Laurie Garrett's readers will be able to see a television adaptation of her best-seller, The Coming Plague, when it airs over Turner Broadcasting System stations at 9 p.m. EST on Sunday nights in April. The four-hour documentary was shot by film crews on five continents and will be broadcast in 32 countries. According to Garrett, who helped with the initial design and factual grounding, the project was carried out at Ted Turner's personal request after he and Jane Fonda read the book in early 1995.
Harvey I. Colbert and his wife, Marilyn, received the 1996 Paul Douglas Goddard Award for "excellence as a volunteer advocate in East Tennessee. The Colberts are volunteer ombudsmen at five long-term facilities in Knoxville, protecting the rights of elderly residents.
After nearly six years as editor of the Harvard Health Letter, Patricia Thomas left Harvard Medical School in January to return to freelancing from her home in Arlington, MA. Her first major project is a book proposal that will be marketed in late Spring by a Boston literary agency.
C. Blake Powers, president of Powers Communications, was honored by the Clan Donnachaidh Society of the South for his work in revamping the Society's newsletter, in creating a WWW site for the Society, and for other work at various games and special events during the year. The award was made even more special by the fact that his mother, Virginia Davis Powers, received the annual award a short time before her death.
Erich Hoyt's The Earth Dwellers: Adventures in the Land of Ants, published in paperback in March by Touchstone, the Simon & Schuster imprint, in New York, received outstanding reviews in the New York Times, Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times and The Cleveland Plain Dealer. For review copies contact Christine Saunders at (212) 698-7529; FAX: (212) 698-7336.
Cornelia (Cory) Dean is the new Science Editor at The New York Times.
Robert J. Coontz has been appointed senior editor of Earth, a bimonthly popular science magazine published in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Previously, he had been senior editor at The Sciences, a general-interest science magazine published by the New York Academy of Sciences.
Tabitha M. Powledge has been awarded her second fellowship from the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland. She was the only freelance and the only specialist in science and medicine among the two dozen journalists selected for "The War on Drugs," which began February 16. Her previous Knight fellowship, in 1991, led to her book Your Brain: How You Got It and How It Works, published by Scribner's in 1995.