This is the first in a series of six posts on salary negotiation published in partnership with PayScale.com.

1. Never accept the first salary offer.

2. Remember that you can negotiate more than just salary. A sign-on bonus and stock options are also major components of your offer that can be negotiated.

3. Work with your recruiter. Recruiters are your friends. But they are friends who have a budget. Ideally, they want you to accept the offer they are extending to you. Provide concrete data (see #10) to support why you are asking for a different compensation package.

4. Role-play the salary-negotiation conversation. Practice, practice, practice.

5. Utilize time as your golden trump card. Let’s say you found your dream job, but still aren’t happy with the salary that is being offered to you. It’s okay to put a timer on the offer after negotiations. Suggest a short turnaround time (i.e. “I will accept this offer by 5pm today if you can deliver the offer I am asking for”) to your recruiter to provide you with the salary criteria you requested.

6. Don’t be the first to disclose a number. Always let the recruiter or hiring manager be the first to share salary ranges or an offer post interviews.

7. Keep emotion out of the process. Remember: Business is business, and you can’t count on karma or other magical thinking. Sorry.

8. Always prepare a counter offer.

9. Remember that the negotiation process revolves around two factors: what you are worth and what they are willing to pay for you.

10. Always research your value and the company prior to interviewing for a job. Data is key to effective salary negotiating. Payscale.com is a great resource to leverage when doing research to determine your professional worth and how much you should be getting paid.

Elizabeth Morgan has over 15 years of technical recruiting experience, with companies that include Microsoft, Google, Amazon and LinkedIn. Currently, she is building LinkedIn’s Engineering Leadership team and helping launch LinkedIn’s Women in Tech program.

More on salary negotiation from PayScale.com:

Summary: Thou shalt be paid more! Tech recruiter Elizabeth Morgan takes to the mount to offer wisdom on squeezing money from a stone.


(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

BOSTON -- The past few years haven't been the easiest time for new entrants to break into the mutual-fund business. Investors have been sending more of their dollars to fewer fund companies and since last year in particular, the steep downturn in the market has made shareholders wary of untested strategies.

But one new player, Hartford Mutual Funds, sponsored by Hartford Life...

Summary: Hartford Mutual Funds has been able to make considerable headway breaking into the fund world. And much of the credit goes to Wellington Management.


08/01/2016 AT 12:10 PM EDT

In case you were wondering,

The "Famous" rapper sat down with

over the weekend and gave a wide-ranging interview that touched on everything from his ambition to design IKEA furniture to his desire to reach POTUS status. While it seems obvious that the self-proclaimed "Yeezus" would want to hold the highest office in the land, he claims he's in it for more than just the glory.

"When I talk about the idea of being president, I'm not saying I have any political views," said West, 39, in an excerpt of the interview which will air in full Monday afternoon. "I just have a view on humanity, on people, on the truth. If there is anything that I can do with my time and my day, to somehow make a difference while I'm alive I'm going to try to do it."

as particularly troubling. "We are numb, we're numb to 500 kids getting killed in Chicago a year, we're numb to the fact that it was seven police shootings in the beginning of July."

Elsewhere in the interview, West lamented how he "completely messed up the music" at the start of his

. The backing track failed to cue properly as he took to the stage, forcing him to reboot in front of a crowd of thousands. The incident plunged the perfectionist West into a depression. "When that music messed up in the beginning it tapped into my nerves, and when you're nervous or vulnerable something special and something different can happen."

He continued: "It really put me into a slightly depressed state. It put me back in the position of when I was in high school and I got fired from my job, or when I played my music for R. Kelly and he told me he was going to sign me and then three months later I didn't have any money, I couldn't afford a haircut, I couldn't take my girlfriend to the movies and I'm still in my momma's bedroom, working on beats and I was that close to being signed by R. Kelly. I don't usually get nervous – I prepare, I get fully prepared.â

West has been wearing his emotions on his sleeve recently. Last week he released

, in which he gets tearful with wife

got him in a reflective mood?

Summary: Kanye West touched on his potential 2020 presidential run in a BBC Radio 1 interview


Meanwhile government troops have been advancing towards the northeastern city of Raqqa, the heart of Islamic State’s so-called caliphate. They have been making slow progress, however, coming up against a fierce defensive from Isil.

As Assad and much of Syria broke its fast last night, Russian and Syrian air strikes over the eastern city of Deir Ezzor left 82 people dead, including 25 children. They had targeted a mosque during prayer time.

Assad, whose government is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, faces calls to step down from the US, UK and several other Western governments. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted his removal is not up for negotiation.

The president’s fate has become a sticking point in stalled peace talks between the government and the main opposition groups.

Summary: The Syrian government has released rare photographs showing President Bashar al-Assad on the frontline, in an apparent show of strength after recent battle gains.


Before the Newman case, the government would simply have pointed to the familial relationship as sufficient to prove the benefit. But the appeals court ratcheted up the requirement for a benefit, so the Justice Department has pointed to Mr. Stewart’s father using some of the profits from the trading to hire a photographer and pay for the rehearsal dinner at his son’s wedding.

That is a bit of a stretch, especially when almost any parent would try to provide that for a child. This shows how much of an impact the Newman decision has had. Prosecutors in New York have to search for something tangible passed between the tipper and tippee to get a case in front of a jury.

The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston takes a more relaxed view of what is necessary to show the benefit. Last week, in United States v. McPhail, it upheld the conviction of a defendant who tipped off his golfing buddies at a country club outside Boston about developments at American Semiconductor that he learned from another golfing friend who worked for the company.

Prosecutors pointed to two benefits that showed the quid pro quo requirement for insider trading. First, there were “concrete” ones that involved his expectations of a free dinner, wine and a visit to a massage parlor with the friends trading on the information, who earned more than $500,000 in profits.

The second was more subtle, that the tipper “stood to benefit from the group’s general gratitude for his largess” so that “it makes him one of the guys, they’re all kind of impressed.” This is the “Caddyshack” element of insider trading in which tipping is as beneficial to one’s reputation as the confidential information itself. The appeals court found the combination of the two enough to support the conviction.

We usually think of federal law as uniform throughout the country, but the question of what is enough to prove tipping inside information has resulted in what the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit called “some inter-circuit tension.” The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the issue in a case, Salman v. United States, in early October. In this case members of a close-knit family passed along confidential information without anything tangible exchanged among them. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which heard the case, is more closely aligned with the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on the benefit issue.

The Supreme Court could decide the case by simply reiterating its position in the decision on the Dirks case about gifts between family members, which would not require proving anything of monetary value passed between the tipper and tippee. One way to confine the gift theory would be to limit it to particularly close relationships, so that more casual friendships — golfing buddies, for example — would require something of actual value passed in exchange for the information.

The defendant in the Salman case filed a brief urging the court to adopt the Newman test that would require some proof of a valuable benefit exchanged between the tipper and tippee, not just warm feelings generated by making a gift to a family member. The question that the justices would have to confront if they take that approach is how much of a benefit is enough so that the lower courts can figure out whether a parent paying for a child’s wedding rehearsal dinner might be sufficient to prove insider trading.

The Salman case could drag the Supreme Court into a quagmire of providing rules about what is and is not required to show a benefit and how different types of personal relationships might affect the analysis. The justices are often reluctant to rewrite the law in detail, but that is what they will have to do if they require proof of a particular benefit in tipping cases.

What is odd about the law in this area is that the benefit requirement is far removed from what is considered wrongful about insider trading, which is the misuse of confidential information for personal gain that undermines confidence in the market. Whether someone got a benefit, such as a rehearsal dinner or the promise of a trip to a massage parlor, seems hardly relevant to showing securities fraud.

The justices could take the law in a different direction, perhaps following the suggestion of a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law at New York University. Instead of proving a benefit, the proposal would require the government to show the tipper made an unauthorized disclosure of information that the person knew would be used by the tippee to trade. The focus would be on the parties’ knowledge rather than the nature of the relationship between them.

The Justice Department is sure to resist this approach because proving intent is always the most difficult element in a white-collar case. This approach could make showing insider trading based on tips even more perilous because an intentional disclosure of confidential information might not violate the law if tippers could credibly argue they did not know what the tippee would do with the information.

A decision in the Salman case that raises the standard for proving insider trading beyond what the Justice Department deems acceptable could also push Congress to step in and define the law more broadly than it is now.

The unfolding drama of what constitutes this type of insider trading could end up changing the law significantly, all because the appeals courts cannot agree on what is a benefit.

Summary: The court will decide what benefit must be provided to prove a quid pro quo arrangement, and it could take insider trading law in a new direction.


Hasina Bano, a silk-factory worker from Ramanagaram, says that, for her, the most difficult aspect of microfinance is that debts can become public knowledge in the community. So when she got in over her head with loans, she had two big problems: Difficulty repaying, and public shame.

While hers is just one person's experience, it's one indication of what can go wrong when microlenders suddenly flood into a community with almost no experience borrowing money.

A key premise of microlending is that borrowers must organize into groups of five, and guarantee each others' loans. The reason is twofold: It spreads the lender's risk, and it uses peer pressure to encourage borrowers to pay off the debt.

Microlenders argue that because women like Ms. Bano have no collateral or credit history, the group-lending system is the only means they have to ensure repayment. "Most of the members can cheat us, therefore we give loans only on group guarantee," said S. Panchakshari, operations manager of the Bangalore-based BSS Microfinance Private Ltd., in an email.

By the same token, borrowers within a group are expected to "support each other in times of trouble," said Samit Ghosh, the founder of Ujjivan, another Bangalore-based microlender.

Ms. Bano's experience indicates that the social pressure can be tough to bear.

Ms. Bano, 27 years old, makes about $8 a week working in a silk factory, and says she owes her microlender a weekly payment of $7.20. She has struggled to make the payments for years. Meantime, her groupmates are watching and waiting -- because they can't secure new loans until she has repaid her share.

