DATELINE–Naperville, IL

Five teenagers thought to have been abducted are now being considered runaways by the FBI.

Hushed tones dominate the living room of Hank and Mary Lou Turner. For nearly nine days they have kept a vigil by the telephone, waiting for word on the whereabouts of their oldest son John. On this night they are joined by the parents of two other missing children and a minister from their church.

The phone rings but it is only the parents of a fourth missing teenager calling to dispel a rumor that authorities in Albuquerque, New Mexico had spotted the Turner’s Chrysler Sebring. In fact, no one in Naperville has seen or heard from the five missing teens since they started out for the Windy City Bible Quiz Invitational on Friday January 15.

Hank Turner is in the den talking quietly with the father of Katie Miezkowski, one of the missing teens and John’s best friend. Four days after the kids were reported missing, the FBI informed the parents that the case was no longer considered a kidnapping. The parents have subsequently been enlisted to come up with possible motives for the disappearance. Were any of the teens involved with drugs? Where any of the kids having trouble in school or with their peers? Could it have been a suicide pact?

The television is on in the kitchen where Marjorie Claymon and Mary Lou Turner are recalling the bright Sunday last July when Debbie Claymon, John Turner, Katie Miezkowski, Caleb Donaldson and Tom Dumm won the regional Bible Quiz championship. It was Debbie who correctly quoted the closing verses of the Book of Acts to clinch the title for the Naperville Assembly of God Bible Quiz team. As Mary Lou looks on, Marjorie prepares a third pot of coffee even though no one appears to be drinking coffee tonight.

The previous night, teammates of the missing teens were called to Fellowship Hall to discuss the disappearance with Jack Servin, the Bible Quiz coach. In attendance were more than a dozen youth, ranging in age from 14 to 19-years-old. After circling in prayer, Coach Servin encouraged the teens to remain strong in their own faith during this time of crisis. The group then asked for forgiveness for the kidnappers of their five friends. During the course of the two-hour prayer meeting, Servin only once alluded to reports that the championship squad may have runaway from home.

While the Naperville Assembly of God community continues to close ranks around the families of the missing teenagers, the media has just begun to unravel a very different story. It’s a tale of broken promises and sober rebellion. According to the Chicago Sun Times, police in Tulsa, Okla. received a phone call last Wednesday from a young man identifying himself as John Turner. Claiming to speak for the entire group, Turner informed authorities that the teenagers had not been abducted nor had any of them been coerced into becoming runaways. The caller then handed the telephone over to the other four teens all of whom reported themselves to be of sound mind and body.

The call to Tulsa police was traced by the FBI to a motel along I-44 West. In interviews with FBI agents, motel staff described the five youths as a friendly group of college students on a road trip. But because the two girls are 17 and the teen-agers are driving a vehicle that has been reported stolen, the FBI is still pursuing the case. The three boys are 18 years of age and cannot be prosecuted solely for leaving home.

Back in Naperville, no one appears to be ready to talk about the one thing the FBI now needs to know: motive. By all accounts, the five teen-agers were polite, hardworking students, loving children, and dedicated Bible Quiz players. The group had spent long hours together in preparation for the memory-intensive competitions that were their sole extracurricular passion and often traveled together to away tournaments.

It was their intense teamwork, acquaintances say, that made the five Napeville teens become best of friends. That friendship is now the only clue left to their bewildered families who may soon have to decide whether to press charges against any or all of the runaway boys.

DATELINE–Los Angeles

Couples learn to RELAT using innovative software.

Luis Alvan is happily married and has two children. He is a charismatic senior employee at an advertising agency in Los Angeles and regularly visits his extended family in Venezuela. Three years ago, Alvan was hospitalized after attempting to commit suicide.

The story of Mr. Alvan’s recovery is well-known in academic circles. He was one of the first patients to participate in an experimental computer-based treatment program pioneered at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Luis was an exceptional patient,” recalls Dr. Brian Wiggins, “perhaps because he and his wife were so close before the crisis began.” Dr. Wiggins met the Alvans at the Century City Wellness Center where the patient and his wife were attending weekly counseling sessions. After a brief interview, Dr. Wiggins invited the Alvan couple to take part in his pilot computer therapy program.

