Dr. Kenneth J. Ryan, a Harvard obstetrician who helped the nation grapple with thorny ethical issues like fetal tissue research, died on Jan. 5 at his home in Weston, Mass.

The plight of the American worker is easily overlooked when the nation is grappling with the threat of international terrorism and the possibility of war with Iraq.

The rest, as they say, is history - history with which we are still living as the nation grapples with the mammoth deficits that were born of the actions of 1981.

Until the nation successfully grapples with such issues as violence and poverty, which result in the epidemics that send costs skyward, it is unwise to think of a system predicated on caps.

Ms. Sereny's examination of these issues is particularly pertinent for Americans as the nation grapples with a rash of horrific murders by children.

Part of the question the nation is still grappling with after seeing nearly 3,000 lives taken by terrorists using commercial airliners as weapons, is whether this is war, and if so what sacrifices are demanded.

Public-Private Ties At a time when all industrialized nations are grappling with how to train a work force for the future, the report calls for stronger ties between employers and educational systems.

And with the nation still grappling with a spate of new threats, one person said, the threshold for Mr. Torricelli's indictment may have subtly risen.

At the same time, nations are grappling with thorny questions of how to slow climate change.

European nations with low-lying coastal communities have grappled with this problem for years, but they have usually taken concrete steps only after serious, prolonged floods that caused catastrophic loss of life and property.