Decades Old Cabaret Law Faces Repeal

Decades Old Cabaret Law Faces Repeal
By MICHAEL COOPER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/20/nyregion/20CABA.html

The age-old battle between the New York of nightclubbing revelers and the New York of sleep-deprived neighbors entered a new phase yesterday when the Bloomberg administration said it would move to repeal a Jazz Age law that prohibits dancing in bars and nightclubs that do not hold special licenses.

Declaring her intention of putting "the dance police" out of business, Gretchen Dykstra, the commissioner of the city's Department of Consumer Affairs, called for scrapping the old cabaret licenses. In their place, she said, the city should issue new "nightlife licenses" that would allow it to regulate the unwanted side effects of nightlife that people really care about: noise, disorderly crowds and filthy sidewalks.

It is the administration's attempt to balance the needs of those who boast that New York is a city that never sleeps, and those who complain about it.

The cabaret law was Mayor Jimmy Walker's attempt at that balance in 1926. A city report at the time noted that the law's opponents said that "when strangers came to New York, they wanted to `run wild.' " The report concluded that "there has been altogether too much running wild in some of these nightclubs."

The law now requires bars and nightclubs to have a cabaret license, in addition to a liquor license, if their patrons are to dance legally. Businesses say the licenses are not easy to come by.

Over the years, the law has been enforced heavily at some points and ignored at others.

It became an issue during the Giuliani administration, when the city began using the law as a weapon in its broader crackdown on quality-of-life crimes.

Few tears will be shed for the cabaret law if the City Council agrees to repeal it.

Stories abound of nightclubs that have switched at a moment's notice from dance music to country or (sorry, Beatles fans) "Eleanor Rigby" to get their patrons to stop gyrating when inspectors arrived. Some disgruntled night owls said New York City was losing its groove and turning into a real-life version of the small town that banned dancing in "Footloose," the Kevin Bacon movie musical. Other revelers were moved to action: they held a "Million Mambo March" to protest the law.

Ms. Dykstra announced the proposal to change the law at the Knitting Factory, a downtown nightclub that does not have a cabaret license.

"They have to expend resources and energy telling people not to dance," she said. "They don't have any community problems, they don't have violations. But people can't shake their booties when they come to the Knitting Factory. And that strikes us as a little odd."

In overhauling the nightlife laws, the administration is hoping to win back the good will of owners and patrons of bars and clubs, some of whom are annoyed by the city's smoking ban. But while the proposed repeal of the dancing ban was greeted ecstatically by some bar owners, other industry representatives expressed concerns about the licensing system that would replace it.

The proposal would require clubs to get nightlife licenses if they meet three criteria: they want to be louder than 90 decibels on a continuing basis, they remain open after 1 a.m., and they have a capacity of more than 75 in residential areas or more than 200 in commercial areas.

Each bar or club would have to get a professional sound engineer to certify that it has enough soundproofing to comply with the city's noise code. (Ninety decibels, officials said, is louder than a dog barking and quieter than a plane taking off.) And the city would be allowed to revoke the license of any club that is repeatedly caught selling liquor to minors or without a liquor license, or operating without sprinklers, exit signs or emergency lights, or that is the scene of crimes including assault and rape.

Christopher Policano, a spokesman for the City Council, said the Council would study the proposed law when it received it.

Robert Bookman, a lawyer for the New York Nightlife Association, a trade organization, applauded the city for moving to repeal the cabaret law, but he said he would rather see the city step up its enforcement of existing laws. The association wants a law allowing off-duty police officers to provide security at bars and clubs.

To some, the change cannot happen fast enough. At Plant Bar, on Third Street between Avenues B and C, the owner, Dominique Keegan, thought he had a system in place to keep surreptitious dancers safe. The bouncer was supposed to flip a switch if it looked as if inspectors were on their way, turning on a blue light telling the disc jockey to turn off the dance music and put on "Kid A," a less-than-boppy Radiohead album.

But the plan fell through in March, when a disc jockey did not know the code and the bar was cited for "16 people dancing." After a second ticket, it was padlocked. To reopen, Mr. Keegan had to discourage dancing, do away with the disc jockeys and put in a jukebox. Since then, he said, business has been way off. Under the proposed law, he would not need a nightlife license because his bar holds fewer than 75 people.

The news that dancing could soon be legal, he said, is "music to my ears, if you'll forgive the pun."

8 Designs Confront Many Agendas at Ground Zero

8 Designs Confront Many Agendas at Ground Zero
By GLENN COLLINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/20/nyregion/20REAC.html

Victims' families yearned to touch the bedrock where the World Trade Center stood. Firefighters had to see their buddies' names listed together. Artists dreamed of a revelation. The fiercely protective hoped for an expression of the essential horror of the tragedy, and the spirit of the city that endured.

Expectations could not have been higher yesterday when the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced eight designs chosen by a 13-member jury to memorialize those lost to terror, and to engender hope while bearing witness to evil.

The jurors had many constituencies to please. And many were unhappy, although there was nowhere near the vehemence as when the initial plans to rebuild the site were announced last year. The chorus of conflicting voices ranged from the outraged to those who found inspiration in the proposals' creativity, but many also expressed the need for further contemplation.

"These plans are impersonal and generic," said one of the disappointed, Debra Brown Steinberg, a lawyer with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft who has donated her time to represent many victims' families. "There is nothing about them that is unique to the tragedy that happened down there. These plans could be in any park, or any memorial, for any purpose."

Ms. Steinberg was hardly the only critic after the plans were unveiled before some 200 guests and a live television audience in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, adjacent to ground zero.

"Uniformed rescuers gave their lives on 9/11, and it's not too much to ask that there be a simple acknowledgment that they gave their lives while saving lives," said John Finucane, 59, a retired New York Fire Department lieutenant, who opposes the A-to-Z listing of victims' names.

Rosaleen Tallon, 32, whose 26-year-old brother, Sean Patrick Tallon, a firefighter, died rescuing victims of the terrorist attacks, said that 14 Fire Department families were ready to remove their relatives' names from the memorial if they were listed along with civilians. "They shed their blood knowingly as they went to their deaths," she said.

The plans also drew the ire of groups opposing the incursion of ground-zero construction on the footprints of the towers. The Coalition of 9/11 Families issued a Memorial Design Finalists Report Card, which gave each of the proposals an F. "All these designs have failed because none really incorporate the historic remnants of the towers," said a spokesman, Anthony Gardner, whose brother, Harvey Joseph Gardner III, died in the north tower.

Mary Fetchet, who represents another advocacy group, Voices of Sept. 11, said, "As it is, I have had no access to the south tower footprint, and now I may never have access." Her son, Bradley James Fetchet, died in the south tower. He would have been 27 on Monday. She said the tower footprints at bedrock, and their surviving support columns, were an especially powerful memorial for nearly half of all the families whose relatives' remains have not been identified.

Others objected to what they saw as the designs' banality. "They all look pretty much the same," said Raymond Smith, 49, an illustrator and painter. As he surfed the images on the Internet in his apartment in Hoboken, N.J., he likened many of the designs to hotel lobbies.

"When I first saw the Maya Lin thing, I walked right up to it and I started crying," he said, referring to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and its designer. (Ms. Lin served as a judge, not a participant, in this competition.) Mr. Smith clicked on another image. "This wouldn't make me cry. This looks like an airport design in the 60's." He viewed another and said, "Welcome to the MGM Grand."

Certainly the plans did generate enthusiasm among many. "Over all, these plans show an amazing breadth of talent and creativity," said Michael Macko, 39, whose father, William Macko, 57, of Bayonne, N.J., was one of six people killed on Feb. 26, 1993, when a truck filled with explosives detonated in the parking garage of the north tower.

"I'm gratified that the names of all the 1993 victims are included in each of the plans," he said.

Michael Casey, an advertising executive in Boston whose wife, Neilie, died on Flight 11, said he was grateful "for the care taken to think out each one of these," he said.

"It means so much to me that something will actually be done there," he added. "But I am looking forward to it being done well."

Some were stunned by the solemn impact of the designs. "I have so much emotion about them that I'll really have to think some more," said Jimmy Renne, a 47-year-old firefighter from Engine Company 259 in Queens who lost many friends on Sept. 11. "I'll be talking to the guys in the house about it."

Richard A. Pecorella, 51, a Wall Street managing director who was to marry Karen S. Juday, who perished at Cantor Fitzgerald, said he liked the Dual Memory entry. "The projected images of the victims are nicer than engraved names," he said, "and will put a face on these real people who died."

Others thought it premature to venture an opinion. "I don't have a favorite yet, because it's hard to judge from what you see on the Web site," said the architect David Rockwell, referring to renewnyc.com. He was part of a team of finalists in the master-plan competition and designed — and helped pay for — the viewing platform at ground zero.

He added, "I'm struck by how they've gotten away from the traditional notions of monuments, to the experience of memorialization."

Kim Foster, 46, an art gallery owner who lives in Battery Park City, said she had expected the eight designs to have been created by famous architects or designers, and was gratified to see that young, lesser-known people had been included. "I was sort of shocked," she said.

The winning design is expected to be picked before the end of the year, but for some, any choice seems moot. The loss of their loved ones still overshadows any notion of a memorial. "I don't feel the emotional strength to get involved in this process," said Jennifer Gardner, whose husband, Douglas, died in the north tower.

"I don't know if I will ever be able to go down there," she said of the memorial. "But there has to be something that reminds you of the violence. It cannot look like people went gently into that good night."

U.S. Sailors Dock Again in Former Saigon

U.S. Sailors Dock Again in Former Saigon
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:45 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Vietnam-US-Ship-Visit.html

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (AP) -- The streets of what was once Saigon were again teeming with American sailors on Wednesday following the arrival of the first U.S. Navy ship since the Vietnam War.

The crew of the USS Vandegrift -- many of them sons and daughters of Vietnam veterans -- made a historic port call in Ho Chi Minh City during a symbolic visit aimed at boosting bilateral relations between the former foes.

``My father actually fought in the Vietnam War,'' said Ensign Esther ``Mary'' Alcantara, 23, of Northridge, Calif., one of about 200 sailors aboard the frigate. ``This trip was actually very symbolic to me, and I know to the Navy as well.''

The missile frigate, based in Yokosuka, Japan and part of the 7th Fleet, cruised up the Saigon River with American and Vietnamese flags flapping before docking on Wednesday. A chain of white-uniformed sailors stood along the ship's railings as it came in, some holding video cameras and binoculars.

``I think one of the messages here today is that the ... U.S. and Vietnam are showing the world that former foes can become friends,'' said U.S. Ambassador Raymond Burghardt, who was on hand for the welcoming ceremony at Saigon Port. American commanders later attended a ceremony honoring Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh.

Burghardt added that the United States is not pushing to re-establish a military presence in Vietnam but wants access to friendly nations' ports instead.

The four-day port call follows a meeting last week by Defense Minister Pham Van Tra and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- the first time a senior Vietnamese military official has visited Washington.

Bilateral ties have been steadily expanding since diplomatic relations were established in 1995. Trade has risen to more than $3 billion annually with the passage of a landmark agreement in 2001, and Vietnam recently said it sends more goods to the United States than anywhere else.

However, the two countries have only begun working on the more sensitive area of military cooperation. As the U.S. and Vietnam find common ground on issues of counterterrorism and regional stability, future military ties will likely include more high-level exchanges as well as more ship visits.

As a first step, the frigate's arrival in Saigon Port is an important gesture, said Duong Trung Quoc, a Vietnamese historian and legislator.

``This is the first time in Vietnam history that a U.S. warship has come to Vietnam with a peaceful flag and friendly spirit,'' Quoc said. ``It is the result of the normalization and development process of the ties between the two countries.''

Many Vietnamese say the port call is welcome, demonstrating that old wounds have finally healed following the conflict that killed 58,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese.

``Since Vietnam is now at peace, it's normal for an American Navy ship to be in Vietnam,'' said Dang Van Hai, 49, a former South Vietnamese soldier who now drives a motorbike taxi.

``I've seen many American veterans who came back. Most of (today's sailors) were not involved in the war and they're visiting many countries and Vietnam is one of their destinations, so I think it's good for them to come back here,'' he said.

On Wednesday, the sailors, decked out in their white Navy uniforms, were hard to miss as they began three and a half days of shore leave. Motorbikes and traffic swirled around them in this southern city that once held a constant American presence during the Vietnam War. Saigon, the capital of U.S.-backed South Vietnam, fell to communist forces in 1975 and was then renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Cmdr. Richard Rogers said there was so much excitement leading up to the visit that many crew members were up before reveille.

``The river transit today was fantastic,'' Rogers said. ``I think my crew genuinely enjoyed coming up the river and seeing the sights.''

Strolling through the city, Alcantara said she planned to check out the city's war museum, taste the local cuisine and possibly squeeze through the tunnels built by communist guerrillas during the war.

Her first souvenir purchase was a favorite among American tourists -- helicopters made from aluminum soda and beer cans.

``It means a lot to me to be back here and know that we're establishing a positive relationship with Vietnam again,'' she said, adding that her father was excited for her to visit the country where he was once drafted to fight.

Wartime Saigon was also a city synonymous with a vibrant night life, with drinking and carousing U.S. soldiers and other foreigners frequenting bars downtown and near the port. Navy officials have said sailors on this visit must be back on the ship or in their hotel rooms by midnight.

``I think they will behave themselves,'' said John Smallman, a Navy special agent who handles criminal and security issues and keeps a watchful eye on sailors in foreign ports. ``But we don't want them to be so careful that nobody has any fun.''

After stepping off the ship, Lt. j.g. Don Shrader, 31, of San Diego, said Vietnam ranks as one of the top places he's visited in his 13 years as a sailor.

``We didn't really think it would become a reality -- and here I am now,'' he said.

