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Page 6 • Tuesday, June 1, 1999 The Baltali; News Easy rider ANTHONY DISALVO/Thi Battalion Two-year-old Fiona Cohen learns to ride her tricycle with her mother Christine Monday at Research Park. Cohen said they decided to ride at the park because it was too hard for Fiona to ride on dirt roads 9 NATO bombs strike hospital ? Yugoslav capital faces second blackout as air campaign escakt ^ BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) — NATO missiles killed at least 16 people when they smashed into a hospital and a retirement home Monday in Yu goslavia, Serb officials said amid growing concern about civilian casualties from the al liance’s bombing campaign. The alliance acknowledged striking a military barracks and an ammuni tion storage area in the area around Surdulica, 220 miles south east of Bel grade, but would not confirm hit ting the civil ian sites and the reports of ca sualties. Condemning the “murdering of civilians” in Serbia, President Slobodan Milosevic said the lat est attacks endangered fragile peace efforts, which continue this week with talks with the Finnish president. Russia’s Balkans envoy also announced plans to meet again this week with Milosevic. The Yugoslav government MILOSEVIC reiterated that it accepts princi ples set forth by the Group of Eight major powers for ending the Kosovo conflict. But Milo sevic’s latest statement still fell short of Western demands for the makeup of a peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Alliance officials insisted there will be “no negotiations” with Belgrade, which they said must halt the violence in Koso vo, withdraw its forces from the province and allow NATO troops into Kosovo to police the peace for ethnic Albanians. In Washington, National Se curity Council spokesperson Michael Hammer expressed skepticism that Milosevic is se rious about peace. “Everybody’s wondering whether we’re on the edge of a breakthrough,” Hammer said. “1 think it’s a bit premature.” The European Union on Monday also demanded Milo sevic translate his words into action and show an “unam biguous and verifiable” com mitment to a Western plan for Kosovo. NATO, despite being put on the defensive again over its tar geting practices, pressed ahead with its escalated air campaign. In Kosovo, U.S. A-10 “Warthog” jets struck Serb forces clashing with ethnic Albanian rebels in the hills along the Albanian border. Belgrade, the Yugoslav capi tal, suffered another blackout Monday evening shortly after air-raid sirens signaled a new round of NATO attacks. The pri vate Beta news agency reported two transformer stations out side Belgrade had been struck for the second time in less than a week, causing the outage. Western journalists taken to Surdulica by Serb authorities saw a scene of devastation, with 11 bodies lying under sheets outside the shattered medical complex and four oth ers, those of elderly women, on stretchers in front of the retire ment home. A human hand was visible, protruding from the rubble. Rescue workers were still pulling bodies from the rubble at midafternoon, more than a dozen hours after the attack. Survivors told of four blasts shortly after a plane passed over the complex on the city’s outskirts, just after midnight. Kosovo roundup May 31 # Major NATO attso HUNGARY 50mte 50km , VOJVODINA f Novi Sad ■^Belgrade ^Ripanji Obrenovac YUGOSLAVIA O Sarajevo Krusevactfr- #Nis MONTENE Vladicin Han h * A <) Surdulica v Prizre oSkopje MACEDONIA OTirana WT i Military action J ► On Sunday, missiles slammed re i l bridge crowded with shoppers heao.' »; market in the central Serbian towna || Krusevac. killinq at least 11 people: | sending several cars plunging into Iff J Morava River 1 ► In Surdulica. Tanjug, the Yugoste service said three missiles hit the sa' tor patients with lung diseases, killing six. Two more missiles hit a retuemer next door, killing five people, it sad Source: NATO H Dr. Hu1 pr , lached jlhps cal ‘ fflent a C< lit 'tit A India agrees to Kashmir talk KARGIL, India (AP) — India agreed Monday to hold talks with Pakistan over Kashmir, after six days of Indian airstrikes on the hideouts of Islamic militants in the disputed frontier region. There was no letup in the Indian offen sive despite the planned talks, and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee pledged Mon day to keep fighting until the guerrillas are driven out — something military officials say could take weeks. India accuses Pakistan of backing guer rillas who seized positions on 17,000-foot mountains in India-controlled territory ear lier this month. Pakistan strenuously denies the charge. India and Pakistan appeared to have re sponded to growing international worry over hostilities between the two nuclear- armed nations. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and British Foreign Minister Robin Cook spoke with their Indian counterpart, Jaswant Singh, over the weekend to express concern over the fighting. Last year, India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices, raising the stakes of any confrontation. Both are working on delivery systems for nuclear warheads. Vajpayee’s agreement to the talks came three days after a proposal made by his Pak istani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, to send Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz to India for ■ “In i sire to ' entity ' , gl: sa ■ Tex, talks. Pakistan was expected to dates for talks. • S 1 The airstrikes in Kashmir are unlike^ Wl re l be intensified, but fighting on thegrc stead c likely will be. Indian infantry troops a:* VI s ready locked in close-quarters combiH'" st * many places to flush out hundreds of rep India said Monday the guerrilla® heavily