2 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, September 8, 2000
NATION WORLD
Police find Colombian drug sub
FACATATIVA, Colombia (AP) - In a scheme
worthy of Jules Verne that awed even veteran naval
officers, Colombian drug traffickers were building a
sophisticated submarine to smuggle cocaine, reported-
ly with help from American and Russian criminals.
Police stumbled upon the half-built submarine
Wednesday night in a warehouse outside the capital,
Bogota - 7,500 feet up in the Andes mountains and
210 miles from any port.
Even by smugglers' innovation standards, this was
off the charts - Verne could have called it "20,000
Kilos Under the Sea."
The 100-foot submarine could have crossed an
ocean, surfaced off Miami or other coastal cities and
surreptitiously unloaded its drug cargo.
"In the 30 some-odd years I have been in law
enforcement I have never seen anything like this," Leo
Arreguin, the chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration in Colombia, said yesterday.
"This is huge,' Arreguin said. "We're talking about
being able to load up to 200 tons of cocaine in this
submarine." However, other officials put the cargo
capacity much lower, but they also it could carry at
least several tons:
Top officials flocked to the warehouse yesterday to
marvel at the lengths that Colombian drug traffickers,
who supply more than 80 percent of the world's
cocaine and a rising share of its heroin, go to export
their illicit products.
Police were led to the find by suspicious area resi-
dents, who had seen Americans hanging around the
warehouse, located in a cow pasture off a highway
near the suburb of Facatativa.
ACROSS THE NATION
Superstores limit sales of violent videos
WASHINGTON -- Young people itching to wreak virtual havoc with an Uzi
via their Playstation will have to bring along a parent if they want to buy a vio-
lent video game from some major retailers.
Kmart announced yesterday it will refuse sale of mature-rated games to any-
one under 17, using a barcode scanner that will prompt cashiers to ask for ider
fication from youths.
After Kmart's news conference in Washington, Wal-Mart announced it would
enact the same policy. In a letter last month to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the pres-
ident of Toys R Us said the practice is already in place at his company's stores.
Sessions applauded the move, but said he would prefer that retailers stop sell-
ing mature-rated games, as Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck and Co.
already have done.
But Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, who started the campaign against violent
video games in April and got members of Congress on board, said Kmart is doing
exactly what he asked of retailers: Remove the games from the hands of children.
"America is starting to realize that if we bombard our children with images of
murder, there may be a price to pay later," Ryan said.
Games rated "M"for mature by the video game industry should not be sold
buyers under 17, Ryan said. Many of those games put playes in a killer's role,
often showing bloody body parts and gruesome deaths.
National
goe .
debt Clock
goes dark
NEW YORK (AP) - Call it a
sign of the times.
The National Debt Clock, an
electronic billboard near Times
Square that has recorded the
nation's once-skyrocketing debt sec-
ond by second for the past decade,
was switched off yesterday, a testa-
ment to big budget surpluses and a
renewed sense of fiscal responsibil-
ity in Washington.
The plug was pulled on the birth-
day of New York real estate develop-
er Seymour Durst, the man who
invented and bankrolled the clock.
Douglas Durst, now president of
his father's business, said the clock's
time had come, what with the nation-
al debt at nearly $5.7 trillion and
dropping.
"It was developed, erected and
maintained by my father to focus
attention on the soaring national
debt," he said, "and it has served its
function."
The elder Durst put up the odome-
ter-like sign in 1989. Often, the debt
climbed so fast that the last several
digits were just a blur.
The clock had to be turned off for
a few months in the mid-'90s when
the debt was increasing so fast it
crashed the computer that calculates
it.
"I always used to look at it and
watch the numbers churning for-
ward. It was a little scary," said Jen-
nifer Erday, a law firm employee
who craned her neck to watch as the
clock was turned off.
Yesterday, the numbers moved
slowly - and downward. The
national debt has actually decreased
since the beginning of the year, what
with budget surpluses and the first
buybacks of government debt in 70
years.
The government has said that the
entire S3.6 trillion of the national
debt held by the public could be
wiped out by 2013 under current
projections for budget surpluses.
"Today, we reached a symbolic
moment in the improvement of our
nation's fiscal situation," President
Clinton said in a statement. "The
Debt Clock was a constant reminder
of the enormous challenge we
faced."
