NEWS Friday, September 8, 2006 - The Michigan Daily - 7 PROVOST FACEBOOK Continued from page 1A Continued from page 1A Sullivan was trying out for the debate team, which Lay- cock captained. "Luckily, I made it," Sulli- van said. Laycock, a constitutional law expert specializing in religious liberties, joined the law faculty after making the move to Ann Arbor with Sul- livan. "It was such a great oppor- tunity for her, it was really a no-brainer," Laycock said. "If it was a second-rate law school, (the decision to move) would have been a little harder." At the end of the reception, Sullivan said she has been continually impressed by the drive for excellence at the Uni- versity. "If we can keep that, nour- ish that - nothing else will matter," Sullivan said. News Feed or offer a one-click option allow- ing users to remove themselves from News Feed. Escaping News Feed under the current system is somewhat complicated: Users must remove each post on their Mini-Feed to hide their Facebook endeavors from friends. Group members have vowed not to update their profiles until their demands are met. More than 103,000 Facebook users had signed the online petition as of press time. Petition organizers also run www.saveface- book.com, which keeps concerned students abreast of the latest news on the backlash. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told The Associated Press yesterday that his staff is working to give users additional pri- vacy. These changes may be unveiled today, he said, allowing users to block categories in the feeds. Users would still be able to monitor their friends' Facebook activities by looking at their mini-feeds. In a Facebook blog entry titled "Calm down. Breathe. We hear you," Zuckerberg addresses the outcry. "We agree, stalking isn't cool; but being able to know what's going on in your friends' lives is," he wrote. "This is information peo- ple used to dig for on a daily basis, nicely reorganized and summarized so people can learn about the people they care about." Although none of the information avail- able via the "new Facebook" is actually new, some students feel uncomfortable because the information is so detailed and easy to find. "Facebook makes me feel like I'm naked," LSA junior Nick Taylor said. "It's how much information it gives everyone you know." Although the News Feed opposition is fervent, there is a weak show of support online. One group, named "Actually, I like the Facebook News Feed," points to its benefits. The group's description says those who want privacy shouldn't be on Facebook anyway. It has only 245 members. Other groups' descriptions say Facebook users' primary purpose online is to stalk anyway, and that therefore they should embrace the feed, because it does the stalk- ing for them. As with any issue, there is also indiffer- ence. "I'm not too worried about stalkers," LSA sophomore Annise Moy said. "I don't think I have any." ACTIVISM Continued from page 1A I've often wondered why our genera- tion isn't more vocal. Conditions cer- tainly seem ripe for protest. Like in the '60s, the country is evenly divided into bitterly partisan camps. Like in the '60s, our nation is stuck in an unpopu- lar war that we won't abandon for fear of letting the bad guys win. Like in the '60s, political opponents no longer see the point of dialogue with their ideo- logical enemies. And yet, even in the supposedly far- left enclave of Ann Arbor, there aren't many hints of discontent beyond snarky bumper stickers and the occasional "Impeach Bush" yard sign. If there's an anti-war movement at the University, it's news to me. The group that sprouted on here campus to protest the Iraq War, Anti War Action!, withered almost as quickly as did hope for a functional, secular Iraqi democracy. Outside of a few SOLE kids and a handful of envi- ronmentalists, you might not even know that there are activists here. Occasionally, someone old enough to remember what campuses were like in the 'fi0s asks me why my generation isn't out in the streets trying to stop all this nonsense. I always struggle to give a satisfactory answer. Maybe Karl Rove is so good at spinning reality that he can make any protest look futile. Maybe today's college students, preoc- cupied with building the perfect resu- me and getting into grad school, can't be bothered with changing the world. Maybe between MTV and the Internet, we just don't have the attention span to launch a struggle and win it. At the back of my mind, though, lurks the suspicion that we don't care because we realize that little of what's going wrong with our country will affect us. Our parents protested Viet- nam because they feared the draft, but no matter how badly stretched our all- volunteer army gets, we know that we aren't headed to Iraq or Afghanistan unless we want to go. The gap between rich and poor in America might have grown drastically during our lifetimes, but let's face it - highly educated pro- fessionals like we'll be are the winners in today's cutthroat, non-union, global economy. BALLOT Continued from page 1A voter approval. The proposal passed, but it was partially repealed by Colorado voters in 2005. Unlike other ballot proposals like the Michigan Civil Rights Iniatitve and the now unnecessary Raise the Wage campaign, the Stop Overspending Proposal had almost no organized student support. "I would have voted for it, butI don't know anyone on campus who was actively supporting it," Brian Steers, secretary of the College Republicans, said. Alum Ryan Bates joined the Michigan Voter Edu- cation Project in Ann Arbor last summer to campaign against the overspending proposal after he graduated last summer. He, too, had never heard of a student who