October 23, 2003

Overthrow of Pres Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada of Bolivia is potentially crippling blow to Washington's anti-drug policy in Andean region; United States officials minimize importance of drug issue in Sanchez de Lozada's downfall, but many Bolivians and analysts say coca problem is intimately tied to broader issues of impoverishment and disenfranchisement that stoked explosive resentments in Bolivia and fueled month of often violent protests before he stepped down; Bolivian officials recall that Pres Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada told Pres Bush last year that he would push ahead with plan to eradicate coca but that he needed more money to ease impact on farmers, or he would be overthrown; recall that Bush merely wished him good luck; Dr Eduardo Gamarra, Bolivian scholar at Florida International Univ, says events in Bolivia are warning that US drug policy may sow still wider instability in region; US has earmarked $211 million for 'alternative development' program for coca farmers, but critics claim that amount is not enough to compensate all of those whose livelihoods have been destroyed by eradication campaign; photo (M)

Do-it-yourselfers are using mini-ITX mother board, made by Via Technologies and others, to create works of art to encase their computers; have used breadboxes, Lincoln Log houses, and toasters for computer case; mini-ITX board is small and inexpensive but expandability is limited; photo (M)

Time Warner Inc reports mixed third-quarter results that modestly exceed Wall Street's expectations; net income rose to $541 million compared with $57 million year earlier; revenue rose 4 percent, to $10.3 billion; chairman Richard D Parsons comments; graphs (M)

World Trade Center site designs by David M Childs for developer Larry Silverstein are reported to be stylistically quite different from master plan for Freedom Tower drawn up by Studio Daniel Libeskind; differences are more than cosmetic and could hold up construction; Libeskind and Childs are expected to resume talks on collaboration; photos (M)

Air Force and Army work on classified project to use new combinations of surveillance aircraft and other sensors, along with intelligence on ground, to try to detect and counter increasingly deadly ambushes against American forces in Iraq; Congress is told that Pentagon plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on surveillance and other new ways of fighting insurgents, but senior military officials are wary of disclosing too much about new Air Force-Army project, fearing it would tip off Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters who are clashing with American forces as many as two dozen times each day; photos (M)

Article on South African satirist and showman Pieter-Dirk Uys, whose one-man show, Foreign Aids, dealing with HIV-AIDS epidemic, has raised ire of Pres Thabo Mbeki; photo (M)

Financial Community Supports Bush Re-election After winning Congressional approval for cuts in taxes on dividends and capital gains, and after navigating a raft of corporate accounting scandals that shook the investment community, President Bush seems to have won over many Wall Street executives, who are now strongly supporting his re-election campaign. A study to be released this week shows that the financial community has surpassed all other groups, including lawyers and lobbyists, as the top industry among the president's elite fund-raisers. [Page A1.]

Harvey Araton Sports of The Times column discusses New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens last start, which comes in Game 4 of World Series against Florida Marlins and ends in seven anticlimactic innings in which he gives up three runs and gets five strikeouts; photo (M)

Alessandra Stanley reviews television documentary Terror in Moscow, about siege of Moscow theater by rebels from Chechnya; photo (M)

David Pogue State of the Art column comments on Apple's release of new Macintosh Operating System OS X 10.3; holds that new system, also called Panther, is stable, faster and better equipped and more secure than previous version and Microsoft Windows platforms; drawing (M)

US Senate, 97-0, agrees to crack down on torrent of unsolicited messages clogging nation's e-mail inboxes, voting to outlaw methods used by most spammers and to allow creation of national do-not-e-mail registry; action does not mean that advertisements will disappear from computers anytime soon; House has barely begun to work on matching bill, and even if legislation becomes law next year, many experts have raised doubts about whether any federal action will be effective; bill approved would prohibit use of false or deceptive headers on e-mail messages, which most spammers use to disguise their identities; all advertising messages would have to bear legitimate return addresses, as well as abbreviation 'ADV' or some similar indication of its content so that recipients could filter them away; messages with sexual content would have to bear equivalent of warning label; bill also requires Federal Trade Commission to begin planning national registry of e-mail addresses of people who do not want to receive unsolicited commercial messages; proposed registry, championed by Sen Charles E Schumer, has produced widespread skepticism; FTC chairman Timothy Muris said in August that if such list were established, he would advise customers not to waste their time and effort; Senate bill would impose fines of $10 per e-mail, up to $1.5 million for willful violations, and imprisonment of up to five years if spam advertises fraudulent scheme, pornography or leads to identity theft; photo (M)

Florida Marlins defeat New York Yankees, 4-3, in extra innings, to tie World Series, 2-2; Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens makes last start; photos (M)