"It's not just the debt that is a burden," says Ms. Bano, who says she twice tried to commit suicide because of the situation. "It's the shame of everybody knowing. Outside they all say to me, 'How could you get yourself into this mess?'"

The mother of three said she had never taken loans before the microlenders came to town. Now she says she is obliged to take out a new loan with a different group of women to pay off her existing debt. To pay the debt, she says she has sold off her valuable possessions -- a mixer, a television, some brass vessels, a water boiler, and the family's mobile phone. A government ration card, which would give her 6 liters of oil and 20 kilograms of rice, was given away for $10.

The communal aspect of microlending has led to "fighting between friends, and even sisters," said Lalitha Sharma, another recipient of the loans. Two women in Lalitha's lending group ran away from their debts in 2007, leaving her and others to pay off their debts.

Mr. Ghosh of Ujjivan says: "We are ourselves worried about (the borrowers) running away" from debts, which is why "we tell our members to only bring people they know and trust" into their lending group. The system works best when group members help find a person who flees debt. "Frankly, if they can't help find the person, they have to chip in and pay up."

Meanwhile, Ms. Bano is fretting about what she'll do once the current payment strike comes to an end in Ramanagaram. "Where do I get the money from?" she said. "The people from the (microfinance) center don't give us any slack. I used to hide in my mother's place, and still they wouldn't leave."

Ironically, she has found some support in her microfinance groupmates -- they persuaded her that suicide isn't the answer, she says. "They try to stop me by saying, 'You'll repay the loan someday or another, but if you die, who'd take care of your children?'" Ms. Bano says.

Summary: Microloan borrowers within a group are expected to support each other in times of trouble. But what the lenders see as support, women sometimes come to view as an almost untenable social pressure.


Donald Trump provides a robust example of someone who is, with respect to matters particularly relevant to the exercise of high political authority, neither well-informed nor especially intelligent. Moreover, even apart from these rather egregious cognitive deficiencies, much of what Trump has said during his presidential campaign has been—to put it mildly—quite unconvincing. This goes not only for his sometimes boorishly insulting characterizations of the personalities, behaviors and even the physical features of others, but also for his bizarrely self-congratulatory claims concerning his own capacities, plans and intentions.

It is generally easy to identify which of Trump’s assertions are, in one way or another, unworthy of belief. What is somewhat more difficult to establish is whether his unmistakably dubious statements are deliberate lies or whether they are just bullshit.

The distinction between lying and bullshitting is fairly clear. The liar asserts something which he himself believes to be false. He deliberately misrepresents what he takes to be the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, is not constrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true. In making his assertion, he is indifferent to whether what he is says is true or false. His goal is not to report facts. It is, rather, to shape the beliefs and attitudes of his listeners in a certain way.

When Trump said that he observed thousands of people in Jersey City celebrating the destruction of the twin towers by dancing in the streets, it is clear enough that he was lying. After all, there was a great deal of reliable testimony that no such thing had happened. Also, records of Trump’s earlier statements make it abundantly clear that he lied when he recently said that he knew nothing about David Duke or about the Ku Klux Klan. Further, in discussing U.S. medical costs since Barack Obama became president, Trump said that “we have lousy health-care, where it’s going up 35, 45, 55 percent.” The truth is that, as readily available public records show, medical premiums rose by an average of 5.8% a year since Obama took office, compared to 13.2% in the nine years prior.

However, it is often uncertain whether Trump actually cares about the truth of what he says. This makes it unclear whether his assertion is a lie or merely bullshit. Since a person does not lie unless he makes an assertion that he himself takes to be false, we cannot properly say that he is lying if he actually believes what he says.

For example, on May 5, 2016, Trump tweeted: “The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!” This could hardly be anything other than bullshit. Does he have any real evidence about where the best tacos are, or was he just making it up? Does he really love Hispanic people? Both assertions come across—at least to me—as little more than hot air.

Consider, also, his pronouncement that millions of illegal immigrants will be deported when he becomes president. This is probably also an instance of bullshit: surely, given the uncertainty of whether he would have both the authority and the means to do so, it’s likely (a) that Trump doesn’t actually have any settled intention to deport those millions and (b) that he doesn’t really care whether or not what he says is true. He most likely made that pronouncement merely in order to create certain expectations and impressions in the minds of his listeners. He wanted people to think of him as a person who would settle upon and carry out intentions like the one he declared to be his.

On the one hand, Trump makes false assertions, which he surely knows, or knows he could easily ascertain, to be false. On the other hand, he makes statements of whose truth he is uncertain—and he is indifferent to the fact that he doesn’t actually regard them as true. In the first case, he is telling a lie. In the second case, it’s bullshit.

Trump freely offers extravagant claims about his own talents and accomplishments. He maintains, for example, that he has the greatest memory in the world. This is farcically unalloyed bullshit. He has also made deceptive claims concerning his business experience. Some of these probably include ingredients both of bullshit and of lies. But his characterization of himself as an extraordinarily successful businessman is, in any event, open to question. Thus, his biographer, Michael d’Antonio, makes the following comment: “He tried to run an airline and failed at that. He tried to run casinos and failed four times. That’s not evidence of brilliance when it comes to operating a complex business.”

It is disturbing to find an important political figure who indulges freely both in lies and in bullshit. What is perhaps even more deeply disturbing is to discover an important segment of our population responding to so incorrigibly dishonest a person with such pervasively enthusiastic acceptance.

Summary: And that makes him even more dangerous


Sirius XM Holdings Inc. raised its earnings guidance for the year as the satellite radio company reported a 10% increase in second-quarter revenue.

Sirius XM now expects this year’s revenue to be about $5 billion, compared with its previous guidance of $4.9 billion. Shares of the company rose 3.1% to $4.28.

Summary: Sirius XM Holdings raised its earnings guidance for the year as the satellite radio company reported a 10% increase in second-quarter revenue.


Just as Boeing ba reached the peak of the biggest boom in its history three years ago, CEO Frank Shrontz spotted trouble on the horizon. The company’s production methods, he warned managers, were lagging far behind those of the world’s best manufacturers. He predicted that the commercial aircraft business, upon which Boeing depends for 80% of its sales, was about to enter an era of price competition like none it had ever seen—one that would lead Boeing to disaster unless it drastically cut costs.

For his lieutenants, straining to keep up with a surging demand for planes, this came as a shock. Recalls William Selby, head of parts production: “We saw right away what he meant. If we failed to cut costs, we risked a fall in profits, then a decline in our ability to develop new products. It would be the beginning of a death spiral.” To protect Boeing’s future, Shrontz and his managers decided they need to chop the cost of building a plane by no less than 25% to 30%—a daunting task even for the company that brought the world the China Clipper and the jumbo jet.

At risk is more than the well-being of the company. America’s No. 1 exporter, Boeing has long been a mainstay of the nation’s high-tech competitiveness and a powerful motor of economic growth. One of the last great U.S. manufacturers with a chance to avoid humiliating decline, Boeing is still a standard-bearer of this export-led recovery.

The free-for-all Shrontz predicted didn’t take long to start. Last year orders for new planes plunged, and Boeing’s commercial revenues have begun losing altitude. According to Paine Webber security analyst Jack Modzelewski, by 1995 the company’s commercial aircraft sales could drop by 26% from their 1992 peak, to $17 billion. In January, Boeing announced plans to slow production on its four major models: the narrow-body 737 and 757, the jumbo 747, and the wide-body 767. Even though the company is gearing up to introduce its all-new 777 in 1995, it will drop at least 20,000 of its 130,000 workers in the next year or so.

Boeing faces an onslaught from Europe’s Airbus Industrie, the No. 2 planemaker, and has unexpectedly encountered another major threat: older airplanes—many of them Boeing products—that airlines refuse to retire. Such planes are cheaper to own and operate than the company’s expensive new ones.

For the unflappable Shrontz, 61, the fate of General Motors gm and IBM ibm carries a stern warning. “It could happen to us if we don’t do things differently,” he says, seated in his Seattle headquarters, a laminated ID tag dangling from his jacket pocket. He views the task of turning Boeing into an efficient manufacturer as the challenge of a lifetime. A 35-year veteran, he saw the company thrive during decades of cozy airline regulation, and subsequently triple in size during the postderegulation boom. For much of its history, Boeing was insulated from the competitive fires that forged lean companies in steel, paper, autos, and computers. No wonder Boeing’s warehouses bulge with inventories, while production often proceeds at the slow, zigzag pace of a crop-duster. To set itself right the company must overcome the drag of its hierarchy and reinvent the way it designs and builds its complex, customized, high-quality products.

The Airbus assault has only begun. Nourished by large subsidies Airbus has shrewdly focused on bringing advanced flight controls and avionics to the fast-growing heart of the market, medium-size planes. So far the consortium of state-owned Aerospatiale of France and CASA of Spain, and privately owned British Aerospace and the Deutsche Aerospace unit of Daimler-Benz, has grabbed market share chiefly from the No. 3 aircraft maker, McDonnell Douglas. Now Airbus is attacking two of Boeing’s strongest markets: long-range wide-body jets dominated by the 747, and small jetliners. In February, Airbus introduced the 350-seat A340, which will compete with Boeing’s highly profitable 400-seat 747. For the mid-1990s Airbus is developing the 130-seat A319 to chase Boeing’s popular 737-300. Boeing’s latest counterstroke made headlines in January. It preempted the development of another European model by going over the head of the consortium directly to the four owners, allying with them to study building a 600-to 800-seat superjumbo jet for the turn of the century.

“The idea was not to delay a plane for lack of a part. It was just-in-case inventory, not just-in-time.”

Even though Airbus’s costs are widely believed to be much higher than Boeing’s, the consortium has often undercut Boeing prices. A dramatic example came last July, when Airbus won a $1.5 billion order from one of Boeing’s best customers, United Airlines ual . Airbus leased to United 50 narrow-body A320s. That is the equivalent of $28 million per plane, or some $4 million less than each plane costs to build, according to Mark Bobbi of Forecast International, a market research firm in Newtown, Connecticut. The slightly smaller 737-400 costs about 18% less per seat to build than the A320, he reckons. For Boeing, the moral is chilling: Subsidies can erase its cost advantage, tilting customers toward Airbus.

