The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

NEWS BRIEFS
MIDLAND, Mich.
Teenager shoots
ex-girlfriend, kills
self outside school
A teenager shot his ex-girlfriend
four times outside her high school
yesterday morning, then killed
himself as the girl's mother tried to
protect her, authorities said.
Jessica Forsyth, 17, was taken
to Hurley Medical Center in Flint,
where she was in serious but stable
condition, hospital spokeswoman
Christie White said yesterday
afternoon. Midland Police Chief
James St. Louis said the gunman,
identified as David Turner, 17, of
5 Coleman, died at the scene.
Turner had gone to H.H. Dow
High School to try to talk to For-
syth, but he was turned away by
school officials, the police chief
said. The boy then called her and
asked her to meet him outside the
building.
After a conversation in the park-
ing lot, Turner pulled a gun out of
a backpack and shot Forsyth four
times before shooting himself, St.
Louis said. The girl's mother, who
had dropped her daughter off at the
school, saw the shooting from her
car and drove between the two to
try to defend the girl.
Turner did not attend Dow High.
He lived about 20 miles west of
Midland.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan
Taliban official says
group prepared for
NATO attack
A top Taliban commander said
yesterday the group has 4,000
fighters bracing to rebuff NATO's
largest-ever offensive in northern
Afghanistan, now in its second
V day.
Suicide bombers are ready, land
mines have been planted and heli-
copters will be targeted, Mullah
Abdul Qassim, the top Taliban
commander in Helmand province
told The Associated Press.
NATO, meanwhile, announced
the capture of a senior Taliban
fighter who had eluded authorities
by wearing a woman's burqa. Mul-
lah Mahmood, who is accused of
helping Taliban fighters rig suicide
bomb attacks, was seizedbyAfghan
soldiers at a checkpoint near Kan-
dahar, the alliance said.
Speaking by satellite telephone
from an undisclosed location, Qas-
sim said the Taliban has 8,000 to
9,000 fighters in Helmand prov-
ince, including some 4,000 in the
north, where NATO launched its
largest-ever offensive Tuesday. He
said all the fighters were Afghan,
denying reports of hundreds of for-
eign fighters in the region.
BAGHDAD
30 killed in attack
during holy Shiite
pilgrimage
A suicide attacker blew him-
self up in a cafe northeast of
the capital yesterday, killing 30

people and wounding dozens,
and a powerful bomb killed three
American soldiers trying to clear
explosives from a highway near
Baghdad.
The deadly assaults occurred as
Iraqi security forces struggled to
protect more than 1 million Shi-
ite pilgrims streaming toward the
holy city of Karbala for annual re-
ligious rituals - and facing a string
of attacks along the way that have
claimed more than 150 lives in two
days.
They included 22 people -12 po-
lice commandos and 10 civilians -
who died yesterday in a car bomb-
ing at a checkpoint in southern
Baghdad set up to protect pilgrims,
the U.S. military said. An Iraqi TV
cameraman working for a Shiite-
owned station was among the civil-
ian dead, his station said.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports

PROP 2
From page lA
continue in federal court.
Opponents have said the mea-
sure could devastate programs
aimed at promoting diversity, but
the report said affirmative action
programs that are inclusive and
don't grant preferential treatment
can continue.
Supporters of Proposal 2 said
that was their position all along.
"Look at the flip-flop this com-
mission has made," said Chetly
Zarko, former treasurer of the
Michigan Civil Rights Initiative,
the group that sponsored Proposal
2. "During the campaign they made
it clear they thought everything
was being banned and the sky was
going to fall."
The programs that would need
to be changed are connected to
the state's Commission on Span-
ish Speaking Affairs, women and
minority business owners, special
needs adoptions, minority student
grants for some higher education
programs and some collective bar-
gaining issues.
Programs that grant money spe-
cifically to black and Latino college
students majoring in K-12 educa-
tion or enrolling in medical schools
could be in jeopardy, for example.

Thursday, March 8, 2007 - 3A
The report said most state gov-
ernment departments do not use
preferential treatment for hiring
or contracting decisions. The two
departments that sometimes do
- the Michigan Department of
Transportation and the Michigan
Department of Environmental
Quality - must do so to contin-
ue qualifying for federal money,
according to the report.
Proposal 2 allows some excep-
tions for programs needed to qualify
for federal funding.
But some supporters of the mea-
sure worry the state might try to use
that as an excuse to get around obey-
ingthe new law.
The review included 17 state
departments and six other agen-
cies, but did not include the attor-
ney general and secretary of state
offices.
A spokeswoman for Secretary
of State Terri Lynn Land said the
department's hiring and contract-
ing policies followthose established
for other state departments.
Although the commission was
under orders to do the report,
Attorney General Mike Cox's office
is the one charged with giving state
departments legal advice and rep-
resentation on issues, including
those related to Proposal 2, spokes-
man Rusty Hills said.

