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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 12, 2001)
5 >ite| est ~ " s r? a T June 12, 2001 Volume 107 ~ Issue 153 6 pages News in Brief |—Campus pneral Wednesday r senior who died k'ercd overhead rta del Sol, at across the speal iaid: “No toint;:| to neoiibeJ| Houston flooding . No to the . . r , te climne ” K^emor information and op- f ,, i ' Hitions management major <>t Bush repres,®^ Carren w y as ki||ed Sat ^ r . e ? , ,? E ,T|at in the Houston floods. Adolto JimeaBi-^g circumstances sur- c ‘- oiinding Garren's death are )t but condemn-.jol yet known by The Battalion the Spanishtwhis parents, Joe and Cindy i the UnitedStatiMrren of Weatherford, could American troop lot be reached. Funeral servic- :s, he added. So* will be held for Garren cans are statit Wednesday at the the First ases in Spain, Methodist Church in h penalty is a'iip at ^ er d orc ^ ti-American se ■ State in, followingidL of a Spanish ci- Maintenance man more than i | rus h e d by elevator th row in their® Ran ANTONIO (AP) — A ou, Spain! Jc; l4-/ear-old maintenance ez said ashear was killed Monday after port. “Therea: \e was crushed by an elevator can describe vc n an office building, ran say is I’m >1; Police said James May went Spanish rightr n to the elevator shaft to in- a Florida jur ta ' ! some equipment and an itted Martini 'levatoraccidentallydescend- „io.„ d on top of him. He was h' L * 1 rushed between the elevator ngjuan(.arb nd the shaft the second government. I |oor door |evel po|jce sajd amards contn p 0 |j ce are investigating the ulant’s legal tees. | eat |-, as an accident, ally, demonstn: _ i Monday's sdOurney, Frampton ation of Time :hange concert to ronvictedinthi 5ene fj|. f or v i c ti ms bombing, and: new trial for Mu: HOUSTON (AP) — Tropical the black U S it:orm Allison's torrential rains enced to death ust were ver V inviting for oumeyand Peter Frampton. : :ihe artists, along with John Vaife, postponed the Hous- ■ on date of their Arrival 2001 I our to Aug. 22 from June 1 0 L 1 J.1 t the C.W. Pavilion. The *heduled concert will be a enefit for flood victims. | TI “Our hearts go out to the l VJ CT-JLleople of Houston who have »st their lives, loved ones and I ^ property," Journey gui- rrrist Neal Schon said. ^^^'^'■® , ' l pifhe first named storm of le 2001 Atlantic hurricane d liy flower boiupason hit Galveston and from her classm iutheast Texas on June 5. ervice, a hearseane!ground was soon saturat- y casket droveoffi leaving water no place to um Kyodo KT hut up as rain continued to id the funeralsofs :>und . P art ^ of the cit y tond were held in’ rou 9 h Sunday. , The storm killed at least 1 7 a Sunday. ;ople and caused up to prls and one bo\ : -qq m j||i on j n damage. •e killed, and 13o. pj ooc |jng a lso prompted and two tea- e Arena Theater in south- Eightvictimsinittest Houston to reschedule n serious conditionlesday's concert with come- steady recovery, kan Dennis Miller to June 28. Japan’s worst fit ice a deadly nerves Tokyo’s subways| and the latestinal al slashings inacoi as strict gun lawsJj d itself on a low cril *eports said Takufflf| th a history of niei - launched his hours before he v igated about a fightj hotel in Osaka, Japi trgest city, portedly had takenj ; daily dose of antii i before the alleged] estigators have seitf a cutter knife andat| veil as 300 unspeci rom Takuma’s ho 1 id. ; said he also wast ears ago on suspicio tranquilizers into 1 ichers at the element dicre he worked, a reports said he*] rged because he' mentally unsta” as sent to a hosp ! he was diagnosed hrenic and event l after treatment. INSIDE Aggielife * l Pt i 4 »»*»k If » tUlol » t aklnij up a lot of time, hfaltli> edtilUj altemiltl* €■» are available? • l’tiv(iiiit| tile limit« tn>e* pfopoeetl ijim \bovv bill in f rifUjf on f ujhti or will It help * a w IK t-% a:talion News Radio: :57 p.m. KAMU 90.9 ww.thebatt.com Snow cones ANDY HANCOCK/The Battalion Bryan Apperson, prepares a snow cone the lines are getting longer for for a customer. As the temperatures rise, Apperson, who runs a snow cone stand. — ■■ —— „ ■ ■ . .. - McVeigh's execution carried out TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — Stony-faced to the