiz has been selling secondhand books since 1994, a year after Fidel Castro legalized the US dollar here, allowing Cubans to experiment with capitalism - for a monthly fee.
It not only allows the 65-year-old retired nurse to take advantage of a growing market - it's her only way to move beyond government rations and a piddling pension.
"Believe me, the people here read, and they read a lot," said her husband and business partner, Octavio Benjamin Villamel. "But they also need money, so they try to sell us books almost every day."
More than 300 storefronts peddling secondhand volumes have sprouted, mostly in Havana, since 1993, largely the result of vast Spanish-, French-, and English-language collections abandoned as thousands of well-off, educated Cubans fled following the 1959 Communist takeover. …
A number of US librarians and specialist booksellers routinely trickle into Cuba to cruise the bookstores and private collections, but are often disappointed in their quest for old, precious books.
"They are scouting around for anything old, and rare and curious, things that don't get into the marketing mainstream," said Dan Hazen of Harvard's Widener Library who went to Cuba twice in the 1990s. "You get to a place and you find the collected works of Karl Marx from 1960 - plenty of revolutionary era stuff, but little [worth anything] from before that."
Hazen, in charge of Widener's Latin American, Spanish, and Portuguese collections, noted that booksellers from Spain, Mexico, and Uruguay are getting first dibs on choice books, unencumbered by embargos and trade bans.
Hazen's Princeton University counterpart, Peter Johnson, in Cuba a few weeks ago, said that what is available changes little over time.
"There are lots of law books and reference works, such as dictionaries and guides," published before 1959, Johnson said. "Some stands have substantial quantities of" editions "from Spain, mainly novels and some history books. Much of what is there appears to be attractive to European and Latin American buyers who are collectors."
Cuban law, he said, prohibits anyone from removing certain books published prior to 1950 printed in Cuba, and that a collector leaving the country is supposed to submit a list of titles to the National Library for approval. …
The Boston Globe
Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
May 21, 2000HEADLINE: COMMENTARY Katy Hall will graduate from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., next month, and will attend Princeton University in the fall.;
WRAPPING UP HIGH SCHOOL AND GETTING READY TO ROLL
BYLINE: By Katy Hall
Graduation announcements, college roommate surveys, prom dates: the list goes on. As seniors on the brink of leaving high school and home, we have a lot on our minds. For the first time in four grueling years, academics take a back seat to other, more imperative issues. With the burden of college admissions lifted, everyone has the security of knowing where they will be in the fall. I do not know a single person who is less than thrilled at the prospect of starting life on a campus full of promises and surprises, regardless of whether they were accepted at their first-choice school. Such issues matter so little now that we wonder why a hundredth of a GPA point was so vital last November.
We can't wait to get out, yet the thought of actually leaving hasn't quite sunk in. …
It is obvious that in these spring days, the mindset of the senior class is not academically oriented. The teachers do not deny this; they rarely even plan lessons. The other day, my advanced-placement journalism teacher began to lecture to a surprisingly large turnout of 11 students. Within minutes, the test review digressed into a debate over who would win in a 10-foot-deep pool of water - a 6-foot shark or a 6-foot alligator. (I voted for the alligator.) …
Daily News (New York)
Copyright 2000 Daily News, L.P.
May 21, 2000HEADLINE: BIG UNIT, 6-10 AND STILL GROWING
BYLINE: By KENNY LUCAS DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITERRandy Johnson is 36 years old and the cold, hard truth is evident: He's not the pitcher he used to be. He's better.
Johnson's 1999 Cy Young Award has barely collected any dust and already the Arizona Diamondbacks' ace has burst from the gates, his left arm hurling thunderbolts from his 6-10 frame.
Last month, Johnson went 6-0 with a 0.91 ERA to join Vida Blue and Dave Stewart as the only pitchers to win six games in April. Heading into today's start against the Mets at Shea, Johnson (7-1) leads the National League in ERA (0.97) and strikeouts (100) and is tied for the league lead in wins.
He's come a long way from the pitcher who led the league in walks three consecutive seasons (1990-92). And while it's easy to point to Johnson's size and velocity as reasons for his dominance, Johnson says his willingness and desire to learn have been equally important. It's these intangibles that mark the difference between the norm - a 36-year-old pitcher whose career is winding down - and Johnson, a 36-year-old who is in his prime. …
The raw materials Johnson had to work with have always been awesomely evident. Former Seattle Mariners catcher Scott Bradley saw that as soon as Johnson was traded to the M's midway through the 1989 season from Montreal in the Mark Langston deal.
"Catching him in his first start - just his size, it almost changed the game," said Bradley, now head coach at Princeton University. "I knew what was coming and it felt like he was almost placing the ball in my glove." …
Dayton Daily News
Copyright 2000 Dayton Newspapers, Inc.
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: SEEN & OVERHEARD
FAST-BREAKING MEDIA NEWS.SURPRISE, SURPRISE.
When Columbus' Charles Penn-Nabrit was interviewed by a newspaper reporter writing a story about the fact that the home-schooled teen-ager is now a student at Princeton University, Penn-Nabrit mentioned the student who has the highest grades in his sophomore class at the Ivy League school. He said, "She never watched TV."
- Bob Batz
The Houston Chronicle
Copyright 2000 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Divorce has society circles talking; Latest split in high-profile Sarofim family will go to trial Monday
SOURCE: Staff
BYLINE: CLIFFORD PUGHForget football.
To watch a real contact sport, peek inside state District Judge Annette Galik's courtroom Monday for what may be the most hotly contested high society divorce in Houston history.
The latest knock-down, drag-out example of "Divorce - Texas style" pits Christopher Sarofim, son of Houston billionaire Fayez Sarofim, against Valerie Biggs Sarofim in a nasty case that has society circles buzzing.
In an unusual move, Galik sealed nearly all court documents surrounding the case last month. But those who have seen the court record say it reads like a bad Jackie Collins novel, with charges of cocaine abuse, infidelity, child neglect and even a whiff of political intrigue among Houston's Big Rich. …
Christopher Sarofim, 36, is a principal at his father's firm, where he runs the Julius Baer U.S. Stock Fund and specializes in analyzing automobile stocks.
A 1986 graduate of Princeton University, Christopher Sarofim is active on Houston's charity circuit. He serves on the MFA board and was host of a skeet shooting tournament two months ago to benefit the museum. …
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
Copyright 2000 The Indianapolis Star
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Driving the message
The Speedway's chief marketing officer, Bob Reif, has a broad mandate to build audiences for the Indy Racing League and boost sponsorships. So far, he's keeping up the pace.
BYLINE: BY BILL KOENIG STAFF WRITER
Bob Reif stands tall, like the quarterback he was at Princeton University. And like a quarterback in the pocket, Reif has a lot of pressure in his new job.
Reif is the chief marketing officer of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy Racing League -- the third person since 1997 to hold that post.
The five-year-old IRL has struggled to draw crowds at many of its events and, aside from the Indianapolis 500, has low TV ratings.
Not only that, but Reif has a demanding boss.
Tony George, the league's founder and Speedway president, says the IRL puts on a good show, but he grades previous marketing efforts "a C, at best, probably a C-minus." …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: IN PERSON; Simply 'Writer' Will Do
BYLINE: By ROBERT STRAUSS
DATELINE: PRINCETONLAN SAMANTHA CHANG cringes when she's told she's the next Amy Tan or Maxine Hong Kingston -- that she is the next great female Asian-American writer.
"When my book came out, immediately there were two reviews that put me in this group with these Asian-American women writers," said Ms. Chang, crinkling her face and cringing at the thought. "Others started comparing me to Jewish writers. I don't know how to feel about all of it."
What has raised expectations about Ms. Chang is "Hunger" (Penguin Books, $12.95), a novella and story collection that has earned a collection of outstanding reviews.
All this for a woman who didn't take a writing course until she was in graduate school, whose career has blossomed late -- fortunately so, in her mind.
"I was older, well past the age where you could be said to be precocious," said the 35-year-old Ms. Chang, who is at Princeton University on an Alfred Hodder Fellowship, given to allow young artists to pursue their work with freedom for a year.
"I was a precocious violin player, but then adolescence came," she said over lunch at the elegant Lahieres Restaurant in downtown Princeton . "Adolescence weeds out those with a true calling from those who are just talented. I'm glad I didn't write until later, so I didn't have to go through the same thing with my writing." …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: Home Schooling Graduates;
Students, Jittery About College at First, Are Doing Well Academically and Fitting In Socially
BYLINE: By DEBRA NUSSBAUMANNIE BYAR could be any Princeton junior. She lives in campus housing with three other young women, has her meals at one of the university's eating clubs, and during finals makes midnight runs to the local Wawa convenience store to load up on snacks.
But in one respect, Ms. Byar is unusual among the 1,134 juniors at Princeton University. For most of her 21 years, she did not attend public school or even a prestigious prep school that feeds into the Ivy League university.
After years of lessons at the kitchen table at the hands of her mother and father, an industrial designer, a few community college courses and many extracurricular activities, Annie seamlessly joined the class of 2001. So far, she seems to be just as successful as her peers, who took the required courses and electives, sat through endless hours of study hall and went to the junior and senior prom.
"I honestly don't think the transition was more difficult for me than other kids," said Ms. Byar. "Socially there was no problem. I found a good group of friends right away. In some sense home schooling helped academically because I did so much on my own."
As home schooling gains in popularity in New Jersey and around the country -- it is now legal in every state -- there are a greater number of young adults entering college and the workplace who spent little or no time in traditional classrooms. Indeed, home schooling groups estimate that a million to 1.7 million children are being taught at home in the United States in the current school year; of that, about 200,000 are of high school age. …
GRAPHIC: Photos: Joshua Donaldson, top right, who will attend the College of New Jersey in the fall, helps his brother, Jeremy, in their kitchen in Hainesport. Annie Byar, above, has put in her lessons at the kitchen table and is a junior at Princeton . (Photographs by Laura Pedrick for The New York Times)(pg. 1); Joshua Donaldson, above, has chosen to go to college close to home. Anne Byar, right, lives on the Princeton campus. (Photographs by Laura Pedrick for The New York Times)(pg. 10)
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: NEW JERSEY & CO.; When You Order Fish in Princeton , It's Probably His
BYLINE: By ANNE RUDERMAN
DATELINE: PRINCETONWhen dawn broke, Jack Morrison was already five hours into his workday.
Mr. Morrison, the owner of the Nassau Street Seafood and Blue Point Grill here, was weaving amid crates of cooled sea bass and tightly packed soft-shell crabs at the Fulton Street Fish Market in lower Manhattan. With a checklist in one hand, his other hand reaching and roaming, scooping up a red snapper, pressing the body of a gray sole, swiping the side of a flounder (slime is good) looking for the perfect buy.
Thousands of pounds of fish later -- enough to supply 90 percent of the seafood restaurants in this town -- Mr. Morrison returns home, listening to early-morning radio and melting into the flow of the first hints of traffic. …
Between Memorial Day weekend and June 6, Mr. Morrison said his catering business would prepare close to 11,000 meals. Since 1990, Nassau Street Seafood catered Princeton University's 25th and 40th class reunions at the end of May as well as the university's annual staff day in early June. …
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: A STORY OF RENEWAL
BYLINE: DAN FITZPATRICK, POST-GAZETTE STAFF WRITERFifty years ago this month, a one-ton wrecking ball took out a small warehouse on Penn Avenue. So began one of the country's most ambitious, expensive and controversial campaigns to save a big city from pollution, neglect and decay. The story of urban renewal is the story of modern Pittsburgh. It is a tale that continues to this day, with Mayor Murphy's $480 million plan to redevelop Downtown. Today's story is the first in a five-part Post-Gazette series. When it resumes in Tuesday's Business section, the series will focus on East Liberty. Though efforts 40 years ago failed there, new seeds of renewal may be taking root. …
Hoping to reverse Pittsburgh's run of bad luck, a silver-haired, chain-smoking New Dealer named Wallace Richards began whispering in the ear of R.K. Mellon, a publicity-shy executive who controlled a vast banking empire and held together one of the world's richest families. …
There are several theories about why Mellon, an aloof, private man, became interested in saving Pittsburgh. Maybe it was his wife. Maybe it was family history. Maybe it was business. …
Mellon, though, was a reluctant leader. Always shy, he spent his childhood in a mansion of 65 rooms and 11 baths that towered above the formal gardens of what is now Mellon Park. He loved riding horses and hunting at his father's 18,000-acre estate in Ligonier. He did not like school. He left Princeton University his sophomore year and took a few courses at Carnegie Tech before joining the family business as a messenger. …
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington PostMay 21, 2000, Sunday
HEADLINE: Sunday in the Loop
BYLINE: Kamen
Lecture Short-CircuitHouse Republicans, pampered by seven years of wonderful investigations of the White House, appear to be increasingly worried they won't have President Clinton to kick around much longer.
That may be why they've gone full-tilt gumshoe on an unspeakable crime committed last fall when someone at the National Endowment for the Humanities invited Clinton, of all people, to deliver the esteemed Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.
NEH calls selection for the Jefferson Lecture "the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities." It's been given to such folks as Lionel Trilling, Robert Penn Warren, Toni Morrison, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Barbara Tuchman.
When word leaked out about Clinton's selection, scholars vehemently opposed the decision, noting Clinton was not really one of the country's most learned intellectuals. NEH Chairman William R. Ferris, a Clinton pal and appointee, tried to defend the choice, saying the idea was to get a publicity bounce by beginning a tradition of inviting presidents to deliver a lecture. (The hidden agenda: boosting attendance at the speech -- only 700 people showed last year in the huge Concert Hall at the Kennedy Center -- by getting a big-name speaker.)
The purists prevailed, the defense vaporized, NEH had egg all over it, Clinton declined, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson of Princeton University gave the lecture on March 27 and a large crowd basically filled the hall's 2,400 seats.
Was that the end of the matter? Of course not. Rep. William F. Goodling (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), head of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations, decided there was something deeply troubling in this whole affair and wrote Ferris two weeks after McPherson's lecture demanding to know who perpetrated this outrage.
"We would like to know in detail," they wrote Ferris, "how, why and by whom the [original] decision was made to invite President Clinton … Specifically, we would appreciate receiving a written response from you to each of the following inquiries …
AP Worldstream
Copyright 2000 Associated Press
May 20, 2000; SaturdayHEADLINE: STUDY ABROAD
BYLINE: JOSEPH COLEMAN
DATELINE: TOKYOFor Ami Torii, the decision seemed obvious.
She always liked studying English. She played basketball as a child and dreamed of the NBA. Everywhere she looked in Japan, she saw the influence of the United States.
So when it came time for college, the answer was easy: an American school.
''I think it's best to get an education in English. It will broaden my possibilities in the future,'' said Torii, 18, who is headed to the two-year Santa Monica College in California in September.
Torii is part of a growing type of Japanese export: students. The number of Japanese going overseas for college has exploded from 24,000 in 1985 to more than 180,000 in 1998, the Justice Ministry says.
Fueling the boom has been the strengthening of the yen and a weak economy back home that has made job prospects and therefore a Japanese-only education less attractive.
The trend has gained strength as the overall reputation of Japanese universities, which traditionally require a minimum of work from students, has declined.
Some students also yearn for an alternative to the style of education in Japan, where teachers talk and students listen with little interaction or voicing of opinions or ideas.
''The lecture is always one way,'' said Gakshi Nakamura, who won admittance to the prestigious Tokyo University, but opted for Princeton University instead. He graduated in 1998.
