Friday, April 16, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 9
Nation/World
NATO continues Kosovo air strikes
The Associated Press
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — A day after its bombs hit a convoy of refugees in Kosovo, NATO pressed ahead with its air camp yesterday, hitting military barracks, TV transmitters and bridges
throughout Yugoslavia
NATO expressed deep regret about the "tragic accident," saying its planes had been targeting Serb forces when they struck a column of ethnic Albanians fleeing the province.
Milosevic: Refuses to bow to NATO's bombing campaign
The bombing Wednesday left refugees' bodies dismembered and burned on a Kosovo road.
Serb forces, meanwhile, lobbed artillery shells over the border into northern Albania in a running battle with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. International observers said yesterday that five KLA fighters had been killed in the past 24 hours.
Some mortars landed close to Albania's border checkpoint at
Morini, where international aid workers were operating and refugees were passing through, said monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which watches the border.
Thousands of ethnic Albanians crossed over into Macedonia and Albania on yesterday, fleeing what they described as a methodical Serb push to empty towns and villages in Kosovo.
Yugoslavia renewed its denunciation of the attack on the convoy.
"This is the worst picture of a humanitarian catastrophe brought on by the NATO bombings," Foreign Ministry spokesman Nebojsa Vujovic said.
In Dijakovica (jah-koh-VEET-sah), the main town nearest the attack, an investigative judge said 69 bodies, mostly women, children and elderly, had been identified so far.
But there were additional charred bodies and body parts, making a precise body count difficult, said the judge, Milenko Momclovic.
Sixteen-year-old Teuta Sulja told reporters on an official Yugoslav-organized trip to the strike site that seven people were killed on the flatbed trailer she was riding on.
"I lost an uncle and a father and another relative," she said.
Principals ban Pokemon
Hot-selling cards causing problems at many schools
The Associated Press
Children in Topeka race for Pekemon figures that were released overhead from a plane. The Pokemon hawk has moved beyond the city-sponsored event and has led to popular trading-card game. Photo by Augustus Anthony Piazza/KANSAN
PELHAM, N.Y. — Pikachu, Jigglypupp and the other mutating monsters on the Pokemon juggernaut are running into roadblocks at grade schools around the country.
The hot-selling trading cards that capitalize on the Japanese cartoon phenomenon have been banned, restricted or discouraged by some principals in New York, New Jersey, Washington and elsewhere because they're distracting the early-reading set.
In Pelham, just north of New York City, all four grade schools have come down in some fashion on the cards, which have sold in the millions since they came out in January.
"They seem to be the latest craze and the children are beginning to become obsessed by them," said Gerard Finelli, the principal at Colonial school. Finelli has banned trading between pupils "because some of our younger kids were getting suckered out of their more valuable cards."
The cards are banned entirely at Prospect Hill school, where principal Richard Limato said. "We were having instances in which the children were losing them and then getting very upset."
Kevin Wolski, a second-grader at Colonial, has about 60 of the cards, a poster illustrating all 150 of the sometimes cuddy, sometimes scary monsters, a Pokemon comic book, a T-shirt and a pin. The 7-year-old doesn't bring his cards to school anymore because "the teachers don't like it and the principal said he'd better not catch us trading."
Besides, he said, wide-eyed, "Somebody was stoiling them!"
Like millions of other kids, Kevin jumps out of bed to watch the Pokemon cartoon each morning and can converse rapidly and astutely about the details of the trading-card game: about the gentle goldfish Magikarp, who can evolve into the powerful sea serpent Gyarados; about Psyduck, whose powers increase "if he has a really bad headache"; and about Kadabra, "who can hypnotize lightning bolts when his eyes light up."
Kevin's mother, Linda, has no objections to her son's new obsession, noting that the cards encourage kids to read, the game requires some arithmetic skills, and the cartoon takes pains to teach lessons, "like making fun of the vanity of the villain."
Kevin's father, Mike, likes that among the big-eyed human characters, "boys and girls are equally powerful."