EN SIMON/Daily

Ed Potter, global relations director of Coca-Cola, speaks in Wyly Hall yesterday.

COKE
From page IA
"Public awareness of the water
issue in India was driven by one
guy with Internet access," he said,
"Local issues are more easily inter-
connected today."
Potter said his job is to identify
potential environmental and labor
problemsbefore they are made pub-
lic so they can be corrected before
they harm Coca-Cola's image.
Potter, who has worked for the
International Labor Organization
since 1997, was hired by Coca-
Cola in March 2005 to improve the
company's response procedures to
human rights violations.
In response to Reddy's emotion-

ally-charged question, a composed
Potter said his position with the
ILO didn't conflict with his posi-
tion with Coca-Cola because the
International Labor Organization
doesn't pay him for his work.
Reddy asked Potter why he
opposed the release of evidence
indicating human rights violations
by Coca-Cola and their Colombian
bottlers in a lawsuit filed by the
International Labor Rights Fund
on behalf of SinalTrainal, a Colom-
bian labor union.
Potter responded by saying that
there is distinction between alle-
gations and evidence and that the
violence may be unrelated to Coca-
Cola's actions but the product of
Colombia's historic civil strife.

"Colombia had four decades of
civil war, over 100,000 thousand
deaths and 4,000 labor union
deaths," Potter said. "The drug
traffickers pour more money into
the economy than the govern-
ment."
Potter said addressing allega-
tions of workplace violations was a
main priority for Coca-Cola.
"We aspire to be a leader in cor-
porate responsibility," Potter said.
"The public often holds Coca-Cola
like other recognizable brands
accountable for anything occurring
under the trademark."
Potter's lecture was a part of
the Global Impact Speaker Series,
which is sponsored by the Univer-
sity's William Davidson Institute.

Sample Roundtrip Airfares From Detroit 1o:


Dems to propose Iraq
pullout by fall 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - House
Democratic leaders intend to pro-
pose legislation requiring the with-
drawal of U.S. combat troops from
Iraq by the fall of 2008, and even
earlier if the Iraqi government fails
to meet security and other goals,
congressional officials said last
night.
The conditions, described as ten-
tative until presented to the Demo-
cratic rank and file, would be added
to legislation providing nearly $100
billion the Bush administration has
requested for fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the officials said.
The legislation is expected on the
floor of the House later this month,
and would mark the most direct
challenge to date the new Demo-
cratic-controlled Congress has
posed to the president's war poli-
cies. As such, it is likely to provoke
a fierce response from the adminis-
tration and its Republican allies in
Congess.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office
announced plans for a news con-
ference this morning to unveil the
measure, without providing any
of the details. It said she would
be joined by Rep. John Murtha
(D-Pa.) and other key lawmakers.
Murtha is chairman of the subcom-

mittee with jurisdiction over the
Pentagon's budget and is among the
House's most outspoken opponents
of the war.
But Democrats familiar with the
emerging legislation said the bill
would require President Bush to
certify that the government of Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
was making progress toward pro-
viding for his country's security,
allocating its oil revenues and cre-
ating a fair system for amending its
constitution.
They said if Bush certified the
Iraqis were meeting these so-called
benchmarks, U.S. combat troops
could remain until September of
next year. Otherwise, the deadline
would move up to the end of 2007.
The officials who described the
details did so on condition of ano-
nymity, saying they were not autho-
rized to speak before the measure is
presented to the rank and file. They
stressed that the specific provisions
in the legislation were tentative
pending approval by the caucus.
The legislation also calls for the
Pentagon to adhere to its standards
for equipping and training U.S.
troops sent overseas and for pro-
viding time at home between tours
of combat.

Read online
updates on
the Daily
news blog.

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Number of library volunteers out
of 55 who resigned from their posi-
tions in the public library in Levy
County, Fla., the Gainesville Sun -
reported. The mass resignation of
the mostly elderly volunteers came
after county officials demanded
that they all undergo drug tests. The
volunteers had helped with many
day-to-day tasks in the library, such
as re-shelving books.

Not your typical celebrities.
Not your typical award show.

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