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Bo Aticiete ON THE INTERNET: WWW.UT1MES.COM CIRCULATION: 1,095.007 DAILY U85J73 SUNDAY THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1999 COPYRIGHT 1999THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANYCC 148 PAGES SD DAILY SOt DESIGNATED AREAS HIGHER COLUMN ONE 4. iP- cy- a I 1 A I Rachel Ruth, left, Rhianna Cheek, Photos by CAROLYN COLE Los Angeles Times the Columbine High victims at a memorial service in downtown Denver. 1 U.S.0KS Updating of Plans for Ground War Balkans: As NATO leaders gather, they face the question of whether airstrikes alone can succeed. British press for eventual invasion. Up to 20,000 refugees headed to U.S.

By NORMAN KEMPSTER and RICHARD C. PADDOCK TIMES STAFF WRITERS WASHINGTON The U.S. government gave the green light Wednesday to renewed NATO planning for ground troops in Kosovo as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, emerging as the alliance's most outspoken hawk, pressed President Clinton to accept his plan for an eventual invasion against a weakened Yugoslav army. With leaders of the 19 North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations converging on Washington for summit talks that begin Friday, a month into the allied bombing effort, the biggest question on the agenda will be whether NATO Can prevail without putting infantry on the ground. White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said Washington will support updating the NATO plan, which was put aside in October, for a ground war in Yugoslavia.

Although Lockhart said the administration is not yet ready to go beyond planning, British officials assert that the alliance must prepare to send ground troops once the bombing has damaged the Yugoslav army enough that it can no longer fight back. "We would have no objection to updating the assessment that was done in October," Lockhart said. "It's looking at whether the problems that were evident when they looked at this in October have somehow changed, how we would address them, whether the situation would be more difficult, less difficult." The October plan estimated that it would require 200,000 NATO ground troops to overrun Yugoslavia against fierce opposition. The scenario was so daunting that the plan was shelved. Clinton and leaders of other NATO countries said they would send troops only as peacekeepers and only into a "permissive environment," military jargon for a cease-fire approved by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milo-scvic Please see WAR, A18 DISPATCH FROM KOSOVO Refugee Serbs Blame NATO in Camp Bombing By PAUL WATSON TIMES STAFF WRITER MAJINO NASELJE, YugoslaviaHalf a mile up the road from where NATO pilots mistakenly bombed Kosovo Albanian refugees last week, warplanes on Wednesday pounded a Serbian refugee camp.

Four Serbs, including a young boy, died during a heavy airstrike, as most of the refugees were asleep around 3 a.m., survivors said in -1 Spreading a New Idea on Disease Mounting evidence may link viruses and bacteria to everything from gallstones to Alzheimer's. By THOMAS H. MAUGH II TIMES MEDICAL WRITER Ignaz Semmelweis was ahead of his time. Working at Vienna General Hospital in the 1850s, the Hungarian physician was one of the first to adopt the idea that germs cause disease. Semmelweiss noted that doctors would perform autopsies in the hospital's basement, then care for healthy pregnant women without cleaning their hands.

Many of the women developed fatal fevers, and Semmelweis reasoned that the doctors were transferring some kind of infectious agent from the corpses to the women. Contagion was a radical idea at a time when illness was thought to be caused by bad blood or other mysterious forces, and Semmelweis was ridiculed for his ideas. Today, we know that most acute diseases are caused by bacteria, viruses and other agents. Now, a growing number of latter-day Semmelweises are advocating an even more radical notion that viruses and bacteria play a major role in many chronic diseases where infection has never been suspected. At a time when much research focuses on the genetic underpinnings of disease, researchers say, it is time to take a fresh look at how an old foe infections can interact with genes to produce chronic disease.

If they are right, physicians might soon have new antibiotic and antiviral weapons to add to their arsenal for treating heart disease, Alzheimer's, kidney stones, gallstones and a variety of other chronic conditions. It might even Please see DISEASE, A12 Flaw Exposes Some Web Shoppers' Personal Data By LESLIE HELM TIMES STAFF WRITER SEATTLE-More than 100 online stores, mainly small retailers, are exposing customer credit card numbers and other personal information to anyone with a Web browser, according to an industry warning posted on the Internet. The problem disclosed Wednesday is caused by improper installation of common software products, called shopping carts, used by most Web retailers. It is not known whether confidential information has been taken or misused, but the breach ranks among the most wide-ranging security flaws ever to hit Internet commerce. The public's enthusiasm for shopping on the Web has always been tempered by fears that such confidential information could be Please see PRIVACY, A32 INSIDE TODAY'S TIMES ADI0S, MARLBORO MAN Tobacco companies must remove their billboard advertising by midnight tonight.Cl ROBBERY SUSPECT KILLED Sheriffs marksman kills bank robbery suspect after standoff on Pomona Freeway.

Bl DUCKS LOSE OPENER Steve Yzerman led Detroit past the Ducks, 5-3, in Game 1 of their playoff series. 1 WEATHER: Mostly sunny, breezy and warmer today after morning low clouds and fog. Civic Center today: 5773. B7 0NA2 4 Authorities carry the body of one of the shooting victims away from school in Littleton, Colo. Recalling the Slain and Their Slayers center, and Mandi Annibel grieve for teachers and school officials across the region said they have been painfully reminded of the need to differentiate typically alienated teenagers from those prone to deadly violence.

