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“It Pays to Care
-o -
50th. Anniaal
NATIONAL ENGINEERING WEEK
February 20 - 26, 2000
Monday (2/21)
11:30 am -2 pm Free Zachry Lawn Lunch (Subway); Prof Dunking Booth
5:30 - 7:15 pm Society Scavenger Hunt@Research Park
Tuesday (2/22)
All Day (9-3)
6-11 pm
Art Gallery -- Zachry lobby
AlChE basketball tournament @ Rec
Wednesday (2/23)
10 am-2 pm
Professors Sharing Research in Zachry lobby
5:30 - 6:45 pm Tl Digital Light Processing demo
Thursday (2/24)
10 am - 3 pm
7-11 pm
Computer Games @ MSC; Bungee Run @ Rudder Fountain
Social & Pool/42 tournament @ The Rack Warehouse
Friday (2/25)
Last day Penny Wars - students manning tables in Zachry
Saturday (2/26)
Engineering Day at the Mall!
For more information call 847-8567 or check us out at sec.tamu.edu
sponsored by the Student Engineers' Council
L— L-\_ L L
Stop by the Coca-Cola Spring Break
Booth, grab a free cake and pick up
your Coca-Cola Club Card*for
South Padre Island!
With the Coca-Cola Club Card you could:
N\V)S\C - Win cool prizes.
Games' Enter special Coca-Cola
PRIZES beach contests.
_ - Receive special discounts
nlRTs anc j giveaways all over
yCOOZ'ES j S | anc |!
Wed., February 23,2000
Fish Pond -11 am to 2 pm
While supplies last
Coke, and OutBound
FRISBEE MEAL - Choice of Fresh Grilled
Hamburger OR Sandwich OR Salad OR Fried Chicken
FREE! Coke Classier* 8 oz. Bottle
Sponsored by Coca Cola« and Texas A&M University Department of Food Services
WORLD
Page 12
THE BATTALION
Tuesday, Februar;
Avalanches sweep througlf
Swiss, Italian Alpine slope
BOLZANO, Italy (AP)—Avalanches
swept down Alpine slopes at the height of
the ski season Monday, killing three skiers
in Italy and three in Switzerland.
In Italy, back-to-back avalanches in
the northern Venosta Valley trapped a
group of seven Germans and one Italian
skiing on an unauthorized route, alpine
rescue official Luigi Weger said.
Searchers recovered the bodies of two
women and one man and accounted for the
remaining five skiers, Weger said. At least
one was hospitalized with severe hy
pothermia. The valley is about 90 miles
from the northern Italian city of Bolzano.
In Switzerland, police blamed an
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avalanche near the popular Davos ski resort on a German
man and his son who skied into an area of deep snow despite
avalanche warnings.
The two set off a snowslide that covered the father and
two Swiss men skiing farther down the mountain on a pre
pared course, police said. Only the son survived.
Recent heavy snowfall followed by blue skies and sunshine
Monday had prompted avalanche alerts in Switzerland and Italy.
In central Switzerland, an avalanche next to a children’s
ski area caught an adult and three children at the Lasenberg
ski area near Erlenbach.
The adult and two of the children managed to climb
the snow by themselves and pulled a 6-year-old girltoa
Italian schools arc out this week for what is to
“white week,” freeing pupils for family ski trips.
Many Swiss youngsters also are given week-longs
vacations during the winter — most frequently in Feb
— to go skiing.
In 1999, alpine avalanches killed 12 people inlial;
36 in Switzerland, according to an Italian avalancheci
KGB to penetrate Coca crop
Russia’s Internet continue
MOSCOW (AP) — The successor
to the KGB is now also spying on the
Internet, raising fears that the infonna-
tion it collects could be used for black
mail and business espionage.
“The whole Federal Security Service
will be crying tomorrow over your love
letters,” warns one of the banners angry
Russian Web designers have posted on
the Internet.
Alexei Rokotyan, the Communica
tions Ministry’s electronic communi
cations department chief, denied that
the project was aimed at “total control
of the information that is transmitted
via the global network.”
“Security organs and special forces
have the right — and now the capabil
ity — to monitor private correspon
dence and tele-
to thrive
Russian hu
man-rights and
free-speech advo
cates say the se
curity service has
already forced
many of the coun
try’s 350 Internet
service providers
to install surveil
lance equipment.
“Most Internet
providers in
Moscow, includ
ing all the large
providers and
many in the
provinces,
opened a
"Most Internet
providers in
Moscow, including
all the large
providers and
many in the
provinces, have
opened a hole.
//
have
hole”
— Anatoly Levenchuk
Russian Internet expert
for security
agents to peep at traffic, said Anatoly
Levenchuk, a Russian Internet expert.
