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A NEW LOOK
NEWS BRIEFS
BEIRUT, Lebanon
. Students clash
with supporters of
Hezbollah
University students loyal to Leb-
anon's government clashed with
Hezbollah supporters yesterday,
setting cars ablaze and battling
with homemade clubs and stones.
The melee deepened worries that
Lebanon cannot contain the politi-
cal and sectarian rivalries threat-
ening to push it toward civil war.
At least three people were killed
and dozens were injured before
army troops backed by tanks and
firing barrages of warning shots
into the air dispersed most rioters.
The military then declared Beirut's
first curfew since 1996.
But the fallout reaches far
beyond the casualty count. The
clashes, sparked by a cafeteria
scuffle between pro-government
Sunni Muslims and pro-Hezbollah
Shiites, reinforced fears that Leba-
non's sectarian divisions are erupt-
ing into violence as they did during
the 1975-1990 civil war.
It was the third straight day of
violence, sparked by a Hezbollah-
led strike Tuesday that came ahead
of a crucial gathering of donor
nations in Paris. The conference
Thursday raised pledges of $7.6 bil-
lion to help Prime Minister Fuad
Saniora's U.S.-backed government
rebuild after last summer's devas-
tating Israel-Hezbollah war.
The money and show of inter-
national support could boost the
embattled Saniora. The Iranian-
backed Hezbollah has vowed to
bring him down unless the opposi-
tion is given more power.
The chaos has paralyzed the gov-
ernment. Hezbollah leader Sheik
Hassan Nasrallah said Wednesday
that donors were backing the wrong
side in the standoff and that he
could topple Saniora at any time.
WASHINGTON
No compromise
seen between two
Iraq resolutions
The leader of a bipartisan effort
to rebuke President Bush's Iraq
strategy said yesterday he would
not strike a compromise with a
harsher Democratic resolution the
Senate will debate next week.
Sen.JohnWarner(R-Va.), former
chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, said he won't negotiate
with Democrats to develop a single
proposal on Iraq. His comments
- along with the emergence of
other resolutions the Senate might
consider - underscored how a Con-
gress largely against Bush's pro-
posal to send more troops to Iraq
remained divided over what to do
about it.
WASHINGTON
Justice Department
wants domestic
spying suit dropped
The Bush administration sought
yesterday to drop its appeal of a
federal court ruling that concluded
the government's domestic spying
program is unconstitutional, say-
ing the entire issue is moot since
the surveillance now is monitored
by a secret court.
Responding, lawyers for the
American Civil Liberties Union said
they would continue to push for
their day in court since President
Bush retains authority to continue
the warrantless spying program.
The Justice Department's
request has been expected since
last week, when Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales disclosed that the
secret panel of judges who oversee
the Foreign Intelligence Surveil-
lance Act had begun reviewing and
approving applications to spy on
people believed to be linked to al-
Qaida.
The ACLU's lawsuit against the
terrorist surveillance program "is
now moot," the Justice Depart-
ment wrote in a 21-page brief,
filed yesterday with the 6th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in Cin-
cinnati.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports
4
Number of states that have
banned affirmative action at pub-
lic institutions. Florida, Califor-
nia, Washington and Michigan
have been racial preferences by
the hand of elected officials or bal-
lot proposals like Proposal 2.
Friday, January 26, 2007 - 3
New Ford chief faces
reality of record loss
Hairdresser Amber Smith of Ypsilanti gives Engineering senior Jeffrey Arin a hair
cut yesterday at Douglas J. on East Liberty Street.
Scientists tie part
of brain to smoking
A different approach: facturing operations.
When asked about his priorities
Less is more for fixing Ford, Mulally said in an
interview this week, "At the top of
the list, I would put dealing with
By MICHELINE MAYNARD reality."
The New York Times It is a harsh reality. Yesterday,
Ford reported that it had the worst
DEARBORN - Just 10 months year in its history in 2006, when it
ago, William Clay Ford Jr. vowed lost $12.7 billion. In the last three
that his auto company, despite its months of last year, it lost $5.8 bil-
mounting losses, would "reclaim lion.
our legacy" in the American car A big part of that was related
market and "emerge stronger than to one-time charges from worker
we've ever been." buyouts. But Ford's losses are also
But there is a new message com- accelerating because of fallingsales
ingoutof the chiefexecutive's office of its big SUVs and pickups, and its
at Ford. Alan Mulally, recruited last inability to sell vehicles without
fall from Boeing to run the Ford offering costly rebates.