Japan Heads to Iraq

Japan Heads to Iraq, Haunted by Taboo Bred in Another War
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/asia/19LETT.html

TOKYO, Nov. 18 — Not one Japanese soldier has been killed, or has killed, in combat since the end of World War II.

That remarkable fact is being repeated here often these days, precisely because, as Japan prepares to send ground forces to Iraq, things could change in the near future. The death of a soldier, a sad though common reality for most nations, would be a pivotal point in Japan's postwar history.

The government twice pushed back the date of deployment because of mounting violence in Iraq, evidently wary of the public's reaction to any casualty. But the government's hesitation runs deeper than that. While Japan's wartime leaders sent more than two million soldiers to their deaths, its postwar leaders are proud of having avoided a single combat fatality. A single casualty would tarnish that record and, some fear, reopen the Pandora's box of ultranationalism, which thrived more than a half-century ago.

Especially toward the desperate final stages of World War II, Japan used its men as if they were mere ammunition, dispatching countless numbers on suicide missions. "Duty is heavier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather," went the imperial rescript to soldiers.

Contrast that to the saying that came to symbolize postwar Japan's official attitude toward death.

In a 1977 hijacking of a Japan Airlines plane, the government gave in to demands in order to win the release of the 156 passengers. As the prime minister at the time explained, "Human life is weightier than the earth."

Now, Japan seems to be groping its way somewhere between these two extremes, cautiously, hesitatingly.

"The legacy and trauma of World War II still lingers," said Ikuhito Hata, a professor emeritus of history at Nihon University here. "It is said that Japan has 2,000 years of history, but it had never experienced defeat, whereas Western countries had experienced cycles of defeats and victories."

The government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi passed a law last summer allowing the country's military, the Self-Defense Force, to send troops to Iraq. On Tuesday, Mr. Koizumi said he had not changed his position and pledged that Japan would not "give in" to terrorist threats after the Qaeda network supposedly threatened Japan over its support of the United States. Shots were fired outside Japan's embassy in Baghdad early on Tuesday.

Yet turning back at this point would mean a loss of credibility, and so deployment is said to be on track for early next year.

In keeping with Japan's war-renouncing Constitution, the troops will engage in unwarlike activities and operate under strict guidelines, firing, for example, only when fired upon. Mr. Koizumi has said he may even request United States protection for the troops. Civilians will be sent to Baghdad, far more dangerous than the area to which the troops are expected to be assigned.

Still, Iraq is Iraq, and the government is preparing, quietly, for the possibility that some troops may not come back alive. It raised compensation for the families of service members killed in Iraq to $926,000 — up from the $556,000 now paid for on-duty deaths.

Such squeamishness is rooted, of course, in World War II, and the militaristic nationalism that led up to it. The military code issued to soldiers in 1941 forbade retreat or surrender, leading to kamikaze air attacks or large suicide missions involving entire ships. As Japan anticipated an American invasion of the main island in 1945, copies of the code were distributed to civilians, as the country prepared to fight to the last man, woman and child. "It had always been a virtue in Japan to sacrifice oneself for someone of higher status, and the government at the time exploited that sentiment," said Shinichi Nakazawa, 54, a professor of religious studies at Chuo University here.

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and its defeat, Japan embraced another document with the same fervor, the American-imposed Constitution, including the Article 9 peace clause, which prohibits the use of force in the resolution of disputes.

Mr. Koizumi wants to consider revisions to the Constitution in 2005, a position supported by about 60 percent of the public.

Revisions would be likely to get Japan more involved in the world's messy affairs and, by implication, to the deaths of troops.

Masahide Ota, 77, a Social Democratic Party member of the upper house of Parliament and a former governor of Okinawa, fought against the Americans in Okinawa, site of one of the grisliest battles. Like many of his generation, Mr. Ota opposes any change to Article 9, which he says is the only safeguard against a revival of Japanese nationalism. "I can't trust Japanese nationalism," Mr. Ota said. "Look at how Japanese are now getting excited about North Korea. It takes only a small incident to get everybody roused. Japanese nationalism is very frightening."

America's tolerance for deaths fell after Vietnam, and in Japan there have been no Sept. 11 attacks to change the mindset overnight. But public opinion is changing gradually here. In the last decade, the Self-Defense Force and other Japanese have been involved in modest United Nations peacekeeping operations. In 1993 in Cambodia, two civilians, including a policeman, were killed. North Korea and its nuclear ambitions loom as a threat.

Yasuo Kimura, a 35-year-old salaryman standing in the Otemachi section of Tokyo, said he was not prepared to put the lives of Japanese troops at risk in Iraq.

"During the gulf war, we paid a huge amount of money," Mr. Kimura said, referring to the $13 billion Japan gave in 1991. "We can pay money instead of sending people."

While Tokyo's reluctance to get involved in the Persian Gulf war drew accusations of checkbook diplomacy, Mr. Kimura's opinion was still the prevailing one. Nowadays, there are also people like Mitsuru Toba, another 35-year-old salaryman in Otemachi, who happened to be in New York during the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I changed that day," he said. "Before then, to be honest, I didn't think anything. I had a vague secure feeling that no one would attack us."

He backed sending troops to Iraq despite the risk of casualties.

"Is it O.K. only to pay money," he asked, "sacrificing the lives of other countries' soldiers?"

Wanted: Fanatical Moderates

Wanted: Fanatical Moderates
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/16/opinion/16FRIE.html

You know when I really get mad? It's when my wife tells me I'm not helping around the house — and I have not been helping around the house. There is nothing more enraging than someone exposing your faults — and being right.

What is true at home is true in diplomacy. I was reminded of that watching the enraged, hysterical reaction of Israel's ruling Likud Party to the virtual peace treaty — known as the Geneva Accord — that was hammered out by Yossi Beilin, the former Israeli justice minister, and Yasir Abed Rabbo, the former Palestinian information minister. Mr. Beilin and Mr. Abed Rabbo, with funding from the Swiss government, decided to see if they could draw up a detailed peace treaty, with maps, at a time when their governments were paralyzed. After three years, they did it. They shook hands on it Oct. 12 and today they are mailing copies in Hebrew and Arabic to every home in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Ariel Sharon and his far-right coalition threw a fit, crying treason and sputtering about the gall, the "chutzpah," of Mr. Beilin drawing up a virtual peace treaty with Yasir Arafat's deputy. The Likud's over-the-top criticism of Mr. Beilin — and of the Israeli Army chief of staff when he pointed out the Sharon government's reluctance to strengthen Palestinian moderates — had all the earmarks of a ruling party that knows it has not washed the dishes, not made any creative initiatives for peace since coming to power, and hates being exposed.

The Geneva Accord fleshes out the peace initiative first outlined by President Clinton. You don't have to accept every word to see its basic wisdom and fairness: In return for peace with Israel, the Palestinians get a nonmilitarized state in the West Bank and Gaza. They also get the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and sovereignty over the Temple Mount, but under a permanent international security force, with full Jewish access. The Israelis get to keep settlements housing about 300,000 of the 400,000 Jews in the West Bank (in return for an equivalent amount of land from Israel), including virtually all the new Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem built in the Arab side of the city. About 30,000 Palestinian refugees get to return to their homes in Israel proper, and all refugees receive compensation. Polls show 35 to 40 percent of Israelis and Palestinians already support the deal, without either government having endorsed it.

"Our agreement is virtual, because we are not the government and do not pretend to be," said Mr. Beilin, whose deal was co-signed by a former Israeli Army chief of staff, a former deputy Mossad chief and leaders from Mr. Arafat's Tanzim militia. "But we need to create a virtual world that will impact the real world by demonstrating that a workable deal is possible. It is inconceivable that for the past three years there have been no official meetings between Israelis and Palestinians about a permanent solution."

By 2010 or so, there will be more Palestinians than Jews living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza put together. "We will fairly soon be losing the Jewish majority," added Mr. Beilin. "This may not interest President Bush, but it interests me and should interest Sharon. If we don't do something to create a border with the Palestinians, we're going to put an end to the Zionist dream."

What I have always admired about Mr. Beilin is that he is a fanatical moderate — as committed to his moderation as the extremists are to their extremism. In a Middle East where extremists tend to go all the way and moderates tend just to go away, the example that he and his Palestinian partners are setting is critical. It shows that civil society in Israel and the West Bank is still alive and refuses to give in to pessimism. But they need, and deserve, courage and help from America now too.

We owe them that. We owe ourselves that. Because the same struggle is afoot in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, where extremists have been intimidating moderates, by going all the way — by blowing up the Red Cross, the U.N. and fellow Muslims. We can train all the police we want in Iraq or around the Arab world, but unless we can strengthen moderates there — those ready to act on the hopes of the intimidated majorities — a decent future will be impossible.

So moderates of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our pessimism. Either we make the future bury the past, or the bad guys will ensure that the past buries the future.

Judging by Where You Sit

Judging by Where You Sit
By David A. Schkade and Cass R. Sunstein
The New York Times, June 11, 2003
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/sunstein-judging.html

Ideology matters when choosing judges -- perhaps too much, as the battles between President Bush and Senate Democrats show. But how much does ideology matter once judges are on the bench?

As it turns out, it matters a lot. We have studied thousands of votes by federal appellate judges, who are randomly assigned to three-judge panels, which then make decisions by majority vote. According to our research, judges appointed by Republican presidents show more conservative voting patterns, while Democratic appointees are more liberal.

These findings may not be surprising. The most striking lesson of our research, however, is the influence of what might be called the majority ideology. For both Democratic and Republican appointees, the likelihood of a liberal vote jumps when the two other panel members are Democrats, and drops when the two other panel members are Republicans.

The effect of ideology on panel decisions is clear. Consider, for example, a case in which a woman has complained of sex discrimination. In front of an appellate panel of three Democratic appointees, she wins 75 percent of the time. But if the panel has fewer Democratic appointees, her chances decline. With two Democratic and one Republican appointee, she wins 49 percent of the time; with one Democratic and two Republican appointees, she wins 38 percent of the time. And with a panel of three Republican appointees, she wins just 31 percent of the time.

Or consider cases in which a company has claimed that an environmental regulation is unlawful. Before an all-Democratic panel, the company wins about a quarter of the time. But before an all-Republican panel, the company wins about three-quarters of the time. Or consider a case in which white people are challenging an affirmative action program; they win two times out of three before three Republican appointees -- but only one time in six before three Democratic appointees. The same pattern can be found in many other areas of the law.

Of course, judges are not politicians or ideologues. If the facts and the law argue strongly for one side, it will prevail, regardless of the political affiliation of the president who appointed the judges. But in the hardest cases that make their way to the federal appellate courts, the evidence is clear: Republican-appointed judges tend to vote like Republicans and Democratic-appointed judges tend to vote like Democrats.

There are some interesting exceptions. In criminal appeals, Republican and Democratic appointees do not differ. Contrary to the stereotype, Democratic appointees are not "softer on crime." And in cases involving abortion and capital punishment, judges appear not to be influenced by their colleagues. No matter what the composition of the panel, Republican appointees are much more likely to vote to uphold restrictions on abortion and to permit executions to go forward.

Ideology also has a more subtle effect on individual judges: in general, both Republican and Democratic appointees are affected by their panel colleagues. A Republican appointee sitting with two other Republicans votes far more conservatively than when the same judge sits with at least one Democratic appointee. A Democratic appointee, meanwhile, shows the same tendency in the opposite ideological direction.

For example, on an all-Republican panel, Republican judges are far more likely than not to vote to strike down affirmative action and campaign finance reform -- and also to rule against people claiming that they have been discriminated against on the basis of sex or disability. But in the very same areas, Republican appointees show a much more moderate pattern of votes when there is at least one Democrat on the panel. The same holds true for Democratic appointees, who show extremely liberal voting patterns when sitting with fellow Democratic appointees, a tendency that shifts in the conservative direction when they sit with one or more Republican appointees.

These findings explain what the current battle is all about. Even on the lower federal courts, judicial ideology matters, and in a way that is crucial to the development of the law. The ideology of a judge is important not only because of how that judge will vote, but also because of the judge's effect on his or her colleagues.

Thus the fight over judicial nominations is no symbolic battle. The debate between President Bush and Democratic senators, between the executive and the legislative branches, is about more than politics. It about the future shape of the law.

David A. Schkade is professor of business at the University of Texas at Austin. Cass R. Sunstein is professor of law at the University of Chicago.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

China Regrets Decision by U.S. to Limit Imports

China Regrets Decision by U.S. to Limit Imports
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/asia/19CND-CHIN.html

HONG KONG, Nov. 19 — The Chinese government gave a temperate response today to the Bush administration's decision to limit the growth of imports of certain Chinese fabrics and garments, contending that the move violated free trade principles.

The Commerce Ministry in Beijing issued a statement expressing its regret and its opposition to Washington's action, but stopped short of threatening retaliation against American exports to China or promising an appeal to the World Trade Organization.

The statement from the Commerce Ministry was critical of the Bush administration but avoided threats. The administration's decision "runs against W.T.O. principles on free trade, transparency and nondiscrimination," the ministry's spokesman, Chong Quan, said in the statement. "As a W.T.O. member, China reserves the right to lodge lawsuits with relevant organizations of the W.T.O. to safeguard the interests of Chinese industries."

Chinese ministries tend to issue statements quoting spokesmen when they want to play down an issue, while subjects of greater importance to Beijing merit statements quoting policymakers.

On Tuesday, a team of Chinese buyers of farm goods canceled a trip to Chicago, but it was not clear if that was related to the textile dispute or to an American denial of visas for some members of the purchasing team. Peter Thornton, the marketing manager for Asia at the American Soybean Association official, said the trade group had received a letter from the Chinese government that cited only the visa problem in canceling the trip. He said it was faxed to the group's Beijing office more than six hours before the administration announced the import restrictions.

But Mr. Thornton added that the timing of the trip's cancellation had nonetheless prompted speculation that something more was involved. A Commerce Department spokeswoman in Washington said the United States had notified China of its plans before announcing them to the public, but did not give the precise timing of the notification.