''There are very few opportunities for students to speak up,'' he said of Japanese schools. ''Discussions with students ... it's not going to happen in that kind of atmosphere.''
There is a price to pay for going to school elsewhere: the difficulty of finding a job back home in Japan after graduation. …
The Calgary Sun
Copyright 2000 Sun Media Corporation
May 20, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: DIAMOND DANDIES CITY FASTPITCH PHENOMS OFF TO COLLEGE IN U.S.
BYLINE: TOM BRENNAN, CALGARY SUNOnly one thing doesn't seem to fit here:
Shouldn't Colleen Larsen be the one going to Columbia University? After all, she's the first baseman for the Calgary Double Diamond Renegades.
And as everyone knows, the greatest of all first baseman, Lou Gehrig, also played at Columbia.
Ah, we're just kidding. Besides, Laura Grant, the pitcher who is headed to New York City, seems to have a pretty good grasp on her Gehrig history.
"He dropped out," Grant reports. "He was drafted to play football at Columbia. But he played baseball too, and he was hitting the ball over the wall and breaking building windows. And a scout from the Yankees signed him."
So there you go.
They're feeling pretty proud over at Renegadesville these days, and they probably should be. After seeing one of their players, Teri Herbert, earn a U.S. college softball scholarship to Tennessee-Chattanooga last season, they've recently confirmed that three others from the under-19 fastpitch squad will be doing the same this fall.
Joining Grant in the Ivy League is catcher Suzanne Spence, ticketed for Princeton , while Larsen is off to Niagara University, near Buffalo, to join her best friend and former Renegade, Erin Shanahan. As far as their coach Clifford Lawrick knows, to have this many scholarship winners from the same Calgary club is unprecedented.
"The odd player has gone down over the years," he says. …
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2000 The Dallas Morning News
May 20, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: Welcome to worship: Click here
SOURCE: Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
BYLINE: Nina FlournoyAs religion takes firm root on the Internet, surfers are finding everything from traditional faiths to fringe movements offering information, expertise and ways to connect with like-minded believers.
In the middle of it all is the Rev. Charles Henderson, a Presbyterian minister who left the pulpit after 30 years in the ministry to create the First Church of Cyberspace.
Mr. Henderson's Web church was reportedly the first to form a congregation on the Internet, creating the sense of a real walk-in church. Packed with images and reading material you'd expect to find in a church atmosphere, the site includes inspirational music, sermons and fellowship in the chat room. Enter the virtual sanctuary where a flame flickers between medieval paintings. Hit "reload" and the images change. Hit a link to sites about non-Christian religions. Hear a Mass in Congolese Style, sung by the Princeton University Chapel Choir. …
New Scientist
Copyright 2000 New Scientist, Reed Business Information
May 20, 2000HEADLINE: Is your phone infected ?
BYLINE: Justin MullinsHIGHLIGHT: Mobiles are fertile ground for e-bugs of the future
IN THE wake of the Love Bug virus attack, computer scientists are warning that future viruses aimed at intelligent mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) may be even worse. They could record your conversations and forward them to others, delete money from "electronic wallets", or perhaps rack up huge telephone bills. "These viruses could spread rapidly in future," predicts David Chess, an antivirus researcher at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
Computer viruses attack devices that are programmable, and spread when there is some link between one device and another. Early viruses spread mainly via infected discs handed from user to user. Today the main avenue of infection is by e-mail.
"The thing that makes viruses a threat is that we're so well connected," says Charles Palmer, a specialist in network security and cryptography research at IBM. This suggests there is a huge potential for viruses to spread via future programmable mobiles.
In current and next-generation phones, and in PDAs, designers have several ways to prevent virus damage. First, they can limit the devices' programmability, leaving them without the capacity to run viruses. Current phones already fall into this category - but future generations will be much more capable.
Another option is to store important programs in read-only memory so that a virus cannot overwrite them. "The drawback then is that the phone cannot be upgraded," says Edward (Felten) a computer scientist at the Secure Internet Programming Laboratory at Princeton University in New Jersey. And this strategy cannot protect data that the user adds, as it must be stored in a writable memory. "A virus that changes your mom's number to a premium-rate number in Nigeria could rack up huge bills," says Palmer. …
NOTE: This item also appeared in The Sunday Gazette-Mail.
New Scientist
Copyright 2000 New Scientist, Reed Business Information
May 20, 2000HEADLINE: or doom and gloom ?
BYLINE: Joanna Marchant and Michael DayHIGHLIGHT: You might be haunted by the omens in your DNA
THERE can be no doubt that sequencing the human genome will transform medicine, but will everyone benefit ? The downside of the health care revolution could be a widening gap between rich and poor - and perhaps even the creation of a genetic underclass. "We shouldn't forget about social inequalities, about redressing the balance between rich and poor," says Hastie.
Few people in the developing world can hope to gain from advances such as screening for susceptibility to diseases. And even in rich countries, some people will benefit to a much greater extent than others. One reason is that it's not just individuals and their doctors who'll want to know the results of such screening - insurance companies will also be keen to know what your genes hold in store for you. …
A source at the Association of British Insurers, who preferred not to be named, agrees: "Ultimately, insurers are businesses. They won't want to do loads of testing if it's going to end up costing them more money."
But the implications of screening go far beyond insurance. We already screen some embryos for single-gene disorders such as cystic fibrosis. Understanding our genes better might allow parents to have "designer babies", choosing the traits they desire. Lee Silver, a biologist at Princeton University, has even gone so far as to suggest that tinkering with our genes could ultimately lead to humans diverging into two species. …
The Providence Journal-Bulletin
Copyright 2000 The Providence Journal Company
May 20, 2000, SaturdayHEADLINE: 137 grad students receive diplomas at Bryant College
BYLINE: THOMAS J. MORGAN; Journal Staff WriterRichard F. Syron, business executive and commencement speaker, urges the graduates to pursue a career that they are passionate about.
SMITHFIELD - Under gray, scudding clouds, Bryant College yesterday handed diplomas to 137 graduate students in such fields as accounting, business administration and taxation.
The commencement speaker, Richard F. Syron, president of Thermo Electron Corp. of Waltham, Mass., advised the graduates: "Don't get seduced. It's not all about money." …
Referring to a recent article by a graduate of Princeton University, Syron said he wanted to plug public service as a career.
"We must figure out a way so that public service is not synonymous with personal sacrifice, so that working for personal gain is not more prestigious than working for the public good, so that more Princeton and Bryant grads will choose teaching, government or social work over Wall Street," he said. …
The Toronto Star
Copyright 2000 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
May 20, 2000HEADLINE: CAST A WARY EYE ON THOSE ADVERTISED FUND RETURNS
BYLINE: Donna GreenThere's a strange phenomenon in the mutual fund industry and every owner of a mutual fund has noticed it - usually with private embarrassment. Newspapers fund ads boast spectacular returns, yet that same fund in your own portfolio barely seems to be twitching. What's happened?
Timing, baby, timing. Investors buy funds on the basis of great returns thinking those returns will continue when most often the run up to glory and wealth is over. Yesterday's winner is today's tired dog. Mutual fund companies advertise those dazzling returns for one, three and five years even when in some cases it's only one stellar year that has lifted the five-year return from ignominy to fame.
There's an irony here. Mutual funds have become hugely popular because investors realize they can't time the market. Time in the market, they believe, is more important than timing the market. Yet investors consistently try to time their mutual fund purchases. Unfortunately, this kind of timing is no easier to get right.
A U.S. study from Princeton University done four years ago found that an above-average (U.S.) fund has only a 52 per cent chance of remaining an above- average fund the following year. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 19, 2000HEADLINE: Scientists Offer a Vision of New Tools to Explore Space
BYLINE: By JAMES GLANZTen years from now, astronomers will have seen the first glimmerings of light as stars and galaxies coalesced in the gloom of the early universe, observed how the powerful gravity of a black hole warped the very fabric of space, and, perhaps, searched for signs of life in the glow of blue planets like Earth as they circled nearby stars.