While the use of computers for testing and therapy is a long-standing practice among developmental and child psychologists, Dr. Wiggins and his staff are the first to develop an intensive therapeutic software system for adults.

Luis and Lisa Alvan had been married for seven years when they noticed the tension growing between them. “Every time we talked,” Mrs. Alvan candidly admits, “Luis would become upset and begin criticizing me for not being a good mother or not earning enough at work. It got to the point where we only talked about him.”

Mr. Alvan doesn’t dispute his wife’s recollection of those bitter times. “I was on an emotional rollercoaster,” he responds, “and I had to bring everyone around me down each time I felt myself dropping.” In fact the stresses on his relationship had grown so overwhelming that he attempted to overdose on sleeping pills and alcohol after a particularly nasty argument with his wife.

When Dr. Wiggins began working with the Alvans, traditional therapy had failed both Luis and his marriage. He had been placed on anti-depressants after his suicide attempt and everyone was worried that he might relapse. When Dr. Wiggins suggested that they advance their therapy using software, Luis and Lisa did not hesitate to accept his offer.

The program is called RELAT, short for Responsible Empathy Lifestyle Adjustment Therapy. RELAT, pronounced “relate", is essentially an e-mail program with a smart spell-checking function. At scheduled intervals, the couple communicates their hopes and worries via local e-mail messages. But before each message is sent, a built-in program scans the text for aggressive, deceptive or otherwise unproductive language.

Once RELAT identifies a phrase that may hinder the communication process, it automatically suggests what are deemed helpful alternatives. For example, the statement “I don’t know what you’re talking about” triggers the phrase “Perhaps I am not letting myself see your point of view.”

RELAT can even learn over time to recognize idiosyncratic and recurring lapses in a couple’s conversational patterns. In other words, it can get to know when a conversation is taking a turn for the worse. According to Dr. Wiggins, over 50 couples have been helped by the RELAT program since 1995.

Today, Lisa still looks through the old RELAT e-mails from time to time, even though the couple have successfully completed the program. “I still cry when I read them. Especially the last ones,” Lisa confesses. “But when I see Luis playing with our two-year-old, I know everything’s going to be okay.”

DATELINE–Los Angeles

When Christine Cardona went shopping last weekend she got an unexpected surprise in the produce section at her local Whole Foods supermarket in La Jolla, California.

Cardona, a mother of two and a grammar school teacher, was sorting through bunches of grapes when she suddenly discovered a tiny doll nestled underneath a half pound of California seedless.

Thinking someone else had accidentally dropped the doll in the fruit bin, Cardona returned it to the front desk. The clerk, believing it was an item for sale at the organic foods store, handed it over to inventory for restocking.

A few hours later, the regional Whole Foods office called the manager of the La Jolla branch and asked if any black fabric dolls had been found in the store. By this time, over 400 identical dolls had turned up in Safeway, Lucky’s, CalaFoods and Von’s supermarkets throughout the state of California.

Worried that a massive poisoning campaign might be in the works, representatives from the supermarket chains contacted state officials who immediately ordered that all California table grapes be pulled from the produce section of stores statewide.

Although the press quickly reported news of the possible grape contamination, no mention was made of the enigmatic dolls that sparked the scare. Thus far, none of the grapes sampled have shown evidence of tampering or toxicity. Two days after the initial scare, grapes were quietly returned to the shelves.

But by then a bizarre press release connecting the dolls to the grape recall had been faxed and e-mailed to press agencies in California and across the United States. The communiqué was issued by a group calling itself “Las Artesanas Zapatistas Les Ganarán A Los Artistas Derrotistas” or Zapatista Artisans Will Triumph Against Defeatist Artists.

In the four page dispatch, Las Artesanas claimed responsibility for having planted the dolls which precipitated the brief grape recall and urged American consumers to reconsider their “duplicitous” relationship with the government of Mexico.