The Commerce Department announced on Tuesday in Washington that it had granted a request by American textile manufacturers for limits on the growth rate in American imports of knit fabrics, bras and sleepwear from China. The United States invoked a so-called "safeguard" clause that allows countries facing a sharp increase in textile or apparel imports combined with job losses at home to place limits on such shipments.

The Commerce Ministry in Beijing contended that the American textile industry had failed to prove that its difficulties were caused by imports from China. The industry has been under pressure from lower-cost imports since the 1960's and has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, but it contends that the job losses have recently accelerated because of China's exports.

Peter Shay, the managing director of MMG Asia Ltd., a fashion consulting firm here, said restrictions on imports from China would probably prompt American companies to import more goods from low-cost factories elsewhere. "Most likely, it'll mean a shift to other plants in Asia, but not necessarily a return to American makers," he said.

Under the safeguard clause, the United States could limit the increase in imports of these goods over the coming 12 months to 7.5 percent. But that would still leave China far ahead of where it was when it joined the World Trade Organization in November 2001.

Chinese textile and apparel exports began climbing sharply then, and an increase of 7.5 percent now would come on top of gains that occurred in 2002. Bra exports, for example, more than tripled in 2002 with the admittance to the World Trade Organization and the removal of previous American restrictions, and had not been expected by financial analysts to grow more than another 15 percent in the coming year because factories are already running at full speed.

China has lately been going out of its way to reduce trade frictions with the United States, notably by approving the purchase of more than $1 billion of General Motors cars and auto parts last week. The textile and apparel exports at issue this week represent less than one-twentieth of China's exports in its third-largest category of shipments to the United States by value. Computers, computer accessories and semiconductors are the biggest category, while toys and sporting goods make up the second biggest.

Many of China's main textile and apparel manufacturers are listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, and most of their factories are located within a 100-mile radius of here, in the densely populated Pearl River delta region of southern China. Textile and apparel stocks were down 2 to 6 percent by the close of trading today, but were even lower in the morning and seemed to be recovering by the afternoon.

A textile industry analyst at UBS here, Nicholas Tan, said the American action would only restrict the growth rate for 4.7 percent of China's textile and apparel exports to the United States. He said import restrictions were was a step by President Bush that investors should have been expecting. "It's really giving away a bone to get some good will," he said. "I would too, if I were him."

The Chinese dismay was a sign of Beijing's unhappiness that World Trade Organization membership has not been sufficient to head off trade restrictions, Mr. Tan said, adding that Chinese officials had hoped that membership "would be a bed of roses, but it hasn't worked out that way."

Industrialized nations have agreed to eliminate in 2005 their complex quotas and steep tariffs on textile and apparel imports from developing countries, where widespread unemployment, poverty and low costs of living have left millions of workers eager for jobs paying less than $2 a day. No country has more potential workers than China, where economists estimate that the number of unemployed people in rural areas exceeds the entire American labor force.

The prospect of competing with such a vast and inexpensive work force has alarmed other developing countries, many having higher wages and less-developed roads and communications, which makes it more costly to ship goods to affluent countries. But China's capacity to produce fabrics and garments cheaply has especially alarmed workers and companies in American states like North Carolina, whose Congressional delegation has enthusiastically supported import restrictions.

The possibility that the American action could lead to more serious trade frictions, together with a report of dwindling foreign purchases of American securities, was enough to send the dollar down to a new low of $1.1978 to the euro in Asian trading. But the dollar began to recover in European trading after the Commerce Ministry issued its statement.

The dollar rose against the Japanese yen, to 109.03 yen. Traders suspected that the Japanese government had intervened in the market to support the dollar. The foreign minister of Japan, Sadakazu Tanigaki, declined to confirm this, but said that his government was prepared to respond to sharp movements in currency rates.

China Set to Act on Fuel Economy

China Set to Act on Fuel Economy
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/18/business/worldbusiness/18AUTO.html

GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 17 — The Chinese government is preparing to impose minimum fuel economy standards on new cars for the first time, and the rules will be significantly more stringent than those in the United States, according to Chinese experts involved in drafting them.

The new standards are intended both to save energy and to force automakers to introduce the latest hybrid engines and other technology in China, in hopes of easing the nation's swiftly rising dependence on oil imports from volatile countries in the Middle East.

They are the latest and most ambitious in a series of steps to regulate China's rapidly growing auto industry, after moves earlier this year to require that air bags be provided for both front-seat occupants in most new vehicles and that new family vehicles sold in major cities meet air pollution standards nearly as strict as those in Western Europe and the United States.

Some popular vehicles now built in China by Western automakers, including the Chevrolet Blazer, do not measure up to the standards the government has drafted, and may have to be modified to get better gas mileage before the first phase of the new rules becomes effective in July 2005.

The Chinese initiative comes at a time when Congress is close to completing work on a major energy bill that would make no significant changes in America's fuel economy rules for vehicles. The Chinese standards, in general, call for new cars, vans and sport utility vehicles to get as much as two miles a gallon of fuel more in 2005 than the average required in the United States, and about five miles more in 2008.

This country's economy is booming, and a growing upper class in big cities like this one is rapidly buying all the accouterments of a prosperous Western life, including cars. As China burns more fossil fuels, both in factories and in a rapidly growing fleet of motor vehicles, its contribution to global warming is also rising faster than any other country's.

But Zhang Jianwei, the vice president and top technical official of the Chinese agency that writes vehicle standards, said in a telephone interview on Monday that energy security was the paramount concern in drafting the new automotive fuel economy rules, and that global warming had received little attention.

"China has become an important importer of oil so it has to have regulations to save energy," said Mr. Zhang, who is also deputy secretary of the 39-member interagency committee that approved the rules at a meeting this month.

China was a net oil exporter until a decade ago, but its output has not kept up with soaring demand. It now depends on imports of oil for one-third of its needs, mainly from Saudi Arabia and Angola. Before the war, Iraq was also an important supplier. By comparison, the United States now imports about 55 percent of the oil it uses.

The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2030, the volume of China's oil imports will equal American imports now. Chinese strategists have expressed growing worry about depending on a lifeline of oil tankers stretching across the Indian Ocean, through the Strait of Malacca, a waterway plagued by piracy, and across the South China Sea, protected mainly by the United States Navy.

Various Chinese government agencies still have three months to review the legal language in the fuel economy rules, giving automakers some time to lobby against them; as yet, there has been no mention of the approval of the new rules in the government-controlled Chinese media.

But Mr. Zhang said that the rules in draft form were the product of a very strong consensus among government agencies and that "the technical content won't be changed."

Two executives at Volkswagen, the largest foreign automaker in China, said that representatives of their company and of domestic Chinese automakers attended what they described as the final interagency meeting to approve the rules. Under pressure from the government, these auto industry representatives agreed to the new rules despite misgivings, the executives said. "They had no choice but to agree," one of the Volkswagen executives added.

The executive said that Volkswagen's vehicles would meet the first phase of the standards in 2005, while declining to comment on compliance with the second, more rigorous phase, which is to take effect in July 2008.

The new standards are based on a vehicle's weight — lighter vehicles must go the farthest on a gallon — and on the type of transmission, with manual-shift cars required to go farther than those with less efficient automatic transmissions.

In a major departure from American practice, all new sport utility vehicles and minivans in China would be required to meet the same standards as automatic-shift cars of the same weight. In the United States, standards for sport utilities and minivans are much lower than for cars.

The Chinese rules do not cover pickups or commercial trucks. According to General Motors market research, there is little demand for pickup trucks in China except from businesses, because the affluent urban consumer who can afford a new vehicle regards pickup trucks as unsophisticated and too reminiscent of the horse-drawn carts still used in some rural areas.

Typically, heavy vehicles are much harder on fuel than light ones, but the new Chinese standards permit the heavy vehicles to get only slightly worse gas mileage. As a result, they provide an incentive for manufacturers to offer smaller, lighter vehicles, which will be easier to design.

The new standards would require all small cars sold in China to achieve slightly better gas mileage than the average new small car sold in the United States now gets, according to calculations by An Feng, a transportation consultant who advised the government on the rules. But officials in Beijing would require much better minimum gas mileage for minivans and, especially, S.U.V.'s than the average vehicle of either type now gets in the United States.

American regulations call for each automaker to produce a fleet of passenger cars with an average fuel economy of 27.5 miles a gallon under a combination of city and highway driving with no traffic; window-sticker values for gas mileage, which include the effects of traffic, are about 15 percent lower. Light trucks, including vans, S.U.V.'s and pickups, are allowed an average of 20.7 miles a gallon without traffic.

But the Bush administration has raised the comparable American standard to 22.2 miles a gallon for the 2007 model year and is now completing a review of whether to raise limits further for 2008. The administration is also considering adopting different standards for different weight classes of light trucks.

Over all, average fuel economy in the United States has been eroding since the late 1980's as automakers shifted production from cars to light trucks. It fell in the 2002 model year to the lowest level since 1980. Automakers in Europe have accepted European Union demands to increase fuel economy under different rules that could prove at least as stringent as China's minimums.

The Chinese standards would require the greatest increases for full-size S.U.V.'s like the Ford Expedition, which would have to go as much as 29 percent farther on a gallon of fuel in 2008 than they do now in the United States, Mr. An calculated. Sport utility sales in China have more than doubled so far this year, but are still a much smaller part of the overall market than they are in the United States.

Because the American standards are fleet averages while the Chinese standards are minimums for each vehicle, the effect of the Chinese rules could be considerably more stringent. A manufacturer can sell vehicles in the United States that are far below average in fuel efficiency if it has others in its product line that offset it by being above average. But under the Chinese rules, the fuel-inefficient models — especially new ones introduced after the standards take effect — would be subject to fines no matter how well their siblings do, Mr. Zhang said, and the maker would not be allowed to expand production of the gas-guzzling models. In Garrison Keillor's phrase, China plans to require that every vehicle be above average.

Mr. An said that at the final meetings on the new rules, the only outspoken objections had come from a representative of the Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company, which makes Jeeps in a joint venture with DaimlerChrysler.

According to people who have seen the new standards, many Jeep models sold in China do not now comply with them; neither do the Chevrolet Blazer sport utilities built by a General Motors joint venture in Shenyang. Some of Volkswagen's car models also fall slightly short, these people said. By contrast, Honda's cars, built at a sprawling factory complex here in Guangzhou, the commercial hub of southern China, would comply easily because they use advanced engine technology, these people said.

Trevor Hale, a DaimlerChrysler spokesman, declined to comment in detail. "DaimlerChrysler complies with local regulations where it does business," Mr. Hale said in an e-mail response to an inquiry. "It continues working to improve fuel economy in the vehicles it develops, builds and sells around the world."

Bernd Leissner, the president of Volkswagen Asia Pacific, said that his company's cars would comply because "it's just a question of how to adapt the engine — it's something that could be done quickly."

The fastest way to improve fuel efficiency is to switch from gasoline to diesel engines, as Volkswagen is starting to do in China. The latest diesel engines are much cleaner than those of a decade ago, but are still more polluting than gasoline engines of similar power.

A spokeswoman for General Motors, which is beginning to introduce Cadillac luxury cars in China, said she did not have enough information about the newly drafted rules to comment on them, but that her company's vehicles were comparable in fuel economy to those of rival manufacturers in the same market segments. Executives of G.M. were preparing for an event in Beijing on Tuesday and Wednesday when the company plans to showcase examples of its work on gasoline-saving fuel-cell and hybrid engines for cars.

In the United States, G.M. has argued that tighter fuel economy rules are unnecessary because technological improvements will someday improve efficiency anyway. G.M. and other automakers have also contended in the United States that higher gasoline taxes would represent a better policy than higher gas mileage standards, because it would give drivers an economic incentive to choose more efficient vehicles and to drive fewer miles.

China is still considering its policy on fuel taxes, but has not acted so far, because higher fuel taxes would impose higher costs on many sections of society, Mr. Zhang said.

Another company that could run into trouble over the Chinese mileage standards is Toyota, which on Nov. 6 began selling a locally produced version of its full-size Land Cruiser sport utility vehicle in China. A spokesman said on Monday that Toyota had not yet heard about the new Chinese fuel economy regulations, which have been prepared with a level of secrecy typical of many Chinese regulatory actions.

Japan is also phasing in new fuel efficiency standards based on vehicle weight that allow heavier vehicles only slightly worse gas mileage than lighter ones. American automakers have complained that the Japanese rules discriminate against them because Japanese automakers tend to produce slightly lighter cars anyway.

China has more than 100 automakers, as Detroit did a century ago, but the bulk of its output comes from a small number of joint ventures with multinational companies. Total production has more than doubled in the last three years, to about 3.8 million cars and light trucks in 2002, nearly as many as Germany. The United States builds about 12 million a year, Japan about 10 million.

The cars that Chinese automakers produce on their own tend to be very small and lightweight, but the engines are built on older technology, and may not have an easy time complying with the new fuel economy standards.

The government has been encouraging the industry to consolidate, and the new rules may hasten that process by forcing investment in engine designs that small companies may not be able to afford on their own.

China Lowers the Wall for U.S. Cars and Parts

China Lowers the Wall for U.S. Cars and Parts
By DANNY HAKIM and KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/business/worldbusiness/13auto.html

DETROIT, Nov. 12 - In a move to quell criticism of its huge trade surplus with the United States, China agreed to let the Big Three automakers send it about 15,000 cars and trucks over the next couple of years as well as more than $1 billion in parts from General Motors, the companies said Wednesday.

China also said that it would allow G.M. to import cars directly, without using a local partner, and G.M. said it was moving into the auto lending business in China.

The deals with G.M., the Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Group were among a flurry of import allowances, including large wheat and aircraft purchases, that were expected from China ahead of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's visit to the United States, scheduled for early December.

China has been criticized by United States officials, most recently Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, for not living up to commitments to lower trade barriers that it made after joining the World Trade Organization. The deals announced on Wednesday come a year before the deadline for China to make such concessions under terms of its W.T.O. membership.

China has the largest and the fastest-growing trade deficit with the United States, exceeding $100 billion last year. The Chinese government's recent efforts to narrow that surplus mirror moves by Japanese officials to line up deals ahead of state visits during trade tensions between the United States and Japan in the 1980's.

Auto executives see China as the world's hottest car market, both the fastest growing and the one with the most room to grow, and the executives are eager to promote their good relations with the Chinese.

"I'd like to commend the Chinese government for their commitment to open Chinese markets," said Phil Murtaugh, chairman and chief executive of the General Motors China Group, at a news conference Wednesday before a signing ceremony with Chinese officials.

"The opportunities in China today are tremendous," he added. "China has the world's fastest-growing economy, the world's fastest-growing middle class and the world's fastest-growing vehicle market."

Manufacturers, who have too much capacity in the United States and Europe, are struggling to keep up with the torrid growth in China, where vehicle sales rose 69 percent in the first three quarters of this year compared with the period in 2002.

The auto allowances, though relatively small for a market expected to sell four million vehicles this year, are a substantial increase from minuscule levels now permitted by the Chinese government. Currently, the vehicles that non-Chinese automakers sell in China are almost entirely made with Chinese joint venture partners, an arrangement that has led to piracy problems, particularly for G.M.

G.M. said it had reached a deal to add $1.3 billion worth of exports to China, cumulatively, in 2004 and 2005. Over the last seven years, the company's North American exports to China, coming mostly from the United States, totaled $1.4 billion, almost entirely in parts and machinery rather than finished cars.

G.M. will export 5,500 fully assembled vehicles and an additional 13,000 vehicle kits for rapid assembly in China. Many of the vehicles will be Cadillacs as the company introduces the brand to a market with a rapidly expanding middle class. The bulk of the agreement, though, is $700 million worth of parts for Buicks that will be assembled in Shanghai.

The Chinese government will also allow G.M. to set up a subsidiary that can import vehicles directly; currently, foreign automakers have to enlist Chinese companies to import their vehicles, increasing costs.

Under the agreement, G.M. will be allowed to test the Cadillac brand in China before committing itself to build them there. The company already sells Buick sedans and minivans and Chevrolet Blazer sport utility vehicles in China.

Zhong Shi, an automotive marketing consultant in Shanghai, said Cadillacs were a good choice because the luxury market was the strongest now in China, as newly wealthy Chinese seek ways to display their success.

"They have a special taste for the big car," Mr. Zhong said.

The Ford Motor Company and DaimlerChrysler declined to set a value on the new exports to China. But Ford said it had a deal to export 5,250 vehicles to China next year, and DaimlerChrysler said it would export 4,500 Chrysler and Mercedes models made in the United States.

G.M. also said today that its financing arm, the General Motors Acceptance Corporation, applied to start making car loans in China with a Chinese partner. G.M. has been working for more than two years to win permission to offer car loans and leases in China through its G.M.A.C. subsidiary, competing with the Chinese banks that have dominated this business since its infancy four years ago.

China only recently issued regulations allowing automakers to finance their own sales, and it is still working out the details of approving the applications of automakers to write loans and leases.

Bankruptcy and foreclosure regulations are also still being drafted, making it a difficult business.

For now, four-fifths of the people buying cars in China do not borrow money for the purchase. "They come with cash and put the money on the table," said Christian Weidemann, the director for financial services at G.M. China.

As automakers struggle to keep up with demand, they are building so many factories that executives and consultants expect a glut within the next several years. G.M. began operating its modern factory in Shanghai with three shifts of employees working around the clock in August, with only very short breaks between shifts for the maintenance of machinery.

"A brutal war of attrition will kick in in the next five years," said Michael Dunne, the president of Automotive Resources Asia Ltd., a consulting firm.

Danny Hakim reported from Detroit and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.

China's Improving Image Challenges U.S. in Asia

China's Improving Image Challenges U.S. in Asia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 15, 2003; Page A01
By Philip P. Pan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42820-2003Nov14.html

BANGKOK -- Once seen largely as an intimidating trade competitor, a diplomatic bully and a potential military threat, China is building a new reputation among its neighbors as a responsible regional power and an essential engine of Asian economic growth, according to diplomats and analysts in Asia.

Though many in Asia remain wary of rising Chinese power, perceptions of China are shifting across the region. In Southeast Asia, China has played down territorial disputes and promised to share its growing prosperity through investments and trade benefits. In South Korea, it has replaced the United States as the top trading partner and won praise for trying to resolve the nuclear standoff with North Korea. And in Australia, Chinese President Hu Jintao last month became the first Asian leader to address parliament.

When a research group in Bangkok asked residents last month what country they consider Thailand's closest friend, about 76 percent named China. By comparison, fewer than 8 percent of residents questioned by the Kasikorn Research Center picked Japan, Thailand's top trading partner and its number one source of foreign investment. Barely 9 percent chose the United States, a longtime military ally and the world's leading importer of Thai goods.

"This government sees China as the power that will engage Asia and dominate the destiny of Asia," said Kavi Chongkittavorn, a senior editor of the Nation newspaper group and one of the few Thais who publicly question the country's new tilt toward China. "There's a China fever going around, an excitement, and all anybody wants to talk about are the opportunities."

China's rising status and influence present a challenge for the United States: After more than a half-century as the dominant power in Asia, the United States has been forced to consider what the emergence of a rival means for its interests and how best to respond.

The invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorism have reinforced an image of the United States as heavy-handed and insensitive to the opinions of other nations, diplomats and analysts in Asia said. By contrast, they said, China has gone out of its way to ease fears among its neighbors and won points by emphasizing a multilateral approach to solving problems.

"More and more, China is doing the things the United States used to do: cooperating, pushing trade, offering help. . . . People are less scared of China now," said Sarasin Viraphol, a former Thai diplomat educated at Harvard and vice president of the CP Group, an agricultural and retail conglomerate that has invested more than $4 billion in China. "If Washington cares about its influence in the region, if it wants to win hearts and minds, it needs to do more than just talk about terrorism."

A 'Special Relationship'

China's rising influence is obvious here in Thailand, a country that established relations with the United States more than 150 years ago and forged a military alliance with Washington that served as a bedrock of regional security during the Cold War. Thai soldiers fought alongside Americans in Korea and Vietnam, and U.S. consumers and investors are critical to the Thai economy.

A Foreign Ministry official, Sihasak Phuangketkeow, described the U.S. relationship with Thailand as "deeply rooted and special" in an interview. But in a sign of Thailand's increasing coziness with China, he quickly added that it was "not more special than relations with China and other countries."

Since taking office in 2001, Thailand's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, has made a point of cultivating closer ties with China, trying to position his country as Beijing's main diplomatic partner in Southeast Asia. At the request of the Chinese, his government monitors the comings and goings of Tibetan and democracy activists, as well as members of the Chinese spiritual group Falun Gong, and prevents them from entering the country when Chinese leaders are visiting, according to Thai intelligence sources.

Like many nations in Southeast Asia, Thailand used to view China with suspicion, blaming it for supporting Communist insurgents in the 1960s and '70s. Malaysia and Indonesia resented Chinese meddling on two levels: its efforts to export communism and its claims to represent the ethnic Chinese populations within their borders.

China's relations with Southeast Asia reached a low in 1995, when it occupied Mischief Reef, an atoll in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) responded by condemning Beijing.

Winning People Over

After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, China began to repair its image. It declined to devalue its currency, which would have allowed it to profit at the expense of its weakened neighbors, and even made a nominal offer of $1 million in economic aid to Thailand. The United States, which refused to offer bilateral aid to Thailand, was blamed for the economic crisis and became a target of protests.

China has worked to minimize concerns about its rapidly modernizing military by refraining from the high-profile threats it used to hurl at Taiwan, expanding military exchanges in the region and participating in its first U.N. peacekeeping missions. It conducted joint naval exercises for the first time -- with Pakistan last month and with India on Friday. China also recently proposed forming a regional conference to increase communication among Asian militaries.

Similarly, China has tried to address fears that its booming economy will draw foreign investment from elsewhere in Asia. In 1990, China received about 20 percent of all foreign investment in Asia; now, if Hong Kong is included, it receives about 80 percent.

But in speech after speech, Chinese leaders have argued that economic development in China promotes growth across Asia and have promised to further open their huge market to Asian products.

The argument is winning people over, in part because Chinese imports from the rest of Asia -- everything from electronic components to iron ore -- have soared in recent years.

On orders from the government, Chinese investment in Asia is growing, too, by more than 20 percent annually and by more than 40 percent in some countries. In some cases, Chinese companies are buying assets from U.S. and European investors who are pulling out. The biggest investments have been in minerals, oil and other raw materials needed to fuel the Chinese economy.

The Chinese shopping spree has persuaded neighbors to bury old hostilities. In Indonesia, a nation that once viewed China as such a threat it banned Chinese writing, a Chinese firm is now the largest offshore oil producer and another one is in negotiations to buy one of the country's major telecommunications companies.

In Australia, where fear of Communist China was once a major election issue, the government is trying to persuade the Chinese to sign a $30 billion liquefied natural gas deal that would eclipse a $25 billion contract reached with China last year, the largest trade deal in Australian history. Last month, lawmakers who were worried about offending Hu, the Chinese president, removed three invited guests -- a Chinese dissident and two Tibetan activists -- from the public gallery in parliament minutes before he was scheduled to give his historic address.

Closer to home, China has improved relations with all 14 countries that it borders, settling territorial disputes from Laos to Kazakhstan and narrowing its differences even with India. It signed a friendship treaty with Russia, established a security forum with Central Asia and is renovating a rail line across its southwestern border to the Vietnamese port of Haiphong.

Last year, China signed an agreement with ASEAN to exercise self-restraint around the Spratlys, which are also claimed, at least in part, by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. By doing so, it put the dispute on a back burner without giving up its claims to the islands, located near busy sea lanes and rich fishing waters.

China also proposed establishing a vast free trade zone with Southeast Asia by 2010, and this year it became the first non-member to sign a friendship treaty with ASEAN. At the group's conference in Indonesia last month, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, entered a roomful of politicians and business leaders with his hands raised above his head in triumph and received a standing ovation.

The success of Chinese diplomacy in the region can be attributed in part to the rise of a generation of better-educated, better-traveled diplomats. But Chinese analysts said it also reflects a fundamental foreign policy shift in which China has decided to act like a "great power" with responsibilities across the region instead of just playing the role of a victim exploited by Japanese and Western nations for a century.

Pressure on Burma

The change helps explain China's unusually aggressive push for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff on the Korean Peninsula. China has also offered to step into regional disputes in which its interests aren't as clear. For example, when Cambodians staged anti-Thai riots in Phnom Penh earlier this year, the Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned the Thai ambassador in Beijing and offered its assistance.

China also agreed last month to work with Thailand to help break the political deadlock in Burma and coax the nation toward democracy, Thai officials said. Beijing has consistently backed Burma's military government, but some human rights activists believe it might be willing to put pressure on the junta despite its own poor record on democratic reform.

"I think China is increasingly worried about Burma as a source of drugs and AIDS, and there is a growing awareness that Burma is a potential source of international embarrassment," said Debbie Stothard, director of Altsean-Burma, a human rights group.

China says its rising influence is not a threat to the United States because its top priority is maintaining stability, which allows it to focus on economic growth and domestic problems. China has also acknowledged the importance of the U.S. presence in Asia and said it has no intention of replacing it.

In addition, because China lacks a blue-water navy and probably will not be able to develop one for decades, it is as dependent on the U.S. military as other nations to maintain the security of the shipping lanes it uses to bring in oil, gas and other critical raw materials, said Hugh White, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former official in the Australian Defense Department.

The United States recently completed a free trade agreement with Singapore and has opened talks about a similar pact with Thailand. In addition, the United States has strengthened military ties with Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand as part of its war on terrorism.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, a security expert at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, said most nations in Asia are trying to strike a balance between China and the United States, eager to enjoy the benefits of good relations with both.

"Because U.S.-China relations are good right now, and their interests in the region don't appear to be in conflict, these countries haven't had to choose," he said. "But this kind of balancing is a dangerous game. A small country can't control what happens between the big powers. It has to be careful not to be caught in between."

Rat Poison: Murder Weapon of Choice in Rural China

Rat Poison: Murder Weapon of Choice in Rural China
By JIM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/17/international/asia/17CHIN.html

LONGFENG, China — The red-and-white banners with the latest government propaganda fluttered above the grimy main street, warning farmers at an outdoor market about a substance that might not spring to mind as a dire menace: rat poison.

Yet the Chinese government regards the most lethal form of the poison, called Dushuqiang, very seriously. Since Oct. 1, anyone convicted of making, storing or selling the poison faces a prison sentence or even death. Government agents have raided illegal stocks and urged residents to hand over any private stashes.

"Stamp Out Dushuqiang, the tumor threatening people's lives," declared one of the banners. Another banner prodded, "If there is Dushuqiang at home, please hand it over and you will rest assured."

All the government interest raises the obvious question: why?

The answer is that in a country where private gun ownership is prohibited and where serious violent crime is considered rare, Dushuqiang has become a murder weapon. In a high-profile case on Oct. 21 in this mountainous region of Hubei Province in central China, officials say a woman killed 10 guests at her husband's funeral banquet by sprinkling poison on the food.

Nor are such attacks particularly unusual. The World Health Organization lists poisoning, accidental or intentional, as one of the top 10 causes of death for Chinese ages 5 to 29.

One Chinese Web site, Sina.com, has already reported a possible copycat poisoning in which funeral guests were sickened but not killed. The authorities also reported a poisoning on Oct. 23 in Shaanxi Province in which 16 people were hospitalized, they said, after a jealous barbecue-stand operator poisoned the food at a barbecue stand that was outselling him.