The pressure on prices is bound to intensify. Strapped for cash to develop new planes, McDonnell Douglas is searching for a foreign company to pump capital into its commercial aircraft division. By the turn of the century, newcomers could crowd the skies. Aviastar, the company recently formed around Russia’s most modern jetliner plant, wants to become a big exporter. Taiwan Aerospace, part-owned and heavily supported by the government, covets a commercial aircraft business; it has formed a joint venture with British Aerospace to produce small jets. And Japan may not be far behind.

Even if Boeing outpaces its rivals, its toughest test will be to make its new planes cheaper to own and operate than the older ones glutting the market. The useful life of a plane is being stretched far beyond the traditional 20 years. For one thing, almost all the airlines are cash starved and are cutting their capital budgets. Also, the balance between operating costs and capital costs has swung decisively in favor of older planes. In the 1980s new plane prices rose faster than inflation; they now range from $29 million for a 737 to $165 million for a 747. Meanwhile, the airlines found that the value of savings from fuel-efficient new planes declined as the price of jet fuel dropped. Even though they need heavier maintenance, burn more fuel, and require larger flight crews, fully depreciated older planes became a relative bargain. In 1991, Boeing projected that 300 airplanes a year on average would leave the world airline fleet. In 1992 the actual number was 91—a minuscule 1% of the world’s total.

Boeing’s 25% to 30% cost-reduction target isn’t guesswork. It’s the precise saving needed to drive out the old planes—and propel sales back to the heights of recent years. Shrontz & Co. plan to use the savings to substantially lower prices and to fund innovations that will help airlines reduce their maintenance and fuel costs. Example: lighter-weight airframes. The airlines are cheering. Says Kenneth Raff, managing director of fleet transactions for American Airlines: “If Boeing can cut its costs 25%, a lot of old planes will turn into beer cans.”

Where will Boeing find $5 billion of savings, the amount Modzelewski estimates the company must cut to reach its target? Shrontz recently showed his skill at wielding conventional cost-cutting tools in Boeing’s other business, its $5.4-billion-a-year Defense & Space Group. Reductions in the B-2 bomber program badly damaged the unit in 1989; by late 1991 it had accumulated more than $1 billion in operating losses. Shrontz resolutely went to work, shedding costs and focusing on programs that had escaped the congressional ax. The unit eliminated 16,000 of its 53,000 employees—almost all by attrition or transfer to the now beleaguered commercial side—and lowered annual overhead by $700 million, or 25%. It currently shares in the development of two major weapons systems scheduled for production in the mid-1990s, the Comanche helicopter and the F-22 jet fighter. Last year the division posted operating earnings of $204 million; analysts say it should do far better in 1993.

For more on Boeing, watch this Fortune video:

The most obvious place for managers to find savings in Boeing’s commercial aircraft operation: its nearly $8 billion of inventory. Boeing turns over its stock a little more than twice a year, compared with ten times a year or higher for worldclass manufacturers in other industries. By streamlining work flows and eliminating excesses, Boeing aims to shrink the time needed to manufacture a plane from more than a year to just six months by 1998. If inventories are cut in half as a result, by Fortune’s estimate based on current production levels that would translate to an annual saving of $400 million in financing costs and as much as $600 million in storage, handling, and transportation.

The company used to rationalize its bulging warehouses by invoking the incredible complexity of its products; each 747 has more than three million parts, not counting fasteners. What’s more, no two orders are exactly alike. Each airline insists on its own custom layouts for seats, galleys, and lavatories, and has its own preferences in engines, air conditioning systems, and avionics gear. Boeing prided itself on being able to satisfy each buyer. Explains Patrick Day, head of the plant that makes ducts for pneumatic, hydraulic, and fuel systems: “In the past, the idea was not to delay a $100 million plane for lack of a $2,000 part. It was just-in-case inventory management instead of just-in-time.” Managers had no incentive to watch stocks. Inventory costs were billed to corporate headquarters, not to the divisions or plants. If their plants were well run otherwise, managers with overstuffed warehouses often pocketed bonuses for good performance.

No more. Inventory management is now a major factor in gauging plant performance, and managers have become inventory hawks. A leading zealot is Day. Last year he moved duct manufacturing from an antiquated factory south of Seattle to a new plant nearby. The old plant turned over its inventory less than once per year and was rife with other inefficiencies. Its 500 workers booked heavy overtime and spent 5% of their hours fixing mistakes. The production flow was meandering: Each duct, for example, traveled back and forth to a nearby factory to be heat-treated.

When the design team decides to alter a major part, it has the authority to make the changes itself.

At the new plant, Day has driven down stocks and tripled the speed of production. The factory takes deliveries of titanium, aluminum, stainless steel, and other alloys twice a day; at the old plant raw materials arrived once a week. Already inventory turns have multiplied to five per year; Day is aiming for ten by year-end. The plant turns out the same number of ducts as before but with 400 workers and minimal overtime; the other 100 jobs were eliminated and most of the workers transferred. Those who remain have been encouraged and trained to share responsibility for the production flow: The workers recently began videotaping their own routines in an effort to weed out wasted steps. Day estimates that his unit costs have fallen by 20% in three years, excluding depreciation of the new plant.

With hundreds of programs like Day’s, the inventory-cutting campaign, launched in 1990, has so far pared Boeing’s stocks by some $700 million, or about 9%. But proven, predictable methods such as lowering inventories won’t come close to generating the savings Boeing needs. For the bulk of them, it is counting on daring experiments to transform the way it designs and builds planes. It has ambitious plans to cut engineering hours, eliminate raw materials waste, and minimize expensive retooling.

Boeing’s traditional method for designing new aircraft is surprisingly primitive. The process consists of three phases. First, engineers design the plane’s shape and components. Then they hand the blueprints to manufacturing experts, who plan the production of components and final assembly. Finally the manufacturing plan goes to tooling specialists, who design specialized production machinery.

Since the phases are completed in sequence, they take a long time. Worse, the three groups have little contact until their initial designs are finished. As a result, tooling specialists often receive blueprints for parts that either can’t be manufactured or are too expensive to produce. In such cases they send blueprints back to the manufacturing engineers for revision. The system forces each group to turn out reams of corrections, consuming millions of hours a year in engineering time.

Once final drawings are ready, a crew of carpenters and artisans goes to work. They build a full-scale mock-up of the plane that incorporates replicas of every part, from support beams to flight controls. Translated for the first time from two-dimensional drawings into three-dimensional reality, the parts don’t necessarily fit. Electricians stringing mock instrument wires through the model, for example, may discover that a structural beam gets in the way. Result: more expensive changes, as engineers redesign the beam so it has a hole in the center and toolmakers reconfigure machines to accommodate the fix.

Similar mistakes inevitably plague construction of the first few planes. And since subsequent planes must be tailored to the customer, Boeing goes through a minor version of the same tortuous process with each order. The waste in raw materials alone is immense. Recalls an engineer who recently left the company: “We’d order a huge delivery of aluminum for a support beam, then decide to change the beam’s dimensions so the metal was no longer right. It would sit in a warehouse for months.”

Boeing hopes to capture huge savings by telescoping the work of its engineers, manufacturing experts, and tooling specialists so that they operate concurrently rather than in sequence. It is testing the new organization in designing a cargo version of the 767 that is scheduled for introduction in 1995. The project’s tooling experts have already shown the designers how to create a reinforced fuselage by using tools from the 767 passenger plane rather than building new ones. Program director Grace Robertson expects to slice 25% from Boeing’s standard design budget, chiefly by eliminating expensive redesign work. Boeing has also freed the team from bureaucracy: When the group decides to alter the design of a major part, it has the authority to make the changes itself, rather than waiting months for approvals from higher-ups. Preparations for production should take 33 months, down from the usual 47.

The company is innovating even more aggressively in its 777, a 375-seat wide-body jet due to appear in 1995. Aimed at the replacement market for the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, the 777 will be much less expensive to operate: It will fly on two engines instead of three and require two crew members rather than three in the cockpit. To make the 777 less expensive to produce as well as to fly, Boeing is mocking it up by computer, dispensing with full-scale models. On each feature, engineers brainstorm with representatives of airlines that have placed firm orders. Then the engineers design the part in three dimensions on computers that keep track of the plane’s components and their relationship to one another. If all goes well, the parts down to the last wire should fit perfectly when the plane goes into production. Boeing used 3-D computing to redesign the drinking water system in a batch of 737s for Delta Air Lines dal . The job took only three months instead of the usual six, saving thousands of costly hours in drawing plans and building mock-ups.

Will such innovations give Boeing the billions in savings it needs? Says Robertson of her 767 project: “We expect a substantial reduction in design, development, and manufacturing costs. But we’re changing our budgets all the time, and we don’t know exactly how much we’ll save in total. We have 33 months to see.” Boeing’s prospects hang on the answer. If the innovations work—and if they can be applied across its entire product line—Boeing may be able to cut enough to reignite growth. For the company that launched the Jet Age, the key to the future is on the factory floor.

A version of this article was originally published in the March 8, 1993 issue of Fortune with the headline “Can Boeing Reinvent Itself?”

Summary: Call it the ultimate engineering test.


Many pet owners interpret the character's favourite food too literally and risk giving their rabbits tooth decay and other health problems, says the RSPCA.

The charity said owners were mistakenly using carrots and other salad foodstuffs for rabbits' staple meals, adding that just 8 per cent of owners knew what to feed them.

Eleven per cent of pet rabbits suffer from tooth decay and 11 per cent have digestive problems, according to research at the University of Bristol commissioned by the charity.

"Bugs Bunny was wrong," said Rachel Roxburgh, an animal scientist for the charity. "We want all pet rabbits to be eating hay as their main food. People also think their rabbits should eat carrots because that's what Bugs Bunny does.

