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TEhe (Sam eco ck Burger King orders closing pf all Columbia restaurants sy Greg Hambrick The Gamecock If you’ve had trouble finding n open Burger King upon Te rming to Columbia, it’s no sur irise: A dozen area BK restaurants, lcluding the location on College itreet across from the Horseshoe, losed in early July. The closings, which put about >00 people out of work, are the re mit of a financial dispute be ween James A. Hinton, the fran :hise owner, and the Miami-based lurger King Corp. Burger King ordered Hinton to dose the restaurants after he fell >ehind in his franchise payments >y more than $300,000. Burger Cing franchise owners have also mstained additional expenses stem ning from Burger King’s April 1999 corporate makeover that cre ited new logos, color schemes and hive-through systems. Though Hinton also owes $5,000 in property taxes on some of his BK properties, he has not filed for bankruptcy. Closed restaurants include the store on College Street, along with locations on North Main Street, Two Notch Road, St. Andrews Road, Charleston Highway and Bush River Road. Hinton’s attorney, Robert Zarco of Zarco & Pardo in Miami, indi cated that the restaurants might be reopened if the dispute is re solved. He said Burger King’s de cision to close the restaurants was a “drastic measure.” Though rumors of the closings circulated among employees for weeks, the abruptness of the clos ings was unsettling. “They just walked in and said, ‘We’re closing the store,”’ said Con stance McClain, a former manag er at the College Street Burger King. Many former BK employees are single mothers with no other sources of income. Debora Smith, for instance, has run out of food since the BK she worked at closed, and she must now live on a $68 unemployment check each week until she can find another job. Marvin Jackson, director of the Lexington Employment Office, said he is confident that the office can place laid-off BK employees in new jobs. Jackson said he has been con tacted daily by employers with po sitions to fill, including Waffle House and Lizard’s Thicket. A number of USC students over the summer took advantage of the College Street closing by using the restaurant’s vacant parking lot as a free alternative to paying parking meters around campus. The news desk can be reached at gamecockudesk@ hotmail.com Ann Marie Miani/The Gamecock Twelve area Burger Kings, including the one on College Street, were closed last month because of a feud between the franchise owner and the Burger King Corp. Students have used the closed restaurants for extra parking. Deadlier version of Code Red vims targets computers ‘Code Red5 computer virus ■ WHAT: Exploits a vulnerability in Windows NT and 2000 ■ IF YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED: Visit the www.microsoft.com/technet or www.sc.ecu for a virus scan by Greg Hambrick The Gamecock USC was still battling the Code Red virus in early August as a new, more dangerous version called Code Red II rapidly spread across the In ternet. Security engineers had to lock down three machines recently after a faculty member’s laptop got in fected. The rest of the USC sys tem was immunized after an in fection of the original strain in July. “The new version of the virus can allow anyone access to a ma chine,” said Ronni Wilkinson, one of the engineers on campus work ing against the virus. Code Red II creates a path for outsiders to enter and tamper with Web sites, allowing them access to classified data such as credit card numbers The original Code Red, designed to attack the White House Web site, caused USC to shut down Web ac cess on July 19 when it was found in the network system. A message posted on the school’s official Web site that night said, “Because of the spread of the Worm virus that is infecting USC devices and causing havoc with In ternet access, we have been forced to shut off HTTP services to and from our campus.” USC cut off Web activity to en sure that the school’s systems could be cleaned out without being in fected again. “That night was a bit of a blur,” said Wilkinson, who, with co-work er Ken Sallenger, found the virus on USC’s Web server. The virus spent the first 19 days of July infecting computers. Then for nine days, starting on July 20, those infected flooded the White House home page. Though the White House Web site has been immunized against the worm and hasn’t been affected, the Pentagon had to re-route traffic on some of its public Web sites. Servers at a cluster of South Ko rean government offices also sparked a shutdown of some of their systems on Aug. 7. The virus, which also affects Web sites hasted by infected com puters, displays the slogan “Hacked by Chinese!” Though Wilkinson and Salinger caught the virus before USC Web sites were defaced, the traffic the virus produ:es slows down the In ternet. “The rest of the Internet is go ing slow,” Wilkinson said, “but our system is doing okay.” The vins exploits a vulnerabil ity in Microsoft Internet servers run ning on computers through Win dows NT 40 and Windows 2000. The vulneraaility was discovered in June, and Microsoft has released a patch that pievents computers from infection. Tie patch is available at www.microsoft.com/technet. The original virus spread by se lecting 100 iddresses logged in an infected conputer but the new strain could infec. up to 300, scanning them for the hole and then infect ing those vulnerable. Originalestimates put the num ber of compiters infected at 12,000, but the System Administration, Net working anc Security Institute lat er estimated hat number to be about 200,000 computers by July 20. Though most of those computers have been irrmunized since, Wilkin son said the new strain might have infected almost 250,000 as of Aug. 7. Studentsthat think their systems might have teen infected should go to the school’; Web site, www.sc.edu, which provides a free virus scan. The news disk can be reached at gamecockidesk@hotmail.com Journalism professor wins honor from Staff Reports The Gamecock USC journalism professor Pa tricia G. McNeely has won a na tional teaching honor for excel lence in journalism education. McNeely, the Eleanor M. and R. Frank Mundy Professor and di rector of the electronic and print journalism sequence in the Col lege of Journalism and Mass Com munications, received the National Distinguished Educator Award Aug. 6 in Washington from the newspaper division of the Asso ciation for Education in Journal ism and Mass Communication. “Her many contributions to journalism education... have been significant in setting the standard for outstanding journalism,” said Frank E. Fee Jr., chairman of the Teaching Standards Commit tee of the AEJMC’s newspaper di vision. McNeely has been head of the newspaper and magazine divisions of the association and a member of the association’s executive com mittee. She is the third faculty mem ber in the college to win national teaching honors recently. Last spring, retired advertising pro fessor Jerome Jewler was chosen Advertising Educator of the Year by the American Advertis ing Federation, and print journal ism professor Henry Price was chosen Journalism Professor of the Year by the Freedom Forum. “It is remarkable that three members of just one USC college have won national awards for teaching in recent months,” said former College of Journalism and Mass Communications interim dean Ron Farrar. McNeely has been a staff writer for The State, The Co lumbia Record and The Greenville News and has worked summers for The Atlanta Journal and Con stitution, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Charlotte Observer and The Charleston Post and Courier. She is senior state director of Voter News Service, which is owned by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and the Associated Press. She is also the author of “Fighting Words: A Media His tory of South Carolina” and “Pal metto Press: The History of South Carolina’s Newspapers and Press Association.” McNeely joined the College of Journalism and Mass Commu nications faculty in 1972. She was chairman of the news-editorial se quence from 1977 to 1994, when she was associate dean for three years. “Dr. Price (interim dean of the College of Jour nalism and Mass Commu nications) al ways used to describe profes sor McNeely as one of the most effervescent people he had Patricia Mcneely ever met,” said Kenley Young, a graduate of the College of Jour nalism and Mass Communications who worked closely with McNeely during the print journalism senior practicum. “I definitely have to agree. She was always readily available to her students for advice, for sug gestions on stories, for internship opportunities, and she’s one of the kindest women that you could ever have hoped to meet.” The news desk can be reached at gamecockudesk@hotmail.com St. Thomas More CATHOLIC CENTER AND CHURCH Weekend Mass Saturday 4:30 p.m. Sunday 11:00 a.m.and 7:30 p.m. Daily Mass Monday - Wednesday & Friday 12:15 p.m. Confession 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. or by appointment RCIA (for those interested in the Catholic faith) Monday, 7:00 p.m. Newman Club Bible Study Tuesday 7:00 p.m. Wednesday 7:00 p.m. Rev. Tim Lijewski, Chaplain and Campus Minister Gaurav Shroff, Director of Christian Formation 1610 Greene Street 799-5870 (across from the School of Nursing) webpage - http://www.stthomasmore.org email: tlijewski@aol.com