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To: Ahda who wrote (23750)	12/2/1998 6:59:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116759

Dollar Falls As Stocks Hit By Boeing News 05:58 p.m Dec 02, 1998 Eastern NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar tumbled Wednesday on renewed fears about weakness in Asia after Boeing Co. said the economic crisis there will hurt its profits over the next two years and force it to cut another 20,000 jobs. The dollar fell along with stocks, extending its recent string of losses against the German mark and other major currencies. ''You had the announcement on the Boeing side which again had reference to weaker sales in emerging markets,'' said Diego Giurleo, treasury vice president at Royal Bank of Canada. ''For the external sector, exports are not invulnerable to what's going on in demand on the global front,'' he said. ''So that has taken a little bit of steam out of the dollar.'' The dollar stood at 1.6715 marks late in New York, down from 1.6840 late Tuesday, and at 120.12 Japanese yen, down from 122.16. The Dow Jones Industrial average fell 69 points to 9,064.54. Shares in Europe also slumped. Stocks worldwide have grown volatile again since the Dow pushed up to a new record high last week. Currency markets have mirrored these jitters, with the dollar particularly vulnerable when investors see big selling on Wall Street. A weaker dollar makes U.S. exports less expensive overseas. Elsewhere, the British pound rose to $1.6675 from $1.6543. The dollar fell to 1.3672 Swiss francs from 1.3820 but rose to Canadian $1.5315 from C$1.5305. Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

To: Ahda who wrote (23750)	12/2/1998 7:10:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116759

WORLD BONDS-Falling oil brightens debt outlook 09:20 a.m. Dec 02, 1998 Eastern By Henry Engler LONDON, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Tumbling oil prices are expected to spark further declines in bond yields as headline inflation is kept well under control among major industrialised economies. Analysts on Wednesday said the oil sector's dire straits, underlined by crude prices anchored at 12-year lows and two major industry mergers announced this week, is yet another sign of a faltering global economy. ''I think the fall in oil prices reflects the view that the outlook for global growth is looking pretty grim and that will keep headline inflation low for some time,'' said Danyelle Guyatt, strategist at Deutsche Bank in London. For bond markets, the news is a clear positive. ''In nominal terms, bond yields can fall further and in real terms there are arguments to justify further declines both in the U.S. and across Europe,'' she added. The U.S. 30-year benchmark bond was at 103-02 at 1135 GMT in early trade, down 4/32 at 5.05 percent. Crude oil futures fell to under $11 a barrel on Tuesday, in nominal terms a level last seen during the market's major downturn in 1986. But adjusted for inflation, ''the price of a barrel of oil today is back to where it was before 1973, 25 years after the first great oil crisis,'' said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, in a newspaper article. With price of oil a major component of consumer price indices in Europe and the United States, any large movements show up quickly in the overall inflation rate. In Europe, analysts say Germany has the highest weighting at 5.3 percent, while Britain, a net exporter, is just 3.9 percent. The U.S., however, incorporates an oil weighting of around seven percent in its consumer price index, making any large shifts in oil prices even more visible. While there is often a tendency to strip out the effects of volatile oil prices when measuring inflation, analysts say this time around the magnitude of the move in crude prices and the long-term outlook for the industry makes it more imperative for bond markets to take notice. ''If you've got a long-term decline in oil prices you need to take that into consideration when you're looking at the overall inflation picture,'' added Guyatt of Deutsche Bank. In Europe, inflation is already at rock-bottom levels. The latest figures from Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office, showed average inflation in the 11 euro nations running at an annual pace of 1.0 percent in September. Just which bond markets stand to benefit the most from cheaper oil is unclear, however, with some analysts saying that many investors have already penciled in a much weaker outlook. ''It is difficult to differentiate between bond markets given that all countries will benefit from lower oil and commodity prices,'' said Keith Edmonds, chief analyst at IBJ International. ''Those low oil prices have already been discounted to some extent in the historically low yields we have already seen,'' he added. The key to any further large gains for bonds may lie in the response from central bankers. To the extent central banks see the oil price drop as a factor that edges the world economy closer to deflation, bonds could put in a sizeable rally. Hints they might in fact be thinking along such lines were seen on Tuesday from Wim Duisenberg, president of the European Central Bank, who said available data pointed to some deceleration of GDP growth next year. ''It certainly does seem the ECB is recognising that price pressures at the moment are minimal in the euro area,'' said Edmonds, adding that such a shift in thinking raised the prospect of a cut in short-term rates early in 1999. ((International Bonds +44 171 542 7770, Fax +44 171 542 5285, uk.governmentbonds.news+reuters.com)) Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

To: Ahda who wrote (23750)	12/3/1998 6:01:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116759

Full story American science, math teachers flunk test - study 05:38 p.m Dec 03, 1998 Eastern By Michael Kahn WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) - American students lag behind much of the world in math and science because their classes are boring, unfocused and incoherent, researchers said on Thursday. Educators, parents and politicians were shocked earlier this year when an international study showed American children score worse than the rest of the world in the two subjects. The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) ranked U.S. 12th-graders, aged 17 and 18, 18th out of 21 countries -- far behind Sweden and the Netherlands and ahead only of Lithuania, Cyprus and South Africa. But William Schmidt, an applied statistician at Michigan State University, and colleagues say pupils are not to blame. ''The U.S. curriculum appears not only to have been unfocused but highly repetitive, lacking coherence, and providing little rigorous challenge during the middle years, particularly when compared to those of other TIMSS countries,'' they wrote in the journal Science. The TIMSS study measured general math and science literacy in third, fourth, seventh, and eighth graders and at high school seniors in the U.S. and more than 40 other countries. Schmidt took a closer look at the results, released earlier this year. ''This tries to put it all together and paint a larger picture,'' said Schmidt, who is also the U.S. national research coordinator for the TIMSS study. One of the key findings after an analysis of more than 1,500 textbook and curricula frameworks from about 50 countries was that Americans tried to teach too much, Schmidt said in a telephone interview. For example, U.S. math textbooks for 8th graders cover about 35 topics compared to an average of seven in Germany and Japan, he said. U.S. curricula also covered more topics than in those of virtually all other TIMSS countries. This can be a problem because it gives teachers little time to spend on each topic and textbooks often repeat familiar ones, Schmidt explained. This fails to challenge students and causes them to lose interest. ''This is the mile-wide, inch-deep curriculum we are talking about,'' he said. Schmidt said American students are studying simpler subjects, like fractions and earth sciences, at the same age as children elsewhere are beginning algebra, chemistry and physics, he said. ''Our students are not now being taught on par with students from other countries,'' he said, calling for a national programme. States now set their own curricula. Glen Cutlip, a spokesman for the National Education Association, which represents most teachers, agreed there are problems with U.S. curriculum and said his group was concerned about the performance of American students. But it would be expensive to change because it would require new textbooks and expanded teacher training. ''If students can learn more than we are teaching then we would see that as a problem,'' Cutlip said. ''But we have to decide how important it is to us as a society, if we are willing to devote the resources it would take to make those changes.'' W. Virginia Williams, spokeswoman for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, agreed there are ingrained problems with the U.S. curriculum and said studies like this can help draw public attention to the issue. ''The things that Schmidt has pointed out are not at all anything our council has disagreed with,'' Williams said in a telephone interview. ''If we continue to ask our students lower-level questions, they won't rise beyond that.'' Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited