APF Reporter Vol. 18 #3

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The City of Brcko:
The Key to Bosnia's Future

by Maud Beelman

The billboard signs along the roadways of northeastern Bosnia say it all. Superimposed on a map of the country is the outline of a key with "Brcko" on it. The old river city, historically a crossroads between Europe and the East, holds the key to the future of Bosnia. It is, perhaps, the only thing everyone here agrees on.

The Prospect

by Marcos Bretón with photos by José Luis Villegas

CERES, CA. - Ninety acres of Stanislaus County alfalfa swayed in the late summer breeze as four shirtless young Dominican men walked in bare feet to the field's edge.

Maquiladora Workers Get
Homes of Their Own

by Miriam Davidson

From his office window, Tom Higgins looks across the city of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, and sees rows of new tin roofs shining on a hilltop. "I'm so pleased," he says, "that in all the crap and corruption of this world, the little guys got something good."

Life and Death in St. Petersburg

by Jason Eskenazi

As the first snow of the season fell on St. Petersburg, Russia, Svetlana, 17, sat with two new acquaintances on a bench. They talked, giggled, and waited. Three hours later, they would continue their conversation in the ladies room, over cigarettes, as they put on their make-up, ready to return home. The only difference between those two conversations is that now, in between puffs, they can speak about being free from their pregnancies.

When the Crunch Becomes the Norm:
Cries from Inside the 24-Hour Work Clock

by James Lardner

According to no end of authorities extrapolating forward from the trends of the early 20th century, Americans should be wallowing in free time by now. A four-hour workday, the technocrat Harold Loeb wrote in 1933, would "satisfy fully the material needs of each member of the community at a minimum expense of human effortand lift that preoccupation with economic security which has always weighted the soul of man except on a few tropical islands."

Independence Free Fall:
The Collapse of Moldova's Industrial Engine

by Andrew Meier, photographs by Mia Foster

Tiraspol may be the bleakest of cities in the former Soviet Union. A gray town of some 50,000 beleaguered souls, it has not witnessed the destruction visited upon the Chechen capital, Crozny, nor the chromosomal damage that haunts the irradiated zones in nearby Belarus and Ukraine. But life in Tiraspol, the capital of the self-proclaimed "Transdniestrian Moldovan Republic" (known in its Russian initials as the "PMR"), is just as hard. When the Russians who predominate here declared their intention to break free from the former Soviet republic of Moldova, an armed conflict ensued in the summer of 1992. Five years later, life in this implausible mini-state has approached its minimalist limits. Crossing its threshold is reminiscent of entering East Berlin, circa 1980.

Gamblers' Needs Focus a Town
on its Reading Failures

by Laura Parker

TUNICA, MS. - A teacher stands before a blackboard in an otherwise barren room. Eleven faces stare back passively. Most are in their twenties, a few in their forties. They are newly hired cashiers at the Sheraton Casino. On Monday, they start work. They are gathered to bone up on decimals, since they will be dealing with dollars and cents. Sounded like a good idea, but after 30 minutes, the teacher has increasing doubts. She wants them to work problems containing decimals, but they are having trouble doing simple math. She bites into the silence that has enveloped the room. "Okay. What's five times five?" No one says a word. The teacher turns to a woman who has come with her 21-year-old son. "Charlotte?" she asks. Charlotte hesitates. "Ten?"

The Medical Gold Rush for Poor Patients

by Fred Schulte

Just a few short months ago, a New York medical insurance plan called AssureCare, Inc. hoped to reap hearty profits caring for thousands of society's poorest people.

Bankrolled by a Florida entrepreneur with a $480 million personal fortune, the HMO seemed likely to snatch up lucrative welfare contracts in several states.

Is Modern Egypt Obliterating its Past?

by Alexander Stille

Built along the Nile in Southern Egypt, the town of Luxor is near the ancient city of Thebes, which served as the capital of Egypt during the period known as The New Kingdom (1,539-1070 BC). In just a few square miles, it contains what is perhaps the greatest concentration of pharaonic monuments in Egypt: the glorious temples of Luxor and Karnak on one side of the river and the vast Theban necropolis on the other, containing the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens and the Valley of the Nobles, where Egyptian royalty of the New Kingdom from King Tutankhamen to Queen Nefertari have their tombs.

The Lessons of Ida Tarbell

by Steve Weinberg

It does not look like anything especially impressive today. It sits on an out-of-the-way shelf, one of millions of volumes in a cavernous university research library. Its green cover has faded after 93 years of heavy use, occasional abuse and, ultimately, lack of use. It is mentioned in Twentieth Century America history courses on college campuses. But hardly anybody alive has read it from beginning to end, all 815 pages of dense type.