Effects of mysterious illness seen at UC-Berkeley
(U-WIRE) BERKELEY, Calif. – A University of California at Berkeley student was back in school Thursday after what he thought was a brush with a deadly virus. The student said she sat next to a man on a flight from Tokyo who thought he had contracted the deadly virus, UC-Berkeley officials said.
The student was kept in the plane for two hours, along with the other passengers, after it landed at San Jose International Airport Tuesday, said UC-Berkeley spokesperson Marie Felde.
Airport officials feared that some passengers had contracted the severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Several passengers on the American Airlines flight complained of symptoms similar to those of SARS sydrome, but none of them turned out to have the deadly virus.
-Daily Californian (U. California-Berkeley)
Students sued for sharing music with ‘mini-Napsters’
(U-WIRE) PHILADELPHIA – The Recording Industry Association of America filed lawsuits Thursday against four operators of music file-sharing programs on internal college and university campus networks.
All four operators of what the RIAA refers to as “local area Napster networks” are students. Two are from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one is from Princeton University and one is from Michigan Technological University.
Amy Weiss, spokeswoman for the RIAA, said that lawsuits are in part an attempt to demonstrate the organization’s firm stance on this issue, although suing students may seem like an extreme action.
“It’s unfortunate that we have come to this, but these sites are illegal, and we have to stop these mini-Napsters from popping up,” Weiss explained.
-The Daily Pennsylvania (U. Pennsylvania)
Experts say database hinders foreign students
(U-WIRE) CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Data loss, information misplacement and other technical flaws in a computerized international-student database have made the United States inhospitable to foreign students, experts testified at a congressional hearing Wednesday afternoon.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service implemented the Student Exchange Visitor Information System earlier this year in response to national security concerns following September 11 attacks. Three of the hijackers who carried out the attacks were in the country on expired student visas.
The database’s history of inefficiency threatens to deprive the nation of the valuable intellectual resources that many international students bring, President of the American Council on Education David Ward told the House Immigration Subcommittee.
Johnny N. Williams, interim director for immigration interior enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security, maintained that while SEVIS has had problems over the course of the past year, it provides a vital service to the nation in a time of security concerns.
-Harvard Crimson (Harvard U.)
Director of UCLA drug policy program convicted of running LSD lab
(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES – A former co-director of the University of California at Los Angeles Drug Policy Analysis Program was convicted Monday of running one of the largest LSD laboratories in history – out of an old missile silo.
William Leonard Pickard, who was employed at UCLA for nearly two years, and Clyde Apperson, his assistant, were convicted Monday of two counts each of conspiring to distribute and manufacture large amounts of LSD.
On Oct. 31, 2000, the Drug Enforcement Agency discovered an old missile silo in Kansas that had been used as an LSD lab. The lab had been taken apart and was packed up in storage boxes.
In the silo, agents found 90.86 pounds of LSD and 14 canisters of a chemical needed to produce LSD. The canisters were valued at more than $1 million.
-Daily Bruin (U. California-Los Angeles)