That sweeping, and expensive, vision for astronomical discovery over the next decade is described by an influential panel of scientists in "Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium," a report released yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences. Often referred to as the decadal survey, the report is one of a series issued every 10 years by astronomers, giving their priorities and hopes for new observing instruments.
In the past, the survey has wielded great influence on the roster of instruments that were built. The co-chairmen of the committee that wrote the new report are Joseph H. Taylor Jr., a Princeton University astrophysicist and Nobel laureate, and Christopher F. McKee, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Berkeley.
At the top of this year's list is an audacious successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope that would be 100 to 600 times as sensitive, two to three times as large and able to look far more deeply into the low-energy infrared radiation, that arrives from the young, star-forming universe. Close behind are a giant, ground-based telescope with an eye 100 feet across and a fleet of four large spaceborne telescopes working in concert to discover Earth-like planets.
With a minimum cost of $4.7 billion for instruments that would require a wide range of new technologies, the recommendations are nothing if not daring for fields as abstract as astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology.
Assuming that most of those instruments are built, "we are in a position to ask, 'How did the universe begin? How did it evolve from a soup of elementary particles into the structures that we see today? Is there life elsewhere in the universe?' " said Dr. Michael Turner, chairman of the astronomy and astrophysics department at the University of Chicago and a member of the committee that wrote that report. …
PR Newswire
Copyright 2000 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
May 19, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: IPNetwork.com Announces Breakthrough Online Licensing Transaction;
Intellectual Property Network's 'EventZone(TM)' Also Completes First Online Event Sponsorship Deal
DATELINE: NEW YORK, May 19IPNetwork.com (http://www.ipnetwork.com), today announced it successfully completed the first-ever online licensing transaction, establishing a breakthrough use of the Internet. Utilizing IPNetwork.com's MarketZone(TM), City Lights Software, Inc., located and acquired the rights to a book of images to develop a series of screensavers. Strengthening its position as the premier intellectual property Web marketplace, in the $220 billion licensing industry, IPNetwork.com also announced its first Web-based EventZone(TM) sponsorship transaction. …
In the licensing agreement, James I. Neusom, President and CEO of City Lights Software Inc., Las Vegas, NV, a multifaceted computer and Internet publishing company, used IPNetwork.com's IPMarketZone(TM) to locate and acquire the rights to Stumbling Toward Enlightenment: An Illustrated Crisis Companion. This unique and inspirational book blends words and images to guide readers through the challenges of life, City Lights Software intends to create a series of screensavers from the book's pages and sell them through a network of retailers and e-tailers. Says Neusom: "When you want to find a book on the Internet you think of Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com. …
About IPNetwork.com
IPNetwork.com's MarketZone(TM) transaction engine is the first of its kind, supporting bids, sales, and licensing of rights, as well as database searching and valuation of services for copyrights, trademarks, and strategic marketing opportunities (sponsorships) on a global basis. …
Plus, IPNetwork.com's newest online service, IPLicenseTracker(TM) is a one-of-a-kind web based method for tracking licensing contracts, terms, revenues, and performance measures. It also provides a new means for managing the product approval process while lowering costs and speeding the time to market for licensed products.
In April 2000, IPNetwork.com received the distinction of being named a "One to Watch" company by Red Herring magazine, the preeminent publication on the business of technology. The diverse group of companies and brands that are using IPNetwork.com to list or manage their intellectual property include Marvel Enterprises, Inc., Harvey Entertainment, Priceline.com, Princeton University, Notre Dame, Honeywell, The Savoy Group, well-known Fox Kids animator Jim Benton, and many others. The company's web site is http://www.ipnetwork.com. …
The San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 2000 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
MAY 19, 2000, FRIDAYHEADLINE: Seattle Sisters Won't Be Squashed;
Feud with sport's establishment taking some of the fun out of it
BYLINE: Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff WriterThey are the most prominent American sisters ever to play professional squash, with a pedigree that stretches across centuries and continents.
Shabana Khan and her younger sibling Latasha should be enjoying the limelight for their accomplishments, but they are burdened by a U.S. squash establishment that seems to disrespect their Pakistani lineage, their easygoing approach to the sport and the fact they grew up and live in Seattle, outside the East Coast/Ivy League nexus that dominates American squash.
Life is beautiful and difficult for the Khan sisters, who are playing this week in San Francisco, at the Bay Club's International Squash Challenge.
"I don't enjoy playing anymore," said Shabana Khan, 31. "For some reason, I am not accepted by this community."
Two incidents stand out. Last year, the sisters both qualified for the U.S. Pan American Games team, but a player who missed out, Princeton junior Julia Beaver, appealed with the help of a lawyer, saying the Khans didn't play well enough in the trials to deserve their spots.
The United States Squash Racquets Association ruled against Beaver's complaint, but it still stung the sisters to be subjected to such doubts. …
The Khan sisters did like the sport, and as teenagers won a number of events and titles. Shabana was recruited for a scholarship by Harvard, Yale and Princeton , but she turned them all down, opting to attend the University of Washington. Latasha followed her there. …
The Associated Press
State & Local Wire
May 18, 2000, ThursdayBYLINE: By The Associated Press
The Democratic candidates seeking the nomination for House in the 7th District.
Maryanne Connelly …
Joel Farley
Age: 46; born Dec. 5, 1953
Home: WestfieldFamily: Single
Education: B.A. in economics from Princeton University (1976); J.D. from Harvard Law School (1983)
Professional: Practiced law in California (1983) and Boston (1984); staff investigator for House Government Relations subcommittee on employment and housing (1984-1985); attorney, Shea and Gould (1985-1988); attorney, Willke Farr and Gallagher (1988-1990); attorney and professional mathematics tutor (1990-present)
Political experience: Elected in 1972 and 1973 as Democratic county committeeman …Jeff Golkin …
Mike Lapolla …
Africa News
Copyright 2000 Africa News Service, Inc.
May 18, 2000HEADLINE: Africa-at-Large; Kampala To Freetown: Why Africa Has To Be Written Off |
BYLINE: Timothy Kalyegira, The Monitor - KampalaKampala - In my last article on this subject, I insisted that the term "new breed" used in reference to military leaders Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame, Meles Zenawi and Isaias Afewerki was absurd -- and false. And so to last week's spectacle: Uganda-Rwanda, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Sierra Leone.
What baffled most commentators in Kampala was that the latest series of clashes between Uganda and Rwanda was seen coming as soon as the last fighting took place in August 1999. But we were either too helpless or too disorganized, shortsighted, to prevent Kisangani II. What if Uganda and Rwanda had nuclear weapons?
This week's issue of The Economist magazine carries the cover story, " Africa, the hopeless continent.": …
The African "elite", on the surface, appear the same as those in America and Europe because they attended Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Cornell, Cambridge.
The African "elite" does not understand the foundation of Western civilization. He does not see that Princeton University is what it is, because of a certain creativity, tenacity and long-term thinking that the founders had, by virtue of upbringing.
He does not "see" (in the deeper sense), that Princeton or Harvard began as a concept and remain essentially that. …
The Herald (Rock Hill, S.C.)
Copyright 2000 McClatchy Newspapers Inc.
May 18, 2000 ThursdayHEADLINE: Southern man
BYLINE: By Karen Bair The HeraldYORK - Steve McCrae Jr.'s fate as a man of renaissance was sealed before he was born.
He was spawned from a line of South Carolina statesmen, artists and Presbyterians, but his parents lived in New York City when his mother carried him. His father, noted watercolorist Stephen R. McCrae, graduated from Parsons School of Design and taught there.
His mother's family was horrified: A first-born grandchild would become a Yankee.
"My mother was told the first-born should not be born in New York City," McCrae said with a wry smile, "so I spent the first couple weeks of my life in Tuomey Hospital in Sumter."
