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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (May 24, 2000)
Book publishers take steps to electronic distribution 1NEW YORK (AP) — Three book publishers announced electronic distribution ventures on Tuesday, a sign the industry is getting serious about making books available digitally for per sonal computers and handheld devices. Random House Inc. made best selling author Michael Crichton’s novel “Timeline” available for free online at barnesandnoble.com but only to users of handheld comput ers with a Microsoft operating sys tem. Also teaming up with Microsoft is Simon & Schuster Inc., which saw about half a million down loads when it released a short sto ry by Stephen King online two months ago. On Tuesday, it re leased 15 Star Trek titles, saying the books would appeal to the “early adopters” of technology. Separately, Time Warner said it had formed an electronic publish ing division. It will solicit manu scripts for books and shorter pieces at a Web site that the com pany hopes to launch early next year. The site will also sell online versions of the books. Two recent developments are pushing the publishing industry to move toward online distribu tion, analysts say. One is the success of King’s electronic book, the first online release by a big-name author, which demonstrated there is a market for e-books. The second is the growing online exchange — and piracy — of music, made easy by file-sharing programs such as Napster. The new electronic books use encryption technology from Mi crosoft and Xerox aimed at pre venting copying and printing. fiffilllS I SJ? ■ v^V., tmmmm — ; .. Western Kentucky town hit by tornado Tuesday 2LEITCHFIELD, Ky. (AP) — A storm that spawned three tor nadoes ripped through this small western Kentucky town Tuesday, damaging homes and buildings, knocking out power and injuring at least 11 people. The midafternoon storm hop scotched across town, hitting an industrial park and residential neighborhoods. At least five facto ries sustained heavy damage. “Portions of buildings have been pretty well demolished,” said city public works director Darrell Harrell. The storm demolished one cor ner of a factory that produces office furniture, said William Thomason, mayor of this town of 6,500. Em ployees had about five minutes warning and reached shelter be fore the storm struck, he said. Elsewhere in town, the storm upended mobile homes, toppled trees and power lines and dam aged roofs on many houses. Web ticket seller refunds late or canceled flights 3 DALLAS (AP) — An Internet travel agency is hoping to gen erate ticket sales by offering par tial refunds to airline passengers whose flights are late or canceled, whose luggage gets lost or who don’t get the meal they wanted. The offer was announced Tues day by biztravel.com. It applies to flights on American, Continental, US Airways, British Airways and Air France. Continental and British Air are minority investors in biztravel. Biztravel promises $100 re funds for flights that arrive more than 30 minutes late, $200 for de lays of an hour or more, and full refunds for delays of more than two hours or flight-day cancella tions because of something other • than mechanical problems. It also promises smaller refunds for lost luggage, for seat assign ments that are not honored or if a passenger doesn’t get his choice of entree in first- or business class. Customers will have 24 hours to file by phone or over the Inter net for their refunds. Analysts called the promotion as a huge gamble. They wondered how the company will make money with a refund offer far more generous than those offered by the airlines themselves. Airlines rarely compensate trav elers for weather or traffic-control delays, though passengers who are bumped from a flight are some times given a free hotel room. “It’s a pretty bold move,” said Tom Parsons, editor of Best fares.com, an online discount travel agency. “When you get into the busy summer season and the airlines are packing those planes pretty full, all it takes is one little storm to put all kinds of delays throughout the system.” The man behind the promo tion, Hal Rosenbluth, is chief ex ecutive of Rosenbluth Interna tional, a $4.5 billion travel agency, which bought a majority interest in biztravel last summer. Up to 100 killed as ethnic fighting rages in Nigeria 4 LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Christians and Muslims clashed for a second day Tuesday in the northern city of Kaduna, burning homes and places of wor ship. Officials said the death toll climbed to 100 despite a heavy presence by security forces. After the second day of fighting in Kaduna, hundreds of residents fled south, carrying their belong ings in bundles on their heads. Others took refuge in police and army barracks as homes and places of worship were torched and went up in smoke, witnesses said. Kaduna State Governor Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi imposed an 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew in a bid to contain violence, and an uneasy calm returned to the city shortly before the curfew took effect. The fighting was a revival of bit ter religious bloodletting touched off in Kaduna in February by plans to implement Islamic law, or sharia, in some northern states. Up to 2,000 died in the earlier fighting, many of them in Kaduna. The clashes broke out Monday after some residents in a predomi nantly Christian neighborhood blamed Muslims for an earlier killing of a local man, police com missioner Mohammed Shehu said. Armed with clubs, stones and machetes, they attacked and burned homes of Muslims, who quickly launched reprisals. 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