The small black dolls in question are known as Marcos dolls in Mexico and are identical to the wool dolls dressed in indigenous Chiapanecan clothing that have been sold to tourists for decades. The simple addition of a ski mask and a toothpick rifle transforms them into toy versions of the famous Zapatista spokesman and strategist Subcomandante Marcos.

The Zapatista rebels have been struggling to secure civil rights and land reforms for indigenous peoples in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico.

In the press release, Las Artesanas repeatedly asked “Uvas Qué?” while imploring shoppers to “do some comparison shopping and calculate the human costs of the feudal conditions in Chiapas.”

Anthropologist Lawrence Rivers who teaches at the University of Southern California has been studying the unrest in Chiapas and Las Artesanas, in particular, for the last few years. Rivers believes this latest media stunt is an attempt by the Zapatistas to reach out to potential sympathizers in the U.S.

It is Rivers opinion that Las Artesanas may be using the rhetoric of the U.S. civil rights movement to garner much needed support. Says Rivers, “The fate of the indigenous people could mark a turnaround in the history of Latin American countries…[where] race has all too often been used as a barrier to democracy and economic opportunity.”

The Zapatistas have recently been invited to resume negotiations with the Mexican government after nearly a year-long stalemate.

DATELINE–Seattle, Wash.

International children’s rights organization The Children First claims to have uncovered an internal memo suggesting that the tobacco industry is selling cigarettes below cost in the United States.

The memo provides evidence that domestic cigarette sales are the linchpin of Big Tobacco’s overseas marketing campaigns.

Just when it seemed that the tobacco industry was getting a handle on its legal problems, a public interest group has blown the whistle on more alleged wrongdoings, this time in the developing world.

At a press conference held early this morning, Seattle-based The Children First announced it possessed an internal memorandum signed by a senior executive at Philip Morris that outlines top-level marketing policies aimed at securing emerging markets.

According to the organization, the memo offers “irrefutable proof” that Philip Morris has been intentionally selling its cigarettes in the United States at price points below cost for at least two years. The memo also links U.S. consumption of cigarettes to sales abroad.

“Big Tobacco is literally giving away cigarettes as product placement,” The Children First spokesperson Nancy McKeon said. “They realize that the mystique of cigarettes in the developing world is heavily American, and they want to insure that Americans continue smoking.”

Although the memo itself has not yet been made available to the public due to a pending court challenge, industry experts familiar with the case do not dispute the authenticity of the leaked document. They point to increasing cigarette taxes as the likely cause behind the startling Philip Morris directive.

“In today’s market the cost of a pack of cigarettes has more to do with state and federal excise taxes than the actual cost of producing the highly contested consumables,” says Fred Ortiz, an analyst with the Monitor Company.

In Alaska the cost of a pack of cigarettes includes $1.24 in taxes, and that may jump to $2 a pack if proposed federal legislation is ratified later this year. With brand-name cigarettes fetching $2.50 in major markets, an average of only 25 percent of the retail price goes to cover manufacturing costs.

According to a University of Kentucky study, excise taxes collected on the sale of tobacco products in 1997 exceeded $13 billion, more than four times the entire farm value of U.S. tobacco production.

As excise taxes rise, companies like Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco are opting to absorb losses rather than raise the price of cigarettes. It is a strategy that may well result in a negative profit margin on the home front but assures rewards abroad, as the memo publicized by The Children First implies.

Bev Wiggins, columnist for the trade weekly Advertising Age, sees the “giveaway” as an innovative marketing ploy for an industry that must balance a rapidly diminishing domestic market share against booming foreign sales. Says Wiggins, “Every cent they lose here they get back in Asia and the third world.”

In 1996 more than 70 percent of the cigarettes sold by Philip Morris, and 57 percent of those sold by RJR Nabisco, were sold overseas. To date, nearly 95 percent of all tobacco users live outside of the United States.

“When people in third world countries think cigarettes,” Wiggins says, “they think Americans smoking cigarettes. If Americans stop smoking, American cigarettes stop selling there.”

The Federal Trade Commission reports that tobacco companies spend upwards of $5 billion each year, or roughly $13 million every day, to promote their products.