The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - 3

The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - 3

NEWS BRIEFS
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
In Pakistan election,
Bhutto's party leads,
ruling party in third
Pakistan's opposition parties
have won parliamentary elections,
threatening President Pervez
Musharraf's rule eight years after
he seized power in a military coup,
unofficial returns showed today.
The party of slain former Prime
Minister Benazir Bhutto was in
the lead in yesterday's parliamen-
tary vote, with ex-premier Nawaz
Sharif - who was toppled in Mush-
arraf's 1999 coup and has emerged
as his fiercest critic - running a
close second.
The private Geo TV network
said the two parties had so far won
139 seats, more than half of the
272-seat National Assembly.
The pro-Musharraf ruling party,
the Pakistan Muslim League-Q,
was trailing a distant third with 33
seats, the network said.
BRUSSELS, Belgium
Kosovo's declaration
of independence
draws opposition
The U.S. and the European
Union's biggest powers quickly
recognized Kosovo as an indepen-
dent nation yesterday, widening a
split with Russia, China and some
EU members strongly opposed to
letting the territory break away
from Serbia.
The riftwas onview fr asecond
day at the U.N. Securit Council,
which was holding an emergency
session to discuss the declaration
of independence issued Sunday by
Kosovo's ethnic Albanian major-
ity.
Ethnic Serbs rallying in north-
ern Kosovo angrily denounced the
United States and urged Russia to
help Serbia hold on to the territory
that Serbs consider the birthplace
of their civilization. Protesters
also marched in Serbia's capital,
and that nation recalled its ambas-
sador to the U.S. to protest Ameri-
can recognition for an independent
Kosovo.
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan
Suicide bomber kills
35 civilians at market
A suicide car bomber target-
ing a Canadian military convoy
killed 35 civilians at a busy market
in southern Afghanistan, a police
official said.
At least 28 people were wound-
ed in the attack in Spin Boldak, a
town in Kandahar province near
the border with Pakistan, said
Abdul Razeq, the Spin Boldak bor-
der police chief. Two Canadian
soldiers were wounded, he said.
The attack comes one day after
Afghanistan's deadliest bomb-
ing since the fall of the Taliban in
2001. More than 100 people were
killed by a suicide bomber outside
Kandahar city on Sunday.
NILES, Ohio

Obama says he
should have credited
Mass. gov for lines
Sen. Barack Obama said yester-
day that he doesn't think it's a big
deal that he borrowed lines from
his friend Massachusetts Gov. De-
val Patrick, although he probably
should have given him credit.
Patrick said during his guberna-
torial campaign a year and a half
ago that words matter, like "I have
a dream" and "all men are created
equal."
Obama used the same lines Sat-
urday night in Wisconsin. Obama
said that Patrick suggested he use
the lines to respond to Hillary
Rodham Clinton's suggestion that
Obama is more of a talker than a
doer.
Clinton spokesman Howard
Wolfson accused Obama of pla-
giarizing Patrick, and that's par-
ticularly troubling since Obama's
appeal is based in large part on his
rhetorical skills.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports
U.S. DEATHS
3,963
Number of American service mem-
bers who have died in the war in
Iraq, according to The Associated
Press. There were no deaths identi-
fied yesterday.

Illinois passes new gun
law, but will it really help?

In Turkey, acceptance of
religion brings tension

Law might not
have stopped NIU
shooter
CHICAGO (AP) - Illinois
lawmakers moved swiftly after
last year's massacre at Virginia
Tech to make it harder for any-
one with a history of mental ill-
ness to buy guns, fortifying what
were already some of the nation's
toughest weapons laws.
But the new measure does
not take effect until June. And
whether it would have pre-
vented last week's bloodbath at
Northern Illinois University is
far from clear.
Steven Kazmierczak, the
27-year-old grad student who
bought an arsenal of guns in
recent months and used them
to kill five people and commit
suicide, had been on medication
and was said to have spent time
in a psychiatric center as a teen
in the late 1990s.
But state Sen. Dan Kotowski,
a sponsor' of the law that will
require more detailed reporting
to state officials about those who
have received mental health
treatment, said the sketchy
information about Kazmierc-
zak's medical history makes it
impossible to know whether he
would have fallen under the law.
"This law is more comprehen-
sive than most," the Democrat
said yesterday. "But everything
needs to be evaluated and'
reviewed to address the problem
so that something like this never
happens again. This is the prom-
ise we have to make."
The measure, when it takes
effect,willrequirehealthprofes-
sionals to inform state authori-
ties about patients who display
violent, suicidal or threatening
behavior. Right now, such infor-
mation is reported to state offi-
cials only on people who have
been institutionalized, not on
those who receive only outpa-
tient treatment.
Illinois adopted the law last
June, and the governor signed it
in August.
Last month, President George
W. Bush signed federal legisla-
tion requiring states to provide