Since then, McCrae has followed in the footsteps of his ancestors in public service, as he has sought to reconcile differences between his Southern heritage and life's journey to and from the northeastern United States.
His family returned to South Carolina when he was still a tot. After earning a law degree from the University of South Carolina, he built his career here. But he also graduated from a prestigious New Hampshire boarding school, Phillips Exeter Academy, and earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University in New Jersey.
"When I was at Exeter and Princeton , I was very defensive of the South, even though I didn't agree with a lot of what was going on," said McCrae, now 52, about the '60s and '70s.
"We Southerners have an inferiority complex," he said. "We want to justify our heritage, even though a lot of us don't know what that means. Yes, there was heroism and honor, but there was also oppression and brutality and unfair use of one sex by a small minority. When you talk about heritage, you've got to talk about responsibilities." Preservation vs. prejudice. …
M2 PRESSWIRE
Copyright 2000 M2 Communications Ltd.
May 18, 2000HEADLINE: UN
New Permanent Representative of Chile presents credentials
Biographical Note (Based on information received from the Protocol and Liaison Service.)
J. Gabriel Valdes, the new Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations, presented his credentials to Secretary-General Kofi Annan today.
Since June 1999, Mr. Valdes has served as Minister for Foreign Affairs of his country, and in 1996-1999, he was Vice-Minister for International Economic Affairs in the Chilean Foreign Ministry. Between 1994 and 1996, he worked as Director of the International Division of the Ministry of Finance and Coordinator of the North American Free Trade Agreement Negotiating Team. In 1996, he was lead negotiator of the Free Trade Agreement between Chile and Canada. …
In 1981, Mr. Valdes coordinated a study group on the transnationalization process of the Latin America International Relations Programme of the United Nations. In 1984 and 1987, he was a research fellow at the Kellogg Institute of International Studies of Notre Dame University and at the Center for Latin American Studies at Princeton University. In 1985, he worked as a consultant at the Economic Commission for Latin America. …
The Morning Call (Allentown)
Copyright 2000 The Morning Call, Inc.
May 18, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: LEHIGH U.'S 'REPRESENTING THE HOLOCAUST' TRIES NEW APPROACH
BYLINE: GEOFF GEHMAN; The Morning CallDebbie Teicholz's photographic triptych "Prayer by the Wall" resembles a tone poem of train tracks and plowed rows. But on those rails, in those mounds, is the ambivalence of a child of Holocaust survivors.
Teicholz photographed the tracks in Budapest during a trip to see her father honored for saving lives by faking passports. She photographed the freshly dug field in Israel that her parents helped found as a place to ease displacement. She joined the images to jar their meaning, to suggest the 'displaced steps' she takes alluding to events before she was born, events that changed her parents into Holocaust activists.
"My art is about the importance of the Holocaust on our generation," explains Teicholz, a 40-year-old mother of two. "One of the most powerful ways to confront the imaginary is by using the reality in front of you. I don't go to camps; I don't use archival footage. I basically walk around the world and transform things into feelings."
On Sunday afternoon, Teicholz will discuss her transformations during "Representing the Holocaust: Practices, Products, Projections," a three-day Lehigh University conference on the challenges of depicting the unforgettable and forgettable. She will share a program with two artists who attempt to shape immense shadows even nonsurvivors can't help but chase. …
Silberstein thinks so highly of Novick's book that he taught it this semester in a Holocaust course at Lehigh and Princeton universities. "Peter said, in a very accessible and eloquent way, what many of us have thought for a while: The overuse of the Holocaust as a way of understanding Jewish identity in the younger generation." …
PR Newswire
Copyright 2000 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
May 18, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: UDC New Micropatterning Technology Aims at High Volume Production of Organic Light Emitting Devices (OLEDs)
DATELINE: PRINCETON , N.J., May 18Universal Display Corporation (UDC) (Nasdaq: PANL; PHLX: PNL), developer of an innovative flat panel display technology based on organic light emitting devices (OLEDs), announced today that a research partner, Princeton University, has developed a novel process for patterning electrodes in OLEDs which shows promise of making them more efficient and less expensive to manufacture. This invention is based on a cold welding process to pattern electrodes to sizes as small as 12 microns. UDC has been granted the exclusive worldwide license for these and other associated technologies. A description of the process appeared in the May 5 issue of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Patterning the metal cathode layer is achieved by pressing a prepatterned metal-coated stamp onto the unpatterned device layers. Under pressure, the metal pattern on the stamp cold-welds to the metal cathode coating the underlying organic films. The cold welded cathode material is then lifted off the device resulting in a submicrometer feature definition.
"This patterning technology is very accurate and quick to accomplish, not unlike pulling lint off clothing with a strip of tape," said Dr. Stephen Forrest, Chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department of Princeton University and one of the inventors of this technology. "Yet it is also elegant, and can result in very high throughput for the large area fabrication of organic electronic devices." …
PR Newswire
Copyright 2000 PR Newswire Association, Inc.
May 18, 2000, ThursdayHEADLINE: New Internet Resource Available for Delaware River Watershed Educators
DATELINE: WEST TRENTON, N.J., May 18The Delaware River Watershed Education Task Force today announced that it has launched a new, on-line resource to help teachers and students of all ages learn about the Delaware River Basin and general water issues.
The Internet site, hosted by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), can be found at www.drbc.net (choose Ed. Web) or www.state.nj.us/drbc/edweb/edweb.htm
"Ed. Web" visitors can access maps, general information about the Delaware River Watershed, educational resources and lesson plans, environmental field trip ideas, and upcoming educational opportunities throughout the basin. "Ed. Web" also includes numerous links to other web sites offering information specific to the Delaware River Basin as well as general water subjects. …
The Delaware River and its 216 tributaries drain 13,539 square miles in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Over seven million people live in the basin and another ten million people who live outside the watershed depend on it for water supply.
The Delaware River Watershed Education Task Force is an informal group including representatives from Alliance for a Sustainable Future, DRBC, Heritage Conservancy, National Park Service, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Pocono Environmental Education Center, Princeton University, and Stroud Water Research Center.
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Copyright 2000 Bergen Record Corp.
May 18, 2000, THURSDAYHEADLINE: STUDY FINDS BLACK-WHITE NET DIVIDE STILL WIDE
SOURCE: Wire services
BYLINE: RICHARD BRAND, The Associated Press
DATELINE: PRINCETONAlthough black schoolchildren are catching up with their white peers in using computers at school, white students are still far more likely to use a computer to access the Internet, a study by a Princeton
University economist has found.
The study by Professor Alan B. Krueger, released Tuesday on the university's Web site, showed that only 14.8 percent of African-American students and 11.7 percent of Hispanic students used computers to access the Internet in school in 1997, whereas 20.5 percent of white students used the Internet.
"There is a lot of evidence that suggests that workers who are not skilled and able to use computer technology at work find it more difficult to find high-paying jobs," Krueger said. …
TULSA WORLD
Copyright 2000 The Tulsa World
May 18, 2000HEADLINE: RECREATION NOTEPAD
SOURCE: Compiled by John A. Ferguson, World sports writerIvy League success: Sophomore Chris Higgins of Princeton University is making his pitch to follow in his father's (Dr. James Higgins) medical footsteps.
Chris, who grew up in the Bear League at the All-Star Sports Complex owned by his father, played baseball at Holland Hall.
Since he went to the Ivy League school in New Jersey, Higgins has excelled academically and athletically for the Tigers. In the classroom, Higgins has maintained a 4.00 grade point average.
Higgins has made 13 appearances as a middle reliever and has a 2-1 record with a 4.95 earned run average.
Scott Bradley, who spent seven of his nine major league seasons as a catcher for the Seattle Mariners of the American League, is the baseball coach at Princeton . Bradley also played with the New York Yankees, Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds.
Chicago Daily Herald
Copyright 2000 Paddock Publications, Inc.