"But he's a cartoon, real rabbits don't talk, and they shouldn't be eating carrots too often either."

The charity has launched a campaign called Hay Fever to encourage owners to feed rabbits correctly.

Rabbits do not naturally eat root vegetables, cereals or fruit, and iceberg lettuce can be dangerous. Carrots and apples are high in sugar and should be an occasional treat.

The charity recommends giving rabbits good quality hay in daily bundles of about the rabbit's own size and allowing them to graze on growing grass, but not lawn clippings.

They should also be given regular handfuls of washed dark greens, such as cabbage, kale and broccoli and small daily portions of commercial pellets or nuggets.

Summary: The sight of Bugs Bunny chewing a carrot is among the best–known images in   cartoon history, but root vegetables are in fact bad for rabbits.


(IMPHAL, India) — One of India’s most prominent political activists ended a 16-year hunger strike Tuesday, licking honey from her hand and declaring “I will never forget this moment.”

Irom Sharmila had been force-fed through a tube in her nose and held by police since November 2000, when she began her fast to protest a draconian security law that gives immense power to security forces in the northeastern state of Manipur.

Earlier Tuesday, a judge had granted her bail after she assured him that she planned to end her fast.

Hours later, she appeared at a news conference, the nose tube already removed, and tasted the honey.

She said she plans to run in the next Manipur state elections, in early 2017, to fight to have the security act struck down.

“I need power to remove this act,” said Sharmila, 44. “I am the real embodiment of revolution.”

Asked how she felt to finally eat, she said “I will never forget this moment.”

She began her fast days after 10 civilians were killed by paramilitary soldiers in Manipur, which has long been plagued by uprisings by ethnic separatist militants and violent government crackdowns.

She was charged with attempting suicide, a crime in India, allowing officials to force feed her.

Sharmila announced last week that she planned to end the fast and run for political office.

On Tuesday, an official with Amnesty International India said the fast was “a testament to her passion for human rights.”

“The government arrested her, confined her to a hospital room and force fed her for 16 years, seemingly to break her will. There was zero dialogue. A peaceful protest was criminalized,” said the official, Abhirr VP.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act is in effect in Indian-ruled Kashmir and in a number of northeastern areas facing separatist insurgencies. The law gives security forces the right to shoot to kill suspected rebels without fear of possible prosecution and to arrest suspected militants without warrants. It also gives police wide-ranging powers of search and seizure.

The act prohibits soldiers from being prosecuted for alleged rights violations except with express permission from the federal government. Such prosecutions are rare.

Manipur, like some other parts of the northeast, faces unrest from separatist militant groups fighting for ethnic enclaves or independent states. Most northeasterners are ethnically more tied to China or Myanmar than they are to most of India.

Summary: Irom Sharmila began her fast in November 2000


If you own a gun -- and surveys say that somewhere between 24% and 45% of you do -- it will come as no surprise when I say that the price of ammunition is on the rise.

How much ammo costs have risen is hard to say precisely, because prices vary from place to place, brand to brand, and caliber to caliber. But by way of illustration, the price of Brown Bear 7.62x39mm rifle rounds (standard for an AK-47) on the popular guns 'n' ammo website AIM Surplus has risen from about $85 for a box of 500 rounds in 2007 to $120 near the end of 2013 to "sold out" today. Cheap .22 long-rifle caliber rifle rounds and 9mm pistol ammunition are both said to have more than tripled in price over the past five years, while .40 Smith & Wesson rounds have doubled and .45 ACP costs nearly twice what it did five years ago.

ScarcityIn short, prices have gone through the roof -- if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, you may have trouble finding ammunition for sale at all. Bare shelves are a common encounter at ammo retailers these days. The situation has gotten so bad that Wal-Mart , one of the cheapest sources of ammunition, instituted a policy early last year limiting customers to buying no more than three boxes of ammo per person, per day.

And this is your first clue to why prices have been shooting up. If prices are sky-high, yet shoppers are still buying -- and not just buying, but sweeping the shelves clean, there's only one logical conclusion:

Hoarding Credit is due to the National Rifle Association for debunking conspiracy theories about "the government" causing this crisis. Last month's issue of American Rifleman, the "official journal of the NRA," lays out the case for why American gun owners have only themselves to blame for the steep rise in ammunition prices (and the steep fall in ammunition supply).

From 2000 to 2012, the NRA reported, excise taxes received by the federal government on ammunition sales (a proxy for ammo sales per se) roughly tripled in size. The dollar value of actual ammunition sales increased nearly 100% from 2007 to 2012. In real life, the NRA explained this means that ammunition sales "started to climb fast as gun sales began surging" in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election.

High prices, low supply Conspiracy theorists will dispute this simple explanation, no doubt. But it jibes with what manufacturers of ammunition are saying. ATK subsidiary Federal Cartridge, for example, has a statement on its website advising, "We are currently experiencing high demand for our products." In an interview with American Rifleman, Federal confirmed, too, that "the current increase in demand," (and by implication, the increase in prices) "is attributed to the civilian market" (this means you).

Olin's Winchester Ammunition said on its website it is also "experiencing an extremely high demand." And privately held Freedom Group, which manufactures Remington cartridges, said "it's clear to us that any lack of supply in the marketplace has been from consumer demand."

Probably the clearest explanation of what's going on, though, comes from privately held Hornady Manufacturing, where President Steve Hornady painted this picture: "People walk into the store, they don't see as much as they want so they take everything they can get. The next guy who comes in can't get anything, so he panics."

Note that at no point does price even become a consideration here. And if price is no object -- then yes, of course, these companies are going to raise prices to maximize profits.

Time for some good news The NRA doesn't exactly bring clean hands to this debate, of course. The association's incessant drumbeat of panic-talk about President Barack Obama wanting to "come and take your guns" was arguably the firing pin that ignited the wave of panic-buying in 2007-2008. Still, the NRA deserves some credit for finally explaining the cause.

And now that we do know the cause of high ammunition prices, and low ammunition supply, we can predict with some confidence that the days of ever-increasing ammo prices may finally be at an end. Last week, Cabela's CEO Thomas Millner noted in an earnings conference call that he's seen a "significant deceleration in ammunition sales" over the past three months, and said "the surge in firearms and ammunition is clearly winding down." Dick's Sporting Goods , another big ammunition retailer, hasn't reported its fourth-quarter numbers yet. But back in November CEO told investors to expect "softer" ammunition sales in the fourth quarter as well.

This won't be great news for ammunition manufacturers ATK and Olin, of course. But for gun owners, a respite from the endless cycle of high demand begetting high prices and low supply -- begetting even higher demand -- will be a welcome bit of good news.

Invest in an even bigger gun Surging profits from ammunition sales helped lift ATK shares up nearly 100% over the past year. But we think you can do even better than that. U.S. News & World Report says this trend "Will drive the U.S. economy." And Business Insider calls it "The growth force of our time." In a special report entitled "America's $2.89 Trillion Super Weapon Revealed," you'll learn specific steps you can take to capitalize on this massive growth opportunity. Act now, because this is your shot to cash in before the fat cats on Wall Street beat you to the potentially life-changing profits. Click here now for instant access to this free report.

Copyright © 1995 - 2014 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Summary: Photo: Wikimedia Commons. If you own a gun -- and surveys say that somewhere between 24% and 45% of you do -- it will come as no surprise when I say that the price of ammunition is on the


08/18/2016 AT 11:05 AM EDT

In a sneak peek at Sunday's episode, Kourtney, 37, reveals she lost her cool after

in May – and included one

In the clip, Kourtney scrolls through headlines on her phone regarding the emoji in question, in which a girl

– with dark hair, defined eyebrows and plump, colorful lips – gets slapped across the face. (In case you're not caught up, Jenner, 19, and Chyna, 28, share a

largely stemming from the fact that Jenner is dating

, 26, who was previously engaged to and

with Chyna, who is now

with Rob, 29. Still with us?)

Kourtney and family makeup artist

analyze the emoji and decide it's "totally" a depiction of Jenner – which Kourtney then explains "sent her over the edge."

"Everything with Rob, I always try to be super calm but I was just like, in a mood," she tells Dedivanovic. "So I was going to call Chyna, and then Kylie was like: 'No, just call Rob, it's too crazy to call Chyna.' And I don't want to yell at a pregnant person."

"This is the first time that made me question Chyna's intentions," she adds. "I usually don't let any of this kind of stuff bother me, but for some reason this just sets me off."

Kourtney then explains she called her brother and yelled at him while Rob, for his part, fiercely denied Chyna's emoji was aimed at Jenner.

"He was like: 'What do you care if she's doing this, everyone has emojis!' " Kourtney recalls. "And I don't care that she has them, I care that it was Kylie."

, 32, then calls Kourtney to discuss – what else? – the notorious emoji diss.

"I went off on him yesterday," Kourtney tells her sister. "He was like: 'I'm going to go on the red carpet tonight and I'm going to tell everybody how I have the worst, most unsupportive, disgusting family!' Like, ridiculous. I think that it's stupid to take it there."

"I actually have a good tweet that I'm going to do," Khloé says. "It's subliminal."

"Your subliminal tweets are not subliminal!" Kourtney replies, laughing.

In the months since the scene was filmed, however, Rob's famous family has

"The girls are making an effort to put any drama behind them and make Chyna feel welcome," a source

to celebrate Khloé's birthday in June. "They're trying to be as supportive as possible, especially now that she is pregnant."

airs Sundays (9 p.m. ET), and

premieres Sept. 11, both at 9 p.m. ET on E!

Summary: "I don't want to yell at a pregnant person ... [but this] but this sent me over the edge," Kourtney says in a new KUWTK clip


Katie Ledecky ended her Rio Games by crushing the field in the 800-meter freestyle, winning by an astonishing 11.38 seconds. In beating Jazz Carlin of Britain, she added another individual gold medal to the ones she won in the 200- and 400-meter freestyle races.