end, Tim othy McVeigh was put to death Monday without uttering a word. More than 600 miles away, those whose lives were shattered by his bomb watched the execution via a video camera, finding neither the apology they hoped to hear nor the suffering some wanted to see. McVeigh’s eyes rolled back, his lips turned slightly blue and his skin appeared jaundiced as he was pronounced dead at 8:14 a.m. EDT at the U.S. Penitentiary. In his last moments, his face was as blank as it was that April day six years ago when America first saw him escorted out of an Oklahoma jail. Instead of speaking, McVeigh released a handwritten copy of the 1875 poem “Invictus,” which concludes with the lines: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” The 3 3-year-old decorated Gulf War veteran was the first inmate executed by the U.S. government in 38 years. He was convicted of the April 19, 1995, bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, 19 of them children, and injured hundreds. To the nation, it was the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil. To Timothy McVeigh, plant ing a 7,000-pound truck bomb at a building filled with inno cent, people was a “legit tactic” for his one-man war against the government. In Oklahoma City, 232 sur vivors and victims’ relatives watched the execution on a closed-circuit TV broadcast, sent in a feed encrypted to guard against interception. McVeigh appeared to be looking into a small camera that had been in stalled overhead in his death chamber. McVeigh “just gave us that same glare that makes me think he got what he wanted,” said Karen Jones, whose 46-year- old husband, Larry, was killed in the Alfred P. Murrah Feder al Building. Kathleen Treanor, also at the broadcast, carried a photo of her 4-year-old daughter, Ashley Eckles, who died along with Treanor’s in-laws. “I thought of her every step of die way,” she said of her litde girl. “I needed to know in my heart that I was done with this man,” she added. ’’(But) I don’t think anything can bring me any peace.” Frances Cummins, whose husband, Richard, died in the bombing, said McVeigh’s head and shoulders took up the entire screen and he “never took his eyes off that camera.” See McVeigh on Page 6. Con artists targeting B Stuart Hutson The Battalion It was a rainy Friday night when a well-groomed man dressed in College Station Medical Center hospital scrubs knocked on my front door. The short, African-American man wiped the rain from his glasses as he hastily explained that his wife was in a Houston hospital about to give birth, and that he needed 20 or 30 dollars for gas so that he could drive his van to be with her.. He explained that his ATM card was not working and he was out of checks, but if I was good enough to lend him the money he would gladly pay it back as soon as he arrived back in town. To convince me, he produced a pic ture of his wife, and that was where his story fell apart. The picture was of a white, dark haired woman who, only a few weeks prior, had asked me for money to get to Houston to visit her husband who was hurt in a car accident. She was clearly not pregnant at the time and he did not appear to be badly hurt. Luckily, this con artist had come to the wrong house, and was sent on his way without so much as a dime, but police say that hundreds of Bryan-College Station residents fall victim to con i oh t’lrv i 2, 1111 m AKVOiVtl AiniNn mn Mosiiv lull 1 II iUlOPIT m MM Yl. ‘ieffifjlwiim m rwifi itifili Mi,-; mmuiH,...,,, I It I I-> ,i)i V artists every year. body’s willingness to help,” said Dan Jones, public information officer for the College Station Police Department. “These scams are popular in this area. “Unfortunately, they can take ad vantage of one of an Aggie’s best qualities. A&M students believe that they should help people who I are in trouble.” Jones said no statistics are avail able for these kind of scams because they can only be prosecuted if the per son can be proven to be “For cons like that, t he lying and because people sel- R U BENd!