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Sen. intros bill to collect Net
taxes

The three-year moratorium on new Internet taxes may end prematurely if a new bill is passed, levying a 5% retail excise tax on goods sold via the Internet and catalogs.

Introduced by Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) recently, the Sales Tax Safety and Teacher Funding Act would use the proceeds to fund teachers' salaries in elementary and secondary school, said Maury Lane, a spokesman for Hollings.

Hollings' proposed bill infringes on the Internet Tax Freedom Act, enacted into law last October. It imposed a three-year waiting period on state and local Internet taxes, and formed the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce to study Net-related taxes, tariffs and other issues.

But items that are bought through mail orders and the Internet have reduced the revenue for states and local merchants, Lane said. "We're in the middle of an education crisis," and the bill -- if it's passed -- "will no longer allow companies to skip taxes from where the product was bought," he added.

The bill is currently before the Senate Finance Committee. No date has been set for a hearing, Lane said.

LOSE THIS BAD JOKE ON THE 'NET!


Former NFL player DuBose
was shot in the back six times
, family says

SAN DIEGO (AP) - An autopsy of former NFL player Demetrius DuBose showed he was shot six times in the back during a confrontation with police last month, DuBose's family said Thursday.

DuBose, 28, a former linebacker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Notre Dame, was fatally shot July 24 by two officers who said he charged at them with a martial arts weapon he took from them. Officers said he resisted their attempts to question him as they investigated a burglary call in the neighborhood where he lived.

The family launched their own investigation and paid for private autopsies by two doctors after witnesses reported DuBose was shot in the back and noted other details that appeared to be inconsistent with the police report, said Brian Watkins, a lawyer for the family. DuBose was shot nine times, including three times in the chest, Watkins said. "You can imagine that this was devastating, that their son took nine bullets and then bled to death," he said.

Police chief David Bejarano declined to comment on the findings of the family's autopsy until an internal investigation is complete. The family's investigators are waiting for police to complete their investigation so they can review ballistics tests, which will help them determine whether the first shot was fired in the back, as witnesses have reported.

"The officers were approximately seven to 10 to 12 feet away," Watkins said. "They yelled for him to drop the (weapon) or get down or something of that sort. Immediately after that, they shot DuBose nine times." Preliminary findings of the family's investigation show DuBose was not lunging toward officers when the first shot was fired and reached for the nunchukas, a martial arts weapon, after it fell from an officer's holder. Also, police were investigating a call of trespassing, not a burglary as they reported, the attorney said.

Witnesses also told family investigators that after shooting DuBose, "police continued to stand over him for another 10 minutes, then one officer put on a rubber glove, checked his pulse, and continued to wait. DuBose bled to death before he reached the hospital," Watkins said. Civil rights activists have said they believe police used excessive force on DuBose because he was black. The two officers who shot DuBose were white and about the same size as DuBose, who was 6-foot-2 and weighed about 210 pounds, Watkins said.

Police have not identified the two officers, who have been placed on administrative duty. In a written statement Wednesday, Bejarano urged people to wait for police to finish their investigation. "The investigation should go to the district attorney shortly," Bejarano said in a written statement. "The time for judgment is after all of the facts are in and have been reviewed."

Police spokesman Dave Cohen said he didn't know when the investigation would be complete, but said the district attorney would be the one to determine whether the shooting was justifiable homicide. "We don't recommend that the DA go either way. Our role is simply to gather the facts," Cohen said.

Fish Oil Reduces Heart Deaths


People who have suffered heart attacks can reduce their risk of heart-related death by 30 percent by taking a fish oil capsule every day, a new study suggests. "People who are looking for more than circumstantial evidence of a benefit of fish oil will find reassurance from this," Dr. Morris Brown, a Cambridge University researcher, said of the Italian study _ the most rigorous to date investigating the oil's potential heart-healthy properties.

The study, published in this week's issue of The Lancet, a British medical journal, also looked at the benefits of vitamin E pills. But, unlike other studies, it did not find they offer heart attack survivors protection from further heart problems. "For both of these dietary components, there is a wealth of circumstantial evidence for benefit," wrote Brown, who was not connected with the study, in a commentary published separately in the journal.

Previously, both fish oil and vitamin E were found to offer benefits in studies examining past eating habits. However, in studies where the nutrients were introduced into the diet, the results have been conflicting. The Italian study involved 11,324 men and women who had suffered a heart attack no more than three months before. They were divided into four groups and followed for 3 years. One group was given a 1-gram capsule of omega-3 fish oil a day, about the amount found in most commercial supplements. The second group was given a 300-mg vitamin E pill each day, again an average amount. The third group was given both, and the rest were given nothing.

ll the subjects had similar eating habits both before and during the study and were taking similar prescription drugs for their heart troubles. The researchers found that a capsule of omega-3 fish oil each day reduced the combined risk of death, stroke and heart attack by 15 percent. Most of the benefit was due to a 30 percent drop in the risk of heart-related deaths. Scientists believe fish oil may help the heart by lessening the inflammation involved in hardening of the artery walls.

This is all building a case. The case is considerably stronger now than it was before," said Dr. Michael Burr, a University of Wales researcher whose own work found a similar result among people eating lots of fatty fish, such as mackerel,  salmon and fresh tuna.

The study, led by Dr. Roberto Marchioli, a heart disease expert at the Consorzio Mario Negri Sud research institute in southern Italy, showed no clear benefit of vitamin E or of combining the vitamin with fish oil capsules. That conflicts with a 1996 American study, which showed that women who eat lots of vitamin E-rich food cut their chances of heart disease by almost two-thirds. A British study the same year indicated that taking vitamin E pills daily seems to reduce heart attacks by 75 percent among people with bad hearts.

Vitamin E is one of a group of nutrients known as antioxidants for their ability to offset the damage done by oxygen to the body. It is used to prevent heart attacks and treat Alzheimer's in some patients. The study's authors speculated that the disappointing vitamin E finding may have been because their Italian subjects were eating a heart-healthy Mediterranean diet already rich in vitamin E, leaving little room for improvement by adding pills.

Or perhaps people need to take vitamin E for a longer period before they start to reap the benefits, they said. The dose also was lower than has been used in other studies, even though it was still 10 times higher than the recommended daily allowance. "There are other ongoing studies of vitamin E on different populations that will better show the effect of vitamin E and we should wait to see what those say," Marchioli said.

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