In the 800, 11.38 seconds is an eternity. It’s enough time to get bored. It’s an awkwardly long hug. As silly as it sounds, we made a timer that counts down from 11.38 to help you grasp how long it is. Press the button and imagine you’re Katie Ledecky. You’ve just set a world record and you’re waiting to see who will join you on the Olympic podium. Give it a try.

Historically, it’s the second-largest margin of victory in the 800-meter freestyle: Debbie Meyer won by 11.7 seconds in 1968. Ledecky nearly matched that margin, but she did it at a much faster speed – her time was about 80 seconds faster than Meyer’s was in Mexico City.

The tables below show just how long the winner had to wait for the silver medalist to finish in each of these freestyle events.

In the 400- and 800-meter freestyle, Ledecky is racing at world-record speeds and beating her opponents by larger margins than her predecessors did decades earlier.

In the closest finish of her three individual finals, Ledecky won by only 35 hundredths of a second, barely edging out Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden.

Ledecky beat her own world record by nearly two seconds, finishing in a blistering 3 minutes 56.46 seconds. Her final 50 meters was covered in only 28.92. “I just let it all out,” she said.

In her final Rio race, Ledecky broke her own world record and left her opponents far, far behind, winning by nearly half a pool length.

Summary: Katie Ledecky crushed the field and broke her own world record in the 800-meter freestyle, winning by more than 11 seconds.


Proposed changes to Tasmania's anti-discrimination laws make a specific exception for religious views.

The Liberal government on Thursday released details of changes to the act such as the addition of "religious purposes" to a list of exceptions which already include "academic", "artistic", "scientific" and "research purposes".

"The proposed changes seek to strike the right balance between providing protection from discrimination and unlawful conduct, while still allowing for genuine public debate and discussion on important issues," Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin said, adding there is no provision for hate speech.

The government is calling for feedback on the changes and have indicated they hope to have them passed in parliament in time for debate ahead of the same-sex marriage plebiscite.

Summary: The Tasmanian government has revealed its planned changes to the Anti-Discrimination Act including exemptions for religious views.


A man has died and a woman is in a serious condition in hospital after a two-car crash in New South Wales’ Southern Highlands.

Emergency services were called to the crash around 9pm last night at Wilson Drive in Hill Top to find a Mitsubishi Magna and a Mitsubishi Challenger had crashed.

The driver of the Magna, a 32-year-old man, died at the scene.

The 52-year-old woman who was driving the Challenger suffered serious injuries and was taken to Liverpool Hospital for treatment.

A report will be prepared for the coroner.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016


07/28/2016 AT 12:00 PM EDT

The brawls the Manzo family encountered on

are nothing compared to what they'll have to fight next.

In a new trailer for

season 3 that was first shared by

faces a terrifying health crisis, telling her children and husband through tears: "Listen to me, I found a lump."

Known for her toughness and level head, Caroline admits in an emotional interview, "I'm the strongest person you'll ever meet when I'm battling for somebody else, but when it's me, oh my god."

And even amid her own personal crisis, Caroline wants to help daughter

, whom she fears is bottling up her anxieties as she tries to start a family.

, Vito, Lauren confesses, "I get nervous that we haven't gotten pregnant yet."

The Manzo ladies' personal obstacles are at the heart of the show, but of course there will be plenty of hijinks from sons Albie and Christopher when

returns to Bravo on Sept. 11.

Summary: Manzo'd with Children returns to Bravo on Sept. 11


CAMDEN, Dec. 10—Mayor Angelo J. Errichetti has set out to win four elections within a year to improve his chances of rebuilding his blighted hometown.

He passed the first hurdle last month when he added the title of State Senator! to the public offices he holds. That was in a special election to fill the unexpired term of John J. Horn, who resigned to become Commissioner of Labor and Industry.

In May Mr. Errichetti will seek reelection to a second four‐year term as Mayor of Camden, South Jersey's largest city. In the Democratic primary in June he will seek nomination for a full four‐year term as State Senator, then seek reelection to that office in November.

As the Democratic Party leader in a Democratic city and a Senatorial district centered on Camden, he will probably win all the electons with ease. In his victory last month, he received 34,000 votes to 20,000 combined for two opponents.

The problem is to find time for campaigning and for serving as a legislator in Trenton while continuing the fulltime job of rebuilding Camden, a city with major unemployment because blight, crime, high taxes and transportation problems have made it unattractive to new industry.

The 48‐year‐old Mayor said in an interview in his spacious office the other day that finding the additional time was not difficult, He does not need to campaign as much as his opponents, he noted, because everyone in town knew him as Mayor and, before that, as Public Works Director, city purchasing agent, and allstate halfback on the Camden High School football team.

On days he must be in Trenton, he simply returns to his City Hall office at night to keep up with the job. On a typical day he is up at 6:30 A.M., in the office at 8 and home by midnight. A 30‐minute nap in place of lunch “regenerates my battery,” he said.

He does not take the time to go home for the nap, but leans back with his feet on the desk.

“I'm sound asleep in seconds,” he said.

The legislation that Mayor Errichetti has supported most enthusiastically in his first month in Trenton is a measure, passed by both houses, permitting tax abatement as a tool to attract new industry.

The Mayor has already used this, along with offers of land at nominal cost, in personal negotiations he believes will entice several industries to Camden.

He also has worked for three years to upgrade services in the city as an inducement to new industry, new residents and professional people.

Some of the payoff will come next year with the start or completion of projects costing millions of dollars, including a Veterans Administration hospital, a county courthouse, a transportation terminal, an interstate highway, schools and housing projects.

But such projects rely in large part on Federal and state financing. Petitions for aid “often fall on deaf ears,” the Mayor said.

“Now there is considerable advantage,” he said, “in being able to go to department heads in Trenton as a State Senator.”

Meanwhile, he said, he will continue to try to pare the cost of government in Camden until an improved industrial tax base eases the city's fiscal crisis.

His latest contribution as Mayor was to veto a $9,000 salary increase voted him by the City Council. He said that the $10,000 he will get as a State Senator is enough of a raise now over his $21,000 Mayor's nay.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this archives appears in print on December 11, 1976, on page 52 of the New York edition with the headline: Camden Mayor Seeks to Win 4 Elections in a Year. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: Camden Mayor Angelo J Errichetti has set out to win 4 elections in yr to improve chances of rebuilding blighted town; passed 1st hurdle last mo when he was elected State Sen to fill unexpired term of John J Horn; in May will seek reelection to 2d 4‐yr term as Mayor; in Dem primary in June, he will seek nomination for full 4‐yr term as State Sen, then seek reelection in gen election in Nov; city and Sen Dist are heavily Dem and he is expected to win elections easily; he expects difficulty in finding time for both jobs; por (M)


The cartilage in Ben Roethlisberger’s aching left knee is repaired.

And though the Steelers are optimistic their starting quarterback will return sooner rather than later after tweaking the knee in the second quarter of a loss in Miami on Sunday, the odds of Roethlisberger being ready for a visit from Tom Brady and the Patriots six days removed from the operating table is remote.

Roethlisberger rested at home Monday after undergoing arthroscopic surgery and Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin said the team is confident Roethlisberger won’t be out “long term.”

Roethlisberger’s teammates began rallying around their backup now facing the most daunting task of his uneven career.

Your turn, Landry Jones. Again.

“I’m going to prepare like I’ve done in the past and we’ll see what happens,” Jones said.

Any chance Pittsburgh (4-2) has of hanging in there against the surging Patriots (5-1) depends on it. Taken in the fourth round of the 2013 draft, the Oklahoma alum has made two career starts, both last season.

The Steelers went 1-1 in those games, though the victory comes with an asterisk because he left early with an ankle injury and Roethlisberger returned to guide a blowout of Cleveland.

Jones has taken just a handful of snaps this season and threw one incompletion while briefly spelling Roethlisberger in Miami.

Jones has completed 32 of 56 passes for 513 yards with three touchdowns and four interceptions in 11 appearances and played extensively with the first team during a preseason in which Roethlisberger made just a token appearance.

Browns’ safety in hospital: Jordan Poyer, a starting safety for Cleveland, could be lost for the season after sustaining a lacerated kidney.

Poyer remains hospitalized in Nashville with the serious injury, which came when he was blindsided in the second quarter. Tennnessee running back Antonio Andrews was flagged for a personal foul on the play.

Kubiak returns: Denver head coach Gary Kubiak is back at work after taking a week off under doctor’s orders.

The 55-year-old suffered a complex migraine following the Broncos’ 23-16 loss to Atlanta on Oct. 9. He spent a night in the hospital after being taken from the stadium via ambulance when he suffered extreme fatigue.

Washington receiver out: Washington is shutting down wide receiver Josh Doctson for a few weeks because of a lingering Achilles injury.

Summary: [...] though the Steelers are optimistic their starting quarterback will return sooner rather than later after tweaking the knee in the second quarter of a loss in Miami on Sunday, the odds of Roethlisberger being ready for a visit from Tom Brady and the Patriots six days removed from the operating table is remote.  Roethlisberger rested at home Monday after undergoing arthroscopic surgery and Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin said the team is confident Roethlisberger won’t be out “long term.”  Roethlisberger’s teammates began rallying around their backup now facing the most daunting task of his uneven career.  The Steelers went 1-1 in those games, though the victory comes with an asterisk because he left early with an ankle injury and Roethlisberger returned to guide a blowout of Cleveland.  Jones has completed 32 of 56 passes for 513 yards with three touchdowns and four interceptions in 11 appearances and played extensively with the first team during a preseason in which Roethlisberger made just a token appearance.  Washington is shutting down wide receiver Josh Doctson for a few weeks because of a lingering Achilles injury.


Halston, a favorite of fashionable women, and Betsey Johnson, who makes far‐out clothes for the young, are the recipients of the 1971 Coty American Fashion Awards. The an nouncement was made at a luncheon for members of the fashion press yesterday. Both winners are connected with boutiques and design mass‐produced wholesale col lections.

