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NEWS: 76-DAILY
CLASSIFIED: 7640557
www michigandaily. com
Tuesday
December 4, 2001
ne $
Officials
reassure
Inside: Americans are warned to be on high alert for holiday season terrorist attacks. Page 2.
error
grips
ideast
a
"
interview
subjects
By Jacquelyn Nixon
Daily Staff Reporter
Local men who agree to an interview as part of the FBI's
investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks can choose
where the interview is conducted and who is present and
will not be asked about their immigration status, southeast-
ern Michigan law enforcement officials assured Muslim and
Arab community leaders yesterday.
As many as 80 letters have been sent from the FBI to
Ann Arbor residents and University students with tempo-
rary visas requesting their participation in an interview with
the U.S. Department of Justice about terrorism. Government
officials addressed concerns about civil liberties and the
Ann Arbor Police Department's role in the interview
process yesterday with eight community members and two
student leaders.
FBI Special Agent John Bell, John Gershel of the U.S.
Attorney's office of the Eastern District of Michigan, Ann
Arbor Mayor John Hieftje and Councilman Steve Hartwell
joined AAPD Chief Daniel Oates in the closed-door meet-
ing with Muslim community representatives and students.
Oates said that while the Arabs and Muslims expressed
reservations and concerns about the interviews at the meeting,
they made clear their support of the U.S. war on terrorism.
"We want to cooperate just like any other American,"
said Haaris Ahmad, director for Michigan's Council for
American/Islamic Relations. "But we don't want violations
of the civil rights of innocent human beings."
In the 90-minute meeting, federal and local law officials
reached a consensus on several issues with community
members. Oates said that if recipients of the letter choose to
participate in an interview, they will have a choice about
how their interview will proceed - including the venue and
See FBI, Page 7
Amnericans
spent more
last month.
By Ted Borden
Daily Staff Reporter
Even as America remains stuck in a recession and con-
sumer confidence continues to lag, personal spending
increased by an all-time high of 2.9 percent in October,
spurred by the low-interest rates of automakers and by sales
of other durable goods, the Commerce Department reported
yesterday.
But growing concern over international affairs combined
with the bankruptcy of one of America's largest energy
companies worried investors yesterday, sending stocks into
negative territory.
"There is global conflict and we are in a recession and
stock prices have gone down to reflect that, but we're cau-
tiously optimistic," said James Russell, head of equity strat-
egy at Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati.
Many analysts said the jump in personal spending is not.
necessarily an indication of an economy on the rebound.
"The number should not be looked upon as good news,"
said Graham Curchin, an equity trader with Bank of Ameri-
ca in Chicago. "The consumer incentives offered by manu-
facturers have inflated this spending. Also, there is
See ECONOMY, Page 7
Attacks
polanze
campus
By Jeremy Berkowitz
Daily Staff Reporter
Palestinian suicide bombings in
Israel over the weekend followed
by retaliatory Israeli missile strikes
on Gaza City yesterday have once
again polarized segments of the
University community over the lat-
est bedlam in the 53-year conflict
between Israel and the Palestinians..
"Every time one of these things
happens, it's supposed to remind us
we're all on opposite sides. Instead,
it distracts from how many Israelis
and Palestinians love one another
and are friends with one another,"
said Rackham student Greg
Epstein, president of Humanistic
Huvarah, a student organization
dedicated to the values of Jewish
culture.
Americans, who now have more
of an understanding about what it's
like to experience such horrific
devastation at home, are witnessing
the biggest flare-up of violence in
the Middle East since before the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Some students said this could
prompt more of a bias against
Palestinians.
"More Americans will feel sympa-
thy towards Israel because they were
deliberate terrorist attacks rather than
army attacks," said LSA senior Paul
Saba, president of the campus Arab-
American Anti-Defamation League.
But Saba emphasized that despite the
militant Hamas, which claimed
responsibility for the weekend
attacks, there are many Palestinians
who feel sympathy for Americans
after Sept. 11 because they have been
through the same thing.
University students and profes-
sors alike had many negative feel-
ings about the events in Israel
See REACTION, Page 7
AP PHOTO
A Palestinian family runs for shelter after they fled their house near Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Gaza City yesterday.
Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at the landing pad near Arafat's headquarters, from which smoke rises (left background), in retaliation
for weekend suicide bombings in Israel by Islamic militants which killed 26 people.
Sharon condemns Arafat
Los Angeles Times
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon declared an unfettered war yes-
terday on terrorism, which he blamed direct-
ly on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, as
Israeli fighter jets and helicopters pounded
Palestinian cities and towns.
Amid a raging government debate over
whether to oust Arafat from power and expel
him from the region, Sharon's Cabinet early
today pronounced the Palestinian Authority
a "terror-supporting entity," setting the stage
for further retaliations. Army troops and
tanks thrust deep into several Palestinian
cities overnight, advancing in the West Bank
Inside: President Bush supports Israel's right
to defend itself against terrorism. Page 7
-------------------------------------- -
city of Ramallah to within 200 yards of
Arafat's headquarters, where the Palestinian
president was spending the night.