May 16, 2000, Tuesday, CookHEADLINE: Hills receive civic achievement award
BYLINE: Debbie Donovan and Chris Clair Daily Herald Staff WritersDavid Hill, chairman and CEO of Kimball Hill Homes, and his wife, Diane, received the American Jewish Committee's Civic Achievement Award Monday.
The award honors professional accomplishments and volunteer work.
The American Jewish Committee works to reduce prejudice and promote tolerance and respect among all Americans.
"It's important that everyone in this room to realize they should approach the world with trying and caring and knowing how much you receive when you give," David Hill said.
Diane Hill is on faculty at Northwestern University and works in treating and preventing speech impairments, especially stuttering. She also has volunteered at All Saints Lutheran Church in Palatine. …
Kimball Hill Homes is based in Rolling Meadows, and the Hills live in Inverness. Their son, David, is a recent graduate of Princeton University.
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 2000 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
May 16, 2000 TuesdayHEADLINE: A PERFECT SAT - AND THEN SOME;
BYLINE: By RICH EXNER; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER
DATELINE: FAIRVIEW PARKElena Dimofte had an inkling her son Tudor was special when he taught himself to read and write - at age 3.
Fourteen years later, a lot of people think Mom was right.
Yesterday, Tudor was named one of 141 Presidential Scholars from among 2.5 million high school seniors from across the country and Americans attending school abroad.
The only other Ohioans on the list were Akron's Katherine Dimengo, who attends American High School in Belgium, and Uma Samant of Centerville High School. The 32-member commission appointed by the president considered test
scores, essays, leadership, character and commitment to high ideals.
Not only is Tudor the first Fairview High student in 25 years to score a perfect 1,600 on the SAT, he is active in school plays, the orchestra, Key Club, French Club and Student Council. He is headed to Princeton University in the fall. …
Aviation Week & Space Technology
Copyright 2000 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
May 15, 2000HEADLINE: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
James O. Arnold, deputy director for space transportation in the Aeronautics Directorate at the NASA Ames Research Center, is among the 30 new fellows elected to the Reston, Va.-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. …
Also … Paul A. Lagace, professor of aeronautics, astronautics and engineering systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Richard B. Miles, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University. …
Crain's New York Business
Copyright 2000 Crain Communications Inc.
May 15, 2000, MondayHEADLINE: Revisiting New York's rising stars; Most, but not all, of Crain's under-40s have kept climbing
BYLINE: Catherine Curan, Louise Kramer, Steve MalangaThe economic revival of new york has served to enhance the careers of most New Yorkers, especially the select group
of rising stars spotlighted each year in Crain's special "40 Under 40" section.ANDREA JUNG
Class of 1996
Chief executive
Avon Inc.Andrea jung's career track has one common theme: success.
Her latest four-star achievement was becoming Avon Inc.'s first female chief executive last November, cracking the glass ceiling and proving that the "company for women" really lives its marketing tag line.
Since graduating magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1979, Ms. Jung has had business successes in both direct selling and department store retailing. She honed her marketing skills at America's toniest chains, rising rapidly through the ranks at Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus and I. Magnin before joining Avon in 1994.
Crain's identified her as one to watch in 1996, when she was Avon's U.S. marketing group president. Ms. Jung revitalized the company with new fragrances and updated packaging.
Sporting her signature suit and strings of pearls, Ms. Jung, 41, projects the kind of modern, stylish image Avon is now seeking for its brand. She's drawing on her marketing savvy to develop new ads for the $5.3 billion company and is trying to diversify beyond door-to-door selling without alienating Avon's all-important representatives. …
TELEGRAM & GAZETTE
Copyright 2000 Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Inc.
May 13, 2000 SaturdayHEADLINE: Academy at WPI honors 38; Graduating seniors are praised for taking on challenges
BYLINE: Kathleen A. Shaw; TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
DATELINE: WORCESTER- William S. Durgin, speaking for graduating seniors at the Massachusetts Academy of Mathematics and Science, revealed the secret of success'' at yesterday's graduation ceremony. …
ACADEMY PRAISED
State Sen. Robert A. Antonioni, D-Leominster, who heads the Senate Education Committee, said it was a hard act to follow the two student speakers.
I don't know your sons and daughters as persons, but I do know something about the school,'' he told parents. He said it is a exceptional school for very bright youngsters. Mr. Antonioni said he supports special education programs, but believes more money should be spent on the gifted students. …
Graduates and the schools they plan to attend in the fall are:
Oxford: Kristin Russell (Arizona State University). Paxton: Michael Alavian (College of the Holy Cross). Princeton : Eric Ursprung (Bates College).
Chattanooga Times / Chattanooga Free Press
Copyright 2000 Chattanooga Publishing Company
May 12, 2000, FridayHEADLINE: 'Ye Shall Have a Song'
BYLINE: LAURA EATON Staff WriterThe Chattanooga Girls Choir will celebrate women in music in a spring concert tonight at the Tivoli Theatre.
The performance, "Ye Shall Have a Song," will offer works of female composers such as Hildegard of Bingen, Francesca Caccini and Emma Lou Diemer. Dr. Mary Goetze, a composer and professor of music at Indiana University, will be guest conductor.
Ed Huey, the choir's artistic director, saw a need to provide the girls with some female musicians as role models. …
The choir has been recognized nationally and internationally, receiving the 1991 Treble Clef Award at the International Youth and Music Festival in Vienna, Austria, first place in 1993 and 1999 at the International Children's Choir Festival in Bournemouth, England, and one of two awards at the 1994 Princeton University Invitational Choir Festival. …
Heritage Foundation Reports
Copyright 2000 The Heritage Foundation
May 11, 2000HEADLINE: HOW MEDICARE PAPERWORK ABUSES DOCTORS AND HARMS PATIENTS
BYLINE: GRACE-MARIE ARNETT, JONATHAN EMORD, LAWRENCE HUNTOON, M.D., AND ROBERT CHARROWGRACE-MARIE ARNETT:
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the first in a series of Heritage programs assessing how the Medicare program is serving Medicare patients today and how well it is prepared to face the serious challenges offered by 77 million baby boomers tomorrow.
Beyond its financial problem, the Medicare program has many more problems. These are rooted in a little-understood aspect of the program -- the huge regulatory morass that governs Medicare. The prestigious Mayo Foundation has estimated that the number of pages of federal regulations and related paperwork that doctors and hospitals must comply with in order to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients totals more than 132,000 pages -- almost 111,000 of which govern Medicare alone. This is roughly six times the size of the impossibly complex Internal Revenue Service code and its federal tax regulations. …
Nationally prominent health policy experts on the Medicare program are recognizing the problem. On August 10, 1998, Dr. Robert Waller, president emeritus of the Mayo Foundation, told the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare:
The public has been led to believe that the [Medicare] program is riddled with fraud, when, in reality, complexity is the root of the problem. This has contributed to the continuing erosion in public confidence in our health care system. We must all have zero tolerance for real fraud, but differences in interpretation and honest mistakes are not fraud.
Likewise, Professor Uwe Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University and one of the nation's top health care economists, penned an important piece on the complexity of Medicare rules published in the January 21 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Professor Reinhardt observed:
The IRS code . . . has the capacity to criminalize the behavior of perfectly decent citizens who would never willfully break the rules, if they understood them. Over the years, the statutes and rules governing Medicare have evolved the same way. They now run the risk of becoming themselves a form of waste, fraud and abuse. …
Press Journal (Vero Beach, FL)
Copyright 2000 Stuart News Company
May 10, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: KISSNER FITS IN AT PRINCETON
BYLINE: DAVID JABLONSKI Press Journal Sports WriterColleges
The first year, you wonder how you got in at all, the dean of admissions explained to Mike Kissner. The second year, you wonder how everyone else got in, and how could the standards have dropped so quickly?