Anne Klein, who heads her own sportswear company, was elevated to the Hall of Fame, having won two pre vious Coty Awards, and Larry Kane of Raffles Wear received an award for men's fashions.

Bill Blass, a member of the Hall of Fame, received a citation for his 1971 fash ions, and four special awards were given.

The recipients are Elsa Peretti, for her jewelry; John Klass of Cira, for his lounge and sleepwear; Nancy Knox of Renegade, for her men's shoe designs, and Levi Strauss, for its 120‐year‐old American fashion work pants that evolved into blue jeans and now influence the world.

Piero Tosi, the Italian de signer of costumes for “Death in Venice,” will re ceive a special award today from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. The award, the first presented by the group, is for Mr. Tosi's influence on fashion through his work in films, plays and opera.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this archives appears in print on June 23, 1971, on page 50 of the New York edition with the headline: Winners of Coty Awards. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: Coty awards given to Halston and B Johnson


A Melbourne man has driven his car through a hospital emergency department entrance.

Police said the 34-year-old from Caroline Springs presented at the emergency department of Sunshine Hospital in Melbourne's west on Friday night, requested treatment and then left, only to return and drive his car through the doors.

"He's left prior to being treated, he's returned a short time later and driven his vehicle through the emergency entrance," Senior Sergeant Jason Dolman told Nine Network.

Nobody was injured in the crash but the driver was admitted to hospital for further assessment.

An engineer will now assess the building.

A hospital spokeswoman said the emergency department closed for a few hours on Friday night but has reopened and is operating as normal.

Summary: A man has been taken to hospital after crashing his car into a Melbourne medical facility.


About 100 Forest Hills resi dents, protesting plans for an 850‐unit, low‐income public housing project in their area, marched into the Queens Criminal Court Building in Kew Gardens last fiight where a boroughwide planning meeting was under way.

In a noisy corridor scene, they waved placards with messages that said: “Lindsay, you are killing our neighborhood” and “Your dollars will be paying for a housing project—we need a school.”

More than 300 members of the 14 community boards were meeting in a courtroom in the building with Borough President Sidney Leviss; Donald H. Elliott, chairman of the City Planning Commission, and other officials to discuss future public hearings on the Queens master plan.

After an argument, four of the demonstrators were authorized to enter the meeting, but 12 pushed their way in.

One of the dissidents, who wanted a high school on the site that has been approved by the Planning Commission for low‐income housing, was Mrs. Sherrie Birbach, who interrupted the meeting with a shouted, “What about our school?’

The site is at 62d Drive. 106th Street and the Long Island Expressway.

Mrs. Birbach was rebuked by Mr. Leviss, who remarked: “You people allowed in as observers will not be permitted to speak.”

Warren J. McNally, who coordinates the Queens community boards in the Borough President's office, had warned the dissidents outside: “You can't go in. We only invited friends.”

Jerry Koenig who described himself as president of the Fairview Tenants Association, spoke for the dissidents.

“We were promised a school on the site,” he said. “We don't know who's on our planning board. We want representation on the board.”

The board in question was No. 6. Of its 14 members, only four—including Anthony Atlas, head of the city's Traffic Violations Bureau—were in attendance.

One of the major points brought up by community board representatives at the 21/2‐hour meeting was the need for Mr. Leviss to appoint more, members to each board, to insure “more activity and more success.”

The borough thief mildly criticized One of the boards for conducting a public hearing on the proposal for a so‐called “interborough truckway” when the plans for it are incomplete. A community board spokesman responded, to applause, that the hearing had been held because “too often the public never gets to say anything before a project is a fait accompli.”

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this archives appears in print on February 4, 1971, on page 44 of the New York edition with the headline: 100 Protest Low‐Income Housing for Forest Hills. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Summary: Nearly 100 Forest Hills, Queens, residents, protesting plans for 850-unit, low-income pub housing project in area, interrupt boro meeting in Queens Criminal Ct bldg, Kew Gardens, where Queens Boro Pres Leviss, city Planning Comm Chmn Elliott and other officials were discussing future pub hearings on Queens Master Plan; residents, who want hs on site, comment


The future of a fraud case against an Adelaide couple charged with stealing $400,000 from workplaces, including churches, is in doubt.

Kerry Keen and her husband Frederick Keen are each charged with dishonestly dealing with property without consent.

But the Adelaide Magistrates Court was told on Wednesday that two forensic accountants have come up with different explanations for how the money went missing.

The defence counsel, after receiving the forensic report, is now seeking a no-case-to-answer hearing.

Magistrate Bob Harrap said he had looked at the "complex" case closely and he saw it going one of two very different ways.

"This can be an absolutely all or nothing situation," he told the court on Wednesday.

"A long, complex trial might be necessary."

But he said a trial may also be avoided, and if so there would be "significant credit" given to the defendants.

"There is a certain flavour to the allegations," he said.

"There may be an explanation, not an excuse, for what occurred.

"The matter is complex and there are ongoing negotiations."

Mr Harrap suggested the defence and prosecution have a case conference and adjourned the matter until January 20.

Summary: Forensic accountants working on the case of an Adelaide couple charged with theft have come up with different explanations for what occurred, a court has heard.


A photo of a frog with two mosquitoes on its head has jumped the competition to take out the top prize in one of Australia's biggest nature photography competitions.

Ecologist Matthew McIntosh, 26, has been named Australian Geographic nature photographer of the year for the quirky snap.

The photo features an orange-thighed tree frog with not one but two mosquitoes parked on his head sucking blood.

Mr McIntosh said he almost didn't capture the striking image after equipment troubles during a roadtrip to the Daintree region in far north Queensland

"The batteries in my headlamp decided to go flat as I was taking the photo and then one of my flashes, the battery started to go in that as well, so things were going against me there," he told AAP.

Although he works in the environmental sector, Mr McIntosh said he was just an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to wildlife photography

"I like taking photos of frogs because I quite like frogs, but there's a photo in anything," he said.

"It represents a cool behaviour that exists between those two species."

The Australian Geographic judges agreed, singling out the photo for praise, saying "adept storytelling along with bold colours and impactful image design make this a worthy winner".

Summary: "Piercing Headache" - a photo of two mosquitoes feeding on a frog's head has jumped into top spot in a major national photography competition.


IT’S NOT ALWAYS A PARTY heading up a company’s fun committee. Just ask Rae Sanders.

The 32-year-old manager at staffing firm WinterWyman and veteran fun committee volunteer organized the company’s 2016 Office Olympics, which included a paper clip chaining competition, rubber band archery, and office chair shuffleboard event, to name a few. The result was fun, even if the planning and preparation weren’t exactly. “It took more hours than I want to disclose,” Sanders says of her efforts.

Call it the fun committee, party team, or event entourage, but more workplaces are asking employees to plan everything from cornhole tournaments to cupcake bars. The idea is to give workers a break, help them socialize, and build esprit de corps. But as anyone who has ever volunteered for a fun committee will say, the business of fun is a lot of work.

There can be hassles recruiting helpers, challenges finding a way to diplomatically nix a superior’s idea, or disappointment when events that take significant planning fail to draw big crowds. Cara Silletto, a Louisville-based workforce consultant at Crescendo Strategies, says it takes more than installing a foosball table to get employees engaged socially, but the companies that prioritize fun retain more workers and may even see productivity gains. “The job market right now is so good, employers are doing it in most fields,” Silletto says. “It’s almost like the old version of team building, when people used to go on retreats.”

Carrie Gonzalez, a human resources employee at Hebrew SeniorLife, a network of rehabilitation centers affiliated with Harvard Medical School, says she volunteered to co-lead the fun committee with colleague Deena Karas because they “knew the temperature of the organization.” Their responsibility: Come up with an inspiring roster of Employee Week events and execute seven days of fun for 1,400 people on the Roslindale campus, from nurses to janitors, food service staff to administrators.

Read the full list of winners and more stories about worker happiness.

Her first and foremost strategy? “Food, food, food,” Gonzalez says.

Unswervingly upbeat about her work, Gonzalez has organized cupcake parties, Waffle Wednesdays, and sushi-making classes across the company’s nine campuses. She has hired mariachi bands, asked the maintenance crew to build a wooden stage for a fashion show, and persuaded the chief executive to deliver cookies in person to employees. “We delegate, we do,” she says, adding that she can be relentless in her pursuit of help with various projects.

Gonzalez says she twists arms and pushes to make the events special because staff work hard, and Employee Week is a way to celebrate those efforts. But the 45-year-old concedes there are trying moments, such as the time the ice cream was accidentally put into deep-freeze and the senior citizens recruited to do the scooping struggled to make a dent in it. “The next day, everybody’s wrists were sore,” Gonzalez says.

Planners recognize the trial and error nature of it all. A fashion show at Hebrew SeniorLife, for example, drew big crowds to see employees vogue their way across a homemade stage in extravagant, sometimes handmade evening gowns. But when Needham-based TripAdvisor planned an event merging fun and fashion, it fell flat. They invited employees to sign up for mini wardrobe reviews with a stylist, but there were far fewer takers than expected, says Kayla Malone, a volunteer employee organizer. “We tried to make it fabulous,” Malone says. Still, she took it in stride, saying even the flops help inform future events.

There was a big win last summer with an outing Malone helped organize around a South by Northeast theme. The afternoon party on the company’s Great Lawn (the size of two football fields) was home to a stage featuring bluegrass, rock, and country artists, as well as a beer garden, shrimp boil, and gumbo station. Employees wanted to join the volunteer committee after that, she says.

Sanders of WinterWyman enjoys the way events can get high-level company executives taking lessons from recent college graduates about things like how to fire a rubber band. But mishaps do occur. Office chair shuffleboard, for example, was the scene of a crash that gouged a wall. Sanders says the “athlete” responsible was none other than the director of facilities.

Chairs were already bubble-wrapped, but at next year’s event, they’ll make it a double layer.

Summary: Party planners help keep morale high with elaborately creative events and office parties.


Apple is considering dropping the price on its streaming-music service, a new report says.

