Monday, J t
July 3, 2001
Volume 107 ~ Issue 165
6 pages
News in Brief
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State
Newspaper carrier
shot while working
| DALLAS (AP) — A 40-year-
old newspaper carrier for The
Dallas Morning News was shot
- and killed while making deliv
eries early Sunday, police said.
Randall Clay Borders was fill-
png a newspaper box outside a
laundry in the Oak Cliff neigh-
orhood of Dallas when he
as shot in a parking lot.
Witnesses said the gunmen
fled the scene in a 1980s
brown or red Oldsmobile Cut
lass with tinted windows.
Investigators said the slay
ing may have been the result of
robbery. Newspaper officials
aid Borders often filled in on
wo routes but did not have a
regular delivery route.
Smoke from marsh
jfire shrouds bay
TEXAS CITY (AP) — Monday
.•losures'l g 0 t off to a smoky start on the
■western shore of Galveston Bay.
A lightning strike Sunday af
ternoon was blamed for ignit
ing a marsh fire that burned all
night and into Monday morn
ing on Goat Island in East Bay,
just north of the Bolivar Penin
sula, the National Weather Ser
vice said.
Smoke from the remote fire
is drifting west, shrouding the
western shores from Bayou
Vista and Texas City, north to
Dickinson, League City and
Clear Lake. Visibility also is re
duced in the Houston Ship
Channel.
The island is accessible only
by boat, officials said, so fire
fighters are going to have to let
the fire burn itself out. They
were hoping for help from
scattered showers and thun
derstorms predicted for the
area Monday afternoon.
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Napster goes offline
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) —
Napster's song-sharing service
'as offline Monday as it
worked to transform itself into
a music company for paying
customers.
Napster did not say when its
computer servers would come
back online, and it was not
clear exactly how the down
time related to Napster's
planned launch of a subscrip
tion service, promised for later
this summer.
The company has also been
upgrading its music-identifica
tion system to better comply
with court orders that it pre
vent unauthorized music
swapping.
Napster representatives did
not immediately return calls for
comment.
The service was sued by ma
jor record companies for copy
right infringement for allowing
computer users to swap songs
for free. As a result, it is trans
forming itself into a fee-based
system that will pay royalties to
the artists.
INSIDE
Battalion News Radio:
1:57 p.m. KAMU 90.9
www.thebatt.com
Men at work
BERNARDO GARZA/The Battalion
Alejandro Rocha coats newly-painted lines along George Bush Drive with high
way safety spheres, or small spherical shards of glass as Jose Mendoza paints
the lines. The glass acts as a reflective medium for driving at night.
Merchants
.- 4 .. . - -»•
upset about
construction
Elizabeth Raines
The Battalion
For John Raney, owner of the
Texas Aggie Bookstore and
member of the Northgate Mer
chants Association, the renova
tions currently taking place at
Northgate may be doing more
harm than good.
The city is currently renovat
ing Church Street, an action
that Raney said needs to be
done. The problem, he said, is
that along with the renovations
comes the removal of all the
short-term parking available on
Church Street.
“Short-term parking is the
life blood of retailers and we [the
retail merchants] are tremen
dously effected by the removal
of short-term parking,” Raney
said. “Our daily sales have al
ready greatly suffered by the re
moval of quick parking.”
Raney said that with the re
moval of short-term parking on
Church Street, the merchants
on Northgate will be surround
ed by three high-speed streets.
He said that when the mer
chants went to the city about the
situation five years ago, and were
told they would still make mon
ey from foot traffic by Texas
A&M students living on North-
side. Raney said this is not so.
“We don’t get as many people
walking across the street as we
did 25 years ago,” Raney said.
“Who wants to cross six lanes of
40 to 45 mile per hour traffic?”
Despite merchants’ com
plaints, Church Street will be
under construction for the next
four months. The city of Col
lege Station is renovating in sec
tions and hopes to have it com
pleted by Nov. 8.
The renovations have already
begun at the Wellborn Road in
tersection and will continue to
Church Street’s intersection
with College Main.
Although city representatives
could not immediately be
reached for comment regarding
the short-term parking situa
tion, Bob Mosely, engineer for
the city of College Station, said
there are many benefits from the
renovations.
“Church Street is the main
east-west artery through North-
gate,” Mosely said. “It should be
a nice improvement to the
Northgate area and improve the
traffic flow.”
Mosely said the city has been
able to complete the work
through federal community
development grant money.
The renovations include
repaving the 28-foot street and
6-foot sidewalks. The side
walks will also be colored and
stamped to look like brick.
See Road on Page 2.
Aggies to
Robin Lewis
The Battalion
The 2,300-mile trip from Chicago to Palm
Springs, Calif, may be a pleasant, cross
country trip to some, hut for the Texas A&M
Solar Power Motor Sports Team, it is a
chance to prove how bright they are — as
long as the sun stays bright too.
