DATELINE–London

Claim crash was royal cover-up.

An increasing number of the British believe that the Princess of Wales is not really dead but simply in hiding. A recent poll conducted by the Times-Mirror found that nearly one third of its readers suspect the gruesome crash which claimed the lives of Princess Diana, her friend Dodi Al Fayed, and their driver Henri Paul on August 31, 1997, may not have actually killed the Princess.

The poll, which was published alongside a retrospective of Princess Di’s troublesome relationship with the media, has inspired a round of heated speculation among the top British tabloids. One such newspaper, The Reporter, has even begun to publish accounts of Princess Di sightings. When its latest edition sold out within hours of hitting newsstands, Buckingham Palace was forced to issue a statement denouncing the rumors as “cruel” and “irresponsible.”

Despite such official protests and continued reticence from the mainstream press, the number of stories claiming that Princess Diana is still alive continues to grow at the same time that the world commemorates the one-year anniversary of her tragic death. Almost all of these stories allude to a Palace campaign to remove Diana from the limelight. That plot, theorists speculate, culminated in a clandestine pact between the Princess and her estranged Royal in-laws.

“Perhaps there was money involved, or perhaps simply a chance to start a new life away from the press,” says Anu Chantha-Doyle, a staff writer for The London Post. “Who else but the Royal family could give Diana Spencer a private identity once again.”

Conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Princess Diana are hardly new in the British press. Earlier this year, Dodi Al Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed, accused the British secret services of arranging the fatal car crash to prevent the mother of the future king of England from marrying a Muslim. There have also been allegations involving stolen jewelry, possible carbon monoxide poisoning and a mysterious white Fiat Uno.

But the possibility that Princess Diana may indeed still be alive has stunned a nation divided between those who are ready to put last year’s highly publicized tragedy behind them, and others who are still in denial over the death of their favorite celebrity. Outside of Kensington Palace, the former London home of Princess Diana, a ragtag group of devotees have begun to gather daily with signs that read “Tell the Truth about Diana,” “Princess Di Lives” and “Where is Lady Di?”

Skeptics are quick to point out that it would be nearly impossible for the most recognized face in the world to disappear and then resurface without being detected. The naysayers also note that if Princess Diana’s detractors at Buckingham Palace had wanted to get her out of the picture, they certainly wouldn’t have made her a martyr in the process. Andrew Boleyn, an expert on the Royal family, dismisses the rumors of Diana’s morbid disappearing act, matter-of-factly stating, “In time, Diana would have destroyed herself on her own… So there was nothing Prince Charles or the machinations of Her Majesty could do about it.”

Yet neither logic nor a casual acquaintance with the facts of the case can dissuade the tens of thousands who have bought into the ongoing speculation that Princess Diana may still be alive.

“One can understand how so many would want to believe the rumors,” explains Gregg Baldwin, a mass psychologist who teaches at England’s University of Sussex.

Baldwin urges the British press to take a less sensational approach to the current controversy, insisting that the “Diana lives” stories have a rightful place in the lore surrounding the late Princess of Wales. “After all,” Baldwin asserts, ” she was known to most of her fans as a celebrity, not a person. While the person has indisputably passed on, the celebrity remains. Why shouldn’t she be alive to her fans?”

DATELINE–Austin, Texas

Texas programmer sues former employer over offensive code.

When Willa Jackson started working the night shift at Integrated Systech in Austin, Texas, she felt she was entering a world filled with opportunity. Jackson had just completed three years of intensive course work in computer programming at a local community college and, at the age of 47, had recently been hired by the successful software developer. Her night-shift position at IS was to be Jackson’s first non-minimum wage job.

But that optimism soon turned to shame and then anger as Jackson discovered that many of her colleagues at IS were accustomed to making racist jokes in the office. In fact, the epithets were never actually uttered in Jackson’s presence, they were encoded within the dozens of software applications being developed at IS.

Her painful discovery occurred less than one month after she began working as an entry-level programming assistant. It was Jackson’s responsibility to find bugs in sections of code that other, higher-level IS programmers produced during the day. But when Jackson – an African-American woman who hopes to one day launch her own software startup – began to dig deeper into a faulty section of source code she was mortified by what she found.

Programmers at the company had been using racist monikers and explicit sexual language in the variables used by their programs to sort information. In one instance, a program had been instructed to “fetch watermelons” and “somefriedchicken” when handling a certain procedure. The handler had even been dubbed “pickaninny” and was only one of several dozen like sequences embedded in IS programs designed for home and office use.

When Jackson showed the racist code to her supervisor she was assured that IS would act decisively to reprimand and possibly even dismiss the offending employee. But as weeks passed and no one approached Jackson with a follow-up to her complaint, she began to suspect that no disciplinary action would be forthcoming. At that point, Jackson began to pore over the mountains of used code that IS had stockpiled over the past six years.

Much to her dismay, Jackson discovered derogatory and occasionally violent terms inside the programming language used by almost all IS software programs. “It went all the way back to the first version of ISDisk,” explains an incredulous Jackson, “and they never bothered to hide it.” Shortly after she had printed out over a thousand pages of tainted code, Jackson hired an attorney and filed a $10 million dollar lawsuit against the profitable software firm.

Just who is responsible for the recurring use of discriminatory language in the company’s computer code is still a mystery. IS executives have issued several public apologies since the lawsuit began, but they have yet to cooperate with the investigation into its allegedly hostile work environment. In 1996, Texaco paid out $140 million to resolve a similar lawsuit brought by its minority employees. But labor law experts speculate that the IS case may never be resolved due to the unprecedented circumstances of the alleged misconduct.

“No jury in this state will believe that the code Jackson found is speech,” argues Mitch Shapson, an attorney with the labor relations firm of Stennis, Shapson & Velasquez. “Even if they did think the messages hidden inside the programs were offensive,” continues Shapson, “it would be like trying an auto manufacturer for putting a Swastika-shaped part in your car’s engine.”

Jackson, who is now working as a full-time programmer at Dell Computers in San Antonio, is not willing to give up her fight against IS despite the slim chances of a legal victory. “At this point, I’m not interested in the money,” claims an unbowed Jackson, “I only want the public to think twice about the kinds of hateful messages that may be hidden inside the software they use everyday.”

DATELINE–San Francisco, Calif.

San Francisco Lofts Get New Life as Working Warehouses

Real estate developers in San Francisco are facing a novel dilemma: as sales of live/work loft apartments continue to plummet, some are considering converting the newly constructed living spaces into commercial warehouses.

The city that has become known as ground zero of the Multimedia Revolution has been hit particularly hard by recent revaluations of high-tech holdings on Wall Street. As the market adjusts, the Internet-based startups that have made San Francisco a hot destination for techno-savvy professionals are beginning to tighten their belts, putting many out of work and freezing bonuses for others.

As a result, what had become one of the nation’s most expensive real estate markets is experiencing a sudden glut in luxury housing, particularly high-priced live/work lofts.

During the 90’s, a critical housing shortage spurred San Francisco developers to look for new ways to build homes in a city renowned for its conservative planning code. Many found a solution in the form of “artist live/work” spaces.

In 1988, the City of San Francisco adopted a zoning control ordinance to “facilitate the preservation of affordable live/work housing for artists…and the construction of new live/work units.” This little known loophole in the housing code made it possible for contractors to bypass much of the red tape usually associated with new construction. In 1990, less than 50 new live/work units were built in San Francisco. By 1997, that number had ballooned to over 600 new sites.

Developments designated as “live/work” have flourished because they are significantly cheaper to build than traditional residential housing but can be sold at comparable prices. According to Victor Edwards, an architect with Restoration Design, “live/work no longer means low-rent – it’s this city’s version of the condominium. But without the amenities.”

Because the live/work loophole was largely meant to protect artists living in sub-standard conditions from being evicted, most new live/work units are built with cheap materials like aluminum, sheetrock and concrete. Even though the new live/work units are modeled to resemble raw warehouse spaces, they can still fetch as much as $350,000 for an 1,800 square foot unit.

But an increasingly bearish market on Wall Street has put a damper on demand for costly apartments in San Francisco, a preferred residence for Silicon Valley executives. And as residential rents stabilize to match lowered earnings expectations among multimedia professionals, the exorbitant cost of purchasing an “artist’s live/work” loft has made these properties almost impossible to move.

Yet, despite the recent economic slowdown, a decade of tremendous growth has put commercial space at a premium in cities that cater to the high-tech industry. While live/work condominiums may no longer be in heavy demand, industrial warehouse space is suddenly in short supply. For developers in San Francisco, this means a rare opportunity to transform warehouse-like apartments into actual warehouses.

“It’s funny, actually,” says Mario Chalstino, a general contractor who has worked on over a dozen live/work projects in the past two years, “because when we started, we didn’t understand why people wanted to live in apartments that look like factories.” Chalstino was one of the first contractors to work on the new loft-to-warehouse conversion projects. For him, business is still booming.