The Pokemon phenomenon originated in japan three years ago as a Nintendo Game Boy game. Until recently, it was best-known for the cartoon episode that sent 700 Japanese viewers to hospitals when they reacted, some with epilepsy-like spasms, to a scene that flashed bright colors in rapid succession.
Man opens fire, kills two in Mormon church's library
The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — A disheveled man calmly walked into the Mormon church's renowned genealogical library during an international convention yesterday and methodically began shooting people with a small caliber handgun.
Before it was finished, the gunman had killed a church security officer and a library patron and wounded five others, including a police officer. He was shot by police and died later in an ambulance. Police knew of no motive.
"He didn't say anything. He just came in and started shooting people," said Margaret Kane, who was at the library when the man opened fire.
"He just looked intent on what he was doing. He came to do what he was doing," said Kane, who huddled under a desk in the first-floor research area as the man roamed the lobby and adjacent classrooms. "I did not hear him say anything. He didn't call out, no names or anything. He just kept his hand held out pointing at people."
Police Chief Ruben Ortega said police had identified the gunman, who had a local address, a wife and children and a prior criminal record, but it did not immediately release his name.
The library, the largest center for
genealogical research in the world, is directly across the street from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Salt Lake Temple and Tabernacle. It has more than 2 million rolls of microfilm copies of census and other records from more than 100 countries.
An international genealogical convention had attracted heavy traffic to the library, which has two floors below ground level and three above. About 250 people — patrons and employees — are in the building on a typical day.
Lyman Platt, a genealogist, said that the gunman entered the library and quickly fired off a dozen rounds.
"He came in the lobby and shot a lady in the head and two or three other men," Platt said.
The gunman, who had exchanged fire with police, was taken out of the building to an ambulance parked in front of a nearby restaurant about 90 minutes after the first shots were fired.
Paramedics at first believed he might be wired with an explosive and the area was evacuated. Police Sgt. Ken Hansen said the gunman died in the ambulance and was not carrying explosives.
The bomb squad was considering blowing up a truck parked three blocks away thought to belong to the gunman. Police believed it may have been booby-trapped.
Scientists discover evidence of additional solar system
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — The first evidence of the existence of another solar system somewhat like our own was reported yesterday.
The discovery indicates that the Milky Way, which contains about 200 billion stars, probably has numerous planetary systems, San Francisco State University researchers said in announcing the find.
Astronomers knew one planet was circulating around Upsilon Andromedae, 44 light years from Earth. But after studying 107 stars for 11 years at the Lick Observatory near San Jose, Calif., scientists said evidence of two additional planets has been spotted. The discovery would mean that for the first time, a true solar system — with multiple planets — had been located
"It implies that planets can form more easily than we ever imagined, and that our Milky Way is teeming with planetary systems," said Debra Fischer, one of the researchers.
sions, astronomers can calculate back-and- forth shifts in the ultraviolet wavelengths. A larger wobble indicates the orbiting planet is large.
The planets were discovered using a method that measures their gravitational pull on their star, not by direct observation. Planets' gravity tugs on their stars, causing them to wobble slightly. By examining the star's ultraviolet light transmis-
Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and at the High-Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colo., independently identified the two new planets.
The innermost of the three planets has at least 75 percent of the mass of Jupiter and is very close to its sun, orbiting once every 4.6 days. The middle planet is twice Jupiter's mass and orbits the star every 242 days from a location about as far as Venus from the sun. The outer planet has the mass of four Jupiters and orbits its star every 31/2 to 4 years. It is more than twice as far from its star as Earth is from the sun.
No theory predicted that so many huge planets would form around a star, said astronomer Geoffrey Marcy, a member of the discovery team.
"I am mystified at how such a system of Jupiter-like planets might have been created," he said. "This will shake up the theory of planet formation."
Alex Wolszczan, an astronomy professor at Penn State University, called the discovery an important step toward understanding the cosmos.
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