The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, August 02, 2001, Image 1

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    Nay, August I
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August 2, 2001
Volume 107 ~ Issue 182
8 pages
News in Brief
VATw Baitaws
along with
-heerleader
Jesday.
nporary emplc
ed notice of the
Campus
Aggie to become
Bolivian president
Jorge F. Quiroga, a Class of
'81 industrial engineering
graduate, will be formally in
stalled as president of Bolivia
and the world's first Aggie chief
of state.
After graduating from
A&M, Quiroga returned to his
native country and quickly rose
through the political ranks. By
1992, he was named minister
of finance, and five years later
was elected as Bolivia's
youngest vice president at the
age of 37.
Quirogo was followed to
A&M by two younger brothers.
State
Day-care worker
pleads guilty to
child molestation
DALLAS (AP) — A former
Catholic church day-care work
er charged with abusing 11
. t girls pleaded guilty Wednesday
ling SOOH [ to 17 counts of sexual molesta
tion, receiving a life sentence.
Julio A. Marcos was accused
of molesting girls in his care
, rr , mn from 1998 to late 2000 at the
A/iii h ^ 1 St. Pius X Catholic Church day-
vi 11 be on stof I 7
™ care program.
Some of the children were
abused several times, which
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added to the charges against
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din a tor Mils
l^reat, and.
His trial was scheduled to
begin Monday, but new evi
dence prompted Marcos to ac
cept a plea offer, said lead pros
ecutor Patricia Hogue.
Marcos pleaded guilty to
two counts of aggravated sex
ual assault of a child. He re-
odMeck aAMeAetm and a 60-year
prison term.
He also pleaded guilty to
seven counts of indecency with
acMd by contact, receiving six
19-year sentences and one 1 0-
year term.
In addition, Marcos plead-
guy for the ed guilty to eight counts of in-
Babers) is decency with a child by expo-
; sure, receiving eight five-year
team, Gleni : P r 'son terms.
e’s up hen,
~d, and learn-
If we keep!
1 stay healthy;
Death row inmate's
attorney claims
evidence tampering
LUBBOCK (AP) — An attor
ney for a Lubbock man on
death row claims a former dis-
a^ainst suet] fhet attorney altered a record
ed telephone conversation
that was entered as evidence
in the inmate's appeal.
Attorney Alex Calhoun of
Austin, who represents Mack
Oran Hill, said the altered evi
dence casts doubt on the
credibility of former District
Attorney Travis Ware.
Ware denied the allega
tions and said such claims are
frivolous and commonplace in
llth-hour appeals.
Hill was set to die by lethal
injection Aug. 8 for killing and
robbing 43-year-old Donald F.
Johnson of Lubbock in 1987.
Hill shot Johnson, then ce
mented his body inside a bar-
; rel and dumped it in a lake.
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Wright verbally commits
to men's basketball team
Mark Passwaters
The Battalion
Head Coach Melvin Watkins and the
Texas A&M basketball
program netted a ma
jor coup on Wednes
day, obtaining die ver
bal commitment of
Antoine Wriglit of
Lawrence Prep in
Groton, Mass. Wright,
a 6-foot 7-inch
guard/foward, is cur
rently ranked fifth on ESPN.com’s Tbp-
100 rising high school seniors.
WRIGHT
“I really like Coach Watkins, and I like
the confrence,” Wright said. “They’ve
got a really good point guard in Michael
Gardner, and I think 1 can help them do
a lot of things. I may be able to come in
and start right away.”
This summer, Wright has turned
heads with his performance in the
ABCD Tournament and last week’s Big
Time Tournament, held in Las Vegas.
“This’ summer I’ve been working hard,
trying to improve my game and going to
the ABCD and Big Time,” he said. “I’ve
been getting ready to be an Aggie.”
Some recuiting Websites had sug-
M
I just think that (A&tM)
is the best place for
me this summer.”
— Antoine Wright
basketball player
gested that the University of Arizona and
the University of Virginia (UVA) were
leading Wright’s list, but he said that
A&M had been the place he had wanted
to go from the beginning.
“I’ve been down there on an unofficial
Double dare challenge
STUART VILLANUEVA/THf Battalion
Cody Wager, a 10-year-old from College Station, is made their way through an obstacle course covered
hosed down by Kristin Leonard, a junior interdisi- with shaving cream, chocolate pudding and green
plinary studies major, after competing in the Double oatmeal. The event took place at Rock Prairie
Dare Challenge, an activity in which participants Elementary School in College Station Wednesday.
Outbreak of 'Code Red'
visit, and I really liked the college at
mosphere,” Wright said.
Wright said that UVA had made a
strong recruiting push, saying he had
“definitely” considered them. The other
schools that had attempted to sign Wright
included die University of Tennesse, the
University of Connecticut and the Uni
versity of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Wright said the University of Texas was
not among the list of finalists.