The team w ill enter Acala, a solar-powered
car named after the Japanese god of fire, in the
2001 American Solar Challenge on July 15.
Acala, designed by A&M engineering stu
dents, has a carbon-fiber body and is covered
with 2,640 solar cells that will propel the car
across the country.
The car is po wered only by the cells that
convert the energy from sunlight to elec
tricity. The pow r er is then delivered to the
batteries where the energy is stored for use
by the car.
“The maximum energy you can get from
the sun is 1,000 watts, and that’s about how
much it takes to run your hair dryer,” said
race solar car across U.S.
Dr. Dennis G. Waugaman, faculty advisor
for the team. “So you don’t have very much
power to glide this 700-pound car across
the country.”
He said this project is primarily for educa
tional purposes, although a lot of the students
dedicate their time because they find it fun to
be involved.
“This (project) is 99 percent students,”
Waugaman said.
Waugaman said the engineering depart
ment has incorporated this project into some
of their courses and students may even get
credit for their senior projects.
Although corporations and former stu
dents sponsor the team, Waugaman said rais
ing money has been the hardest part of this
$1 million project.
Waugaman also said it is a challenge to get
the car from one city to another, much less
cross-country without a breakdown.
See Solar on Page 2.
KRISTI HINES/Th£ Battalion
Mark Ellis, a recent graduate, works on putting the final touches on
the Solar Power Motor Sports Team's solar car, Acala. The team will
race the car in the 2001 American Solar Challenge, which begins on
july 1 5 in Chicago.
I ' . . ; •
Local officials oppose proposed
bombing range in South Texas
SARITA, Texas (.AP) — Local lead
ers and environmental groups on Mon
day urged Secretary of the Navy Gor
don England to end consideration of the
Laguna Madre area as a possible mili
tary bombing and tra ining site.
Kenedy County Commissioners vot
ed unanimously to oppose the idea after
hearing from Texas A&M professor
Timothy Fulbright, who has studied the
inland ecosystems for decades.
Fulbright told the commissioners
that the land was critical habitat for
wildlife.
He said 80 percent of all red-head
ducks in the Western Elemisphere win
ter in the area and 50 percent of all fish
caught along the Texas Coast originate
in the Laguna Madre.
The ecosystem is eve n more delicate
inland, Fulbright said, with grasses and
groves of mesquite trees the result of
long and careful tending.
He said disturbing the thin layer of
clay below the sand wou Id cause fauna
to disappear into the porous sand.
“It’s not that we don’t like the mili
tary,” said County Commissioner Tobin
Armstrong, a 7 7-year-old World War II
veteran. “We’re all patriots. We love this
country. I’ve been ranching it success
fully. There ain’t nothing you can do ex
cept raise livestock and support wildlife.”
Located in the middle of a sparsely
populated stretch of sandy coastal
plains, Sarita is the closest settlement to
It's not that we don't
like the military. We're
all patriots.”
— Tobin Armstrong
Kenedy County Commissioner
what 49-year-old civil engineer Patrick
Veteto, a Marine Corps veteran, has
suggested as a possible site for military
training.
The possibility of using 220,000 acres
just east of Sarita for practice bombing
is one plan being considered as an alter
native for training now done on Vieques
Island in Puerto Rico. That agreement
ends in May 2003.
The plan suggested for South Texas
would also have Navy troops use Padre
Island, a narrow barrier island that runs
along the coast, to practice amphibious
assault landings.
Navy officials hyve said it is too pre
liminary to comment on the plan.
Since news of the plan broke, the
public outcry along the coast has been
more substantial than anything in Arm
strong’s memory.
“There are more people today than I
have ever seen. There was not one per
son in favor,” Armstrong said. About
100 people attended the meeting.
Kenedy County’s population is
slightly more than 400.
Supporters are promoting it as an
economic development plan, said
County Judge J. A. Garcia Jr.
“Studies show it would have just the
adverse impact,” Garcia said. He said
practice bombing could harm the oil and
gas industry as well as the catde industry.
“There’s also eco-tourism, the recre
ation impact, which is tremendously
See Texas on Page 2.
Pieces of
spy plane
head home
WASHINGTON (AP) — Exactly
three months after the U.S. Navy EP-
3E spy plane made an emergency land
ing on China’s Hainan island, it began
returning in pieces to U.S. custody, of
ficials said Monday.
Parts of die dismantled aircraft were
flown aboard a Russian-designed cargo
plane to Kadena Air Base on the Japan
ese island of Okinawa on Sunday. The
cargo plane is to make a final flight with
the EP-3E’s stripped-down fuselage on
Wednesday U.S. Pacific Command
spokesman Maj. Sean Gibson said.
The EP-3E was part of an electronic
surveillance group based at Kadena. Its
return in pieces will mark an end to an
episode that put severe strain on the
United States-China relationship. Vice
President Dick Cheney said “the jury’s
out” on w hether the United States and
China can forge stronger bonds.
“We’re not enemies at this point,
See Plane on Page 2.