The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom

Wednesday, November 15, 2006 - 3A

NEWS BRIEFS
BAGHDAD
Shiites kidnap
dozens at Higher
Education Ministry
Suspected Shiite militiamen
dressed as Interior Ministry com-
mandos stormed a Higher Educa-
tion Ministry office yesterday and
kidnapped dozens of people after
clearing the area under the guise
of providing security for what they
claimed would be a visit by the U.S.
ambassador.
Witnesses and authorities said
the gunmen raced through all four
stories of the building, forced men
and women into separate rooms,
handcuffed the men and loaded
them aboard about 20 pickup
trucks.
Shortly afterward, authorities
arrested six senior police officers
in connection with the abductions
- the police chief and five top sub-
ordinates in the Karradah district,
the central Baghdad region where
the kidnappers struck, Interior
Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Jalil
Khalaf said.
Recent weeks have seen a univer-
sity dean and prominent Sunni geol-
ogist murdered, bringing the death
toll among educators to at least 155
since the war began. The academ-
ics apparently were singled out for
their relatively high public stature,
vulnerability and views on contro-
versial issues in a climate of deepen-
ingIslamic fundamentalism.
WASHINGTON
Bush meets with
automakers
President Bush told Detroit's
auto industry leaders yesterday
he knows they are making "tough
choices" to shore up their compa-
nies in foreign competition and
promised continuing dialogue as
they seek help on trade and health
care issues.
"The president clearly under-
stands the importance of the busi-
ness to the United States and the
global economy," Ford Motor Co.
Chief Executive Alan Mulally said
later.
Bush said, "We found a lot in
common."
Bush,VicePresidentDickCheney
and other administration officials
met in the Oval Office for just over
an hour with top executives of Ford,
General Motors and DaimlerChrys-
ler AG's Chrysler Group.
WASHINGTON
Weakened at home,
Bush faces tough
crowd abroad

Senate Dems
pick leaders

ACTION NEWS

Lott makes
comeback bid for GOP
majority whip
WASHINGTON (AP) - Demo-
crats voted Tuesdayto keep the lead-
ers who guided their takeover of the
Senate last week but were sharply
divided over whether to give Speak-
er-to-bp Nancy Pelosi the majority
leader she wants in the House.
Former Republican Major-
ity Leader Trent Lott, meanwhile,
opened a bid to return to the Sen-
ate's Republican leadership after
being ousted in 2002 for remarks
interpreted as endorsing segrega-
tionist policies of the 1940s.
"Yes, I am," the Mississippian
said Tuesday when asked if he was
challenging Tennessee Sen. Lamar
Alexander to become minority
whip in the newly elected Demo-
cratic-majority Congress next year.
Senate Democrats voted yes-
terday to make Sen. Harry Reid of
Nevada majority leader and Dick
Durbin of Illinois No. 2 in the party
hierarchy.

In the House, a bitter battle was
under way after Pelosisaid she would
prefer Rep. John Murtha of Pennsyl-
vania to be majority leader over her
current lieutenant, Rep. Steny Hoyer
of Maryland. Critics accused Pelosi
of backpedaling on a pledge to scrub
the House of corruption.
Both Murtha and Hoyer claim to
have commitments from a major-
ity of Democrats, but the balloting
Thursday will be secret, and com-
mitments are known to change.
Murtha, a decorated Vietnam
veteran who favors an immedi-
ate drawdown of U.S. troops in
Iraq, has fought charges for years
of using his senior status on the
defense appropriations subcom-
mittee to award favors to campaign
contributions. He voted against
a Democratic package of ethics
reforms earlier this year and was
touched by but never charged in
the Abscambribery scandal a quar-
ter-century ago.
Citizens for Responsibility and
Ethics in Washington, a Democrat-
ic-leaning watchdog group, accused
Pelosi of compromising her ethical
standards by endorsing Murtha.

Channel 7 Action News films Engineering seniors Julianna Battista and Stephanie Fraley in their Michigan gear last ni
story about Michigan fans going to Columbus on Saturday for the epic matchup.

S. African lawmakers
legalize gay marriage

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP)
- South African lawmakers passed
legislation recognizing gay mar-
riages yesterday despite criticism
from both traditionalists and gay
activists.
The bill, unprecedented on a
continent where homosexuality
is taboo, was decried by gay activ-
ists for not going far enough and by
opponents who warned it "was pro-
voking God's anger."
Veterans of the governing Afri-
can National Congress praised the
Civil Union Bill for extending basic
freedoms to everyone under the
spirit of the country's first post-
apartheid constitution, adopted a
decade ago by framers determined

to make discrimination a thing of
the past.
"When we attained our democ-
racy, we sought to distinguish
ourselves from an unjust painful
past by declaring that never again
shall it be that any South African
will be discriminated against on
the basis of color, creed, culture
and sex," Home Affairs Minis-
ter Nosiviwe Mapisa-Ngakula
declared.
South Africa's constitution was
the first in the world to prohibit
discrimination on the basis of sex-
ual orientation, providing a power-
ful legal tool to gay rights activists
even though South Africa remains
conservative on such issues.

Man admits U.Va. sexual assault

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP)
- A man who sexually assaulted a
fellow student at a fraternity party
in 1984, then apologized to her two
decades later as part of the 12-step
Alcoholics Anonymous program,
pleaded guilty yesterday and could
go to prison.
William Beebe calmly entered a
plea to aggravated sexual battery as
his victim, Liz Seccuro, bowed her
head and wiped away tears.
"Twenty-two years ago I harmed

and former University of Virginia
student said outside court.
Under the plea bargain, prosecu-
tors asked that Beebe get two years
in prison when he is sentenced in
March.
Prosecutor Claude Worrell said
authorities agreed to the deal in
part because the investigation
revealed that more than one per-
son may have sexually assaulted
Seccuro at the Phi Kappa Psi party.
Beebe agreed to cooperate with
the investigation into exactly what
happened to Seccuro that night.

Humbled by elections at home, another person, and
President Bush is heading into talks set that right," the r
with leaders in Asia and Europe who
will be watching for signs of weak-
ness, uncertainty or retrenchment. universit
Bush's challenge is to demon-
strate that U.S. leadership as the almost as
world's last superpower is undi-
minished on the world stage.
"I think he will go vigorous, I
think he'll give a powerful perfor-
mance," said Kurt Campbell, a top
Pentagon official in the Clinton
administration who now is with
the Center for Strategic and Inter-
national Studies. M University
Some world leaders, particu- Unions
larly those who resented Bush's
cowboy swagger and saw his
decision to invade Iraq in 2003 as
a dangerous act of unilateralism,
might be gloating privately at the
president's political misfortunes.
But the United States does not
have a parliamentary system, and
Bush will remain president for two
more years. And other world lead-
ers have been challenged at home, To play: Comp
too, especially Iraq ally Tony
Blair of Britain and war opponent and every
Jacques Chirac of France, both of
whom could commiserate with There i
Bush.jutueo
- Compiled from jut use C
Daily wire reports
Difficult
3
Years it has taken for the
odds of dying from breast 8
cancer in the United States
to decrease by almost half.
"We think that's a combina-
tion of better screening and
better treatment," said Daniel
Hayes, co-director of Breast 9
Oncology Research at the
University's Cancer Center.

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