Industrial World

In the keynote address of his African tour, Pope John Paul II appealed to the rich nations of the world Monday to provide more generous aid to the afflicted, have-not region of sub-Sahara Africa. On the fifth day of an eight-day trip through some of the poorest countries on Earth, the Pope's rhetoric was as powerful as his conviction that the wealthy nations of the Northern Hemisphere are not doing enough to counter Africa's misery.

South African gold miners launched their first industrywide strike in 18 years Sunday to demand higher wages, the country's main mining union said. "I can say now that the strike is on," said Gwede Mantashe, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers. "All the workers who were due to go on the 6 p.m. shift are out." Around 100,000 gold miners represented by the union would remain on strike until a solution was found, he said.

To paraphrase Tolstoy, all healthy economies are alike, but every unhealthy economy is miserable in its own particular way. And right now just about all the world's major industrial economies, from the United States to Europe to Japan, are in their own special kind of funk. All are scratching to restore some semblance of economic vigor. For the moment, though, all are dragging each other down.

The only way to ease the health insurance burden fast ("Health Insurance Costs Jump 11.2%," Sept. 10) is to have a 100% deduction on health insurance and/or costs from state and local taxes at every income level. Once governments have millions less in income they may want to correct the worst system in the industrial world. Kurt Sipolski Palm Desert

The only way to ease the health insurance burden fast ("Health Insurance Costs Jump 11.2%," Sept. 10) is to have a 100% deduction on health insurance and/or costs from state and local taxes at every income level. Once governments have millions less in income they may want to correct the worst system in the industrial world. Kurt Sipolski Palm Desert

The widowed mother with no access to child care is convicted of misdemeanor child abuse for leaving her 8-year-old daughter alone in order to hold her job (June 20). Another horrid example of what the 1995 Carnegie Corporation study found of U.S. early education and child care "that have so long been neglected, that they now constitute some of the worst services in Western society." What a contrast to the French system of child care and early education, which are tax-paid extensions of public school.

President Reagan opposes a suggestion by the congressionally chartered National Research Council that contraceptives be given to teen-agers, the White House said today. "The President does not approve of giving contraceptives to teenagers," spokesman Larry Speakes said. "He is strongly opposed to it." When asked whether Reagan regarded teen-age pregnancy as a serious national problem, Speakes said, "I don't know that he has seen any recent figures."

It's bad enough that my work is being scapegoated. It's worse that it--and I--are being lied about. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher's letter (July 18) does both. Rohrabacher has reduced my hour and one-half, critically acclaimed play to a distortion. "Blessed Are All the Little Fishes" is about faith, despair, ecology and, yes, water. Following a precedent in several well-known plays, the script does represent urination for a brief moment. This is part of an elaborate, thoughtful, humorous and ultimately human context.

Vice President Al Gore, carrying a message of U.S. commitment on environmental matters to the world body, told the United Nations' Commission on Sustainable Development that the White House will establish a council to advise the President on how to promote economic growth without ruining the environment. The new unit will be called the Council on Sustainable Development, Gore said.

It was a sign of the times as the leaders of the world's seven richest industrial nations breezed into town earlier this summer for their annual get-together. Facing a daunting array of problems--a global economic slowdown, a devastated former Communist empire, potentially deadly Soviet-built nuclear reactors, large-scale migration and a war in the remnants of Yugoslavia--the seven men spent most of their three days here conspicuously avoiding them.

The industrialized world has an inexplicably high and still-growing incidence of asthma and other autoimmune diseases. Most researchers attribute such increases to some facet of industrialized societies, such as increased sanitation, lesser exposure to common pathogens during childhood, vaccinations or pollution. A new study of asthma rates in indigenous communities in Australia appears to deliver a strong blow to such theories, however. Dr. Patricia C.

Anaheim-based Opal Concepts Inc., the world's second-largest owner of hair salons, said Wednesday that it added celebrity hair stylist Jose Eber Salons Inc. to its holdings, putting the world-famous coiffeur into the same corporate family as everyman haircutter Fantastic Sam's. Financial details of the stock-swap transaction weren't disclosed. Eber Salons will become an Opal subsidiary and Eber a shareholder of Opal.

The widowed mother with no access to child care is convicted of misdemeanor child abuse for leaving her 8-year-old daughter alone in order to hold her job (June 20). Another horrid example of what the 1995 Carnegie Corporation study found of U.S. early education and child care "that have so long been neglected, that they now constitute some of the worst services in Western society." What a contrast to the French system of child care and early education, which are tax-paid extensions of public school.

Public complacency and the ease of international travel have led to a resurgence of tuberculosis in the industrialized world that is threatening to become "a health catastrophe," a U.N. agency has concluded. The World Health Organization, in an annual report on the disease to be released today, said that "most people in Europe and North America have been watching other crises"--including AIDS--while tuberculosis has become "the world's most neglected health crisis."

Vice President Al Gore, carrying a message of U.S. commitment on environmental matters to the world body, told the United Nations' Commission on Sustainable Development that the White House will establish a council to advise the President on how to promote economic growth without ruining the environment. The new unit will be called the Council on Sustainable Development, Gore said.

The announcement of Robert B. Reich as secretary of Labor came as the only surprise in Bill Clinton's first round of appointments. Of course, everyone expected Reich to receive a high-ranking post--he is a friend of Clinton's, a fellow Rhodes scholar and contributor to the campaign manifesto, "Putting People First." Only Reich's destination, the Labor Department, raised eyebrows. The brash, prolific Reich was passed over for the top economic-policy positions.

Those with a taste for doilies and chintz be forewarned; the work of Italian designer Emilio Ambasz is not for those with a sentimental eye. A multifaceted artist who combines a fervent Minimalism with a visionary sense of space evocative of South American writer Jorge Borges, Ambasz is legendary in the field of design for his work as an architect, landscape designer, graphic and industrial designer, urban planner, theorist and critic. Every aspect of his prolific, relatively short career (Ambasz is just 45)

There is something bizarrely appropriate about interviewing photographer Lewis Baltz at an Irvine cafe that consists of four tables facing a parking lot. Baltz, 44, is known in international art circles for his crisp, deliberately unremarkable images of construction sites, tract houses and industrial parks. He is not a photographer in the traditional sense of capturing moments of exceptional beauty, power or surprise.

To paraphrase Tolstoy, all healthy economies are alike, but every unhealthy economy is miserable in its own particular way. And right now just about all the world's major industrial economies, from the United States to Europe to Japan, are in their own special kind of funk. All are scratching to restore some semblance of economic vigor. For the moment, though, all are dragging each other down.

It was a sign of the times as the leaders of the world's seven richest industrial nations breezed into town earlier this summer for their annual get-together. Facing a daunting array of problems--a global economic slowdown, a devastated former Communist empire, potentially deadly Soviet-built nuclear reactors, large-scale migration and a war in the remnants of Yugoslavia--the seven men spent most of their three days here conspicuously avoiding them.