replace regular audio-only telephones. The problem is, they've never caught on.

Now, Japanese telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation says it has an answer.

Instead of showing close-up images of the callers' faces, NTT's new video phone focuses its cameras at each person's desk top, so that business people can work together over the telephone on joint projects.

"We think this may be the future,'' says Sadami Kurihara, manager of NTT's Human and Multimedia Laboratory.

The images of both desk tops are shown on each screen so that people at different locations can jointly design new products, ad campaigns or buildings, NTT says.

Kurihara says video phones haven't become popular because they are still too expensive for most individuals, and businesses aren't interested in face-to-face communication over the telephone.

"If I call up my mother, I'd like to be able to see her. But in business, what people say on the telephone and what they actually feel aren't always the same, and they don't want that to show through eye-to-eye contact,'' he says.

"People of different ranks also feel uncomfortable facing each other directly. What's more important is to be able to focus on a project together.'' NTT's "Team Work Station'' also has two optional cameras that can transmit small pictures of the callers' faces in corners of the video screen, if desired.

It will go on sale in Japan later this year at a still-undetermined price, NTT says. In its present form, however, it will only work on special broad-band telephone lines.

*** An accountant serving Broadway and Hollywood stars, including actress Jane Alexander, was indicted last week for allegedly stealing millions of dollars from his show business clients.

Business manager James Powers is alleged to have stolen at least $3 million and some of his clients are alleged to have been stung so badly they face the loss of their homes.

Powers, who has been in custody since March 26, is charged with grand larceny, scheming to defraud and criminal impersonation. The indictment alleges that he took money from his clients' accounts or liquidated investments he had made in their name.

He allegedly began the scheme in 1986 and got a name for himself in the show business community by doing entertainers' taxes.

Prosecutors said Powers kept the scheme going using a "borrow from Peter to pay Paul'' scheme.

According to the indictment, Alexander's husband Ed Sherin, who directs episodes of TV's "Law and Order,'' was a victim as well.

Others are actress Cecil Hoffman, who plays a prosecutor on "L.A. Law,'' daytime TV actor Michael Zaslow, who appears on ''The Guiding Light'' and actress Kate Collins of "All My Children.'' Also listed are actors Matt Craven and James Leverett and playwright Janice Greenberg.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said some of the victims have tax liens on their homes after Powers failed to make mortgage payments. He said many of their homes are in the process of being foreclosed.

* * * CON Some 70 international businessmen and international businessmen from Bermuda are expected to attend this week's Risk and Insurance Management Society's annual conference, which this year is being held in Orlando, Florida.

The event normally attracts some 10,000 people and is one of the largest conferences of any industry in the United States.

Guest speakers include former US Government troubleshooter Colonel Oliver North and Dr. Thomas Sutherland, who was held hostage in Beirut for over three years.

The Royal Gazette will have a journalist at RIMS all week, reporting new developments in international insurance and what the conference means to Bermuda.