“Now they don’t just look like warehouses,” Chalstino quips, “they actually are becoming warehouses.” For Chalstino and contractors like him, the lengthy and sometimes complicated process of retrofitting live/work lofts as working warehouses can mean big bucks. Although almost all live/work lofts are located in neighborhoods zoned for industrial use, the lofts themselves are industrial only in appearance.

In most cases, the conversion means flooring has to be reinforced and large bay windows must be taken out for added structural integrity. In some instances, car garages are reclaimed as additional work space.

The loft-to-warehouse conversions are also proving an unforeseen boon to the commercial establishments that have plodded along as neighboring businesses were replaced by upscale live/work developments. For many of these local industrial outfits, live/work units meant restrictions on hours of operation, noise complaints and a shortage of parking spaces once reserved for loading trucks.

“You could say that we’re going to miss the new coffee shop,” jokes Angel Garcia, a welder with Giants Auto Body, talking about the new cafe that went up across the street from a live/work unit now destined to become a warehouse for a local clothing manufacturer, “but that wouldn’t really be true.”

DATELINE–San Francisco, Calif.

Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if there was no longer any violence?

A non-profit organization from San Francisco, Calif. is posing the same question to Americans all over the country. Using billboards, television commercials, radio spots, and free workshops the Coalition Against Violence is stepping up its year-long effort to raise public awareness on violence with a campaign called “Turn On the Lights.”

The non-profit hopes to encourage Americans to shed some light on the “dark spots in our culture” and by doing so, put an end to violence in our society.

Unlike other community-based organizations that work to eradicate violence in such target areas as schools, families and city streets, CAV’s approach has been to emphasize the relationship between different forms of violence while offering free, long-term counseling in all 50 states.

One of CAV’s most recent television Public Service Announcements strings together a variety of situations ranging from a group of drivers stuck in heavy traffic yelling at one another to a group of teen-agers purposely angering a pet dog. After the last scenario slowly fades away, the PSA asks “Can you live without hurting others?” and answers “Yes. If you love yourself.” The message is followed by a toll free number that connects callers to a counseling referral service.

Such non-traditional tactics are nothing new to CAV which was founded in 1988 by an ecumenical and multiracial coalition of clergy, teachers, doctors, lawyers, business owners, and more than a few ex-convicts. The CAV receives its funding from private foundations and claims it adheres to neither a particular religious nor political agenda.

Yet, one of the most controversial ads from CAV’s “Turn On the Lights” campaign tackles both religion and politics. Already over 260 television stations throughout the U.S. have blocked the PSA which presents negative soundbites from political figures of all stripes. The 60-second PSA features often rare footage of liberal and conservative leaders alike advocating violence or attacking minority groups. Among those depicted are Mao Tse Tung, Strom Thurmond, Jane Fonda and Al Sharpton.

At the end of the sequence a woman’s voice states, “Let’s stop shooting ourselves in the foot” while a toll-free number is displayed. The hotline gives callers information on political candidates and social programs working to put an end to violence around the world.

“Some people criticize us for not being either left or right,” says Sarah Beattud, CAV’s media relations coordinator. “But we’re not interested in allying ourselves with any party or any politician for that matter. What we have in mind is a consistent and conscientious approach to violence. No position, no matter how noble its intentions, should be shielded from scrutiny.”

It’s precisely this unbiased perspective on violence that distinguishes CAV from other movements. One of CAV’s founders, retired U.S. Army Colonel Harris Clay Jackson, has spent the last 20 years of his life advocating that “where violence is concerned everyone has a problem.” The African-American serviceman is no stranger to violence having fought in both Korea and Vietnam.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” says Jackson, “and say only survivors of child abuse are prone to violent action or only criminals and police officers are violent, but the truth of the matter is that violence gets affirmed by everyone through silence.” Jackson credits his years of military service as teaching him that communication is the only solution to violence:

“When talks end, wars begin. Violence is the end of communication. But if we can get people to talk before they lapse into violence, then we can start working on solutions to our problems.”

CAV has taken the controversy over some of its ads in stride and vows to continue challenging how Americans define and respond to violence. As Beattud affirmed in her letter to station managers who rejected the organization’s provocative PSA, “It’s time to turn on the lights in every room and on every street and take a stand against all forms of violence.”

DATELINE–Cologne, Germany

The ballots are in for this year’s Ramelli Ingenuity Award in Technological Experiments (RIATE). The annual awards ceremony honors some of the most intriguing inventions in the research and development pipelines of high-technology companies around the world. Several thousand guests of the RIATE Committee attended this year’s ceremony which was held at the K–lnMesse in Cologne, Germany.