Although there may never be an exact science to identifying dangerous students, experts say schools must be more attuned to signs of impending trouble. "One of the things I have been concerned about when I hear the reports from Colorado is that some ssMM Shooters: of youths who By JULIE CART TIMES STAFF WRITER LITTLETON, Harris said he and that he when she was where Harris called them intelligent. But others ities say killed Tuesday at pushed to mired in a dark exalts militaristic say, were time anyone taken The two complicated, school, the isn't easy portrayed them gloomy separate signs that they isolation by their Harris, 18, Police Begin Removal of 15 DeadatSchool Aftermath: Grisly task commences as Colorado community members grieve, account for friends. Officials struggle to explain students' rampage. By RICHARD A.

SERRANO TIMES STAFF WRITER LITTLETON, Wednesday began removing 15 bodies all but one of them studentsfrom the smashed-out, shot-up Columbine High School here as officials confessed they are baffled by what drove two outcast teenagers to turn a stockpile of weapons and small explosives on their classmates. Flags flew at half-staff, the skies clouded gray and the Denver area braced for a late -season snowstorm while all around the campus grief-torn students, parents, teachers and counselors set out on a long road to healing. Twenty-three people were injured in Tuesday's rampage, 16 remained hospitalized Wednesday evening. Because the two gunmen Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold, members of the school's so-called Trench Coat Mafia apparently killed themselves in their final bursts of gunfire, police said answers to explain the nation's worst shooting in a two-year rash of schoolyard carnage will be slow in coming. But already Wednesday, there were signs of some dissension among law enforcement officials and questions about how they had handled the shootout.

The horror of Tuesday was reverberating throughout the nation. A GRIM VIEW Televised carnage raises disturbing issues on media. A17 A MUTED NRA Pro-gun group's convention in Denver will be A17 At the state Capitol in Denver, lawmakers withdrew a set of major gun bills, including one that would have made it easier for Colorado gun owners to conceal their weapons. In Washington, President Clinton echoed the nation's grief, and his administration began sending a phalanx of federal officials here, not only to help investigate the shooting spree but also to assist those likely to suffer for years with the emotional scars of what had been a normal day nearing the end of the school year. Here in Littleton, hundreds of Columbine students spontaneously converged on a park near the school Wednesday afternoon, cre-Please see SHOOTINGS, A15 Victims: Classmates gather to share grief and memories of friends now lost.

By STEPHANIE SIMON TIMES STAFF WRITER LITTLETON, had beautiful hair, down past her shoulders, but she cut it off butchered it, really for her role in the school play. That was Rachel. She never did anything halfway. Didn't know how. She was fearless, no stage fright even, and funny and dramatic and ambitious.

An all-out, go-for-the-gusto kind of girl. And Isaiah. How to describe Isaiah? He was short, very short, and always making fun of his height. Always joking about how he feared he might get stepped on. Isaiah seemed to know absolutely everyone.

Smiled in the halls, waved at folks, even made a point of saying hi to geeky freshmen. The nicest guy. Everyone said so. Matt, well, he was a joker. He hated country music, so buddies at the pizza joint where he worked used to turn on the most whiny, twangy station around just to get his goat.

He'd retaliate by belting out his best or maybe it was his worst Shania Twain imitation. And he'd slap them with wet towels after work. He had a vicious towel snap. Rachel. Isaiah.

Matt. All three were killed at Columbine High. Please see VICTIMS, A15 Contrasting pictures emerge erupted in violence. i girl who knew Eric was the sweetest guy she had ever met solicitously attempted to cheer her up depressed. The owner of a pizza store worked along with Dylan Klebold model employees who were highly describe the young men who author- 13 people and took their own lives Columbine High Scool as deeply troubled, the fringe of high school society and subculture that espouses violence and images.

Harris and Klebold, they bombs that could be heard, had the time to listen. portraits seem contradictory, and in the territorial world of the suburban high manner in which these portraits overlapped to fathom. Some of their classmates as lonely outcasts reveling in a reality, but there were abundant may well have felt driven into more popular peers. and Klebold, 17, were close friends who Please see SHOOTERS, A17 Warning Signs Always There, Expert Says interviews at the scene. The attack damaged at least two apartment buildings housing refugees and left more than a dozen bomb craters.

The aircraft involved were not immediately identified, although Serbian refugees and Yugoslav government authorities blamed the attack on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But Army Col. Mike Phillips, a spokesman at NATO's military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, said the alliance could not have been responsible because its aircraft were not operating in the area. Serbian refugees at the camp were among the more than 200,000 ethnic Serbs driven from Croatia's Krajina region in 1995 by Croatian troops. Many of those Serbian vic-Please see SERBS, A22 people say, 'This came out of the that there weren't any warning signs or clues," said Jana Martin, a clinical psychologist and expert in adolescent behavior.

"There are always warning signs." But communities may struggle to heed the signs because school counselors are in short supply, parents often are busy and out of touch, and students don't know whether the teenager in the next seat is a menace or merely an Please see SCHOOLS, A16 By JAMES RA1NEY, LOUIS SAHAGUN and HILARY E. MacGREGOR TIMES STAFF WRITERS It would be hard to find a high school in California that doesn't have its loners and misfits the kids with the Mohawks, tongue studs, trench coats, or those whose idiosyncrasies are less obvious. A day after two disaffected students went on a killing rampage in a Colorado high school, parents, 4.