Motor Co., has signaled that the One Wall Street analyst, Jona-
bigger-is-better worldview that has than Steinmetz, calculated that
defined Ford for decades is being Ford's "terrible" 2006 performance
replaced with a new approach: less was equal to a loss of $4,700 per
is more. vehicle. Earlier this decade, Ford
Instead of insisting that Ford earned profits of that size on its big
reverse its slide, Mulally says that vehicles, a time when it held almost
Ford will become much smaller. Its a quarter of the American car mar-
forecasts show it may fall from sec- ket.
ond to fourth place this year in the Ford, whose market share
American market, behind General dropped to 17.5 percent last year, is
Motors, Toyota and Chrysler. in the middle of shedding 44,000
The hiring of Mulally, leaving workers, a third of its total staff It is
William Ford as chairman, marked also closing16 plants, and has said it
the first time any Detroit carmaker does not expect to make any money
has reached outside the industry in North America until 2009. By
for a new leader. And Mulally has then, it expects to sell only about 14
broken with tradition in a hurry. percent of the cars and trucks pur-
He flew to Japan to meet with top chased in the United States.
executives of its toughest competi- Mulally is trying to be both opti-
tor, Toyota, to seek their advice on mistic and pragmatic, creating of
ways to streamline Ford's manu- sense of urgency while reassuring
Bad drugs blamed for
Detroit-area death rise
his anxious workers that the com-
pany has a future.
Mulally is in a honeymoon peri-
od and has escaped any blame for
Ford's poor results last year, even
though the worst performance
came last quarter, when he was in
charge.
Ford executives in the past also
have made similar claims about
breaking with tradition, installing
new ways of working and accepting
reality. In the end, Mulally will be
judged as much by Ford's success or
failure in the marketplace as for his
management techniques.
"The whole thing boils down
to the product that's being sold,"
said Jan K. Brueckner, a profes-
sor of economics at University of
California at Irvine. "We can do
everything - we can build great
computers, put men on the moon.
Why can't we design cars that
appeal to people?"
Some analysts also said that
Ford's financial results could get
worse before they got better, mean-
ing Mulally might have to wait
years to show improvements. "Ford
will suffer the most severe market
share decline among the Big Three
in 2007," Brian Johnson, an auto
analyst with Lehman Brothers,
wrote in a research report yester-
day. "We expect Ford's decade-long
share loss to accelerate in 2007."
Mulally is learning what a dif-
ficult tightrope he must walk in
managing expectations amid the
dire news.
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Injury to specific area
eliminates urge for
cigarettes
By BENEDICT CAREY
The New York Times
Scientists studying stroke patients
are reporting that an injury to a spe-
cific partofthebrain,nearthe ear, can
instantly and permanently break a
smoking habit, effectively erasing the
most stubborn of addictions. People
with the injury who stopped smoking
found that their bodies, as one man
put it, "forgotrthe urge to smoke."
The new finding, which is to
appear in the journal Science today,
is likely to alter the course of addic-
tion research, pointing research-
ers toward new ideas for treatment,
experts say. While no one is sug-
gesting brain injury as a solution for
addiction, the findings suggest that
therapies might focus on the insula,
a prune-sized region under the fron-
tal lobes that is thought to register
gut feelings and is apparently a criti-
cal part of the network that sustains
addictive behavior.
Previous research on addicts
focused on regions of the cortex
involved in thinking and decision-
making. But while those regions are
involved in maintaining habits, the
new study suggests that they are not
as central.
The study did not examine depen-
dence on alcohol, cocaine or other
substances. Yet smoking is as at least
as hard to quitas any other habit, and
it probably involves the same brain
circuits, experts said. Most smokers
who manage to quit do so only after
repeated attempts, and the craving
for cigarettes usually lasts for years,
if not a lifetime.
"This is the firstitime we've shown
anything like this, that damage to a
specific brain area could remove
the problem of addiction entirely,"
said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the
National Institute on Drug Abuse,
which financed the study, alongwith
the National Institute of Neurologi-
cal Disorders and Stroke. "It's abso-
lutely mind-boggling."
Others cautioned that the study
was small, and that scientists still
knew little about the widely distrib-
uted neural networks involved in
sustaininghabits.
"One has to be careful not to
extrapolate too much based on brain
injuries to what's going on in all
addictive behavior, in healthy brains,"
said Dr. Martin Paulus, a psychiatric
researcher at the University of Cali-
fornia in San Diego, and the San Diego
VA Medical Center. Still, he added,
the study "opens up a whole new way
to think about addiction."
The researchers, from the Uni-
versity of Iowa and the University
of Southern California, examined 32
formersmokers, all of whom had suf-
fered a brain injury.
Beware heroin and
cocaine laced with
fentanyl
DETROIT (AP) - There hasbeen
a marked increase in drug deaths
in the area, county health officials
said yesterady, blaming the prob-
lem on the spread of heroin and
cocaine laced with the prescription
drug fentanyl.
The Wayne CountyDepartmentof
Health and Human Services reported
that 542 people died from drugs from
Jan. 1 through Dec. 10, 2006. That
is up 19 percent from the 457 drug
deaths reported for all of 2005.
Of the 2006 deaths, 178 were
specifically attributed to fentanyl,
197 to heroin and 204 to cocaine.
Because those drugs often are
mixed, the numbers don't add up
exactly, health department spokes-
woman Teresa Blossom said. Com-
parable figures for 2005 were not
immediately available.
ow,
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