The tech giant is mulling a $2 price cut on Apple Music, bringing its single-user price down from $9.99 to $7.99 per month, Digital Music News is reporting, citing sources. The Apple Music family rate would be reduced to $12.99 from its current $14.99-per-month price, the report says. Students would continue to pay $4.99 per month.

The Apple Music price cut could come down during the holiday season, though it’s possible Apple delays it to 2017, the report claims. The Next Web earlier reported on the Digital Music News report.

According to Digital Music News, its sources are not “inside Apple,” but claim to have been “working closely” with the iPhone maker. Those sources added that the price cut is “under serious discussion,” but no decisions have been made.

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Apple Music is the company’s answer to popular streaming-music services like Spotify. For a monthly fee, users can stream millions of tracks, download them to their Apple products, and listen to both user-generated and curated playlists.

Since its release last year, Apple AAPL has steadily grown the Apple Music user base. At last count in September, it had 17 million subscribers. During an earnings call last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple Music is growing quickly and one of the chief reasons the company’s Services business is performing so well. He didn’t share updated subscriber numbers.

However, Apple Music’s success to this point, coupled with its leadership position in driving Apple’s Services business, might make some question the Digital Music News report. After all, Apple doesn’t appear to be having too much trouble attracting millions to its streaming-music service. And as the Services business is becoming one of its most important (it’s the second largest division inside Apple now), it’s hard to understand why Apple would reduce Apple Music’s price.

In general, price cuts are designed to boost demand for a product in hopes of attracting many more users and thus, more revenue. But at $9.99 per month, Apple Music is competitively priced. It’s one of the main drivers to Apple’s Services business, which is likely to reach the size of a Fortune 100 business next year with billions of dollars in revenue each quarter. Thus, it would seem to make little sense to cut pricing now.

For more about Apple Music, watch:

It’s also worth pointing out that Digital Music News’ sources are not actually working inside Apple. While the notoriously secretive company has admittedly become less secretive in the last few years, it doesn’t typically sharing pricing schemes with third-parties. Why it would change tack now is unknown.

The report also sounds similar to another from Digital Music News in May, in which the site cited music industry sources who had “close and active business relationships with Apple.” Those sources said Apple was planning to kill off iTunes music downloads as early as the end of 2018. An Apple spokesperson subsequently confirmed to Fortune, however, that the report was untrue, and Apple has no plans now to eliminate music downloads.

Therefore, this latest talk of an Apple Music price cut should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. While it’s certainly possible Apple could cut Apple Music pricing, many signs point to the contrary.

Apple declined to comment on the report.

Update at 11:50 a.m. ET to note Apple declined comment.

Summary: But Spotify has been around for a longer period.


Joachim Ladefoged/VII, for The New York Times

Joachim Ladefoged/VII, for The New York Times

Khan in his bout against (Action) Jackson Williams in February, his sixth professional fight and sixth victory.

The young Asian women, with diamond studs in their noses and bindis on their foreheads, stood by the boxing ring of the Braehead Arena in Glasgow, Scotland, their cellphone cameras at the ready. Music blared from the loudspeakers  "We will, we will, rock you!"  and the 6,000 fans in the audience were screaming, cheering, whistling, blowing horns and stamping their feet until a figure in a satin hooded robe appeared and the noise dissolved into a single, bellowing chant, a name. "Khan! Khan! Khan!"

Amir Khan is a slender 19-year-old with smooth skin the color of café con leche. His handshake is weak, his long, delicate fingers as easily crushed, it seems, as the stem of a flower. He began boxing when he was 8, in the tough old mill town of Bolton, in northern England. He is a British citizen of Pakistani descent and a practicing Muslim. At 11, he was a boxing prodigy. By his teens, he was the best young amateur boxer in the United Kingdom. In 2003, when Khan was 16, he won a gold medal at the Junior Olympics, which were held in the United States. One opponent at the event told him that if he fought at the Olympics the next year in Athens, he would "shock the world."

So, Khan says: "I went home and looked at the rules. You had to be 18 to compete in the Olympics." He petitioned the British Amateur Boxing Association to make an exception, but the A.B.A. refused. Khan threatened to fight for Pakistan. The A.B.A. relented, and that summer Khan was named the sole member of the British boxing team. "It would have been an embarrassment to have no boxer on the British team," he says.

Khan advanced to the gold-medal bout by, as the press variously put it, "outclassing," "demoralizing" and "hammering" his first four opponents. His graceful style elicited comparisons with Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali. Khan said that his goal was to show British Asian youths that they could achieve whatever they wanted. A British paper claimed Khan was "fighting for all of us"  for white Brits and their countrymen in the immigrant communities.

In the final, Khan faced Mario Kindelan, a 33-year-old three-time world champion from Cuba, who was considered the best fighter in the world, pro or amateur, in the 132-pound weight class. Kindelan had fought hundreds of senior amateur bouts, Khan a mere handful.

Millions of viewers in the U.K. watched on TV as Kindelan outpointed Khan 30-22 for the gold medal. Afterward, the 17-year-old Khan was the toast of Britain, besieged by TV and print media, lawyers, promoters and sponsors who asked him what kind of after-shave he used. And he was the subject of a national debate: should he turn pro and become rich now, or should he remain an amateur until the 2008 Olympics and seek glory for the U.K.?

The debate was effectively settled in May 2005, when Khan met Kindelan in Bolton for an amateur rematch. "The kid took the Cuban to school," Frank Warren, a boxing promoter known as "the Don King of British Boxing," told me. After the fight, Khan, with no amateurs left to challenge him, turned pro and signed with Warren's Sports Network. Warren, in his 50's, had a plan to make Khan a world champion and a millionaire by his 21st birthday.

It is a plan that has gone smoothly so far. Khan has won all six of his fights, including in January a first-round TKO of Vitali Martynov, a highly rated Belarussian who had won 10 of his previous 11 fights. When Khan turns 20 later this year, he will be eligible to fight for a British lightweight crown. In the meantime, Warren is making plans to take Khan to the United States for his professional debut outside Europe. Two years from now, Warren says, he hopes to have Khan positioned to fight for the world championship.

han's first professional fight, against David Bailey, a car mechanic and a journeyman boxer, took place last July 16, nine days after the terrorist bombings in London, which killed 56 and wounded more than 500. It was the worst attack on the city since World War II. What was most shocking, however, was that three of the four bombers were born in Britain to Pakistani parents, young men whose lives in the north of England had not been all that different from Khan's. They were Muslims who frequented a boxing club. One of them idolized Mike Tyson. (Khan's hero is Ali.)

Khan knocked out Bailey at 1:46 of the first round to the cheers of "Khan's Barmy Army," a dozen or so of his friends who waved British and Pakistani flags that had been stitched together. In an interview afterward, Khan dedicated his first professional victory to the victims of the 7/7 attacks. "Hopefully, I'm one of the people who can help stop this happening," he said. "I wanted everyone to be together and to be happy . . . and to be nice to each other." The papers described Khan, who entered the ring with someone in his entourage carrying the Union Jack behind him while "Land of Hope and Glory" played over the loudspeakers, as Britain's most important multicultural role model. He met the queen; he talked boxing with Tony Blair.

The next month, Khan did not sound so enthusiastic about his new status as a role model. "A lot of things have changed around me, and that's why it can be quite hard," he told a British reporter. "It makes me feel I've lost a lot of my youth.. . .You know, I'm only 18, and I don't really want to be a spokesman for anyone."

Khan is not the first British Asian Muslim boxer, though there haven't been many of them. There was Prince Naseem Hamed in the 90's, and then there is Khan. Hamed was a first-generation British citizen whose parents immigrated from Yemen. He became a world featherweight champion in the 90's and then, as his successes and riches increased, grew fat and indifferent to boxing. During his championship years, Hamed was never a hero to either British Muslims or whites.

"There's never been a history of Muslim boxers in the U.K. or anywhere," Colin Hart, a British boxing historian and boxing columnist for The Sun, says. "Maybe they don't have the nature to fight?"

Pat Jordan writes frequently about sports for the magazine.Correction: Mar. 19, 2006, Sunday: An article on Page 38 of The Times Magazine today about Amir Khan, a British boxer, misstates the given name and description of a fan of his. She is Pamy Sandhu, not Parm; she is from Wolverhampton, not Birmingham; and she works as a police officer in the West Midlands, not London. The article also renders part of a quotation from her incorrectly. She said, "My father's been in England for 38 years and still thinks of himself as Indian," not "My grandfather's been in England for 50 years."

Summary: How a lightweight named Amir Khan is changing the face of boxing.


ASHINGTON, June 30 - The Fourth of July is the deadliest day on the calendar for drivers, pedestrians and motorcycle riders. But it is not much worse than the average Saturday, according to a new study of highway deaths by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

On average over the study period, 1986 to 2002, 117 people were killed on the nation's highways each day, day in and day out, year-round. On the 17 Fourths of July studied, 161 people were killed each day. In the same period, 158 were killed on the average Saturday.

Though the study did not link the number of deaths a day to the number of miles driven, some experts suggested that July 4 might actually be safer than a typical Saturday, with a lower rate of deaths per mile traveled, because far more miles are logged on the holiday. The study said the average number of deaths on July 2, 3 and 4 was 448, about 6 percent higher than the number of deaths on the average Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Susan A. Ferguson, senior vice president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an industry-sponsored research organization, said holidays were one of the rare times when people pay attention to the routine carnage.

The police often conduct enforcement campaigns on summer weekends, with well-publicized patrols and sobriety checkpoints. To make those campaigns work, Ms. Ferguson said, "one of the things you need is publicity, and one of the ways you can get publicity is by tying it to a holiday."

At the California Highway Patrol, Commissioner Dwight O. Helmick Jr., a veteran of 35 years of traffic enforcement, said what distinguished holiday weekend crashes from others was they tended to cause larger traffic backups.

"It makes sense to stress safety every day," Mr. Helmick said. "The media have a lot of interest on holidays. I'd love to have them have the same interest and to run the same stories every day."