^Wa/T>« B/inai/ON person is playing off some- dom report them. CS area “Usually one of two things will hap pen,” Jones said. “Either the person will give them money and not suspect any thing, or die person won’t give any mon ey, so they don’t see the need to report it.” Jones said anyone randomly ap proached for money should be very sus picious of the situation, and should di rect the person to a local church or an organization like Twin City Mission which has procedures for aiding people in need of temporary help. “These places have specific mecha nisms in place to take care of the types of situations the people are claiming to be experiencing,” he said. “The thing to remember is to just be careful — you never know when a person might decide that their scam isn’t working and try to just rob you.” See Scams on Page 2. A&M to help future of cotton industry Elizabeth Raines The Battalion Twenty years ago, Texas A&M University revolution ized the cotton industry with Texas A&M agriculture engi neering faculty member Lam bert Wilkes’ invention of the Cotton Modular builder. Now with the help of an agri culture equipment company, Case IH, and its recent $35,000 donation, A&M will continue to aid the evolution of the cot ton industry. Case IH’s donation is one of many made in the past three years to the Endowed Chair in Cotton Engineering, Ginning and Mechanization, part of the Bright Matching Chair Program. “The Bright Matching Chair was established by Texas A&M President Dr. Ray Bowen as a way to create matching pro gram throughout the Universi ty,” said J. Warren Evans, assis tant to the vice chancellor for resource development in the Texas A&M College of Agricul ture and Life Sciences. “Cur rently, [the chair] is right at about $700,000, $200,000 over our initial [matching] goal.” The chair began in the Spring of 1998 with its first do nation coming from the Texas Cotton Ginning Association in April of 1998. To help make the $500,000 goal a reality, leaders from all segments of the cotton industry met in 1998 and formed the Cotton Industry Support Group which cam paigned to endow the chair. “The Texas Cotton Ginning Association started [the chair] out with $100,000 challenge to the rest of the industry to raise money,” said Ben Avant, execu tive director of Texas Food and Fiber and member of the chair volunteer committee and Aggie Class of’75. “Case IH’s signifi cant contribution of $35,000 [helped to make the goal] of $500,000 a reality. Evans said that the entire cotton industry has supported the chair. Later this fall an advisory committee will be selected from people throughout the cotton industry. Once selected, the committee will meet with faculty from the department of Agriculture Engineering to dis cuss the needs of the industry and choose someone to fill the Chair, who can work to meet those needs. “Cotton is very important to me both personally and profes sionally,” Avant said.“ I think it See Cotton on Page 2. Researcher develops terrorism Justin Smith The Battalion Timothy McVeigh was put to death Monday morning for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. This was an act of terrorism that if foreseen by authorities may not have taken the lives of 168 men, women and children. Kathryn Lucchese, a cultur al geographer who was recent ly awarded her doctorate from the College of Geosciences, has devised a tool that might aid in predicting terrorist activities. Lucchese’s tool is called the Terror Grid. The Terror Grid is a “three dimensional matrix based on site, situation and time,” she said. Each of these factors has two parts. The two parts of “site” are common place and cultur al monument. If a common predictor place is attacked and people are killed, people will be morally outraged. If a cultural monu ment is assaulted, but few peo ple were harmed, then people will feel a great cultural loss. “Time” indicates whether the area that was attacked was crowded or if it was deserted. Obviously, the more people present at an attack site, the higher the number of casual ties and fatalities. Finally, “situation” de scribes the accessibility of the area. If the site is very difficult to approach, then the attacker would be called “suicidal.” If the area is wide open and easy to reach, then the attack would be described as “cowardly.” Terrorism may be seen as a form of communicating one’s thoughts or beliefs. Jonathan Smith from the Department of See Terrorism on Page 2.