After all, this is Princeton . This is the Ivy League. Self-doubt can be followed only by self-confidence as a student realizes he belongs at one of the nation's most respected universities.
Until then, though, freshmen like Kissner will sit back in class and wonder, "Wow, everybody's smart."
"It took me a while to get over that," Kissner said.
Is it as hard as they say?
"Every bit," he said.
Of course, this is just one side of the college experience for Kissner, a 1999 graduate of Vero Beach. He also plays football, and that means bigger bodies across the line of scrimmage in practice and games as well as bigger brains next to him in class.
Last season, he broke in on the junior varsity team. It practiced with the varsity team but played games against other schools from around New Jersey. Kissner, who was an all-state selection in football and wrestling for the Fighting Indians as a senior, played on the offensive line. T
The Tigers just finished their spring practice season, and Kissner benefited from not only his stronger physique - he said he's up to 260 pounds from the 245 he was at Vero Beach - but from new coaches. Roger Hughes is the new head coach, and Stanley Clayton takes over the offensive line for the Tigers, who went 3-7 last season. …
Japan Policy & Politics
Copyright 2000 Kyodo News International, Inc.
May 8, 2000HEADLINE: CORRECTED FOCUS: MacArthur considered converting emperor.
AUTHOR: COPYRIGHT 2000 Kyodo News International, Inc.
TOKYO, May 2 KyodoGen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander during the Allied occupation of Japan, once considered having Emperor Hirohito converted to Christianity, a diary of then U.S. secretary of the Navy shows.
The diary of James Forrestal said that during his meeting with MacArthur in Tokyo on July 10, 1946, the general said he had "given some consideration" to converting the emperor but thought it would need a "good deal of reflection and consideration before it could be carried out."
Kyodo News obtained a copy of the diary, which was found at the library of Princeton University, Forrestal's alma mater. The author later became the first secretary of defense, a post created in 1947.
MacArthur's idea of spreading Christianity in Japan by changing the emperor's religion probably stemmed from the general's belief that democracy arises from Christian principles, according to Ray Moore, Japanese history professor at Amherst College, who described MacArthur as a "19th century man." …
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 2000 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
May 2, 2000 TuesdayHEADLINE: CAMPAIGN FOR DRUG WORKING; AWARENESS ON RISE FOR MORNING-AFTER PILL
BYLINE: By LOUISE D. PALMER; NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICEIt can prevent pregnancy and a potential abortion - even after unprotected sex. It's been legal for years. It's private. It's safe and effective, according to the Food and Drug Administration, which urged American drug companies to market it two years ago.
And yet, most women don't know what emergency contraception is, don't know where to get it and don't use it to avoid unintended pregnancy, according to research by family planning groups and experts in women's health. Most doctors, for their part, neither talk about "the morning-after pill" nor offer it to their patients.
Researchers say women often have heard of the pill, which can be taken up to 72 hours after unplanned sex, contraceptive failure or rape. But they are just as likely to mistake it for the "French abortion pill," also known as RU 486 or mifepristone.
This ignorance and confusion has spurred a series of public awareness and education campaigns aimed at doctors and their patients. And advocates say that, 30 years after its introduction, EC - as emergency contraception is known - is finally catching on.
Anti-abortion groups oppose EC as an abortive agent. To them, it is the moral equivalent of mifepristone, which induces abortion without surgery. (The FDA was expected to give final approval to the abortion drug earlier this year, but announced another delay in order to gather more information.)
Expanding availability
But EC education is a top priority in the reproductive health community, where members believe wide availability could cut the abortion rate in half and dramatically reduce the personal and public costs of an estimated 3.2 million unintended pregnancies every year.
"This is an idea so compelling that once you think about it, the world is never quite the same," said James Trussell, an economist who runs the Office of Population Research at Princeton University and one in a group of academics providing research for the education campaigns. …
American Feminist
Copyright 2000 Feminists for Life of America
Spring 2000HEADLINE: Activism 2000
BYLINE: Wolfgang, PeterHIGHLIGHT:Article summarizes the platform and strategies of Feminists For Life, according to Vice-Chair Peter Wolfgang
Peter Wolfgang
Vice-Chair, FFL Board of DirectorsAS WE PREPARE FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM pro-life feminists face a daunting task. Whether the issue is the sexual exploitation of women around the world, a major study daring to link crime reduction to aborting poor and minority children, or the hiring of Peter Singer, an intellectual apologist for infanticide, at Princeton University, cultural attitudes that harm women and children appear to be advancing on many fronts. But appearances can be deceiving. Pro-life feminists can help assure that the next millennium will be a springtime of hope through the development of sound public policy and promotion of change that benefits women and children in the workplace, at schools and at home. …
Euromoney
Copyright 2000 Euromoney Publications PLC
April, 2000HEADLINE: Criticizing the critics
Allan Meltzer and his cabal of fellow iconoclasts obviously hit something when they fired their round in the debate about the IMF and the World Bank. Carnegie Mellon University's Meltzer, chairman of a congressional panel called the "International Financial Advisory Commission," and his conservative colleague in the American Enterprise Institute, Charles Calomiris of Columbia University, joined forces with Harvard's Jeffrey Sachs to forge a common view in favor of restructuring.
Allan Meltzer and his cabal of fellow iconoclasts obviously hit something when they fired their round in the debate about the IMF and the World Bank.
Carnegie Mellon University's Meltzer, chairman of a congressional panel called the "International Financial Institution Advisory Commission", and his conservative colleague in the American Enterprise Institute, Charles Calomiris of Columbia University; joined forces with Harvard's Jeffrey Sachs, a cardcarrying Democrat and longtime IMF critic, to forge a common view in favour of radical restructuring. Three members of the group, all Democrats, split from the majority and refused to sign the report.
The document arrived at a propitious time. Public support for the multilaterals, at least in the US, is waning and their legitimacy has been increasingly challenged. Now, with a new managing director preparing to take the helm at the IMF, an opportunity to change course could be at hand although incoming boss Horst Kohler has hinted against radical reform.
Neither the IMF nor the World Bank has been doing an effective job, says the report. It condemns the IMF for not spotting and not dealing with such debacles as the Asian crisis.
Key recommendations for the IMF include. limiting its role to quasi lender of last resort to emerging economies. IMF lending would be short-term (120 days with one rollover), at a penalty rate (above the borrower's recent market rate) and secured by a priority claim on the borrower's assets. To qualify for IMF lending, a country would need to meet four criteria: it must provide Freedom of entry and operation to foreign financial institutions; it must publish in a regular and timely manner the maturity structure of its outstanding sovereign and guaranteed debt as well as its off balance sheet liabilities; the country's commercial banks must maintain adequate capital either in the form of equity or as subordinated debt held by nongovernmental and unaffiliated entities; the country must meet appropriate standards for fiscal policy to prevent countries from using IMF resources in support of irresponsible government spending.
In addition, countries should avoid pegged or adjustable exchange rate systems. The IMF would be authorized to waive the normal prequalification requirements in cases when a crisis threatened the global economy.
Princeton University's Peter Kenen, who served as a member of the Council on Foreign Relation's task force which scrutinized the IMF and World Bank last year, agrees with the Meltzer Commission that a narrowing of IMF conditionality is in order. Kenen says: "I have objections to many of the conditions imposed which take too much time to negotiate and are extremely difficult to implement in the midst of a crisis. The Fund has loaded far too many conditions on these countries."
Kenen thinks that it would make for the faster implementation of a Fund programme if a lot of the conditions were set out in advance, rather than negotiated in a crisis. Overall Kenen doesn't give the Commission high marks. "There's absolutely no weighing of the difficulty involved with some of these things," complains Kenen, "no discussion of pros and cons. There's simply a series of flat, dogmatic prescriptions, many of which have been thought about before and rejected for good reason." …
OBITUARIES
The Washington Post
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
May 20, 2000HEADLINE: Environmentalist John Sawhill, 63, Dies; Nature Conservancy Chief Was Energy Official, Economist, College President
BYLINE: Claudia Levy, Washington Post Staff WriterJohn C. Sawhill, 63, a former federal energy administrator who for the past decade was president of the world's largest private conservation organization, the Nature Conservancy, died May 18 at the hospital of the Medical College of Virginia. He had diabetes.