Like its counterparts in other coun
tries, the Federal Security Service may
argue it needs the monitoring system to
catch spies, terrorists and bandits, and
to combat black-market businesses and
capital flight.
The system has raised particular
alarm in Russia, where memories of
KGB surveillance and repression re
main fresh. And the abundance of se
cretly filmed, juicy videotapes and tran
scripts of telephone conversations in
Russia seems to justify the fear of black
mail by renegade security agents or oth
ers who get hold of the information.
Free-speech activists fear that the
Internet surveillance is evidence of the
security services’ resurgence under act
ing President Vladimir Putin, a 15-year
KGB veteran. They have already ac
cused him of chipping away at press
freedoms championed by former Pres
ident Boris Yeltsin.
Last week, a government official for
the first time publicly acknowledged
the existence of the Internet control
project, called the System of Operative
and Investigative Procedures or
SORM-2, its Russian acronym.
phone
conversations of
individual citi
zens according to
the law,” The
Moscow Times
daily quoted him
as saying.
Levenchuk
and others said
the Federal Secu
rity Service has
been quietly im
plementing the
system at least
since 1998.
“As you look
at all these Or
wellian things
you understand
RIO NFG RO, Colombia (API
In nearly a decade ofU.S.-spons®
fumigation, planes have spraya
hundreds of thousands ofga
herbicide on illicit drug crops in vas
expanses of Colombia’s highland
and rainforests.
Drug cultivation in the world’sNn
I cocaine-producing nation isatarecoit
high and climbing. Crop yields are also
improving as traffickers pk more po
tent strains of coca tuid opium poppy, (lie
sources of cocaine and herck
The stubbornness of the p)*'
seems matched only by the dew©
tion ol'U.S. and Colombian officials
continue the chemical counterattack.
As President Andres Pasta 1
awaits action in theU.S.Congresson
$1.6 billion aid package that wo«
Me
o;
fund an accelerated spraying effort.when he loci
estimates show coca cultivation upt McCain
20 to 30 percent last year. Since l^ a mav erick o
it’s coming — total control, total sur
veillance,” Levenchuk told a round
table held in St. Petersburg.
Federal Security Service officials
apparently view the steps simply as an
extension of SORM regulations enact
ed in the mid-1990s, which allow secu
rity agents with a warrant to tap tele
phones and Internet traffic.
At a series of meetings with Inter
net providers in 1998, security service
officials described a system that
would involve a box installed in
providers’ computers that would route
electronic traffic to the local security
service headquarters through a high
speed link.
The project still seems a far cry from
Echelon, a high-tech spying network
which, according to a European Parlia
ment report, is coordinated by the U.S.
National Security Agency and involves
“routine and indiscriminate” monitor
ing of electronic communications
around the world.
Russia’s Internet freedom activists
are still raising the alarm. Levenchuk’s
www.libertarium.ru site is filled with
accounts from mostly provincial
providers that say they were forced to
install SORM-2 equipment.
fact, it show s
currently inh
opportunist -
McCain is e\
During hi
it has more than doubled, according 1
the Colombian and U.S. figures.
Pastrana, who expressed sen*
reservations about fumigation’s eft
liveness during his first months in
lice, has toned down the criticisms 1 ^ ^ ,
now welcomes the U.S. assistant;.
“If anyone has been tough on®
trafficking it’s me,” hetoldTheM*
ciated Press earlier this month.
Colombian and U.S. official!®
eluding White i louse drug czarB®
McCaffrey, who arrives Tuesday
three-day visit, argue that drugefl ^ ava l liaison
would be expanding even morefe*
ly if there wasn't any attempt tote
their proliferation.
Even a recent effort to shouts
the spraying effort ended up
lighting the many questions sark
ing it, including its distressing inf
on this Andean nation’s diverse*
fragile ecosystem.
Flying with anti-narcoticspofc
an opium poppy field in the soil
western state of Huila, the vie"
the Bell 212 helicopter windowis j
of huge scars in the forests, of vat
denuded by clear-cutting.
“That’s the ecological crime
narcos,” national police spokesp
Carlos Perdomo says, gesturing®
deforested ridges around Rio NT
nec
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Sell
T e
:
Health Professions
Symposium
Free! Meet over 60 representatives from
Medical, Dental, Physician Assistant,
Physical Therapy, Nursing, and Other
Health Professions Programs from around
the world!
MSC Flagroowtt
February 22
10:30-2:30
Alpha Epsilon Delta Beta Beta Beta
Biomedical Science Assoc. Genetics Society
Aficrobiology Society PreDental Society
PreMedical Society American Medical Student Assoc-
Multicultural Assoc. Of PreHealth Aggies
Texas A&M University
Executive Council of Health Organizations
exas, I
er stat
quirin
get certain g]
able to contii
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for scholarsh
lobe a clear
and most pe<
agree that if:
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