The Michigan Daily - Thursday, April 14, 1994-- 3 *Cops ready for busy summer on Belle Isle DETROIT (AP)-The tourist sea- son is under way on one of Michigan's most popular islands. Not pricey Drummond Island. Not storied Mackinac Island. Not remote Isle Royale. At least not for the thou- sands of visitors to Belle Isle. Most visitors to the island park in the Detroit River are young and from Detroit. Unlike the more famous is- lands, Belle Isle is close to home and costs little more than a few dollars' worth of gasoline. "Traffic is the biggest problem, but other than cruising, we really don't have a lot of problems with those kids," said police Cmdr. C.L. Logan, who oversees a precinct station on Belle Isle. The Strand is a hot spot for young people who know it as The Strip. "The girls sit on their cars, then people slow down to look at the girls and exchange phone numbers. Every- body who has a nice car or nice truck comes out to show it off," Logan said. The socializing becomesdisruptive, however, along Jefferson Avenue and the bridge connecting it to the island. "Sometimes they will stop at a light and just stay there, and all the cars will back up," said Sgt. Bernard Reed. "They all have on the same 'The girls sit on their cars, then people slow down to look at the girls and exchange phone numbers' S- C.L Logan Belle Isle police officer radio station. They get out of their cars and they dance. It's like a tailgate party." Police beef up Belle Isle patrols in the spring and summertto combat the snarled traffic and the cruising. Plainclothes officers on foot and mounted officers on horseback look for illegal activity as they scan the crowds. Parking isn't allowed after 11 p.m., so many people simply circle Belle Isle in their cars. When it gets so crowded that traffic backs up, police limit access or order all vehicles off the island. "The biggest problem is late in the afternoon when my residents are trying S to make their way home and they can't get through," said Sandra Najduk, man- ager of an apartment complex just east of the bridge. "The traffic coming off the island and going on to the island is sojammed up. ... On the weekends, if you're trying to get past the island, you're out of luck." Jerry Seman, who manages a JeffersonAvenue partystore, welcomes the traffic. "We wait for it," he said. Police have made no arrests in the Sunday night drive-by slaying of a 23-year-old Detroit man on the is- land. But they say such violence is rare. Tickets for illegal parking, block- ing traffic, underage drinking, loiter- ing, urinating in public and blasting music from cars are far more common than arrests for violent crimes, police said. "What we really try to focus on is the loitering and the parking because when this occurs, they tend to mingle, get in confrontations and start pulling guns," Officer Mack Stewart said. WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD Forging computer message no trouble, hacker illustrates MARK FRIEDMAN/Daily Light shines through the glass roof over Angell Hall Computing Center last night. 0" easing feaurs ofspirlig ifltion By JAMES M. NASH DAILY STAFF REPORTER The computer hacker who inter- cepted a University student's pass= word last week and then distributed a racist e-mail message actually had much simpler methods at his disposal. With relatively little technical knowledge, computer users can forge e-mail messages in the name of anyone - even University President James J. Duderstadt or President Clinton. So says Dave Schroeder, a Uni- versity Medical Center computer con- sultant who sent bogus e-mail mes- sages to The Michigan Daily in the names of the two presidents. Officials from the University's In- formation Technology Division (ITD) acknowledge the ease of grafting a new name onto an e-mail letter. But until new communication software replaces current versions, the security breach will likely remain open. "I could post thousands of mes- sages to Usenet as Daily. News@um.cc.umich.edu with no hacking' experience whatsoever," Schroeder wrote yesterday in an e- mail message. "Forging e-mail is a little more involved, but can be ac- complished by a few simple steps. "The victim's password, or any- thing else about their account, need not be even known by the person forging the mail," Schroeder added. In a phone interview yesterday, Schroeder said he sent the messages to shed light on a problem that has remained largely hidden. ITD officials disagree on how to alert users to the problem. Once people are aware of how easy it is to send e- mail in someone else's name, many computer users may choose to do so, some ITD officials argue. The solution lies in software pack- ages that are less prone to tampering; said Keri Gluski, the University's system projects coordinator. "We expect to move toward com- munication packages that have more secure (password) authentication," Gluski said. "Right now, it is very easy to send a message that at least superficially looks like it came from someone else." Many of the current communica- tion packages - such as Nuntius and Newswatcher - allow users to enter a new name in the "from" field, which identifies the sender. In many cases, ITD experts can trace the message to a specific computer. But some hackers can foil investi- gators and send messages that are impossible to trace. ITD officials said computer hack- ing is on the rise, coinciding with the end of the semester. According to ITD, students are more likely to send messages when they are under stress. Man' kils 2, then himself RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. (AP) - A man stormed into a fiber optics plant yesterday and opened fire with a 9 mm handgun, killing two former co-workers and wounding two others. The man later killed himself. "We looked out over the plant floor - we saw people just running at random. And it was just a pop, pop, pop. We never did see the guy," said Sid Gregory, an employee at Sumitomo Electric Fiber Optics Corp. Authorities evacuated the build- ing and spent more than six hours searching the grounds of the Japa- nese-owned plant before finding the killer's body behind cabinets on the top floor. WASHINGTON (AP) - Con- sumer prices rose moderately last month and Americans spent less than expected at stores, easing fears of spiraling infla- tion and an overheating economy. Helped by the smallest increase in health care costs in a decade, the Con- sumer Price Index increased 0.3 per- cent in March - matching February's rise, the Labor Department said yester- day. The Commerce Department re- ported that retail sales were up 0.4 per- cent last month, a figure economists said is a sign of healthy but not worri- some growth. Hours after the report, financial markets did not seem encouraged. Stock prices were lower in early afternoon trading after bonds failed to hang on to initial gains. Inflation has been mild for more than three years, the best stretch in three decades. The cost of living was up 2.7 percent last year, following a 2.9-per- cent rise in 1992 and 3.1 percent in 1991. But recent surging economic growth has sparked inflation fears and led the Federal Reserve to increase short-term interest rates. The Labor Department said in- creases in clothing prices and housing costs-primarily rent-accounted for about half of March's CPI upturn, which was generally in line with economists' predictions. Before February's 0.3-percent rise, the index had been unchanged in Janu- ary for the first time in more than four years. The annual inflation rate was up 2.5 percent for the first quarter of 1994, compared to 2.7 percent for the same period in 1993. When volatile food and energy costs are excluded, the index still rose 0.3 percent for March and just 2.9 percent from a year ago. The latest figures were on top of the government's reassuring report Tuesday that wholesale prices in- creased 0.2 percent in March and at a 3.9-percent annual rate for the first quarter of 1994. Serbs detain U.N. army observers; 2-month cease fire in Sarajevo broken SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herze- govina (AP) - Two days after com- ing under NATO attack, Bosnian Serbs lashed back yesterday, detain- ing U.N. military observers in the Gorazde area and cutting off natural gas to Sarajevo. Four rockets landed in the capital, shattering a two-month cease-fire. Russian special envoy Vitaly Churkin said the Serbs were ready to stop attacks on the besieged Muslim enclave of Gorazde. Two weeks of relentless Serb assaults on the en- clave 35 miles southeast of Sarajevo provoked NATO air strikes Sunday and Monday. Following the NATO air strikes, the Serbs suspended peace talks with the United Nations and threatened to shoot down NATO planes. Fighting has ebbed since Monday's raid, and international negotiators have pressed the warring sides to return to peace talks. The NATO allies said yesterday they were ready to strike again if Serbs resume shelling the enclave, which was designated a U.N. "safe haven" last year. Churkin met yesterday with Bosnian Serb leaders in Pale, a Serb- held suburb of Sarajevo. "I got assurances from the Bosnian Serb leadership that it was not in their intention to conduct offensive opera- tions in the Gorazde area or shell the town," he told reporters. "Of course they expect similar restraint from the other side." Serbs have consistently denied attacking Gorazde, despite reports of Serb offensives from U.N. observers. Churkin suggested any truce could be followed by a "political settlement ... if all sides exercise restraint." He did not say whether he was expressing a personal opinion or relaying Serb will- ingness to negotiate a settlement. The Serbs are more likely to ac- cept a proposal made by the Russians than anything U.N. negotiators put on the table. In Gorazde, Serbs were restricting the movements of 58 U.N. military observers, U.N. officials said yester- day. A handful of U.N. observers in northern Banja Luca have also been confined to their quarters, and the Two U.N. peacekeepers stand atop an armored vehicle outside Sarajevo yesterday. Serbs placed more restrictions on U.N. personnel including limiting their freedom of movement resulting from recent airstrikes in Gorazde. United Nations has lost communica- tion with some of them, officials said. In New York, U.N. official Joe Sills said the Serbs also continued to hold 11 French relief workers de- tained in their barracks outside Sarajevo since the weekend. A Dutch U.N. military observer and his interpreter, who were heading from the eastern enclave of Zepa to Sarajevo through Serb-held territory, were missing for a second day. U.N. spokesperson Maj. Rob Annink said the United Nations suspected they were being confined somewhere. Serbs also stopped U.N. convoys from passing through Serb territory to Sarajevo. No relief flights have arrived in Sarajevo since Sunday, said Peter Kessler, an official for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Zagreb, Croatia. Donor countries ap- pear reluctant to risk flights because of fears of Serb attacks. 1 Display staff thanks the following advertisers for their donations to our sales meetings: Group Meetings U Indian American Students As- sociation, Board Meeting, Michigan Union, Room 4202, 7 p.m. U Intervarsity Christian Fellow- ship, 1040 Dana Building,7 p.m. 0 Muslim Student Association, Masjid Building, 6 p.m. U Orthodox Christian Fellow- ship, Michigan Union, Room 2209, 7 p.m. U Saint Mary Student Parish, Education Commission, 331 Thompson, 7 p.m. SSociety of Women Engineers- Days, Student Activities Buiding, Room 3200, 4-6 p.m. " "The Future of Medicine, Medical Practice and Health Care Reform, Prof. Helen Smits, MCHC Auditorium, Mott Children's Hospital, 3p.m. Q Hebrew Table, downstairs, Cava Java, sponsored by the American Movement for Israel, 5 p.m.t 1 "Intellectual Elites and the Vi- cissitudes of 'Imagined Na- tion' in Poland," Andrzej Walicki, Lane Hall, Commons Room, 4 p.m. Q "The I ra " film hnwini and Harappan, Jeffrey Bonevich, Ruthven Museum, Room 2009, noon Student services Q 76-GUIDE, peer counseling phone line, call 76-GUIDE, 7 p.m.-8 a.m. Q Campus Information Center, 763-INFO; events info., 76- EVENT; film info., 763-FILM Q Health Insurance, International Center, Room 7, noon Q Free Tax Assistance, 3909 Michigan Union, 12-8 p.m. Q Nnrth Camnn Information I ::