2 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, January 16, 2002 NATION WORLD Andersen fires top Enron auditor NEWS IN BRIEF 4- WASHINGTON (AP) - Arthur Andersen LLP said yesterday it is firing a senior auditor who organized a "rushed isposal" of Enron documents last fall after federal regulators had requested information about the failing energy company. It was the first time that the account- ing firm has acknowledged that the doc- ument destruction occurred after Enron received requests from the Securities and Exchange Commission for informa- tion on its financial reporting. Andersen also said that four partners in its Houston office would be stripped of management responsibilities and that three auditors had been put on adminis- trative leave. One of the four Houston partners, D. Stephen Goddard Jr., an Andersen man- aging partner, was a major fund-raiser for President Bush's 2000 campaign and was one of the "Pioneers" who raised at least $100,000. He also personally con- tributed $1,250 to Bush's earlier races for Texas governor, campaign finance records show. Enron was Bush's largest corporate contributor in the 2000 race. The lead auditor, David Duncan, ordered the destruction of documents during an Oct. 23 meeting. Two weeks later, in a desperate e- mail, his assistant said, "Stop the shred- ding." A day before that, Andersen had received a federal subpoena for the doc- uments. The law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, which is representing Dun- can, said he is cooperating with investi- gators. Andersen's chief executive officer, Joseph Berardino, did not rule out the possibility that wrongdoing reached higher into the accounting firm than the auditors being disciplined. "We're not quite sure yet;" he said in a telephone interview. "We want to make sure we have enough facts to make a call." The company said it is replacing the management of its office in Houston, where Enron is based. Four Andersen partners in the Houston office "have been relieved of their management responsi- bilities," the accounting firm said. The Chicago-based firm said it will fire any other employees found to have partic- ipated in the improper destruction of doc- uments, which it disclosed last week. Its statement said it had "discovered activities including the deletion of thou- sands of e-mails and the rushed disposal of large numbers of paper documents." The SEC has been investigating Andersen's role in Enron's complex accounting, including questionable part- nerships that kept about $500 million in debt off the energy company's books and allowed Enron executives to profit from the arrangements., The SEC's enforcement director, Stephen Cutler, said last week the agency was widening the scope of its investigation to include Andersen's destruction of documents. The Justice Department is pursuing a criminal investigation of Enron, which became the biggest corporate bankrupt- cy in U.S. history on Dec. 2. Walker will not get death penalty NEW YORK ~ Two shot in New York City high school A teen-ager opened fire in the hallway at a high school near Lincoln Center yesterday, seriously wounding two fellow students in what authorities said may have been a dispute over a girl. The shooting on Manhattan's Upper West Side occurred at Martin Luther King Jr. High School on what would have been the 73rd birthday of the apostle of nonviolence. The public school has 3,000 students. Schools Chancellor Harold Levy at first said the shooting may have been gang-related, but later said authorities believed the shooting was because of a dispute concerning a girl. He said the suspect was an 18-year-old who had not been attending school. No arrests had been made in the case by yesterday evening, police spokesman Lt. Brian Burke said. "We were in schobl and we heard two gunshots," said senior Romain Morri- son. "They were telling everyone to get out of the hallways." Authorities said Andrel Napper and Andre Wilkins were shot from behind in a fourth-floor hallway. One was shot in the back and the other in the buttocks, and both were listed in serious condition. Wilkins' father, Wadell Parks, said he was grateful his s6n wasn't paralyzed. Palestinians detain suspected assassin Palestinian police yesterday detained the leader of a faction that claimed responsi- bility for the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister - a move that appeared to be aimed at defusing spiraling tensions. The move came just hours after gunmen shot and killed two Israelis in the West Bank: a 72-year-old Israeli-American man shopping for building supplies and a 45- year-old woman driving to a wedding. Officials flom the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine confirmed that Ahmed Saadat had been detained. The Front had claimed responsibility for killing Tourism Minister Rehavan Zeevi on Oct. 17. Israel has said it would not lift its travel restrictions on Arafat, until those respon- sible for the minister's death were in detention. The Palestinian leader has been restricted to Ramallah for more than a month. The detention appeared to be an attempt by the Palestinian Authority, led by Arafat, to salvage the cease-fire that has become extremely tenuous and stop ten- sions from spiraling out of control. Saadat's deputy, Abdel Rahim Mallouh, said Saadat was detained during a meeting with an official of the Palestinian Authority. 0 WASHINGTON (AP) - John Walker Lindh, the 20-year-old Californian who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, was charged yesterday with conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens. He will be tried in a civilian court and could face life in prison. After weeks of deliberations, the Bush admin- istration opted against a military trial or charges that would carry the death penalty. Lindh, who converted to Islam at 16 and is alleged to have trained at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan, was charged in a criminal com- plaint filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. He will be transferred from a U.S. military ship for trial in the United States. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Lindh admitted in interviews with the FBI that he met Osama bin Laden and knew bin Laden had ordered the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. "He chose to embrace fanatics, and his allegiance "to those terrorists never faltered," said Ashcroft. "Terrorists did not compel John Walker Lindh to join them. John Walker Lindh chose terrorists." Lindh learned in early June that bin Laden had sent people to the United States to carry out sui- cide operations, according to an FBI affidavit. The document described an odyssey that began with Walker's conversion to Islam in 1997, later training in Pakistan and Afghanistan and a deci- sion last year to join the Taliban. Friends have described Lindh as an intelligent young man who wore full-length robes to high school and went by the name "Suleyman" after his conversion to Islam. After his capture in December, his parents, Marilyn Walker and Frank Lindh, had asked the public to withhold judgment about their son. James Brosnahan, a lawyer for the separated couple, could not be reached yesterday. A spokeswoman at his law