April 15, 1999

Neil Strauss's Pop Life column on music-related technology displayed at House of Blues in Los Angeles, where Microsoft Corp has announced its entry into business of downloading and streaming music from Internet; photo (M)

Entropy, movie by Phil Joanou, a successful Hollywood director, will open Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and will be his introduction to world of independent films made outside studio system on low budgets; his difficulty in distributing film despite backing of powerhouse company like TriBeCa Productions underscores gritty reality behind the fashionable facade of independent filmmaking; photos (M)

Hartford Courant announces that it has purchased The Hartford Advocate and and its four sister tabloid publications in Westchester County, NY, Fairfield County, Conn, New Haven, Conn, and western Massachusetts; newspaper analysts say it is first time that major American daily has taken over major alternative weekly in its home city; photo (M)

Charles O Rossotti, first Commissioner of Internal Revenue Service who is not tax lawyer, is pursuing technological and cultural revolution with improbable goal of both making IRS more efficient at collecting taxes and making Americans happier about paying them; some of goals Rossotti has achieved and goals not yet achieved discussed; photo (M)

Europen Union, joining in search for diplomatic solution to Kosovo crisis, presents plan under which province would be placed under temporary international European administration if Yugoslav Pres Slobodan Milosevic agreed to withdraw his forces and allowed hundreds of thousands of Albanian refugees to return; US officials give European initiative, and more detailed German plan little chance of being accepted by Belgrade; NATO reiterates that it will continue bombing in Yugoslavia until Milosevic withdraws all military units from Kosovo and lets ethnic Albanian population go back home; European leaders say United Nations, Russia and European Union should play role in diplomatic moves to resolve crisis; map; photo (M)