For IO in lab3, consider passing an InputStreamReader to the BufferedReader.
Here is a chunk of working code that demonstrates it use:

import java.io.*;  // for IO Streams
import java.net.*; // for URL
import java.util.*; // for StringTokenizer

     BufferedReader inFile;
     InputStream instream;
     InputStreamReader instreamread;
     String tempString="";
     StringTokenizer st = null;

     try{
                //u was a string defined from a paramter
          uber = new URL(u);

     } catch(MalformedURLException eURL) {System.out.print("hosed");}


     try{
          instream = uber.openStream();
     } catch(IOException netE){System.out.print("openSteam hosed "+netE +"\n");}

     instreamread = new InputStreamReader(instream);
     inFile = new BufferedReader(instreamread);

     try{
          while(tempString != null)
          {
               tempString = inFile.readLine();
               if (tempString != null)
                    st = new StringTokenizer(tempString);
               else //end of file
                    return;

               //right about here you can do whatever you want with the line
               //or StringTokenizer
          }
     } catch(IOException read){System.out.print("readline hosed");}

While this code may be ugly and have not real meaningful error messages, it works.