gath- ered signatures for the petition. Typically a petition drive that turned in 500,000 sig- natures would have no problem getting on the ballot. Even if 10 percent of the signatures are disqualified, which is average for a statewide petition, there are still more than 317,757 signatures: the amount needed to make the ballot. But the overspending proposal ran into trouble because its petitions contained an unusu- ally high number of duplicate signatures. This is espe- cially damaging to a petition drive, because if state investigators find two identical signatures, both are thrown out. Mark Grebner, a Democratic consultant with experi- ence in petition drives, conducted an audit of the petition signatures for Defend Michigan,a group that campaigned against the overspending proposal. His audit found over 100,000 duplicate signatures as well as tens of thousands that were invalid for other reasons. "This was unlike anything I have ever seen before," Grebner said. "Typically you see a 12-percent rate of duplicate signatures, but these guys had over 20 per- cent." The secretary of state confirmed most of Grebner's findings through its own investigation. Scott Tillman, a spokesman for Stop Overspending, said the campaign's opponents would stop at nothing to prevent the proposal from appearing on the ballot. "Just because someone accidentally signed a petition twice does not mean they were trying to commit election fraud;" Tillman said. Grebner said the petition drive probably failed because the organizers hired unreliable paid petition circula- tors, rather than college students or volunteers. He also stressed that his investigation found no evidence of voter fraud. "It is not a criminal racket, but they had to find guys who don't have real jobs;" Grebner said. "If you pay people who normally spend their days washing windows at stop signs hundreds of dollars to collect signatures, you will get hundreds of signatures, but you may not be happy with the quality you get." Tillman said the proposal's backers hired National Voter Outreach, based in Ludington, to use paid petition circulators. He said he was not sure whether or not Stop Overspending would take legal action against National Voter Outreach because of the high number of duplicate signatures. Death reveals underground surgery web Phony doctor received $3,300 for fatal cosmetic surgery FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) - Fabiola DePaula's quest for beauty took her to a condomini- um basement, where authorities say she paid an unlicensed doctor $3,300 for a nose job and lipo- suction performed on a massage table. But something went terribly wrong and the 24-year-old nanny died, exposing what investigators say was an underground cosmet- ic-surgery network used by immi- grants from Brazil - a country whose women are world-famous for their beauty and their will- ingness to go under the knife to achieve it. "Somebody has to speak out. Go to the Brazilians, open their minds and let them know it's dangerous," said Jacque Foster, a friend of DePaula's. "This is totally beyond unsafe. You have to think about what you are doing." Authorities believe a Brazilian doctor, Luiz Carlos Ribeiro, per- formed liposuction, nose jobs and Botox injections for three years in the Framingham area, mostly for the town's large Brazilian immi- grant population and mostly for cash. Police say DePaula, a native of Brazil, went to Ribeiro for a nose job on July 27, then died three days later after the liposuction. According to the autopsy report, DePaula died of complications from the liposuction, including pulmonary fat emboli, or fat par- ticles in the lungs. District Attorney Martha Coakley said doctors in a hospital could have dealt with the compli- cation, which she called a rare but known risk. Ribeiro and his wife, Ana Maria Miranda Ribeiro, both 49, were arrested July 31 and charged with manslaughter, unauthorized practice of medicine and drug counts. The couple pleaded not guilty and remain in jail. Their attorneys declined to comment. The owner of the condo was also arrested. The district attorney said Ribeiro was licensed to practice medicine in Brazil, but his spe- cialty was not cosmetic surgery. Officials have not identified his specialty. Eliana Miranda, a Brazilian immigrant who owns a clothing store in Framingham, about 20 miles west of Boston, said she doubts Ribeiro had trouble find- ing customers. Cosmetic surgery is "big here too, but in Brazil, it's much big- ger," she said. "We suffer all day in high heels, just to look good. Americans think about what is comfortable. Even the underwear is more underwear." Youth and beauty are posi- tively worshipped in Brazil- ian culture, exemplified by the scantily clad women celebrat- ing Carnival or sunbathing on the beach (a spectacle immor- talized in the sultry song "The Girl From Ipanema.") The best- known plastic surgeons in the country are celebrities. Other states with large immi- grant populations have also seen cases in which people fell victim to others practicing medicine or dentistry illegally. In Miami, for example, which has a large popula- tion of Brazilians and others from Latin American countries that put a heavy emphasis on female beau- ty, many of these cases involve cosmetic procedures. Some Brazilians around Fram- ingham said it is common for Brazilians to travel back to their native country for all types of operations - not just cosmetic surgery - that often cost thou- sands of dollars less than in the United States. August death toll high in Baghdad despite predictions Morgues and hospital records show more than 1,500 violent deaths last month BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - More than 1,500 people died violently in Baghdad last month - nearly the same number as in July - and not the dramatic drop estimated just last week, when U.S. and Iraqi officials announced that their new security crackdown was working. The Iraqi Health Ministry says its final August tally of violent deaths in Baghdad was 1,536. That is nearly three times the same agen- cy's preliminary estimate last week and shows a nearly undiminished epidemic of killings by insurgents and sectarian death squads. Asked yesterday about the new, higher fig- ures from the ministry, U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson declined to provide an explanation or revised outlook. He referred The Associated Press to a statement on a U.S. military Web site that said the murder rate in Baghdad dropped 52 percent in August from the daily rate for July. The Health Ministry offered no explana- tion for how the original estimate of 550 vio- lent deaths in August could have been revised upward so dramatically. The final figures for Baghdad, based on reports from morgues and hospitals, showed that 1,536 people died in Baghdad in August due to sectarian and political violence, said Deputy Health Minister Hakem al-Zamly. The revised tally could be due in part to a surge in killings at the end of the month. More than 250 people died in bombings and shootings in Bagh- dad during the final week of August. Delays in gathering information could have also played a role. The Health Ministry bases its monthly counts on reports from government hospitals and morgues, many of which are understaffed and lack computers. Either way, the new numbers raise serious questions about the success of the security operation. U.S. and Iraqi officials have been eager to show progress in restoring security in Baghdad at a time when the country appears on the verge of civil war, and support for the war is declining in the United States. Asked yesterday about the higher death fig- ures, Johnson, the U.S. military spokesman, declined to comment directly. He referred the AP to a statement on a U.S. military Web site by Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, which said the murder rate in Baghdad had dropped 52 percent from the daily rate for July. "The violence Baghdad endured in July receded during the month of August;' the state- ment by Caldwell added. "Attacks in Baghdad were well below the monthly average for July." The confusion over the numbers underscores the difficulty of obtaining accurate death tolls in Iraq, which lacks the data reporting and tracking systems of most modern nations. When top Iraqi political officials cite death numbers, they often refuse to say where the numbers came from. The Health Ministry, which tallies civil- ian deaths, relies on reports from government hospitals and morgues. The Interior Ministry, which command Iraqi's police, compiles fig- ures from police stations, while the Defense Ministry reports deaths only among army sol- diers and insurgents killed in combat. Cell phone makers fight aftermarket sales Some mobile companies losing millions of dollars on prepaid phone resales overseas COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - People moving state to state, armed with cash and tricks to avoid scrutiny, are buying cheap prepaid mobile phones by the thousands with plans to sell them in Latin America and Hong Kong. Cell phone companies say the practice is costing them millions of dollars, and some have hired private investigators to document what they say is illegal tam- pering with their phones. Wal-Mart, Radio Shack and other retailers are limiting how many phones they will sell at one time. The buying has raised concerns the phones might be used to aid terrorism, though those in the trade say it's nothing but capitalism at its best - no different than reselling stock for more than you paid. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security issued nationwide bulletins ear- lier this year warning police to be on the lookout for bulk purchases of cell phones. Authorities are worried that profits from the trade could end up financing ter- rorism or that the phones could be used as detonators in attacks. The practice - at the center of court cases in Flor- ida, Ohio and Michigan - appears widespread and in no danger of subsiding soon. Participants in the trade don't appear very bashful. "Don't leave a phone behind. To make real money buy them all;' urged an e-mail by Larry Riedeman of Larry's Cell in Altamonte Springs, Fla., that was included in a lawsuit against that entity by TracFone Wireless Inc. "Thousands a day if you can!" Riedman and other small companies are consid- ered the middlemen in a system that starts with buy- ers snapping up phones at retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and ends with resale of the phones over- seas. In Ohio, two men acknowledged last month to authorities that they had delivered 600 TracFones to a middleman over three months. Also in August, three Dallas men briefly charged in Michigan with trafficking counterfeited goods told the FBI that several businesses in Texas buy tele- phones "from hundreds of people like themselves," according to an FBI filing in that case. The phones are then sold to middlemen in California, New York or Miami. Another buyer, Bilal Mustafa, 22, of Minneapolis, told The Associated Press he travels around the Mid- west a week at a time in search of phones. He and a buddy will buy four to six at once at small-town depart- ment stores, as many as 250 a day. Mustafa sells them to a cell phone business he wouldn't identify. He says he's doing nothing illegal and scoffs at FBI concerns that the practice could aid terrorists.