Mr. Sawhill, an economist and business consultant, knew his way around board rooms and had headed New York University, the country's largest private university. He applied the financial deal-making of large corporations to the preservation of environmentally sensitive marshes, barrier islands, coral reefs and ranch lands through land trusts that restrict uses.
During his tenure, conservancy officials said, the organization bought property and brokered other sales that helped protect more than 7 million acres in the United States. The organization tripled its staff to 3,000, doubled its membership and increased its revenues from land sales more than fivefold.
Mr. Sawhill, who was president of New York University in the late 1970s, was a familiar figure in government circles, having served in Washington during the Carter, Nixon and Ford administrations. …
Mr. Sawhill, who had homes in the District and in Washington, Va., was born in Cleveland and raised in Baltimore. He graduated cum laude from Princeton University and received a doctorate in economics from New York University. …
The San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright 2000 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
MAY 24, 2000, WEDNESDAYOBITUARIES
HEADLINE: John C. SawhillJohn C. Sawhill, who headed the Nature Conservancy and turned it into the world's largest private conservation organization in just 10 years, died Thursday near his home in Virginia of complications from diabetes. He was 63.
Mr. Sawhill was an educator, lecturer, author and an energy manager for three U.S. presidents, but his most lasting achievement probably will be his work with the conservancy.
The nonprofit organization, which is dedicated to preserving biodiversity and wildlife habitat, has doubled its membership from 519,000 to 1.1 million since 1990, when Mr. Sawhill became president and chief executive officer. The number of employees tripled in that time to 3,000. …
Mr. Sawhill was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1936 and raised in Baltimore, Md. He graduated cum laude from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1958 and received a doctorate degree in economics from New York University in 1963.
As president of NYU in the 1970s, Mr. Sawhill was responsible for a $150 million turnaround that the New York Times called one of the "miracles of higher education." …
Los Angeles Times
Copyright 2000 Times Mirror Company
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: JOHN C. SAWHILL; HEAD OF NATURE CONSERVANCY
BYLINE: From Times Staff and Wire ReportsJohn C. Sawhill, who as president of the Nature Conservancy led the world's largest private conservation organization through a period of unprecedented growth, died Thursday at a hospital in Richmond, Va. He was 63 and had diabetes.
Sawhill, an economist, business consultant and energy administrator for three presidents, knew his way around boardrooms and had headed New York University, the country's largest private university. He applied the financial deal-making of large corporations to the preservation of environmentally sensitive marshes, barrier islands, coral reefs and ranchlands through land trusts that restrict uses.
During his tenure, conservancy officials said, the organization bought property and brokered other sales that helped protect more than 7 million acres in the United States. The organization tripled its staff to 3,000, doubled its membership to 1.1 million and increased its revenues from land sales more than fivefold. …
Sawhill, who was president of New York University in the late 1970s, was a familiar figure in government circles, having served in Washington during the Carter, Nixon and Ford administrations. …
Sawhill, described by the New York Times as a man ascetic in behavior and diet, was born in Cleveland and raised in Baltimore. He graduated from Princeton University and received a doctorate in economics from New York University. …
Press Journal (Vero Beach, FL)
Copyright 2000 Stuart News Company
May 21, 2000, SundayHEADLINE: OBITUARIES
DAVID C. LAKEVERO BEACH - David C. Lake, 81, of Vero Beach, died peacefully at home May 18, 2000.
Mr. Lake was born December 19, 1918 in Binghamton, NY, and moved to Vero Beach 10 years ago, from Rancho Sante Fe, California.
He graduated from Princeton University in 1941, after serving as a Major in the United States Army during World War II. He was employed by IBM until his retirement. …
The Times-Picayune
Copyright 2000 The Times-Picayune Publishing Co.
May 22, 2000 MondayHEADLINE: DR. NELSON HOLMQUIST, PATHOLOGY PROFESSOR
BYLINE: From staff reportsDr. Nelson D. Holmquist, Emeritus Professor of Pathology at Louisiana State University School of Medicine, died Saturday of pancreatic cancer at his home in Diamondhead, Miss. He was 75.
Holmquist, a native of Bristol, Conn., lived in New Orleans and Folsom before moving to Diamondhead. During World War II, he served as a pharmacist's mate on the escort carrier USS Lunga Point.
He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and from Columbia University Medical School, and later studied under Dr. G. N. Papanicolaou , the inventor of the Pap smear. Holmquist was a pathology professor at LSU from 1959 until his 1989 retirement. …
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 2000 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
May 16, 2000 TuesdayHEADLINE: WALTER HARRISON WHITE, WHITE MOTOR EXECUTIVE
DATELINE: CABLE, WIS.Memorial services for Walter Harrison White, 73, son of the founder of White Motor Corp., will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Christopher's By-the-River, 7601 Old Mill Rd., Gates Mills.
The Gates Mills native, whose father was Walter C. White, died Feb. 28 at his home in Cable, Wis.
An executive with White Motor Co. for 25 years, he worked for the company in Cleveland, Chicago and Minneapolis.
In his youth, he attended Hawken School. Years later, his family donated the land on which the upper school was built.
Mr. White graduated from Princeton University and served in the Navy. …
The Plain Dealer
Copyright 2000 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
May 2, 2000 TuesdayHEADLINE: NEWELL BROWN, LABOR AIDE IN EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION
BYLINE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: KEENE, N. H.Newell Brown, a labor official in the Eisenhower administration and an aide to Gov. Sherman Adams of New Hampshire before that, died on April 14 of congestive heart failure.
From 1963 until he retired in 1980, Brown worked at Princeton University, where he established and then directed its career and counseling services. In that period he published two nonfiction books, "After College, What?" and "To Call It a Day in Good Season."
Born in Berlin, N.H., he graduated from Princeton in 1939. In World War II he was an Army lieutenant colonel in the Office of Strategic Services, commanding a guerrilla force of Kachin tribesmen operating behind Japanese lines in central Burma toward the end of the war. …
The New York Times
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
May 24, 2000, WednesdayHEADLINE: Paid Notice: Deaths
STEELE, GEOFFREYSTEELE-Geoffrey. 93, of Meadow Lakes, Hightstown, NJ on May 18, 2000. Husband of Peggie H. Steele. Stepfather of Anthony and Rex Jackson and Karlene Kent Dickey. A farewell party will be held in the Day Room at Meadow Lakes, Hightstown, NJ from 4-7 PM on Friday, May 26. In lieu of flowers contributions to the friends at Princeton University Library, Princeton , NJ 08544.
AP Worldstream
Copyright 2000 Associated Press
May 18, 2000; ThursdayHEADLINE: Humeyra Ozbas, granddaughter of last Ottoman sultan, dies
DATELINE: ANKARA, TurkeyHumeyra Ozbas, the granddaughter of Turkey's last Ottoman Sultan, has died, newspapers reported Thursday. She was 83.
Ozbas, the only member of the Ottoman dynasty to be allowed back into Turkey during the early years of the republic, died Wednesday of a heart attack at her home in the Aegean resort of Kusadasi. Ozbas owned and ran the luxury hotel Kismet Turkish for fate or destiny in Kusadasi, which was frequented by European royalty and foreign dignitaries.
Ozbas was the granddaughter of Sultan Vahdeddin who was forced into exile in 1924 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the republic. …
Ozbas met her husband, Halil, a Turkish engineering student, while studying in the United States at Princeton University during World War II.
The two moved to Kusadasi, which means bird island, where she spent the rest of her life. She was affectionately known there as the ''Princess of the Island.'' …
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