The Insurance Institute study showed that with accidents that involve alcohol, weekends are bad, summers are worse than other seasons, and the Fourth of July and New Year's Day are particularly bad. The study drew from a database maintained by the Transportation Department. The figures showed that 41 percent of the deaths on July 4 involved people with high blood alcohol concentrations, as did 51 percent of the deaths on Jan. 1.

Independence Day "is associated with lots of beers and barbecues, and people drink," Ms. Ferguson said.

On both days, many of the fatalities with high blood alcohol levels are not drivers, but pedestrians.

Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge said that after 17 years as an emergency room physician, he was convinced that holiday weekends were more dangerous than other times. Dr. Runge, now administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said that when he worked at a Level 1 trauma center in Charlotte, N.C., holiday weekends were when "people seem to take more risks than when they want to have more fun."

That includes cars, motorcycles, boats and off-road recreational vehicles, he said. If the police did not concentrate enforcement around holiday weekends, he added, the toll would be even higher.

Chuck Hurley, a highway expert at the National Safety Council, said comparing Independence Day to Saturdays was not fair because the Fourth usually falls on weekdays. Tuesdays average 95 deaths, he pointed out.

"The public tends to believe holiday travel is an order of magnitude more dangerous than ordinary travel, and they're wrong," he said. But he added that holiday deaths would be higher without the traditional extra enforcement and the attending publicity.

Although July 4 does not stand out as a high peak on the calendar, the period around it does. Of the top 10 days for crash deaths, July 3 is second, and July 2 is ninth.

Three of the top 10 days - Aug. 4, 6 and 12 - fall in a time of heavy vacation travel. In fact, highway deaths in August run 132 a day, one-third more than in January and February, when people drive less.

When deaths are counted per billion miles of vehicle travel, January would appear to be the safest month, with 17.3 deaths per billion miles, and November and December worst, with 19.1. July was 18.6, and August and September were each 19.

The worst days for pedestrian deaths are Jan. 1 and Halloween, according to the study, each with an average of about 24.

Summary: The Fourth of July is the deadliest day on the calendar for drivers and pedestrians, but it is not much worse than the average Saturday, according to a new study.


Sunday, March 15th 1998, 2:04AM

"If not for the Nehemiah Houses" has become a refrain of hopes fulfilled in the past 15 years for many public housing tenants in the South Bronx and in Brownsville and East New York, Brooklyn.

Named after the biblical prophet who rebuilt Jerusalem, the Nehemiah Houses have revitalized blighted neighborhoods and allowed working-class New Yorkers, predominantly blacks and Latinos, to buy into the American dream of home ownership.

Listen to Irving Domenech, who bought one of the first three-bedroom, red-brick houses to go up on Watkins St. in Brownsville:

"I had lived in public housing all my life. A house was something you saw when you went far away from your neighborhood, like to Long Island, or out of state."

Living in a studio apartment with his pregnant wife, Domenech, a cook, needed more space.

Because of the Nehemiah Plan, his $35,000 average household income allowed the couple to buy a $54,000 home, reduced to $44,000 after a city subsidy.

The Nehemiah Houses won't win too many design awards: The two-story homes, with a basement, are 18 feet wide by 32 feet long on each floor, with three bedrooms and a bath upstairs and a kitchen, living room and a half-bath on the ground floor. A patch of grass and a concrete parking space out front completes the package.

But home ownership for the past 15 years has brought Domenech, now 45, immeasurable returns.

"It's like getting a stake in your neighborhood, in your country, a stake in everything you believe in and it gives you hope," he said. "It makes you feel less negative about what can be done."

The Nehemiah Plan was launched in the early 1980s when civic reformer I.D. Robbins proposed in a Daily News article that low-cost, single-family houses be built for low and middle-income city residents on city-donated dormant parcels of land in blighted neighborhoods dominated by public housing.

The East Brooklyn Congregations and the South Bronx Churches, sister organizations of religious and church groups working to improve housing, education and economic opportunities took the idea and ran with it.

Since first breaking ground in October 1982, they have built 2,200 single-family houses in Brooklyn. In the South Bronx, 224 single-family houses and 288 condominiums have been built.

More than 35,000 people eventually put their names down for those homes, and organizers were on the lookout for new parcels of land to develop.

A site they had long eyed is a stretch of land called Spring Creek, east of the Starrett City housing complex.

Former Mayor David Dinkins agreed to let the church group build 500 single-family houses at Spring Creek if it also would build houses in blighted areas west of Pennsylvania Ave., said Sister Kathy Maire, the lead organizer for EBC. The city, as it usually had done, would build the infrastructure such as roads, and water and sewer lines.

In 1989, candidate Rudy Giuliani based his housing platform on the Nehemiah Plan. And when he took office in 1994, the plan's organizers thought they had a friend in City Hall.

Earlier, Giuliani visited St. Paul's Community Baptist Church, whose pastor, the Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood, was chairman of EBC. For EBC organizers, who had long butted heads with previous mayors and city agencies, it was the start of a beautiful relationship.

Giuliani even budgeted the $10 million needed to clear the Spring Creek site and put in the infrastructure. The deal apparently was sealed with a June 1995 memorandum of understanding with EBC, signed by Deborah Wright, then commissioner for the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

Now a murky political dispute threatens the 500 houses planned for Spring Creek.

"The program didn't want to be accountable," Giuliani said last week, defending the elimination of $5 million budgeted for the first phase of Spring Creek infrastructure. "I know it's a sacred-cow program, so you don't want to examine it. But sacred cows don't mean anything to me unless they are producing."

Youngblood says he has been unable to meet with the mayor.

Still, demand for the new homes is unabated, though prices have risen to $95,000 each, or $75,000 with the city subsidy.

There already are 1,471 people on the waiting list for the 745 homes west of Pennsylvania Ave., more than 50 of which have been built and occupied. About 1,200 people are waiting for the 500 houses in Spring Creek.

Santos Rivera, 47, and his wife, Francia, waited 41/2 years before getting his house at the corner of Snediker and Dumont Aves. in December.

"When you own something like a house, you are respected," said Rivera, the father of an infant girl. "It's a real dream come true for me. I really thank God that I got this."

Ronald Waters, the Nehemiah construction manager, relishes the response of people like Santos.

"The most rewarding part of the job that I have here is on home-closing day when I hold out the keys to the new home," he said. "The expressions of delight and joy, the smiles that is reward enough for anybody. It really gives you a sense of accomplishment and a good feeling."

Summary: "If not for the Nehemiah Houses"has become a refrain of hopes fulfilled in the past 15 years for many public housing tenants in the South Bronx and in Brownsville and East New York, Brooklyn. Named after the biblical prophet who rebuilt Jerusalem, the Nehemiah Houses have revitalized blighted neighborhoods and allowed working-class New Yorkers, predominantly blacks and Latinos, to buy into the American dream of home ownership. Listen to Irving Domenech, who bought one


Tuesday, February 29th 2000, 2:12AM

New Harper's Bazaar editor in chief Kate Betts returns from Milan this week with some idea of next fall's fashions - and an upcoming opening for a No. 2.

Barbara O'Dair, the executive editor she hired to help steer the Hearst monthly into its post-Liz Tilberis phase, is quitting. One of the first to sign on with Betts - from Conde Nast's Details - after Betts left Conde Nast's Vogue, O'Dair has told friends "she's just going to take some time off," one said.

Hearst Magazines' spokeswoman Andrea Kaplan said the parting is "by mutual agreement between Barbara and Kate."

But the word inside Bazaar is that the hard-driving Betts is reluctant to delegate sufficient control, a situation the equally hot-tempered O'Dair - who often found her editing work re-edited by the boss - had difficulty navigating.

A former colleague of O'Dair's said, "There she is, a No. 2 again at a magazine, and she wants to reassess her life." O'Dair also worked at Jann Wenner's US monthly, Time Inc.'s Entertainment Weekly and The Village Voice.

Betts has not yet named a successor to O'Dair, who's leaving in April, but her fondness for the tried-and-true has sources putting odds on features director Mary Murray Duenwald, a friend imported from Conde Nast.

Time Inc.'s Eric Schrier has barely landed as the Reader's Digest Association's corporate editor in chief and now Christopher Willcox, the flagship magazine's top editor since 1996, is leaving "to explore other opportunities."

"I have a couple of old media ideas and a couple of new media ideas," Willcox said, "but I have to test their viability first. I'm leaving the magazine with the biggest February issue we've had, and April is the biggest ever."

Web-enthusiast Schrier, former president of Time Inc.'s Health magazine and its Internet operations, and Reader's Digest chief Thomas Ryder, another Time Inc. veteran, have made no secret of their desire to update and expand the Reader's Digest brand, particularly through Net ventures and print acquisitions. Under Ryder, the company posted worldwide revenues of $2.5 billion in its last fiscal year.

Willcox had been with the magazine since 1988, but Schrier, who will oversee the Digest's editorial operations until a replacement is announced, is said to have come on board with his own candidates in mind.

Spin magazine is planning a four-way split for the cover of its 15th anniversary issue - and it looks to be the last under parent Miller Publishing.

The issue, due on newsstands mid-March, will feature a young Madonna (republished from the music magazine's first cover), Nirvana (a 1993 cover shot), The Beastie Boys (1987) and Notorious B.I.G. (1997).

The desire to be Spin's next owner comes from billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his partner, William Savoy, president of Allen's Vulcan Ventures. Allen's told CEO Robert Miller to expect a bid "any day now," a Miller insider said, for Spin, Vibe and Blaze magazines packaged together. Miller is hoping for $200 million.

Other suitors have been reluctant to pump up their bids to anywhere near Miller's asking price, which most in the industry consider severely inflated, especially since Miller's divestiture was ordered by financial backers at Freeman Spogli.

But the $100 million purchase price Vulcan paid Times Mirror two weeks ago for money-losing weekly Sporting News and its Web site has Miller hoping for a windfall, sources said.

Miller did not return phone calls.