In its last moments, the sign read:
"Our national debt:
S5,676,989,904,887. Your family
share: 573,733."
CREATIVE
Continued from Page 1
loft the beds because of a slant in
the ceiling.
Ray uses banana boxes as storage
space in her closet and reserves the
space under her bed for clothes.
"My laundry basket is on top of
the microwave. We hang stuff from
everywhere. There's stuff all over
the floor. It's quite messy," she said.
Ray said the walls are the only
area of her room that is bare.
"We're a little lacking in the dec-
orations. Our room resembles a
prison cell," she said.
Hanging up posters and Christ-
mas lights was not a priority for
LSA freshman Ralph Dilisio, a res-
ident of West Quad.
"Decorating was the last thing I
thought about," said Dilisio, whose
wall is adorned with a "Just in Case
You Need an Excuse to Party"
poster and bits of cardboard cov-
ered with friends' phone numbers.
Dilisio's floor is taken care of
though. He pieced together a carpet
from scraps he found in his base-
ment, which happened to match a
friend's dorm carpet from last year.
"The color's really close, but
they're different materials," he said.
LSA freshman Matt Castle was
lucky that he knew his three other
roommates for their quad in Mary
Marklev Residence Hall.
MP3.com to go back
online despite suit
LOS ANGELES - MP3.com will
reactivate its embattled online music
service despite an ongoing copyright
infringement tussle with Universal
Music Group and the recording
industry.
The company's chief executive
officer, Michael Robertson, said the
My.Mp3.com service would be
turned on sometime in the next few
weeks, giving members access to
music stored on its computers in San
Diego.
To access their music over the
Internet, members must first prove
they paid for the recording by briefly
inserting a compact disc into a com-
puter's CD-ROM drive.
It was this service that first landed
the company in court, accused by the
five major record labels and the
Recording Industry Association of
America with illegally storing thou-
sands of CDs and intentionally vio-
lating copyrights.
M P3.com has reached out-of-
court settlements and signed licens-
ing agreements with four of the
five major record labels, but con-
tinues to hold it has done nothing
wrong.
"Letting people listen to the'r
own CD collection is a fair usi
Robertson said yesterday.
Moving men bound
for space station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -
They're cable guys, movers, plumbers,
electricians and mechanics all rolled
into a single space station team.
Seven astronauts and cosmona
are scheduled to lift off on a flight
the international space station today to
install a toilet, set up a treadmill, lay
cable and otherwise "turn this house
into a home." Atlantis' I1-day voyage
will be the first shuttle flight in alniost
four months and the start of what
NASA hopes will be a rapid-fire
series of missions to the space station.
"Very shortly, the station's going to
come to life," said program mana*
Tommy Holloway.
A~ouN THEWORL
French fuel protests
halt transportation
PARIS - Drivers hunted for the
last drops of gasoline, school buses
shut down routes and car rental agen-
cies turned away customers yesterday
as a crippling nationwide protest by
French truckers over high fuel prices
entered its fourth day.
Many gas stations have been forced
to hang "empty" signs after truckers
sealed off the roads to nearly 100 of
the country's oil refineries and fuel
depots. After Britain, France has the
highest gas taxes in the 15-nation
European Union.
Truckers say the price of diesel fuel
in France has risen by 40 percent in
the past year to S2.84 a gallon com-
pared to an average of S1.58 a gallon
in the United States.
France has the second highest fuel
prices in the European Union; about
75 percent of the cost of unleaded
gasoline is tax.
Some drivers went to great lengths
to find fuel. At a Shell station in Paris
yesterday, businessmanLouis Cheva-
lier filled two plastic containers with
gasoline as a favor for a colleague vis-
iting from the central city of To.
where fuel is scarce.
"He's taking them back with him on
the train tonight," Chevalier said.
The Carrefour shopping chain said
80 percent of its gas stations outside
Paris faced shortages.
UN ends relief effort
in West Timor
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Fearing
more attacks following the mob killing
of three foreign aid workers, the United
Nations evacuated its remaining relief
staff from West Timor yesterday, leav-
ing about 90,000 refugees without
international assistance.
The Indonesian government, pledg-
ing to assert control in the troubled
region, said 15 people had been
arrested in Wednesday's slayings of
the aid workers.
- Compiled from Daily' wire reports.
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