Section A • Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
35.2
Tuesday, April 20, 1999
Refugees forced to stay in Kosovo
The Associated Press
BELGRADE. Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia slammed shut the main crossing point for ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing Kosovo, leaving uncertainty yesterday about the fate of the tens of thousands whom aid officials had believed were on their way to the border.
On the diplomatic front, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan scheduled a trip to Moscow next week to discuss the Kosovo conflict. President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin held a 45-minute telephone conversation on the crisis in the Balkans, their first talks since the air campaign began March 24. Russia opposes the NATO air strikes.
On the 26th day of the bombing, allied warplanes struck a government building in Serbia's second-largest city and a television transmitter in Kosovo. But NATO said its operations were limited by poor weather.
Despite continuing defiance by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his military forces in Kosovo, NATO's chief spokesman expressed confidence the strategy will pay off.
"Since when was a dictator defeated in 24 hours?" Jamie Shea said at the
Clinton: Spoke with Yeltsin for the first time since March.
NATO briefing in Brussels, Belgium "It took six years to defeat fascism in the middle of Europe in the 20th century. I think we can take two or three months to defeat President Milosevic."
The bombings aim to force Milosevic to accept a peace plan for Kosovo, a province in Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia.
Refugee traffic from Kosovo into Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro slowed to a trickle yesterday. The U.N. refugee agency said the Serbs apparently were turning back the refugees.
It was not immediately clear why the refugee flow out of Kosovo was halted, as it had been periodically in past days. The Yugoslav government made no statement on the matter.
Albanian soldiers swarmed around the Morini border station — the main entry point into Albania — and ordered reporters away. International monitors reported daytime shelling along the border, one day after
Yugoslavia broke off diplomatic relations with Albania.
The majority of Kosovo Albanians
The major who have fled or been forced out of the Serbian province have come to Albania — 365,000 of more than 600,000. Over the weekend, an estimated 40,000 either left Kosovo for neighboring territories or were at its borders, aid officials said.
The handful of refugees who
Yeltsin; Talked with Clinton about the crisis in the Balkans.
crossed into Macedonia yesterday said there were many more who had been turned back by Serb police.
FCC could issue licenses to low-tech radio stations
The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS - For five years Stephen Dunier was a radio pirate, pounding the airwaves in Berkeley. Calif., with garage rock music, political documentaries and programs by homeless people. Then the government's airwave police nabbed him, and Dunier's 50-watt FM station went silent.
Dunifer, 47, was operating "Radio Free Berkeley" without a license from the Federal Communications Commission. He knew it was illegal but felt the community needed an alternative voice. "It was a form of electronic civil disobedience," he said.
At a time when hundreds of radio stations nationwide try to operate without licenses—and as technology makes it easier to set up a station—the government is looking at ways to open the airwaves to more voices. The FCC proposed in January issuing very low-power licenses to help churches, schools and other community groups get legally on the air.
Many Republicans and the National Association of Broadcasters, meeting this week in Las Vegas, actively oppose the idea.
"We're very concerned that the FCC proposal may have the effect of legitimizing pirates," the NAB's president, Edward Fritts, said yesterday. The FCC has not decided whether pirates who have refused to shut down would be eligible for the new licenses.
In addition, the NAB believes the stations' signals could interfere with FM stations. Others fear that white-supremacists or other controversial groups could get low-power licenses.
Since 1997, the FCC has tracked down 430 pirate radio stations, ranging in power from 1 watt to 800 watt
"Many of them are just the average citizen wanting to serve their community," said the FCC's top point man on the issue, Richard Lee. "I was totally surprised. I expected — I won't save militants."
A 50-watt station like Dunifer's typically can reach listeners within a radius of about 21/2 miles.
Hillary Clinton takes NYC trip
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Hillary Rodham Clinton, edging closer to running for Senate, opened a campaign-style swing yesterday by declaring, "I love New York," as her
fledgling political operation combed the state for potential campaign workers.
"I'm obviously still considering and exploring and am very interested," Clinton said.
Yet she tried to minimize the political implications of the trip, which included talks about the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo and other traditional
Rodham Clinton: Her aides said that the trip had political implications
first-lady fare. The White House called the trip an official function, thus U.S. taxpayers picked up the tab.
"This is not an exploratory trip. This is a trip filled with events and occasions, some of which I agreed to do months ago." Clinton told reporters after urging private foundations to help ease the Kosovo refugee crisis.
Her aides, however, conceded the trip had political implications.
"I guess anytime we're up here, it's part of the (exploratory) process," said press secretary Marsha Berry. "She's thinking about this. I don't know when you turn it off and turn it on."
Friends and associates say Clinton appears to be leaning toward a Senate bid, though some believe she will forego the race at the last minute. Their assessments are based on clues from private conversations with her and the full-speed-ahead groundwork being laid by top political alce Harold Ickes.
The former deputy White House chief of staff has begun compiling lists of campaign operatives in the event she takes the plunge. He has secured commitments from some potential staff, said a source close to Clinton.
One longtime associate said Clinton told him two weeks ago that she intended to run but would not finalize her decision until June or July.
Clinton scheduled scores of New York stops yesterday, today and — after returning to Washington on tomorrow again Thursday, from Long Island to Niagara Falls. Yesterday's unusually crowded schedule contained seven stops, including the Columbia College Teachers' College, the Ukrainian Institute, the Jewish Child Care Association and a fund-raiser for Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y.
Court upholds law banning obscene e-mails
the Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A federal law aimed at limiting e-mail smut does not violate free-speech rights, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
That could be bad news for people who like to write dirty online and for the proprietors of annoy.com.
The court's unanimous decision, issued without an opinion, rejected a computer technology company's argument that one part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 threatens free-speech rights.
The law had been attacked by ApolloMedia Corp., a San Francisco-based firm that developed the annoy.com Web site to let people anonymously communicate their opinions to public officials by using language that some might consider indecent.
The challenged provision of the law makes it a crime to transmit a "communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy or indecent with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person." The provision applies to all e-mail, even messages sent from one friend or acquaintance to another.
A three-judge federal court upheld the law after interpreting it to ban only obscene material that gets no constitutional protection. The Supreme Court affirmed that ruling.
Not all sexually explicit language and pictures are obscene. Free-speech protections are lost only if the material appeals to prudent interests and depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and that determination is left to a jury applying contemporary community standards.
William Bennett Turner, ApolloMedia's lawyer, said yesterday's decision "makes you nervous ... to be liable" for some future e-mail content found by some other court elsewhere in the nation to have crossed the line between indecent and obscene.
While ApolloMedia's 1997 lawsuit was pending, the Supreme Court invalidated another provision of the Communications Decency Act. The justices in 1997 struck down Congress' effort to protect children from sexually explicit — but not legally obscene — material.
The invalidated provision had made it a crime to send any "obscene or indecent" material on the Internet knowing that it could be seen by someone under 18.
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