armed, with machine guns,if ets and Stinger missiles to shoot dowii dian aircraft. However, the governtr claimed the area occupied by the iff was shrinking. “It is a matter of time that we wouAr able to remove them from these ^ reils 'rVw-o tense Minister George Fernandes said.!, ■■1 1 Congress to consider tax changes WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans in creasingly perplexed by the country’s com plex tax laws may find little relief in sight: one out of every five bills introduced in Con gress this year would tinker with the tax code, and President Clinton himself is proposing 131 changes. Even the Internal Revenue Service is starting to feel the strain of 6,493 tax law changes since 1986. The worry is that more tinkering could di vert precious resources and slow the IRS’ transformation into a more taxpayer-friend ly agency. “You add all these things up and the IRS can’t handle it,” Rep. Amo Houghton, R-N.Y., chair of the House Ways and Means subcommittee that oversees the agency, said. Val Oveson, the IRS national taxpayer ad vocate, said rapid-fire changes make it diffi cult to interpret laws, draft forms, program already-overloaded computers and train em ployees. As a result, taxpayers have a hard er time understanding the rules and getting the right answers from the agency. “Failing to understand the law results in frustration at both ends,” Oveson told a con gressional committee recently. “Don’t change the tax laws so much.” But there is little sign that Congress and the White House are listening. Clinton, for example, proposed 28 new spe cific tax cuts in his budget for fiscal 2000, in cluding credits for care of disabled elderly and the newborn and 73 ways to raise revenue. “Failing to understand the law results in frustration at both ends. Don't change the tax laws so much." — Val Oveson IRS national taxpayer advocate Lawmakers from both parties have dozens of bills providing tax relief for almost every imaginable constituency. The IRS says about 20 percent of all bills introduced so far this year in the Republican- controlled Congress would have some im pact on the tax code. That compares with about 15 percent in 1993-94, the last time Democrats controlled the House and Senate. Last week. Republican Sens. Paul Coverdell of Georgia and Susan Collins of Maine introduced a proposal allowing teach ers to deduct up to $250 a year for their out- of-pocket classroom expenses, such as sup plies and instructional aids. For Coverdell, the bill has a key political purpose: Teacher unions oppose separate legislation he proposed to allow tax-free IRA- like accounts to pay private school costs, but many average teachers like the $250 deduc tion idea. “As long as we are confronted with the tax code we have, I will be among those try ing to find ways to relieve pressure on the working people of this country,” Coverdell said. “We just have to live with the fact that we have a very complicated tax code. ” Because these tax changes often are tar geted for political reasons at the middle class, they frequently are phased out for higher-in- come taxpayers. That means the IRS must pro duce a way for taxpayers to figure out if the break applies to them, and then taxpayers have to do the calculations. 2 government Website in vandalized by hacker ? / school: WASHINGTON (AP) — Computer hackers attacked two more govern ment sites on the Internet on Monday and left a taunting note promising to vandalize more federal computers be cause of a related FBI investigation. Hackers from different organiza tions defaced a Web page early Mon day within the Interior Department and a site run by a federal supercom puter laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho, claiming “it’s our turn to hit them where it hurts.” “These are the perils of open gov ernment,” Stephanie Hanna, an Interi or spokesperson, said. “We try to make as much of the materials of the Interi or Department as open and available as possible. The consequence of that is, those who choose to do damaging things can do that.” Last week, hackers claiming to be from another group defaced the Web site for the U.S. Senate, causing UK! ■The taken offline until the weekend. Mike \ The FBI also was forced tolBlley" down its own Internet site last wee: topics ter hackers launched an electron!ents j tack against it. It remained inacc school: ble Monday, along with the Websil public its National Infrastructure Protec exliibit Center, which helps investigatec and po puter crimes. ing wit Messages left at the attacked hood v suggest they were vandalized tore|KRon iate against what was said to be vices o FBI’s harassment of specific ha Brian, groups, including the group that be shpotir ed of breaking into the White H more a site last month. B'TIk The FBI confirmed it executed to wak search warrants last week inlexa what ve lated to an investigation into all up tha tions of computer intrusion, inclu enpe.” one search at the home of a promi®The hacker in Houston. chlldhc was pc schools Want to is.GGj£ Motivate The Class of 2003? Applications available April 26 - June 2 Interviews: June 3-4 Mandatory Training: June 5 Orientation Leader Applications are due June 2 in 314 YMCA For questions and applications please call 862-2746 or stop by 31 4 YMCA Email: aolp@stulife2.tamu.edu Web: http://stulife.tamu.edu/slo/aolp more reasons to sign up For our GRE You’ll love our course More than 94% of our students were recommended by a friend. Flexible schedules We offer two schedules. If you're pressed for time, you can choose the Fast Track, our shorter course schedule. For the most thorough review, take Total Prep, our six-week, 39-hour program. Classes start 6/19. Call now. 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