2 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, March 27, 2001 NATION/WORLD Supreme C to decide legality of executin tly retarded inmates WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court rejoined the heated national debate over the death penalty yesterday, announcing it will decide whether the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" bars execution of mentally retarded people. The justices said they will hear an appeal by North Carolina death-row inmate Ernest McCarver, whose lawyers say he is retarded. The justices halted his exe- cution early this month just hours before he was to have been put to death. The justices decided in 1989 the Constitution allows execution of mentally retarded killers. McCarver's lawyers say Americans' standards of decency have changed since then. "There has been a substantial change in American society," his lawyers wrote in his appeal. "The penal- ty of death is plainly cruel when imposed on those whose culpability is lessened by their inability to rea- son." The Constitution's Eighth Amendment bans "cruel and unusual punishments." The question, McCarver's lawyers contend, is whether a punishment offends contemporary standards. Prosecutors said considerable evidence showed that McCarver was not mentally retarded, but they added that even if he was, his execution would not violate the Constitution. North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley denied clemency, saying McCarver planned the 1987 stab- bing and choking death of a co-worker, motivated by revenge. This month, the justices blocked the execution of another man said by his lawyers to be borderline retarded. Antonio Richardson had been scheduled to be put to death March 7 in Missouri. The court also plans to hear arguments today in another case involving a death-row inmate whose lawyers say he is mentally retarded. The case involving Johnny Paul Penry of Texas does not ask whether the Constitution prohibits exe- cuting the mentally retarded. Instead, Penry's lawyers say jurors who sentenced him to death for murder did not have the chance to properly consider his mental capacity. NEWS IN BRIEF HF MAOUN JERUSALEM Infant slain in latest round of Mideast fighting A Palestinian sniper killed a 10-month-old Israeli girl yesterday in the tense and violent West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli and Palestinian officials said. Israeli tanks retaliated with machine-gun and artillery fire into the neighborhood where the shooting originated. The infant was slain - and her brother and father were wounded -- in front of her home in a fortified Jewish enclave that lies near the center of Hebron, just below a Palestinian hilltop neighborhood called Abu Sneinah. The girl, identified as Shalhevet Pas, was the youngest of about 65 Israelis killed since the Palestinian uprising began Sept. 29, during which time about 350 Palestinians have been slain. The shooting took place at about 5 p.m., a Palestinian policeman in Hebron said. Immediately afterward, Israeli soldiers and settlers began to fire up into Abu Sneinah and an adjacert neighborhood. The assault lasted about 45 Min- utes and injured at least seven Palestinians, according to Palestinian officials. The Israeli military command in the West Bank then told Palestinian security forces to tell residents to leave Abu Sneinah or face the danger of a heavy at#. Few left, the Palestinian policeman said, and the attack did not take place Monday evening. However, shooting fromthe settlement continued. WASHINGTON Military sufers two separate losses in Europe U,. military aviation suffered two hard blows yesterday with the fatal crash oif an Army plane in Germany and the disappearance - and apparent loss - of two Air Force fighter jets in Scotland. An Army RC-12, a twin-engine propeller aircraft used to detect, identifyd locate enemy radar and electronic communications, crashed in a forest about P ,ht miles from Nuremberg, killing the two pilots on board, Army spokeswoman tfilde Patton said from 5th Corps headquarters at Heidelberg. German and American authorities at the scene were attempting to recover the pilots' remains from the crash scene, Patton said. There was no initial indication of what caused the crash. At roughly the same time, the Air Force disclosed that two F-15C fighters were overdue on a return flight to their home base at Lakenheath in southern Englnd after conducting low-level flght training in Scotland. Several hours later the Air Force said there had been no word from the two -15 pilots nor any confirmation of their fate. The lack of communication suggested a strong possibility that they had crashed, officials said. Bush takes tax promotion tour to heartland KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Presi- dent Bush yesterday injected a new tone of urgency into his public appeals for Congress to quickly pass his $1.6 trillion tax cut, saying the economy "has slowed and we better do something about it." Campaigning anew in the heartlands for his economic agenda, the president told several hundred business people that his plan "has the potential to turn (the slowing economy) around." Bush's remarks, both in Kansas City and yesterday evening in Billings, Mont., set the stage for what top White House aides said would be a major address on the economy today in Kalamazoo. "It's going to be the president's assessment of where the economy is, why his plan is the best plan to help the economy recover," said Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary. WRITE FOR US. 76-DAILY AP PHOTO President Bush shakes hands with a crowd gathered to greet him yesterday in Billings, Montana where he outlined his economic agenda. HAVE YOU SAVED LIFE TODAY? Are YOU a registered donor? *WOULD YOU LIKE TO SAVE A LIFE TODAY? * Then on Tuesday, March 27 Come to the Michigan Union Pendleton Room 6:30 PM Free Refreshments!! Attention Campus Groups: Easy Fundraiser Every time someone signs up for a Kaplan course through a link from your web site you - 'r - make $$$. Totally