With the Middle East teetering on the
brink of new disaster, Israel also launched
strikes elsewhere in the Gaza Strip and West
Bank. Israeli gunships hit Arafat's Gaza City
headquarters yesterday and destroyed two of
his personal helicopters. The Israelis called
the aircraft symbols of his sovereignty and
freedom.
Also in Gaza, Israeli bulldozers plowed
the runways of the Palestinian international
airport, which was opened three years ago
amid great fanfare as the crowning jewel of
Palestinian aspirations for statehood. A
senior Israeli official said the airport was
rendered unusable, "turning it into a flour-
ishing greenhouse."
The air raids and incursions were just the
beginning of what Sharon promised will be a
broad campaign of retaliation for a trio of
suicide bombings and a shooting that killed
26 people, all but one of them Israeli Jews,
and wounded more than 200 over the-week-
end. But his goals seem to go further than
simple retaliation. Palestinian officials said
the new offensive was a declaration of war
See TERROR, Page 7
Sweatshop worker credits 'U'
for better working conditions
By Jordan Schrader
Daily Staff Reporter
Students and administrators at the
University of Michigan were instrumen-
tal in improving working conditions at a
factory in Mexico that produces Michi-
gan apparel, a modest seamstress turned
labor advocate told students yesterday.
Marcela Munoz Tepepa, a seamstress
at the Kukdong apparel factory in Atlix-
co, Mexico, was among the workers
who initiated a work stoppage in protest
of poor labor conditions there.
Tepepa said those conditions includ-
ed low wages, abusive treatment, and
food that made many workers seriously
ill. The labor union that supposedly rep-
resented the workers refused to help
them because it was controlled by the
Mexican government, she added during
a lecture at the School of Education.
Conditions are better at that factory
now in part because the University of
Michigan and other colleges and uni-
versities stepped into the dispute,
Tepepa explained.
The Kukdong factory produces
Nike clothing, including some bearing
Michigan logos. After student protests
helped bring the issue to the forefront,
the University wrote a letter to Nike
urging the company to intervene, and
Nike in turn made demands to Kuk-
dong for fair labor practices.
"Without the dialogue at the Univer-
sity of Michigan it would've been
impossible to win the struggle," Tepepa
said through an interpreter. "This is one
of the reasons we continued to struggle
and could stand everything that was
See WRC, Page 7
YONI GOLDSTEIN/Daily
Marcela Munoz Tepepa, a seamstress at the Kukdong factory.
in Atlixco, Mexico, that produces Michigan apparel for Nike,
speaks through a translator last night at the School of
Education about improvements in working conditions.
Guitar in the grass
Tech Transfer aids student-run startups
By Lisa Hoffman
Daily Staff Reporter
For former Engineering graduate student
Kalyan Handique, the process of getting his
research development on the market was not
easy, but with the help of University resources
his dream of marketing his high-tech handheld
device recently became a reality.
"We are making a portable laboratory, one
the size of a hand-held computer," said Hand-
ique, who named his company HandyLab. "I
got my Ph.D. in May of 2000 and our patent
in June of that year. Since, we've been busy
building the core technical team and the first
prototype."
"The idea is that a doctor could take your
blood with something like a Palm Pilot," said
Mark Maynard, marketing director at U-M
Tech Transfer.
Tech Transfer, which was created in 1983
after the federal government placed the own-
ership and advancement of intellectual prop-
"The idea is that a doctor could take your blood
with something like a Palm Pilot."
- Mark Maynard
Michigan Tech Transfer marketing director
also helps researchers find corporate funding.
"Not everybody participates, nor should
they," said Tech Transfer director Ken Nisbet,
although resources at Tech Transfer are avail-
able to any upstanding University researcher.
"We have brilliant researchers who struggle
for a long time. If their research is not put to
use, it's really disappointing, so we help them
find connections and reach the marketplace."
Tech Transfer also helps to ensure the pri-
vacy and individuality of each research pro-
ject proposed and accepted into their services.
"When people talk about an invention in
public, they start the clock running on
grounds of protection, so before a professor
born here can have a positive effect on the
world outside," he said. "Money can come
back to the University and fund additional
research, and a project has the opportunity to
grow to the fullest of its potential.
Compared to the $580 million a year that
the University spends on research, which .is
the most of any public university in the coun-
try, the few million dollars that the University
gets back by helping researchers doesn't yield
much financial benefit, Maynard said.
For Handique, the help of Tech Transfer
was critical in his four years of talking to
investors leading to the creation of Handy-
Lab. These talks resulted in $4.5 million of
LSA freshman Michael Beauchamp plays guitar in the courtyard of East Quad Residence Hall
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