Several times a year, the Chinese news is filled with tales of restaurant owners poisoning the food in rival restaurants, or of teachers poisoning students, or, as happened a few years ago, of a zookeeper poisoning animals to spite his boss. The worst case happened last year when 49 people, many of them children, were killed in an intentional poisoning.

"Hypertoxic rat poisons have become a tool for criminals, a massive threat to public health and safety," warned a recent report in the state-controlled China Work Safety News.

The motives for the deliberate poisonings, many of which occur in rural areas, are often the same sorts of grudges, feuds and animus that lead to killings everywhere. With other weapons in short supply, the poison is popular for those who want to kill, though officials say most of the poisonings, fatal and otherwise, are accidental. Many rural people are unaware of the poison's extreme lethality.

Still, some analysts believe that the attacks offer a window into the frustrations felt by some rural Chinese whose lives are remote from courts and other legal means of settling disputes.

"In rural areas when conflicts happen, there is no way to solve them," said Ming Xia, an associate professor at City University of New York who studies crime in China. "Most likely, the local leaders will be arbitrary in solving the conflicts. They do not give it justice."

Statistics are often unreliable in China, but various reports in the state news media suggest that there are about 100,000 serious food poisoning cases a year, both lethal and otherwise, with up to 70 percent caused by rat poisons or pesticides.

Dushuqiang is so lethal that the government first banned it more than a decade ago, though apparently with little effect. It contains tetramine, a chemical that attacks the nervous system. The demand for effective rat poison remains great because China, with 1.3 billion people, also probably has billions of rats.

Mr. Xia said that under Mao, the government regularly sponsored and coordinated nationwide rat extermination campaigns, but that such efforts were now far less sweeping — like the recent government program to train 10 Siberian foxes to hunt rats that are destroying crops and woodlands in northwest China.

Guo Yongwang, a Ministry of Agriculture official, said the government began cracking down on illegal rat poison in April only to have the program interrupted by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. Still, officials say they have already seized more than 105 tons of illegal poisons, mixing materials, bottles and containers.

"The efforts have been quite effective," Mr. Guo said. "You won't be able to find Dushuqiang and other highly lethal rat poisons in the market, although there still might be some illegal peddlers selling them secretly."

Here in Longfeng, a town along the mountainous trucking route that runs through the western section of Hubei Province, the outdoor market has stalls selling fresh produce, tofu, sides of beef, spices and glass containers filled with fish. Until the recent crackdown after the funeral poisonings, the market also apparently had peddlers selling banned rat poisons.

One clerk in a hardware store beside the market said that the number of peddlers had declined in recent years but that the poison could still be found. He said he bought a small supply a few years ago.

"People are still selling it," a woman selling cabbage said.

Farther west, in the city of Lichuan, officials have handed out leaflets warning people to turn over Dushuqiang by Nov. 25 or face fines and possible prison time if they are caught with it. The Lichuan police, who led the investigation into the funeral poisonings, refused to discuss the case or provide any details.

But reports in various state-run newspapers say the confessed murderer, Chen Xiaomei, had been estranged from her husband and her oldest son. When her husband died, Mrs. Chen was reported to have sprinkled the poison on the food at the traditional funeral meal. She told officials she had wanted only to sicken her family members so that they would need to ask for her help in paying for medical treatment.

Instead, the poison killed 10 guests, including members of Mrs. Chen's family. Then, little more than a week later, a similar poisoning occurred in Zaoyang, also in Hubei Province. Initial reports said 34 people had been poisoned, though none fatally. Other recent cases include that of an Anhui Province villager poisoned by his wife; a chain of poisonings in Jiangxi Province that left 7 people dead; and a factory in Guangzhou where more than 200 workers were poisoned.

News of the funeral poisonings has already spread in the most isolated farming areas here in Hubei. Tian Shigui, 45, lives in a small house along the trucking route and raises corn. She spends much of every day slowly working through the piles of corn, picking off the dry kernels either for making cornmeal or for feeding her pigs.

She said that she knew people who used illegal poisons but that she considered them too risky, even though her corn makes a tempting target for rats. "It's not safe," she said. "It would hurt my pigs."

So she has resorted to another time-tested solution: a cat.

Dean Believes Remains of Brother Have Been Found

Dean Believes Remains of Brother Have Been Found
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:46 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Deans-Brother.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said Tuesday that the search for the long-lost remains of his younger brother may be over with the discovery of bones, a sock, a pair of shoes and a bracelet buried in a Laotian rice field.

Charles Dean has been missing since 1974, when the 24-year-old University of North Carolina graduate was traveling through Southeast Asia with a companion, Neil Sharman of Australia.

A joint U.S.-Laotian team discovered remains earlier this month in Bolikhamxai Province in central Laos, said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon office in charge of POW and MIA issues. The remains have not been positively identified, but Dean said his family is confident they belong to his brother because of personal items found at the site.

As governor of Vermont, Howard Dean had visited the location last year to push for excavation. He said the discovery would be painful not only for him, his mother and his two surviving brothers, but families of every POW and MIA.

``We greet this news with mixed emotions, but we are gratified we are now approaching closure,'' Dean told reporters in a brief statement after a candidate forum in Bedford, N.H. He did not take questions.

Sharman's brother, Ian Sharman, told the Australian Herald Sun on Tuesday that the two men had been handcuffed, executed, and their bodies thrown into a bomb crater. He told the newspaper that U.S. Army officials had informed him that one body had been found on top of the other, and two skulls, bones and shoes had been recovered.

Dean spokesman Jay Carson said the shoes resembled a pair worn by Charles Dean and the bracelet ironically was marked POW. Charles Dean wore the bracelet in support of finding missing prisoners of war, Carson said.

The Dean family has been trying to piece together the details surrounding Charles Dean's death for three decades.

Charles Dean graduated from North Carolina in 1972 and went to work on the anti-war campaign of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. After McGovern lost in a landslide to President Nixon, Charles Dean decided to travel around the world. He left New York for Seattle by car with a friend in the spring of 1973 and then traveled by freighter from Seattle to Japan. He later went on to Australia, where he lived on a ranch for nine months.

He and Sharman took off for Southeast Asia and were arrested by the communist Pathet Lao on Sept. 4, 1974, during a trip down the Mekong River in Laos. They apparently were suspected of being spies, although the U.S. and Australian governments said they were merely tourists and strongly protested their detention.

The two men were held in a small, remote prison camp for three months before they were believed to have been executed on Dec. 14 while driving toward Vietnam with their captors.

Charles Dean, although a civilian, was considered by the U.S. government to have been a prisoner of war. The effort to recover the bodies of Dean and Sharman was coordinated by the Defense Department's Joint Task Force Full Accounting, a Pentagon unit created 11 years ago to find remains of Americans missing in Indochina.

Based on accounts from local informants, the task force zeroed in on a flooded paddy field about 2.5 miles from the Vietnam border.

The family had been frustrated with delays in excavation of the suspected burial site when Dean visited the area last year. He was able to speak through a translator to one of two witnesses who claimed to have seen the bodies of Charles Dean and Sharman and remembered where they were buried.

At the time, Dean said he decided to make the trip after the death of his father because it would have been too difficult for Howard Dean Sr. to relive the pain of his son's death. Charles Dean's disappearance was gut-wrenching for everyone in the Dean family, but Howard Dean said his father took it especially hard.

At the time of Charles Dean's disappearance, the elder Dean was vice president of Reynolds Securities in New York and worked through his business and personal relationships to try to find his son. Howard Dean Sr. had attended Yale University with Charles S. Whitehouse, then the U.S. ambassador to Laos, and had developed connections in the region while living in Asia.

There are currently 1,875 Americans missing from the Vietnam conflict, including some civilians such as Dean, Greer said. He did not have a precise number of missing civilians but said they include government contractors, missionaries and those like Dean who had no connection to military operations.

``We track everybody who's an American,'' Greer said.

The remains are still in Laos, but will be taken to the military's identification laboratory in Hawaii next week. Dean said he likely will fly to Hawaii on Nov. 26 for a repatriation ceremony.

Lt. Col. Gerald O'Hara, a spokesman for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii, said identification can take as long as several years, but he expects this case could be resolved in four to eight months because a ``good quantity of remains'' were recovered. He declined to say what exactly was uncovered, citing the family's privacy.

^------

Associated Press writers Matt Kelley in Washington and Holly Ramer in Bedford, N.H., contributed to this report.

47 Currency Traders Are Indicted on Fraud Charges

47 Currency Traders Are Indicted on Fraud Charges
By KENNETH N. GILPIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/business/19CND-DOLL.html

Forty-seven currency traders were indicted today on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and securities fraud for what prosecutors said were wide-ranging crimes involving nearly every level of foreign-exchange trading.

The charges, which involve employees at low-level boiler-room operations with fancy-sounding names and at some of the world's largest financial institutions, capped an 18-month investigation conducted by undercover agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was code-named "Operation Wooden Nickel."

"There is a staggering array of criminal conduct," said James B. Comey, the United States attorney for the southern district of New York. "Today's charges rum the gamut of fraud. With more than 1,000 victims, from small investors to large banks, the losses are in the millions."

F.B.I. agents arrested dozens of people on Tuesday night and seized boxes of records from small trading firms like Madison Deane & Associates as well as giants like J.P. Morgan Chase and UBS.

In its eight separate complaints, the Justice Department contends that two basic crimes were committed.

First, many of the small firms solicited money from investors with the promise that they could earn them consistent returns by trading in foreign currencies. In fact, these firms were really stealing the money, Mr. Comey said at a news conference in Manhattan.

"It wasn't fancy," he said. "Just fraud."

The second charge contends that banks like J.P. Morgan Chase were "scammed" by their own employees who engineered trades in which their firms and their customers lost money while the small trading houses made money. Some of the profits were then kicked back to the bank employees, according to the complaints.

Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. discovered more than 100 such trades over a six-month period that cost the banks roughly $650,000. But the actual number is probably much higher than that, he added.

This type of scheme "had been going on for 20 years," he said.

In addition to employees at J.P. Morgan and UBS, those charged include workers at Société Générale, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and Israel Discount Bank and three practicing lawyers.

In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against the United Currency Group and its chief executive, Adam Swickle, accusing them of conducting a fraudulent offering of the company's securities from May 2001 through December 2002. The complaint stems from the F.B.I.'s investigation, the S.E.C. said.

And the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it filed six separate actions against 31 individuals and entities, including Madison Deane, charging them with engaging in fraud and in the sale and solicitation of what it claims were illegal foreign currency futures contracts.

The C.F.T.C., which has been investigating illicit activity in the currency futures market for nearly three years, said its actions stemmed from its participation in the F.B.I. investigation.

In announcing the charges, the C.F.T.C. said that as part of the investigation federal agents infiltrated a foreign-exchange boiler room at the World Financial Center that was operated by corrupt sellers of illegal foreign-exchange futures contracts.

The agents captured "hundreds of hours" of video and audio recordings of defendants that showed sales representatives scheming to deceive unsuspecting customers and steal millions of dollars, the C.F.T.C. said in a statement.

Mr. Swickle, who was named in the S.E.C. suit, is the founder of the United Currency Group. The S.E.C. asserts that he employed sales representatives to trade foreign currency for its clients. His firm raised $774,000 through its fraudulent offering, the S.E.C. contends.

Of the 47 traders who were charged with fraud by the United States attorney, 40 were taken into custody by the F.B.I. on Tuesday and today, the Justice Department said. Two defendants had previously been arrested. Four are still being sought. The status of one person was uncertain this afternoon.

The defendants in custody are scheduled to appear today before various federal judges in Manhattan and elsewhere.

The currency traders at large banks who were named in the indictments are Craig Bohrman of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, Lee Kassler of Israel Discount Bank, Patrick Marzo of Société Générale; Anthony Viggiano of J.P. Morgan Chase, and Eduard Wehrli of UBS.

The complaint charges that at least from May 2003 through the present these individuals, and others at interbank brokers who were also indicted, participated in a fraudulent scheme they referred to as the "Game," or "Points for Cash."

The traders received about $270,000 in kickbacks from the interbank brokers for the rigged trades, according to the complaint.

The foreign-exchange market, the conduit for transactions that fuel the global trading system, is largely unregulated. Daily volume in the market is around $1 trillion a day, Mr. Comey said.

The government's action is the latest taken to crack down on fraudulent activity in the foreign-exchange market.

Last month. the Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged A.S Templeton, another small firm, and two of its officers with stealing about $6 million from more than 300 of the firm's clients.

Since December 2000, the C.F.T.C. has filed more than 40 cases involving $177 million taken from at least 3,500 investors in the currency futures market.

LVMH Battles Against Morgan Stanley in Court

LVMH Battles Against Morgan Stanley in Court
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/18/business/worldbusiness/18lvmh.html

PARIS, Nov. 17 -Echoes of a four-year battle for the Gucci Group resounded here on Monday as a commercial court heard opening arguments in a lawsuit that pits LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the luxury goods group that lost the struggle for control of Gucci, against Morgan Stanley, Gucci's investment banker.

LVMH sued Morgan Stanley a year ago seeking 100 million euros ($118 million) in damages, accusing the bank of improperly manipulating its stock research to benefit its investment banking clients by issuing unusually negative assessments of rival companies.

At issue are ratings issued by Claire Kent, the analyst in charge of Morgan Stanley's research on luxury goods companies, whose recommendations are widely followed by investors. In February, an annual survey of money managers by Institutional Investor magazine ranked Ms. Kent the leader in her field for the ninth consecutive year.

Morgan Stanley struck back in May, filing a countersuit that accuses accused LVMH and its chairman, the French entrepreneur Bernard Arnault, of instigating an "unjust and abusive procedure'' against it and demanding 10 million euros in damages and the publication of a final court verdict in 20 newspapers and magazines. Ms. Kent now has a neutral rating on both LVMH and Gucci.