FREE No B.S. Contact randiwilson@kaplan.corn Montana is the 21st state that Bush has visited since becoming president- testament to his determination to take his tax-cut campaign beyond what he gently denigrated on yesterday as "the filter"- meaning the Washington establishment, Upon the president's arrival in Kansas City, he dropped in on First Watch, a popular diner, before address- ing local businessmen and women gathered at Bajan Industries, a minori- ty-owned enterprise that produces spe- cialty cards for Hallmark and employs many former welfare recipients. There, the president delivered his standard stump speech, laying out his rationale for the across-the-board tax cut and debt reduction while explaining his proposals to rebuild the military and extend the solvency of Medicare and Social Security. FDA says Tylenol and alcohol a bad mx The Washington Post WASHINGTON - Evidence that many Americans may poison their liv- ers by unwittingly taking toxic doses of acetaminophen has the government considering if consumers need stiffer warnings about the popular over-the- counter painkiller. Its not the first time acetaminophen, best known by the Tylenol brand, has drawn federal concern. There are warnings not to take it if you consume more than three alcoholic drinks, because the combination can poison your liver. But the latest worry is about over- doses: taking too much for too long, or mixing the myriad acetaminophen-con- taining headache, cold/flu and other remedies, or just popping extra pills. Because acetaminophen is nonpre- scription, "people think it must be safe and they take it like M&Ms," sighs Dr. William Lee of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Lees data suggest acetaminophen overdoses could be a bigger cause of liver failure than some prescription drugs recently banned for liver poi- soning, such as the diabetes medicine Rezulin. He tracked more than 300 acute liver failure cases at 22 hospitals and linked 38 percent to acetaminophen, versus 18 percent of cases caused by other med- ications. In a second database tracking 307 adults suffering severe liver injury-not full-fledged failure -at six hospitals, Lee linked aceta- minophen to 35 percent of cases. "Most were accidents and should have been preventable," Lee contends. The findings surprised Food and Drug Administration officials, who this month began investigating how big a risk the painkiller poses and whether Americans need more explicit warn- ings to use it safely. They even are seeking data from Britain, where so many people used acetaminophen for suicide that British health authorities now restrict how many tablets are sold at once, "Acetaminophens liver toxicity is conspicuous in its magnitude com- pared to some of the other bad players we've taken off the market;' says Dr. Peter Honig, FDAs postmarketing drug safety chief. "Were looking at the data to decide if something has to be done, and what" Certainly millions of Americans safely take acetaminophen every day. Tylenol maker McNeil Consumer WASHINGTON McCain finance bill dealt blow in Senate The Senate voted narrowly yesterday to ban certain late-campaign advertis- ing by advocacy groups such as the National Right to Life Committee and the Sierra Club, compliating efforts by Sen. John McCain and his allies to pass legislation reining in the campaign money chase. The vote was 51-46 on a proposal by Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) he said he wanted to "pkug one large loophole" in the campaign finance bill that allows independent groups to pay for late-campaign attack ads while banning unions and corporations from doing so. "If I thought it was constitutional I would have voted for it," said McCain (R-Ariz.). He watched on the Senate floor while some supporters of the underlying bill sided with Wellstone, joined by Republican lawmakers hop- ing to kill the entire legislation. CONCORDy NM Bloody knives found in suspect's room Knives found in the bedroom of one of the teen-agers accused of murdering two Dartmouth College professors were stained with blood matching one of the victims, according to court docu- ments released yesterday. The two knives were found in a box in the bedroom of Robert Tulloch, 17, according to the prosecution docu- ments. Tulloch and James Parker, 16, both of Chelsea, Vt., are accused of fatally stabbing Half and Susanne Zantop in the professors' Hanover home on Jan. 27. "On one knife, DNA consistent with Susanne Zantop was detected," the-roc- uments say. "On the second knife, DNA consistent with Susanne Za p was detected, with a mixture of an er source of DNA." The documents do not identify the source of the additional DNA. WASHINGTON U.S., Russia shut down child porn site In a joint operation, the United States and Russia have shut dox a Moscow-based international pornog- raphy ring that used the Internet to sell videotapes of children engaged in sexual acts, authorities said yes- terday Law enforcement officials arrested nine people, including four in the Unit- ed States, and issued 15 search wtar- rants as a result of the investigation by the U.S. Customs Service and Mos v city police. Authorities dubbed the ong'ing investigation Operation Blue Orchid, after the studio in Russia where many of the videotapes were made. A Web site using the same name allegedly advertised the tapes, which were then distributed worldwide through the mail. Most of the tapes, which Cost between $200 to $300, were shipped to the United States, authorities said. - Compiled from Daily wire rep . New= 74 iI aItfL __ti * 0 A* dddV C7Fkt asisan A PC~lvi StSIStant The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University of Michigan. Subscriptions for fall term, starting in September, via U.S. mail are $100. Winter term (January through April) is $105. yearlong (September through April) is $180. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. The Michigan Daily is a member of The Associated Press and The Associated Collegiate Press. 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