The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, June 01, 1999, Image 6

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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
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