The RIATE award is named after Agostino Ramelli, a French inventor from the 16th century famous for his book of technical experiments entitled “The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli.” Previous years’ winners include Artemis Research for their WebTV console (U.S.A.), Kawakami for the Battery Free Mobile Phone (Japan), and RiceTec AG’s patented BAS-867 (Liechtenstein).

From a diverse field of over 200 contestants, 12 companies are selected for honorable mention and four lucky candidates are deemed finalists. Highly coveted in engineering circles, the RIATE award brings both fame and fortune to the finalists who are rewarded with a hefty cash prize of $250,000 for their “contribution to the noble tradition of man-made wonders.”

This year’s finalists include a smart phone, an anti-growth hormone, a pill that simulates altitude sickness and a portable MRI scanner.

The American Motorola Corporation captured top honors for its Intelligent Personal Operator TM , a cellular telephone with a built-in computer that can speak with a human voice. At first glance, the IPO TM looks like a standard Motorola cell phone and uses conventional AMPS/NAMPS analog technology to transmit telephone calls.

But what sets the IPO TM apart from any other portable telephone on the market is its ability to make calls on its own. At the heart of the IPO TM are Motorola’s most advanced semiconductors which allow the phone’s built-in computer to synthesize the human voice and handle such complex operations as interacting with a live caller.

In an on-stage demonstration, a representative from Motorola received a call, literally, from his IPO TM phone. The call was a reminder: “Hey Max, don’t forget to thank the 68HC05s Team when you get up the podium.” This was not a previously recorded message. Rather, the IPO TM phone had received a call from a Motorola engineer in Austin, Texas, and engaged the live caller in a brief conversation. After chatting with the engineer long enough to discern his reason for calling, the IPO TM bid him a casual goodbye and proceeded to call the IPO TM ’s user with the above message.

Not only can the IPO TM handle incoming calls like a human operator, it can also make outgoing calls to both its owner and just about anyone else. The IPO TM can be “taught” how to make calls through either direct conversations with its user or a software interface. Using this innovative feature, the IPO TM ’s owner can call the IPO TM to let it know that an important package is in the mail. The IPO TM can then use this information to call the shipping company and/or the owner’s secretary to check up on the status of the delivery. Then, based on its owner’s activity patterns, the IPO TM selects an appropriate moment to call its user with the update.

Unlike the voice emulation-recognition machines of the past, the IPO TM ’s high-speed circuitry allows it to mimic and understand the pauses, noises and slips that regularly occur in normal speech. This ability also allows the IPO TM to reproduce faithfully its owner’s voice as well as that of a friend or family member. After the RIATE awards, a demo IPO TM fielded questions from the press alternately employing the voices of its inventor, a well-known news anchor, Motorola’s CEO, and, humorously, the voice of the inventor’s mother. Motorola plans to bring the Intelligent Personal Operator TM to market by 2002.

The second prize went to the Japanese biotechnology firm Cosmobio Corporation Ltd. for RGHR-214, a recombinant growth hormone receptor antagonist that retards maturation in mammals. Recent clinical trials of RGHR-214 have focused on the hormone’s success rate in domestic animals. If administered within 60 days of birth, RGHR-214 can arrest all further growth without any significant side effects. Cats, dogs and other small mammals treated with Cosmobio’s synthetic hormone receptor antagonist will live out their natural life span as baby animals.

The Swiss NutriaRX was awarded third place honors for its HemoStop TM dietary supplement. Developed to assist mountaineers training for extreme high-altitude climbs, HemoStop TM induces the pathophysiology of altitude illnesses. The new supplement uses a hemoglobin oxygen binding inhibitor to impair the body’s ability to process 02 resulting in the swelling of cells. HemoStop TM thus produces symptoms of mild Hypoxia at any altitude, allowing professional mountain climbers and everyday athletes alike to experience Mt. Everest-like conditions anywhere.

And, finally, FONAR, an American company founded by the pioneer of nuclear magnetic resonance scanning, received fourth place for its MPATH scanner, an experimental hand-held MRI device. The MPATH is a miniature version of the company’s “open MRI” system which provides doctors with a non-invasive method of examining human tissue in three dimensions. Using “probability map” target modeling software previously designed for the military, the briefcase-sized MPATH is able to analyze minute changes in the brain’s chemistry. FONAR hopes a future version of the MPATH scanner will be used by doctors and therapists to verify the emotional state and possibly the thoughts of their patients.