The principal lawyer for LVMH, Georges Terrier, told the three-judge court that LVMH was "not attacking financial analysts in general,'' but sought damages merely for the "prejudice we suffered.'' He cited what he said were dozens of factual errors in Ms. Kent's reports and accused her of unjustifiably warning investors in a July 2002 report that a downgrading of LVMH's rating might be imminent.

LVMH conceded defeat two years ago in the struggle for Gucci and agreed to sell its remaining Gucci shares to François Pinault, a rival French billionaire who had helped Gucci thwart Mr. Arnault's advances.

In May 2000, Ms. Kent lowered her rating of LVMH to neutral from outperform, a decision some investors later applauded, given that the stock peaked two months later, before falling back sharply. Over the same period, Ms. Kent rated Gucci shares outperform. In the summer of 2000, Gucci shares rose a bit, but fell back later in the year. Though LVMH shares have gained more than 48 percent thus far this year, the stock closed in Paris on Monday at 58 euros, down 3.5 percent.

Morgan Stanley has always denied that the work of its analysts showed any bias. A lawyer for Morgan Stanley, Philippe Nouel, rejected the objections of LVMH, describing as "pure invention" the claim that Ms. Kent sought to promote Gucci over LVMH. Ms. Kent did not attend the session.

The lawsuit comes at a time of heightened public scrutiny of conflicts of interest within investment banks, and is the first of its kind to be heard by a French court. Earlier this year, 10 Wall Street firms, including Morgan Stanley, agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement over charges that analysts published misleading stock research. Morgan Stanley's share was $125 million.

On Monday, the company agreed to pay $50 million to settle a complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission that Morgan accepted payments from investment companies, that it did not disclose, to sell those companies' mutual funds.

Getting a Job in the Valley Is Easy, if You're Perfect

Getting a Job in the Valley Is Easy, if You're Perfect
By MATT RICHTEL and LAURIE J. FLYNN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/technology/19techjobs.html

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 18 - As the economy bounces back, even Silicon Valley's job market is showing signs of revival. But it has a long way to go. Employers are being extremely picky, the few jobs being offered pay less than they once did, and they do not come with the bountiful benefits and sterling opportunities of the 1990's boom, job seekers say.

Just ask Cary Snyder. After 16 months without a job, he is joining a four-person start-up as a technical analyst, having given up his search for just the right position. He may not have job security, but he says it beats combing through want ads.

"Not only are there fewer jobs, but the ones that are out there don't pay as much as they used to,'' Mr. Snyder said. Still, he added: "Looks like I'll be getting a regular paycheck in January or February."

Silicon Valley, the humbled epicenter of the nation's information technology industry, is stirring again, buoyed by revived corporate profits and fresh injections of still relatively small amounts of venture capital into a variety of start-ups.

But the region's job market is mending only slowly. The continued displacement of basic-level technology jobs overseas, and the boomerang effect as companies use the new technologies largely invented here to sharply increase productivity, is keeping employment demand and salaries markedly below their boom-time levels.

Indeed, what qualifies as good news in the technology industry is not so much evidence of overall job gains, but signs that job losses have slowed considerably. That is the conclusion of a report due out on Wednesday from the American Electronics Association in Washington, which found that the information technology sector is expected to lose about 234,000 jobs this year, most of them earlier in the year, compared with 540,000 job losses the year before.

While some established companies are still cutting jobs, the pace of hiring - mostly at smaller firms - has clearly started to pick up. On Craigslist, an online service relied upon by job seekers throughout the San Francisco Bay area, the number of job postings rose to 1,800 a week in September and October, up from 1,400 early in the year.

Mike Curran, director of Nova, a job retraining program in San Jose, Calif., said his clients were having an easier time finding jobs lately, but agreed that what employers were looking for had changed.

"More people are getting interviewed and more people are getting jobs,'' Mr. Curran said. But "companies are being very selective,'' he added, "requiring four or five interviews, and they're looking for exact characteristics.''

Owen Rubin can attest to that. Mr. Rubin, 49, an engineer who was laid off from his $165,000 management position more than a year ago, had an interview recently at a software start-up where he found himself getting "jazzed" about the opportunity to lead the engineering team.

It did have one major drawback, though. "I had to work for free,'' Mr. Rubin said. The company could not afford to pay in cash and offered to compensate him in shares alone. Still, he was disappointed that he was not offered the job.

"They give you a list of the 30 things they want,'' he said, "and if you're not an identical match, they move on immediately.''

Stephen Levy, chief economist with the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto, said that in the tech bust many companies learned to do more with less. "The Silicon Valley economy is improving, except for jobs - and that's not a vacuous statement," he said. "The Valley can be alive and kicking and not get back to the hiring levels of 2000."

William T. Archey, chief executive of the electronics association, agreed that productivity gains were part of the issue. "We have the use of high technology in producing high technology," he said. "It has engendered less demand for people."

At the same time, many here worry about the prospect of jobs flowing to places like India and China. Forrester Research projects that by 2005, as many as 588,000 service jobs now held by Americans will shift abroad. By 2015, the nation will probably lose about 3.3 million such jobs overseas, but it is not clear how many of those will be in technology.

As job opportunities shrank in recent years, so did salaries. For example, in Santa Clara County, home to Palo Alto and Stanford University, the average salary fell to $63,000 in 2002, the most recent year with statistics available, down from $76,300 in 2000, according to the Labor Department.

In California, which lost 123,000 technology jobs in 2002, the employment market has stabilized but has not yet started to add workers. Employers in Santa Clara County reported 865,800 jobs in October, up 2,500 from September. But the gains came in health and educational services and in government employment. The information technology sector lost about 700 jobs.

But there are also evident signs of recovery. The stock market's rebound has cleared the way for new initial public offerings. That, in turn, has given venture capitalists the incentive to invest in start-ups, and some of them are hiring.

Technology industry headhunters say that demand for job candidates is starting to pick up. "I'm hearing more optimism from my technology clients than I have in the last 24 or 36 months,'' said David Nosal, who runs the Northern California operations of Korn/Ferry International, the nation's largest executive search company.

Corporate earnings and sales have turned around too. Intel, the Silicon Valley bellwether, reported big gains in profits and revenue for the third quarter but nonetheless has managed to keep its head count flat, at 89,000 compared with 88,700 in the second quarter. Chuck Malloy, a company spokesman, said Intel had no plans to hire in significant numbers in the near future.

Cisco Systems, a maker of Internet equipment and a bellwether of the fortunes of the telecommunications industry, is in a similar position. Despite reporting sales last quarter that exceeded $5 billion for the first time in two years, Cisco said that it cut its work force by 259 people.

Cisco said that it did not intend to add many employees until it increased productivity. The company said it now took in $594,000 in revenue per employee, up from $545,000 the previous quarter. But a company spokeswoman, Abby Smith, said Cisco's goal was to achieve sales of $700,000 per employee.

At that point, "we'll consider hiring again," Ms. Smith said, adding that the company had not said how soon it expected to achieve that goal.

Whenever it comes, it looks as if it will be too late for Tim Rowledge, who is giving up on his job prospects here. A 43-year-old programmer, Mr. Rowledge did so well as a software engineer and consultant during the boom that he managed to buy two houses. But he has sold his vacation home near Yosemite and is preparing to sell his primary home in Milpitas, near San Jose, too. After spending 18 months looking in vain for work, he has decided to move to Canada, despite what he describes as a "definite uptick in consulting.''

"There appears to be a huge push for outsourcing,'' Mr. Rowledge said, lamenting what he sees as a nefarious scheme to force American computer programmers to make themselves redundant. "One of the current favorite tricks of companies is to say, 'We're laying off you, and you, and you. Now you, you get to keep your job, but you have to go to India or teach a bunch of Indians your job.' "

East River Pilots

Clear to Land, but Dodging East River Flotsam
By MICHELLE O'DONNELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/18/nyregion/18SEAP.html

Of all the airplane runways in New York City, the longest and most treacherous is the murky vein of the East River. It does all a river can do to distinguish itself from the asphalt lanes at Newark and La Guardia and Kennedy.

It coughs up piano casings and the shells of old refrigerators. It sends back corpses from its depths. Its currents have currents, its eddies have eddies, and cargo ships and high-speed ferries crisscross it with no apparent regard for an aeronautical grid.

But to a small and select breed of aviators, the urban bush pilots, the East River and its slapping waves have a special draw. These fliers honed their skills landing seaplanes in wilds from the Caribbean to Alaska and have transported their skills to New York City, where they ferry vacationers to the Hamptons instead of tourists and mailbags to the bush.

To spend time with them is to feel a boat become a plane, to twirl around the steel and glass midriff of Manhattan, and to discover that the biggest frustrations are not always those obstacles in front of the nose, but sometimes the demands of those sitting in the back seat.

"There are times when I think we are the only people in the world who say `no' to these people," John Kelly, 56, the owner of Shoreline Aviation, said with a sigh, referring to the demands of his Hamptons-bound passengers. Shoreline is the only seaplane operator that offers regular flights in and out of Manhattan.

The clients include fund managers, fashion industry leaders, real estate moguls and the occasional celebrity.

Shoreline flies planes in from a hangar in Bridgeport, Conn., for their runs from Manhattan to eastern Long Island. The company strictly guards its passengers' privacy. Mr. Kelly has fired pilots who have asked for autographs, but he could still list some passengers' most grating traits: they have been known to stand in mist as thick as bisque and insist that a flight not be canceled. They are likely to comment on turbulence and to point out when a flight is late. "We've had a number of guys come from Alaska who were bush pilots, but when they get tossed in New York City, they get frazzled," said Eric Atkins, a pilot with Shoreline.

Mr. Kelly explained, "They're used to flying where sometimes they can't get in for days, and here, if they're five minutes late for a cocktail party, we hear about it."

J. J. Frey, a seaplane pilot who has flown into both Alaska and New York, summed up the differences: "You get pressures in both places in different ways. In Alaska, you have little or no radio work but the pilot doesn't know too much about the weather. In New York, there's a lot more radio work. As you go by J.F.K., you have to be squawking a transponder code. There's a lot of junk in the East River. And it's a semi-hyper customer you're dealing with anyway in New York."

A few of Mr. Kelly's small but hardy boat planes swoop down every week to traverse the dingy body of water that divides the city from itself. They are taxis for those with means: a seat to the Hamptons costs $375 one way.

Arriving in Manhattan, a plane wobbles over the wakes of speeding ferries and through the spray of passing cargo ships to a small wooden dock at the 23rd Street pier, where a red sign says simply, "Seaplanes." Using the plane's pontoons as gangplanks, passengers hop from plane to dock. Then, sputtering straight into the path of oncoming ships, the plane rises from the saltwater before the waves can heave it to shore.

"It's 35 minutes door to door," a fund manager said last Friday as he boarded a seaplane bound for his home on Shelter Island. He requested anonymity so his employees wouldn't know why he had left work early. "They can pull right up to my dock."

Seaplanes used to be a more common sight on the East Side of Manhattan. Even as late as 1980, six seaplane operators served the New York area. From Great Neck to Oyster Bay to Westchester, business leaders flew in seaplanes to their Wall Street offices. Only in Seattle and other waterlogged regions lacking New York's network of bridges and tunnels do seaplanes thrive as commuter workhorses.

In New York, the seaplane's high season lasts from May until September. They fly until there is ice on the East River, but not as regularly in the off-season, and not with every seat full. Now there is room on weekend flights to the Hamptons. Most of the regular pilots have bolted — in seaplanes — for the winter flying season in the Caribbean.

Urban bush pilots are tough yet sensitive. They must monitor the weather, the river currents, boat traffic, air traffic and the unpredictable objects of nature unique to the East River, as well as the feelings of their passengers. But in the highly sanitized and technical world of commercial flying, seaplane pilots feel they offer the last vestiges of flying's romance. "What works for us is finding a guy, or gal, who loves to fly but doesn't feel like putting on a uniform," said Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly has found Mr. Atkins and Amy Rowell, 38, a co-pilot. Mr. Atkins cannot be bothered to wear shoes while flying — or, for that matter, for much of the winter. "You're like, `Eric, it's snowing outside,' and he's walking around barefoot in the ice and snow," Ms. Rowell said.

For her part, Ms. Rowell, a former flight attendant who took flying lessons after she realized she was working the wrong end of the plane, is also a bit of a daredevil.

She enjoys swimming with whales in the open sea, and sailing. She has no permanent address, and in September, she flew her own Cessna 172 four-seater across the United States. It took four days.

Being a seaplane pilot is a hard living, but for those who love it, it is hard living without it. The pay is not high: pilots make around $50,000 a year, and co-pilots around $35,000 — a fraction of what commercial jet pilots make.

Mike Volk, president of the Seaplane Pilots Association in Lakeland, Fla., said: "Some people are not cut out for seaplane flying. They have a macho attitude toward it, and that's the type of attitude that's going to get you in trouble."

Mr. Kelly, a native of Boston's Back Bay and a seaplane pilot who employs a revolving staff of about a half-dozen pilots during the summer, said it was hard to figure out what makes a seaplane pilot tick.

"I've been trying for years and still can't," he said.

He narrowed it to this: "You got to have enough ego so you can have enough confidence to do what you do. You have to be willing to get wet, because that's what they do, get wet, that's part of the job. At the end of the day, they have to wash their planes to get the saltwater off. They're not the prima donnas you get with the jet pilots. I probably shouldn't say that, but it's the truth."

The other morning, the only passenger on Shoreline's flight was an auburn-haired woman who was returning to Manhattan from an overnight visit to Shelter Island.

Ms. Rowell hopped onto the float and lassoed the plane to the dock. A high-speed ferry sped by scattering waves from shore to shore. Ms. Rowell remained steady on the pontoons. Behind her, the boats docked at the 23rd Street pier groaned in their moorings, straining to be free.