“I just think that (A&M) is the best
place for me this summer,” Wright said.
“They need one missing piece, and I
think I can be it.”
Conseco
denies
charges
Jason Bennyhoff
The Battalion
In response to a lawsuit filed
by the Texas attorney general’s
office Tuesday, Conseco Execu
tive Vice President Mark Lub
bers said that any violations took
pla<?e before Conseco acquired
the offending company.
The attorney general’s lawsuit
alleges that a company Conseco
acquired, ATL Life Insurance
Co., engaged in deceptive rate
practices.
Lubbers said ATL’s rate prac
tices were not economical, so
rate changes had to be made.
“Companies Have to have
premiums that will cover the
long run,” Lubbers said. “Pre
mium prices have to cover
claims. If they are not priced
correctly, you risk insolvency of
the company.”
Lubbers said Conseco sympa
thizes with the affected policy
holders and wants to bring an
end to the litigation in a way that
will positively affect them.
He says Conseco is one of
the leading insurance providers
in the country, and it intends to
live up to the responsibilities
that entails.
“Many of these customers
who were policyholders in this
See Conseco on Page 2.
not as severe as predicted
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
virus-like “Code Red” worm infect
ed computers around the world
Wednesday, although the outbreak
was not as severe as predicted.
“We're still watchful, but for the
first time, we’re hopeful as well,” said
Alan Paller, research director at the
SANS Institute, a computer se
curity think tank working with
the government to monitor the
Internet.
About 135,000 Internet-con
nected computers running Mi
crosoft’s NT or Windows 2000
.operating system, were infected
by Code Red late Wednesday af
ternoon, according to SANS data.
Although the rate of infection
doubled each hour early on, the
rate of increase gradually abated.
The Pentagon had to shut
down public access to many De
fense Department Websites
again, a week after it shut down
most military sites to protect
against Code Red.
“These prudent measures are
being taken to ensure DOD net
works remain protected and
available for use,” the Pentagon
said in a statement.
Unlike a computer virus, which
needs a person to help it spread, a
worm infects other computers on its
own. It does not affect most home
computers.
Officials worried that the outbreak
would be as crippling as Code Red’s
first appearance on July 19, in which
Worming through the Web
The “Code Red” worm — an intecting agent that, unlike a virus, does
not need a person to spread - slowed Internet traffic Wednesday,
but the feared catastrophic overload did not materialize.
Standard procedure
A user sends out requests to a Web server.
The receiving server transmits the requested
file back to the user.
User
Traffic jam
Searching for
vulnerable
computers, the worm
jams the Internet with
requests. It can also
go on the offensive,
sending junk data to
a specifc target.
Divide and
conquer
p A worm vyorks by
automatically
duplicating itself
onto other
computers. Each
duplicate in turn
attempts to find
more computers
to infect.
SOURCES: National Infrastntcture Protection Center AP wire reports Hassan Hodges/AP
over 250,000 systems were infected
in its first nine hours. As a result,
there were widespread slowdowns
and outages across the Internet.
This time, after Code Red
launched at 7 p.m. EDT, the worm
has had a much lower infection rate.
German, Lrench and British offi-
_ cials reported that Code Red’s im
pact was minimal.
“Lears that the worm would
have a potentially devastating ef
fect on the Internet seem to have
been unfounded,” said a state
ment from Britain’s Home Office,
the country’s top law enforcement
institution.
But foreign and American
computer experts continued to
warn that computer users should
download a software patch from
Microsoft to inoculate their sys
tems from the worm.
Web ite administrators run
ning ATicrosoft Windows NT and
2000 operating systems, along
with the Internet Information
Services software, are vulnerable
unless the patch is installed. Users
running Windows 95, 98 or Me
See Outbreak on Page 2.
Graduation
speakers
announced
Stuart Hutson
The Battalion
fexas Sen. Todd Staples will be the featured
speaker at the Texas A&M commencement cere
monies on Lriday, Aug. 10.
Staples represents 17 East
Texas Counties in the Third
Senatorial District.
He will address graduates in
agriculture and life sciences, ar
chitecture, business and gradu
ate school of business, veteri
nary medicine and the George staples
Bush School of Government
and Public Service.
Dr. Thomas R. Saving, professor of Econom
ics at Texas A&M,will be the
featured speaker at the Texas
A&M commencement cere
monies on Saturday, Aug. 11.
Saving serves as director of
the Private Enterprise Re
search Center at Texas A&M
and is a member of the Presi
dent’s Commission to
Strengthen Social Security.
He will address graduates in
education, engineering, geosciences, liberal arts,
medicine, and science.
SAVING