November 9, 1999

British Airways PLC chief executive Robert J Ayling dismisses skeptics who have assailed company's dismal financial performance and have questioned his unusual plan to reverse it by reducing market share of his airline, Europe's largest; company reports its fiscal second-quarter earnings fell 86 percent; earnings totaled 30 million pounds, or $48.6 million, down from 216 million pounds a year earlier; six-month earnings fell 37.2 percent to 218 million pounds, and company is expected to report annual loss this fiscal year for first time since airline was privatized in 1987; Ayling is putting his own, somewhat diminished, reputation on line as he tries to remake airline; he is reducing its overall passenger capacity by 12 percent in effort to weed out low-cost fares, and cater more to first- and business-class passengers who pay fares that are higher and push profit margins up; photo (M)

Uta Hagen, who played Martha in the original Broadway production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1962, discusses decision to take up role again in staged reading on Broadway; reading will benefit HB Playwrights Foundation, which she created with her husband, Herbert Berghof, and celebrate her 80th birthday; photos (M)

Growing body of artifacts and skeletons is forcing archaeologists to abandon ruling theory of how the Americas were peopled; ruling theory, called Clovis, holds that big-game hunters trekked out of Siberia sometime before 11,500 years ago, crossed land bridge into Alaska and eventually reached all the way to southern tip of South America; new evidence suggests that people may have arrived thousands to tens of thousands of years sooner, that they came in many waves of migration and by a number of routes, and that their ancestry may not have been only Asian; finds primarily responsible for new thinking are remains of pre-Clovis camp at Monte Verde in Chile and skull and bones of Kennewick Man found in Washington State, which are possibly as old as 9,300 years and which bear little physical resemblance to later American Indians; photos; map (L)

Microsoft stock fell $1.625 a share yesterday, to $90, but ended the day higher than the $87 a share reached in after-hours trading on Friday. That was the day a federal judge found that the government had proved that the company had a monopoly and had used it to stifle competition. Investors seem to have decided that even the harshest of all possible remedies for Microsoft -- a breakup of the software giant -- would not be a disaster for the company or the stock market.

Profile of filmmakers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant on location at Helmingham Hall in Stowmarket, England, where they are at work on their 43d collaboration, an adaptation of Henry James's The Golden Bowl; photos (M)

Article examines rift between New Jersey Gov Christine Todd Whitman and Steve Forbes, who brought his Republican presidential campaign into Trenton, NJ; Forbes and Whitman, once schoolmates, political allies and Republicanbluebloods, now find themselves on opposite sides of Republican Party divide; Whitman, who has been villified by her party's right wing for her support of abortion rights, has publicly criticized Forbes's shift on social issuesseveral times this year, accusing him of caving in to conservative voters who dominate party's primaries; photo (M)

Hospital-acquired infections are on the rise, and the fault is laid to doctors and other health care workers who do not properly clean their hands before touching patients; reasons for inadequate washing include lack of time, inaccessible sinks, rough paper towels, hands chapped from excessive washing and the tedium of the washing itself; experts fear that health care professionals have doubts about importance of hand-washing practices and are led not to feel responsible for infections by their unpredictable and untraceable nature; there are no national regulatory requirements for hand washing in medicine, only recommendations; experts say hospitals should monitor hand washing more diligently and encourage patients to speak up before allowing themselves to be touched; another hope is waterless, alcohol-based antimicrobial hand rubs, which are widely used in hospitals in Europe; photos (M)

China vs. Sect: 111 Arrests China said 111 people had been arrested in the crackdown on the Falun Gong movement, and many more faced other punishment, like labor camps or re-education. PAGE A13

Dream of late American billionaire Daniel K Ludwig to build complex in Amazon jungle that would prosper as result of world's growing appetite for products like paper, aluminum, porcelain, rice, beef and pork, is up for sale for one dollar by current owners, Brazilian consortium that has seen only one profitable year since taking over after Ludwig gave up in 1982; Jari Celulose, as scaled-down version of project is known, comes with $354 million in debt and project will require several hundred million dollars in new investment, including $100 million to build electric power plant; how project, which has been carved up and is little more than pulp plant and lot of land, failed detailed; map; photos (M)

Special report, On the Record, examines environmental policies of Republican presidential frontrrunner, Texas Gov George W Bush; in any assessment, unmistakeable subtext is Bush's relationship with business and industrial leaders; as advocate of limited government, he believes lawsuits and regulations are not best way to achieve environmental goals and has pursued cooperative approach that emphasizes voluntary solutions instead of government mandates; environmentalists are criticizing his closeness to industries regulated by his administration in Texas, as records indicate companies that helped draft new pollution law have donated nearly $1 million to his presidential campaign; say Bush's environmental policies are being run by business and industry and their friends in state's regulatory agency; unlike his father former Pres George Bush, who declared himself 'environmental president, Bush has not emphasized environmental issues since becoming governor of Texas in 1995, despite fact that state ranks as one of most polluted in country, and has yet to articulate an environmental policy in presidential campaign, as he has on other major issues; critics say environment hardly registers on Bush's environmental radar, while admirers say he is not hostile to environment but merely reflects conservative politics of Texas; photos (L)

Thomas George Sports of The Times column discusses how Walter Payton's death affected National Football League, players and his former teamChicago Bears; photo (M)

NYS Gov George Pataki, who was assailed last summer for ignoring environmentalists calls for air pollution controls on New York's oldest power plants, has suddenly jumped to head of line among nation's governors in fighting air pollutionwith recent moves to impose strict emission limits on old power plants and new cars; while Pataki and his aides insist that his actions should be taken at face value, Democrats and environmentalists see link to political aspirations (M)