The Phone Call

The Phone Call
By JEREMY SMERD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/16/nyregion/thecity/16rami.html

Fernando Ramirez felt surrounded by people who loved him, the people he worked with and sold coffee to at the Fairway supermarket near 125th Street in Harlem. Like a lot of solitary New Yorkers, cut off for one reason or another from their real families, he had found another kind of family in one of those peculiar improvised communities that spring up so randomly in the city.

This family sustained Mr. Ramirez for 15 years, first at the Fairway on Broadway at 74th Street, then when he moved to the store's Harlem branch. At the very end of his life, his son re-entered it, and briefly sweetened it in a way that seemed miraculous to both of them.

Mr. Ramirez, who was born in Colombia in 1937 and came to New York in the mid-60's, worked part time as a coffee roaster, a low-level job that he nonetheless performed with gusto. "If a customer would ask for a certain kind of coffee, he would say, 'No, wait a minute, let me make a mix,' " said Richard Pascale, his friend and longtime boss. Before sealing a bag of freshly ground coffee, Mr. Ramirez would show it to the customer and say, in his gravelly voice: "Now smell it. Doesn't it smell good?"

After work, he typically drank a few cans of Bud and snacked on pork rinds at El Ciro Fish Market, a bodega near the store. Although he rarely spoke much about his past, he seemed sensitive to other people's boys.

"Eh, Nino, junior, be good, O.K.?" he'd say to 17-year-old Eric Toledamo, whose mother worked at El Ciro as a clerk. And Louisa Lam, who lived in Mr. Rodriguez's building on Nagle Avenue in Inwood in Manhattan, remembered: "I have a 17-year-old boy, and every time he'd see me, he'd say, 'How's your big boy?' ''

But his friends knew little about Mr. Rodriguez's past. They did not know he had been abandoned at age 5 by his father after the death of his mother. They did not know about the drinking that had led to his divorce from his wife, Marlene, shortly after their marriage in 1968, the head injury he got when he fell off a subway platform or the resulting seizures that cost him his job as a waiter.

And they did not know that he had dropped out of his son's life more than two decades ago. Why this happened is a mystery, although relatives speculate that his drinking, combined with the loss of his job and his departure from the family's home in Sunnyside, Queens, made him too embarrassed to stay in touch. Mrs. Ramirez, who remained in Sunnyside after remarrying and had tried unsuccessfully to track him down a decade ago, assumed he had died.

Mr. Ramirez often talked to Mr. Pascale with regret about the estrangement from his son, and secretly, while helping Mr. Ramirez create a direct deposit account, Mr. Pascale tried to track down the son himself, using his friend's Social Security number. In the process, he found a nephew, Mauricio, who lived in Colorado.

Around the same time, in one of those extraordinary quirks of fate, his son, Michael, after years of ambivalence, had determined to find his father. Each act, it turned out. would be a pin in a lock that opened the door to the family that Mr. Ramirez felt abandoned him.

So far this year, the Social Security Administration has received more than 15,000 requests from people trying to locate parents, children, brothers and sisters who have disappeared from their lives. On Sept. 17, Michael Ramirez of Shakopee, Minn., sent such a request. The last time he had seen his father was at his first communion at Queen of Angels Church in the old neighborhood.

Like so many letters mailed to huge bureaucracies, Michael Ramirez's was addressed to that no-one-in-particular: "To Whom It May Concern: I am requesting help in locating my father. The last contact I had with him was in 1981 when I was 10 years old; I am now 32." He added the only other details he knew: his father's birth date, his Social Security number and the date he got his green card.

THEN, worried that this communication would sound too impersonal, he added: "If all you can do is get him a copy of this letter, then I would like for him to cherish this little bit of information about my life." He covered the last 22 years of his life in 179 words. "Dear Dad, I am a grown man now," he wrote. "I remember so much about you, especially the love you gave me. . . . I would love to talk to you and make you proud.''

When the phone rang in Michael Ramirez's home on Oct. 11, a family reunion was in progress; his mother and stepfather had flown in from Queens to celebrate the birth of his youngest son, Samuel, a month earlier. "Get ready for this," announced Mauricio, who was calling from Colorado. "I found your dad."

"I've been speaking with your dad, and he's so happy," Mauricio added. "He's nervous, but after three phone calls he's finally worked up the courage to speak with you."

Michael, too, wanted to reconnect. "Please tell my dad, call him and tell him I love him," he replied, crying now. "We're not going to talk about the past at all. We're going to start a new life."

Thirty minutes later, Mauricio called back. "I've got great news,'' he said. "Your dad is ready to talk to you. Call now before he loses his nerve." Tears streamed down Michael's face as he dialed his father's number.

"Hello?"

"Hello. Ola, papa."

The two spoke for 45 minutes, crying most of the time. The father told his son of his life in Manhattan. "I'm surrounded by people who love me," he said. "And I'm so proud of you."

"Dad, I just wanted to make you proud," the son replied.

They hung up, promising to speak in a few days. But Mr. Ramirez was not quite ready to see his son. Soon, he said. Michael secretly hoped for a Christmas reunion.

In his one-bedroom apartment, Fernando Ramirez was once again alone to ponder all he had missed; his son's graduation from Aviation High School; a full scholarship to the Air Force Academy, where he studied engineering; his marriage to a fellow Air Force captain; their move to Minnesota to be closer to her family and start their own; the birth of Fernando's three grandsons.

Mr. Ramirez's death was discovered almost accidentally. Every Tuesday night he used to telephone Mr. Pascale; first they'd talk about work and coffee, then about more personal matters, like the Yankees. On Oct. 14, Mr. Ramirez did not call. The next day he did not show up for work. When Mr. Pascale called his friend and no one picked up the phone, he filed a missing-person report.

On Oct. 22, the police found Mr. Ramirez's body in his apartment; he'd died of a heart attack the previous week. Amid the wreckage caused by the search for clues, Michael, who flew to New York that night, found some of his old toys - Matchbox cars, a golfing Smurf - arranged on his father's night table. In the living room was a framed picture of his younger self, bearing a striking resemblance to his eldest son, Tyler, 5 years old.

The brief moment between estrangement and death, the time when father and son were reunited, was, for Michael Ramirez, "divine intervention."

"So what are the chances?" he said. "Here I am putting this off for 22 years. What are the chances that in this time frame, knowing that everyone in his family is thinking about him and wanted to see him, that we finally spoke? And then, with that, he passed away."

A Tokyo Novelist Mixes Felonies With Feminism

A Tokyo Novelist Mixes Felonies With Feminism
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/17/books/17TOKY.html

TOKYO — As a former jazz club waitress, ceramics shop owner and homemaker, Natsuo Kirino began her life as a writer more than two decades ago, tossing off entertaining but forgettable bodice-rippers in the velvety-red tradition of the Harlequin novel. From the beginning, though, she knew that she had more to say, so in the late 1990's she switched genres, churning out hard-boiled crime stories that have won her prizes for mystery writing and have perennially been high on best-seller lists in Japan.

With her novel "Out," a best-selling and highly acclaimed murder caper that has been translated into English for the American market, Japanese critics say Ms. Kirino has finally found her calling, mingling biting feminist commentary with engrossing storytelling. In the process she has become Japan's writer of the moment.

"Out" is written somewhat in the manner of French detective fiction, but it is also much more, particularly to the legions of female fans who have snatched it up and read it as a scathing allegory about the subjugation of women in Japanese society and the secret lives this forces them to lead. (Ms. Kirino is one of the few contemporary Japanese writers translated into English.)

The novel's plot revolves around a barabara jiken, or murder and dismemberment, by Yayoi Yamamoto, a woman who works dismal night shifts at the boxed-lunch factory of her cheating, debt-ridden husband. Much of its almost cult appeal lies, however, in the ephemeral sisterhood of a handful of aggrieved women who band together to dispose of the corpse. "The thing I don't like about detective stories is looking for criminals," said Ms. Kirino in an interview in Japanese in her office in the suburbs here. "A crime is like a crack in reality, and it is the author's role to explore those cracks. As a writer, I like to see how they impinge on people."

Ms. Kirino, who has never lived outside Japan, sees her society as a place of profound contradictions: a country that is deeply unfair to women, immigrants and people of mixed race, and yet, for most, an extraordinarily easy place to live. Her characters often inhabit society's fringes and, like Hindus striving for fruitful reincarnation, yearn for a place in the sun. They can be immigrants from China and Korea who seek, but never quite manage, to assimilate, or members of Japan's large Brazilian-Japanese community, who are ethnically identical to the rest of the population, yet easily identified as different. And most of all, they are women emotionally and financially squeezed, for whom the promise of this fantastically rich society has turned to rancid disillusionment.

"It's a very confusing experience living as a woman in Japan," said Ms. Kirino, who is 51, dressed casually in a crimson polo shirt and pea-green army surplus pants, her fingernails blood red. "If your husband is white-collar, the wife is blue. Even if you marry a person of status, the wife inevitably remains a rung below."

Contradicting the widely held view of Japan as an egalitarian land of narrow social differences, the Japan that Ms. Kirino writes and speaks about is a stark, stony pyramid defined less by income than by education and profession: a person's university or employer. For women, who now have access to the best universities but are sharply underrepresented in the professional world, status derives first and foremost from youth and beauty, then from whom they marry and how each couple place their children in school.

Her books are filled with brutal depictions of this reality. In "Out" many of the women, from young teenagers to homemakers on the cusp of middle age, struggle for the ripe, pubescent look. More often than not, the men in Ms. Kirino's books are predatory manipulators — voyeurs and creeps — who exploit women in every way they can.

"We are not interested in maturity," said Ms. Kirino, who is married to a journalist. "As a society we are interested in the peak experience for right now, and young women think that comes by being more beautiful. Getting old is worse than disease — you have no value."

In one scene in "Out," a 31-year-old loan shark wakes up in bed with a first-year high school girl and, with his very first words, orders her to fix him breakfast. "How old is your mother?" the man asks suddenly.

Forty-three, the girl answers. "A bit older than my dad."

"Women are useless after 20," the man replies, flatly.

Ms. Kirino sees the obsession with youthful beauty, reinforced by a bombardment of images in television and advertising, as an insidious trap for Japanese women, one that many all too willingly fall into. And as handsome as Ms. Kirino is herself, she is intimately aware of beauty's pitfalls. "I'm happy to be told that I am beautiful, but I don't gain anything from that," she said. "I am fascinated with how preoccupied people here are with their appearance. Sometimes it strikes me as grotesque."

"And over time I have come to learn that ability and appearance work in contrary directions," she added. For those who believe that conformity is usually rewarded in Japan with a comfortable if dully predictable life, and that rocking the boat invites banishment and more severe sanction, Ms. Kirino, with her harsh judgments of her native land, is a stunning exception. "Out" has sold 300,000 copies in Japan, and in August was translated into English and then distributed in hardcover in the United States by Kodansha International, also its Japanese publisher. Kodansha said it had received paperback offers from numerous American publishers.

Another novel, "Soft Cheeks," now being translated into English, has sold 330,000 copies in Japan. It is a psychological thriller about the disappearance of a child, with some similarity to the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. Two of Ms. Kirino's novels have been made into films in Japan and three others into television movies.

The novel she is writing now offers what may seem like a complete departure in theme and backdrop. It is about the collapse of Japan's colony in Manchuria when Japan was defeated in World War II.

Manchuria was a place of fantastic dreams for many Japanese socialists, liberal planners and technocrats, who were allowed to live out their utopian ideals there on the Asian mainland during the most reactionary years of Japanese militarism.

After years of footnote status, that Japanese colonial period is now in vogue among Japanese historians, and Ms. Kirino thinks she knows why: the "anything is possible" atmosphere that pervaded the colony mirrors the giddiness that her generation experienced during the financial bubble of the 1980's, when denizens of Tokyo drank the most expensive wines and sprinkled gold flakes on their deserts to celebrate their wealth.

"I am part of that generation, which felt that money would allow us to do anything," Ms. Kirino said. "Now we are flooded with desire and don't know how to deal with it. Manchuria was a land of illusions, too, and I want to see what happened to those people, and to their dreams."

Ballet Theater Is Calm in Face of Loss of Funds

Ballet Theater Is Calm in Face of Loss of Funds
By ROBIN POGREBIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/arts/dance/13ABT.html

American Ballet Theater insisted yesterday that the Movado Watch Company's decision to switch its support to the New York City Ballet would not damage Ballet Theater's financial health. But others in the worlds of art and philanthropy said Movado, which withdrew its funds over accusations of mismanagement, had delivered a stinging blow at a time when corporate money for dance was limited and cultural backing in decline.

"This is the flattest, hardest pool of money to get anything more from in the foreseeable future," said Mara Manus, who used to oversee the Ford Foundation's arts portfolio and is now executive director of the Public Theater. She said the money would be hard to replace, calling the decision "a hit that's going to last."

That view was echoed by Randall Bourscheidt, director of Alliance for the Arts, a cultural advocacy group.

"Movado is Ballet Theater," he said. "This is not the era in which major corporation sponsorships are flourishing. It's a lucky organization that is able to hold onto this kind of sponsorship." Movado has been a principal sponsor of Ballet Theater, one of New York's premier troupes, for almost 20 years, giving what the watch company estimated was more than $400,000 annually.

But Ballet Theater trustees said that Movado's withdrawal would be only a dent in the company's $35 million annual budget and that a substitute would not be difficult to find. "I don't think it's that big a deal," said Nancy F. Havens-Hasty, chairwoman of the board's finance committee. "It's more the visibility: the name has always been there. They have that pretty clock across from Lincoln Center." But she added, "I don't think the money that we see from them is as important as it once was."

Movado's chairman, Gedalio Grinberg, told the board of his decision in a letter on Tuesday. Having served on Ballet Theater's board for nearly 20 years, he resigned in June to protest the decision not to renominate to the board Lewis P. Geyser, a trustee who had been critical of the company's financial operations. Both men had voiced concerns that the company had become overly reliant on the wealth of the new chairman, Lewis S. Ranieri. They also said that he had failed to keep the board informed about cash flow and other budgetary concerns.

John L. Warden, chairman of Ballet Theater's audit committee, said Mr. Grinberg's letter to the board was destructive. "His doing that and making this announcement smacks to me of the spoiled brat who says, `If you don't play the game my way, I'm going to take my marbles and go home,' " Mr. Warden said. "It's too bad he developed the attitude he did."

Mr. Grinberg was traveling yesterday and unavailable for comment, an assistant said.

Movado's move may heighten the competition between City Ballet and Ballet Theater, which go head to head at Lincoln Center in the spring, when City Ballet performs at its year-round home, the New York State Theater, and Ballet Theater performs at the Metropolitan Opera House. Ballet Theater also performs a fall season at City Center; this year's ended on Sunday.

But Christopher Ramsey, City Ballet's director of external affairs, said the two ballet companies had very different missions and reached different audiences, with only a slight overlap. Ballet Theater is best known for performing the classics, City Ballet for commissioning and producing its own repertory.

Mr. Ramsey added that the ballet companies had a long history of artistic cooperation — sharing ballet masters, for example — and that the success of each troupe benefited both. "We want them to be successful," he said of Ballet Theater. "We want as many people to be opened up to the dance world as possible."

Jacques D'Amboise, who danced with City Ballet for years, said: "City Ballet never felt competition with any dance company anywhere. We always like to have the Yankees against the Dodgers."

Still, arts groups do compete for a finite pool of funds. City Ballet performs twice as much as Ballet Theater (23 weeks) and has a considerably larger budget ($52 million) and endowment ($130 million, to Ballet Theater's $9 million).

Wendy Evans Joseph, a Ballet Theater trustee and the widow of its former chairman, Peter T. Joseph, who died in 1998, said yesterday that Movado's move would not influence her giving, which has been among the most generous of the company's supporters. "Movado doesn't affect me," she said.

And Richard J. Schwartz, the chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts, said the Movado move had not made him question the council's longstanding financial commitment to the ballet company, currently $200,000 a year.

"We've been aware of the criticism of the chairman for some time," Mr. Schwartz added. "And at this point we're not alarmed."

Ms. Manus, of the Public Theater, said she saw Movado's move as a positive sign that corporate sponsors were demanding greater financial accountability from cultural organizations. "That is good news for the nonprofit world in general," she said. A Ballet Theater spokeswoman said the company had $667,000 in cash and a credit line of $1.5 million.

"Any deficit we're going to have is not material," said Mr. Warden, the audit committee chairman. "And it's certainly smaller than it was." The company's most recent financial statements that are available date to July 31, 2002. It has yet to file its tax form 990, a spokeswoman said, and has asked for an extension.

As for accusations that the board has not been forthcoming with timely financial information, Mr. Warden said, "We're not quite to the point of monthly financial statements, but we're certainly at the point of quarterly financial statements."

Board members said yesterday that Mr. Grinberg's decision to raise questions about Ballet Theater's chairman was unfair. "Lew has brought in some wonderful board members and wonderful contributors," Ms. Havens-Hasty said.

While Mr. Ranieri has expanded the payroll, for example — often at his own expense — several trustees said these were essential hires. "A human resources person is someone we had to have," Mr. Warden said. "It's not like Lew had the idea of festooning the place with unnecessary personnel."

They also said that Ballet Theater had made significant progress, given that it almost went under a decade ago. "We've come an awfully long way," said Edward A. Fox, a board vice chairman.

"It's a very tough time for the performing arts," he added. "And I think compared to others, we're doing reasonably well."

DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN

[review of the opening night performance that we saw monday. i thought it was a little weak in several places, and the sets seemed more designed for frugality than for modern minimalism. but then again that is not unusual at the first performance of the season. after three visits in a week, i know i will really miss the Met when i leave. even got to see the queen of spain, flanked by bodyguards, at yesterday's performance of La Boheme.]

MET OPERA REVIEW | 'FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN'
Ethereal Queen Redeemed by Her Human Heart
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/arts/music/19FRAU.html

Two years ago, the Metropolitan Opera lifted the spirits of music-lovers in New York with a humane, visually ravishing and musically distinguished new production of one of opera's most problematic works, Richard Strauss's "Frau Ohne Schatten." Every element of that production by Herbert Wernicke in his Met debut was enchanting. Add to that the winning cast, headed by the soprano Deborah Voigt in a milestone performance as the Empress, and the incandescent conducting of Christian Thielemann, and this "Die Frau" was the finest work the Met had done in years.

The production returned to the company on Monday night, with Ms. Voigt back in all her glory, though with a different yet also fine conductor, Philippe Auguin, and new singers in two crucial leading roles. It's often hard to reassemble the elements and rekindle the synergy of a successful new production. And this time the company lacked the guiding presence of Wernicke, who died at 56 just four months after the production's premiere. But the revival still provides an enthralling evening at the opera. There are seven more chances to see it, through Dec. 13.

"Die Frau Ohne Schatten" ("The Woman Without a Shadow"), a collaboration between Strauss and his frequent librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, had its premiere in Vienna in 1919. The opera is a strangely mystical fairy tale about an Emperor who is married to a demigoddess. The Empress is fascinated by human life, but remains apart from it, symbolized by her barrenness and lack of a shadow. Her angry father has given her one year to become a mortal by acquiring a shadow, or else her husband will be turned to stone and she must return to the spirit world.

Her Nurse, an ambiguous figure grippingly sung by the mezzo-soprano Julia Juon in her Met debut, leads the Empress down to Earth, where they try to strike a bargain with a bitter, childless wife of a poor Dyer of fabrics. In exchange for giving up her shadow, and with it her potential to have children, the Dyer's Wife will have riches, lovers and eternal youth.

Wernicke's production (he also designed the sets, lighting and costumes) captures the wondrous fantasy of the opera and exposes its human core. The Emperor's world is a magical hall of mirrors upon which dazzling lights and colors play and flood into the auditorium. When the Empress and the Nurse descend to the human realm, the stage rises to reveal the factorylike home of the Dyer.

Ms. Voigt's voice was as radiant as her shimmering silver and royal blue gown. She captured the ethereal quality of the character, tossing off the high-flying vocal flourishes with the agility of a coloratura. Yet during the anguished soliloquies when the Empress ponders her choices, Ms. Voigt sent Strauss's arching vocal lines soaring over the lush orchestra. The tenor John Horton Murray looked properly regal as the Emperor but sang poorly, struggling in his middle range, unsteady on the high notes.

The soprano Deborah Polaski brought a powerhouse voice and dramatic vulnerability to the role of the Dyer's Wife. Dressed in a drab gray smock, skirt and boots, she was the poignant image of a hassled housewife. Everything about her dreary life aggrieves her: her childlessness, the grinding work, the deprivation, her bumpkin of a husband.

Returning to the role of the Dyer was the baritone Wolfgang Brendel. Though past his vocal prime, he gave a musically intelligent and deeply moving portrayal of, significantly, the only main character given a name, Barak. Yes, Barak is a dolt. But he is a generous soul, aching for children to give meaning to his life and inspire him to work even harder. At the end of Act I, turned away by his embittered wife, Barak wandered into the makeshift kitchen, took a beer from the refrigerator and, illuminated only by the refrigerator light, sipped his lonely drink as the wistful orchestra music acted like a benediction.

Mr. Thielemann may have captured more of the music's madness and intensity two years ago, but Mr. Auguin conducted a rhapsodic account of Strauss's richest score.

At the end, the Empress cannot bear to take the shadow of the beleaguered Dyer's Wife. Still, her newfound humanity is rewarded; the curse is broken. In a riveting final image, both couples, the celestial and the working class, sing a quartet as they rediscover the blessings of tenderness and, with luck, procreative love. Rows of stage lights descend from the flies, revealing the wiring and mechanics of the production, yet somehow seeming heavenly.

Schloss to depart CSFB

[ironically perhaps, as the Deal notices, "Three years after Garrett Moran left CSFB, his replacement as head of private equity Lawrence Schloss now is leaving."]

Schloss to depart CSFB
Movers & Shakers: Week of Nov. 17, 2003
by Dennis Fitzgerald and Heidi Moore Posted 11:04 EST, 14, Nov 2003
http://www.thedeal.com/

A top private equity banker who helped build DLJ Merchant Banking Partners into a powerhouse is departing Credit Suisse First Boston. Lawrence "Larry" Schloss plans to step down from his job as global head of private equity this spring to explore opportunities, the firm said in an internal announcement last week. CSFB insiders say Schloss, 49, had been thinking about leaving for some time. Tensions between Schloss and Thompson Dean, CSFB's head of leveraged corporate private equity, have been well known on Wall Street.

Possibilities for Schloss include starting a private equity firm of his own or bringing his expertise to an existing firm. "We wish Larry the best, and would look forward to the opportunity to invest with him, should he launch a new private equity investment business in the future," says CSFB CEO John Mack in the announcement Nov. 12.

Schloss joined DLJ in 1978 and was instrumental along with Hamilton "Tony" James, now the vice chairman at Blackstone Group, and Dean in establishing the investment bank's private equity group in 1985. Schloss joined CSFB in 2000, when the firm acquired DLJ. Today CSFB's private equity group has $31 billion of assets under management.

After Schloss departs, Dean and other PE bankers will continue to report to Brian Finn, who with Brady Dougan is co-president of institutional securities. Finn returned to CSFB in April 2002 after five years at private equity powerhouse Clayton, Dubilier & Rice Inc. In October 2002, after James resigned as chairman of global investment banking and private equity to join Blackstone, Finn was promoted to co-president and assumed responsibility for CSFB's private equity effort.

Asked who might replace Schloss as global head of private equity, one source says CSFB was thinking about bringing in an operational executive from Finn's former firm, Clayton Dubilier. If CSFB makes such a hire, it would be gaining a set of skills quite different from those of Schloss, who in recent years has focused on raising money and handling relationships with limited partners. Schloss' colleague Dean, meanwhile, has concentrated on doing deals.

After the private equity operations of CSFB merged in 2000, former DLJ bankers have called the shots. The DLJ brand was so strong that a $5.4 billion fund that Schloss played a key role in raising in 2001 is still known as DLJ Merchant Banking Partners III.

Another former DLJer, Susan Schnabel, was recently transferred from Los Angeles to be co-head of CSFB's private equity team.

Schloss holds an undergraduate degree from Tulane University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

CSFB loses Moran, 18-year DLJ veteran
by Erica Copulsky Posted 09:15 EST, 14, Nov 2000
http://www.thedeal.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=DH&cid=1003865143995

Less than two weeks after completing their merger, Credit Suisse First Boston and Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette Inc. have lost the executive charged with running their combined private equity operation.

Garrett Moran, a former vice chairman of investment banking at DLJ, unexpectedly stepped down from CSFB Tuesday. His decision to take what CSFB described as a "leave of absence from his duties" comes amid a battle for control of the combined firm's merchant banking operation.

Moran was named head of global private equity investing for the new firm in September, less than two weeks after DLJ and CSFB announced their merger plans. The appointment left unclear the roles of Lawrence Schloss, DLJ's longtime private equity chief and his colleague, Thomson Dean, in the combined entity. Also unclear were the roles of Hartley Rogers and Michael Schmertzler, CSFB's merchant banking chiefs.

It didn't take long for the situation to heat up. According to one person familiar with the situation, earlier this month, Schloss and Dean told CSFB investment banking co-head Hamilton James that they were unhappy about working under Moran, who had little experience in private equity.

Since that time, rumors have been swirling inside and outside the firm that the two merchant banking executives were considering leaving, possibly to launch their own firm.

With Moran's announcement, those rumors may subside. According to a memo CSFB's investment banking chiefs circulated Tuesday, Schloss will assume Moran's role as head of private equity, effective immediately. Larry "is uniquely qualified to assume this role," said the memo, which was signed by James and his co-head, Charles Ward.

But the turf battle is still far from resolved. The spotlight is now expected to shift to CSFB's Schmertzler and Rogers, and what role they will have in the merged operation. The two, founding partners of CFSB's $3 billion fund, have a contract that contains a change-of-control clause, people familiar with the firm say. A CSFB spokesman declined to comment.

According to the internal memo, Moran will be taking a leave of absence to spend more time with his family and travel. Moran has agreed to stay for a few months, the memo said, to help with the compensation process and merger integration.

"We are convinced that he will find the urge to return to the new CSFB irresistible after a few months out of the fray, but his future plans are still uncertain," the memo said.

Moran, a DLJ veteran of 18 years, is an architect of the firm's high-yield bond business. While he headed fixed income, DLJ scooped up a team of a dozen or so bankers for Drexel Burnham Lambert after that firm collapsed in 1990, and built from scratch one of the top junk bond franchises on Wall Street.

The firm found a way to use unfavorable market conditions to its advantage. At a time when demand for publicly traded junk bonds had dried up, DLJ placed junk-bond paper privately. When the markets rebounded, the group was able to capitalize on Drexel's former client base, becoming the top book manager in high yield for the past eight years.

Amid DLJ's success in high yield, Moran saw his star rise within the firm. In 1996, he was named vice chairman of investment banking, becoming banking head James' top lieutenant. Moran told investment banking staff in a separate memo Tuesday that he had told James he had wanted to take a break last March.

"When the merger was about to be announced I agreed to assume the challenge of running private equity, but after a few months I realized that it wasn't going to scratch the itch I had," Moran said. "My children range in age from 7 to 13, perfect ages for a summer trip to Europe - young enough to hang out with their parents and old enough to travel."

- Additional reporting by Josh Kosman.