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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 2002)
Nation & world briefing Feds file charges in sniper shootings Eric Lichtblau and Jeffrey Gettleman New York Times WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors filed a 20-count complaint in Greenbelt, Md., on Tuesday against the adult suspect in the Washington-area sniper shootings. Some of the charges against John Allen Muhammad, 41 — discharging a firearm as part of an extortion scheme in the deaths of seven people in Maryland — make him eligi ble for the death penalty. The complaint in U.S. District Court did not name the other suspect, John Lee Malvo, 17. A juvenile can be charged with a federal capital offense but cannot be executed. Officials are barred from discussing any charges against a juvenile and any charges would likely be brought under seal. After the announcement of Tuesday’s filing, Attorney General John Ashcroft said: “There are already people who are saying that they don’t think the ultimate penalties ought to be available, whether they are editorialists or others who don’t believe in the death penalty. “I believe that the ultimate sanction ought to be available here.” The action followed the filing of murder charges by prosecutors in Virginia on Mon day against the two suspects, which came as law enforcement officials in suburban Mary land, the area with the most victims, con ceded that they would most likely lose con trol of the case. Muhammad, an Army veteran, and Malvo now face charges in six jurisdictions in the sniper attacks that claimed 10 lives in the Washington area. Since the two were arrested on Oct. 24, one question has been which ju risdiction would try them first. A Justice Department official said federal prosecutors would be able to build the strongest case by stringing together all the shootings in one trial. Federal prosecutors charged Muhammad with violating the anti-extortion Hobbs Act, alleging that he tried to extract a $10 mil lion ransom in exchange for ending the killings. Bush signs broad election-reform measure William E. Gibson South Florida Sun-Sentinel (KRT) WASHINGTON — President Bush signed a sweeping election-re form bill into law on Tuesday, near ly two years after the calamitous 2000 election that brought him to the White House. The law, if fully funded by Con gress, will bring more than 8170 mil lion to Florida over the next few years to help the state and counties meet new national election stan dards, congressional staffers told Florida Secretary of State Jim Smith’s office on Tuesday. Florida also can compete for additional grants, including a portion of $100 million established to help states provide access for disabled voters. “Counties will be reimbursed for a lot of their outlays in buying (new voting) equipment,” Smith said on Tuesday between visits with county supervisors of elections. “For the fu ture, there’s no question a lot of that money will be used for poll worker training and voter education.” In all, the law provides authority to spend $3.86 billion over fiscal years 2003 to 2006, most of it for states to replace outmoded voting machines, train poll workers and help meet fed eral standards. Congress must still ap propriate this money year by year, a high priority for election reformers and state officials. States are required to set up a voter database, ensure access for the disabled and help soldiers over seas cast absentee ballots. States and localities are also required to allow voters to cast “provisional” ballots if their voting registration is in question. The landmark legislation, called the Help America Vote Act, was inspired by mass confusion at the polls and five weeks of legal wrangling in Florida two years ago. A compromise leading to fi nal passage in Congress was prompt ed by Florida’s primary in September, when some polls were closed for hours and some poll workers had trouble op erating new machines. The signing came one week before the midterm congressional elec tions, but its provisions do not apply until next year. © 2002 South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. Scientists virtually touch each other via Internet Chris O'Brien Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT) SAN JOSE, Calif. — The world got a little smaller Tuesday after scien tists reached around the globe via the Internet and touched. Or rather, the scientists — in Lon don, Boston, and Los Angeles — picked up a virtual cube on a com puter screen at the same time and pushed it around. The scientists, holding robotic arms, could feel the force being exerted by the others as well as the texture of the cube. Though computers have been able to transmit such sensations in close quarters for several years, the dis tance between the scientists was a new milestone that they hope will eventually lead to new collaborative applications in telemedicine, educa tion and art. “I think the most important appli cations are the ones we don’t know yet,” said Mandayam Srinivasan, di rector of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Touch Lab and leader of the MIT team that developed the technology. “When Alexander Gra ham Bell invented the telephone, he didn’t see all the possibilities.” The breakthrough actually oc curred in May and was detailed in a paper presented Oct. 9 in Portugal at the conference called PRES ENCE 2002: The 5th Annual Inter national Workshop on Presence. Tuesday marked the first public demonstration. By adding a sense of touch, re searchers hope to improve the expe rience of various virtual environ ments, which are usually limited to sight and sound. The field of re search involving touch is referred to as “haptics.” The robotic arm and the software have been commercially available for several years. But the teams al tered the software so the program could be used across the Internet. Despite the breakthrough, re searchers said they were well aware of the limitations. The arms have to be moved very slowly because the transmission of signals across the Internet can often be slow and jumpy. Srinivasan said re searchers will be focused on improv ing the network performance, the pro cessing speed of the computers, and the software to fine tune their work. “As the software becomes more so phisticated and computers become faster, we can have widespread virtual environments where we interact more naturally,” Srinivasan said. © 2002, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.). Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. ROCK MUSIC MIXED BY DJ-KAMAKAZI ALL NITE LONG! 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