office in San Francisco said he was "issuing no statements at this time." 0 S AP PHOTO Attorney General John Ashcroft speaks to reporters yesterday on the indictment of John Walker Undh, the American Taliban. Court grants EEOC new legal power The Washington Post WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the federal agency in charge of fighting job dis- crimination may sue an employer for alleged violations of an employee's civil rights, seeking damages for an employ- ee even when the employee has agreed to submit job disputes to arbitration. By a vote of 6-3, the court held that a federal law designed to encourage arbitration as an alternative to litiga- tion does not impinge on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commis- sion's authority to fight legal battles when employees claim on-the-job bias. Writing for the court, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that the EEOC itself is not a party to the arbitration agreement at issue, and that nothing in federal law "authorizes a court to com- pel arbitration of any issues, or by any parties, that are not already covered in the agreement." Yesterday's decision is especially important because it comes after a rul- ing last year in which the court said that an employee's signature on a job contract containing an arbitration agreement waives the employee's right to go to court on his or her own behalf Now, however, employers may still be deterred from illegal discrimination by the costly prospect of being taken to court by the EEOC. Under the ruling yesterday, the EEOC will be able to seek not only a court order requiring an employer to stop any illegal activity, but also back pay, punitive damages and other individualized relief for a worker. "(P)unitive damages benefit the indi- vidual employee (and) they also serve S 0 Jamaica, Bahamas & S.Padre www.studentexpress.com is 1........i........... .. - -. .4 .Q I. I CalNow: ''Afi~1-800-787-3787 I RICHARD G E R E L AURA LINNEY an obvious public function in deterring future violations," Stevens noted. The stakes in the case were high for employees-rights advocates, who feared that a ruling against the EEOC in this case, EEOC v. Waffle House, No. 99-1823, would have given employers an easy way to get around all but the mildest legal remedies for discrimination under federal civil rights law. "This means the enforcement scheme of the civil rights statutes is still in place," said Thomas Osbourne of the AARP Foundation, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support ofthe EEOC. U.S. troops, to fight terror in Philippines The Washington Post U.S. Special Forces have begun arriving in the Philippines to assist Philippine troops in their fight against Muslim guerrillas linked to Osama bin Laden, a significant expansion of the U.S. war on terrorism outside Afghanistan. Although the deployment is a training exercise, the U.S. troops will accompa- ny front-line Filipino forces on patrols in guerrilla-threatened areas in the southern Philippines. Approximately 650 U.S. soldiers, including 160 Special Forces, will take part in the exercise, defense officials said yesterday. "It is not a modest number, it's sev- eral hundred plus," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in an interview with radio journalists. "But it is a group of people that are going to be with the Philippine forces for the purpose of training." Even as Pentagon officials say the focus of the war will remain on Afghanistan, the dispatch of several hundred U.S. troops to the Philippines underscores the Bush administration's intention to wage its fight against ter- rorism on a global scale. Having put aside such targets as Iraq, at least for now, the administration is working with friendly governments such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Singa- pore that are seeking help in rooting out terrorist groups. It's also looking to such countries as Indonesia, Yemen and Somalia, whereaal-Qaida cells are believed to be located. The U.S. forces moving .to the Philippines will help the Philippine army in the fight against Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group that Washington says is linked to bin Laden, whose al-Qaida network is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States. PUENTE QUETAME, Colombia Despite accord, no peace in Colombia Just hours after President Andres Pastrana accepted an eleventh-hour accord to salvage Colombia's three- year-old peace process, leftist rebels came out fighting yesterday.. Guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, exploded bombs in the town of Puente Quetame. They also blasted into a prison and freed 39 suspected rebel members, authorities said. "While the FARC was expressing their willingness to have peace, they were bombing a civilian town," Defense Minister Gustavo Bell said. Pastrana had given a U.N. envoy and 10 foreign diplomats until Monday night to convince the rebels to return to the negotiation table. Troops were massed outside the safe haven to retake the zone at his go-ahead. BUENOS AIRES, Argentina Argentina to deepen ties within region Amid renewed public protests and violent attacks on foreign-owned banks, President Eduardo Duhalde declared yesterday that Argentina would attempt to deepen ties within Latin America and confront the region's economic "domination" by the industrialized world. In remarks that signaled a shift away from Argentina's decade-long stance as Washington's closest ally in South America, Duhalde called for the cre- ation of a common currency with neighboring Brazil, and for a united front against "protectionist" U.S. trade barriers blocking Latin American agri- cultural exports. During the 1990s, Argentina embraced U.S.-backed economic poli- cies and received the coveted "non- NATO" ally status reserved for countries such as South Korea and Egypt. WASHINGTON Plane had dmaged tail fm, NTSB says Federal safety investigators said yes- terday they have discovered internal damage in the tail fin of the American Airlines jet that crashed last November in New York, but further testing is.... needed to determine if it occurred before or after the accident. The National Transportation Safety Board said NASA scientists examin- ing the 27-foot tail fin found that some layers of the advanced composite material used to build it had peeled apart from each other, a phenomenon known as "delamination." It was the first tentative indication of possible flaws in the material. The tail fin of the Airbus A300 jet broke off shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Air- port, and Flight 587 crashed into a nearby neighborhood, killing all 260 aboard and five people on the ground. - Compiled from Daily wire reports. 0 0 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 $105. Winter term (January through April) is $110, yearlong (September through April) is $190. University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions for fall term are $35. Subscrip- tions must be prepaid. The Michigan Daily is a member of The Associated Press and The Associated Colle- giate Press. ADDRESS: The Michigan Daily, 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1327. 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