the mental-health information
they gather for use in a national
background-check system.
Virginia lawmakers, mean-
while, are still considering a
package of bills to change that
state's mental health system
after the Virginia Tech tragedy.
One bill would enshrine into
law an order by Gov. Timothy
M. Kaine that requires names of
people ordered into outpatient
treatment to also be reported to
state authorities.
The proposals are attempts to
alter a mental health system that
came under increased scrutiny
since a mentally disturbed stu-
dent, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32
people and himself at Virginia
Tech in April.
Unlike Cho, Kazmierczak
showed few outward signs of
trouble. He passed repeated
criminal background checks and
had a state firearm owner's iden-
tification card, which requires
applicants to answer a series
questions, including whether
they have been in a mental hos-
pital in the preceding five years.
Authorities say they verify what
the applicants put down.
Kazmierczak bought four
guns at Tony's Guns and Ammo
in Champaign. He bought a High
Point .380 pistol on Aug. 6, a Sig
Sauer 9 mm pistol. on Dec. 30,
and a Remington 870 shotgun
and Glock 9 mm pistol on Feb. 9,
authorities have said.
A former employee at a Chica-
go psychiatric treatment center
said last week that Kazmierc-
zak was placed there after high
school by his parents. She said
he used to cut himself and had
resisted takingmedications. And
Kazmierczak's girlfriend, Jes-
sica Baty, told CNN on Sunday
that he had been on an antide-
pressant but had stopped taking
it about three weeks ago because
"it made him feel like a zombie."
But even under Illinois'
new law, it's not clear whether
Kazmierczak said or did any-
thing that would have triggered
the reporting requirement and
made him ineligible to buy guns.
Some argue the more strin-
gent reporting rules could make
it even harder to identify people
who might be about to snap.

Nation's
secular-religious
divide becoming
more noticeable
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
The New York Times
ISTANBUL, Turkey - When
two women in Islamic head scarves
were spotted in an Italian res-
taurant in this city's posh new
shopping mall this month, Gulbin
Simitcioglu did a double take.
Covered women, long seen as
backward peasants from the coun-
tryside, "have started to be every-
where," said Simitcioglu, a sales
clerk in an Italian clothing store,
and it is making women like hpr
more than a little uncomfortable.
"We are Turkey's image. They are
ruining it."
As Turkey lurches toward a
repeal of a ban on head scarves at
universities, the country's secu-
lar upper middle class is feeling
increasingly threatened.
Religious Turks, once the under-
class of society here, have become
educated and middle class, and are
moving into urban spaces that were
once the exclusive domain of the
elite. Now the repeal of the scarf
ban - pressed by Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, passed by
parliament and now just awaiting
an official signature - is again set-
ting the groups against each other,
unleashing fears that have as much
to do with class rivalry as with the
growing influence of Islam.
While the public debate here

typically revolves around Islam
and how much space it should have
in Turkish society - a legitimate
concern in a country whose popu-
lation is overwhelmingly Muslim
and deeply conservative - the
struggle over power is a glaring, if
often unspoken, part of the tension
between the two groups. Secular
women at parties speak disdain-
fully of covered women and the
neighborhoods they populate. Older
people shake their heads and cluck
their tongues at them. High school
boys yell, "go back to Iran."
Adamantly secular Turks "don't
encounter them as human beings,"
said Atilla Yayla, a Turkish politi-
cal philosophy professor teaching
in England, referring to religious
Turks. "They want them to evapo-
rate, to disappear as fast as pos-
sible."
That attitude surfaced with the
repeal of the ban by parliament this
month.
One professor declared bluntly
that universities should "close the
gates until the administrators of
the country come back to their
senses." Another argued that cov-
ered students could cheat by using
cell phone headsets under their
scarves. The worry, secular Turks
said, was that covered women in
universities would soon graduate
and expect to wear their scarves in
civil service jobs, transforming the
Turkish state from secular to reli-
gious.
"I wasn't sure before but now I
am sure," said a 32-year-old law-
yer in a Starbucks in a fashionable
Istanbul neighborhood. "Their real
intent is to bring Shariah."
Turks who support lifting the

ban have drawn analogies with
school integration in the United
States. In a speech to parliament,
Nursuna Memecan, a deputy from
Erdogan's party, referred to a 1957
photograph of a white girl shouting
at a black student entering Little.
Rock Central High School, high-
lighting the girl's apology decades
later.
"There is a reaction that we may
regret," said Memecan. She said
that fears about growing religiosity
were groundless. Observant Turks
are not growing in numbers, she
said. They have always been there
but were not visible in educated
society.
"Weweren'tsittingwiththemon
planes," she said. "They didn't go to
ourrestaurants. We haveto learn to
share the cake with them."
Hasan Bulent Kahraman, a pro-
fessor at Sabanci University in Istan-
bul, said: "Cleaning ladies are all in
head scarves and no one says any-
thing. But if a judge wants to cover
her head,the problem is triggered."
But Turkey is different than
the United States, secular Turks
argue. The fight here is not about
skin color, but a religious belief
that seeks to impose an ideology,
they say. Islam dictates rules for
daily life, many of them limiting for
women, and secular women argue
that Islam's growth in Turkey will
inevitably lead to a society that is
less free for women.
"To associate the head scarf
with freedom sounds a little cyni-
cal," said Ayse Bugra, a political
economist at Bogazici University
in Istanbul, "since it is clearly about
limiting the way in which a woman
can appear in public."

I Attention Students!1

State of Black America
When: Wed. Feb. 20, 2008, from 7-9pm
Where: U-Club (Michigan Union)
Soul food will be served
Co-sponsored by MAC & NPHC
To be discussed:
What is the status of young blacks in our country?
How do black students feel on our campus?
How can African Americans move forward?
For more on MSA events, go to www msa.umich.edu
E
PACTICE
TEST
FEBRUARY 16,2008
All Tests are In Angell Hal
PCAT: 9:30AM - AUD C
i-wAPTEsT I kmptescom/prtwe K PL N

the perfect summer job
before other students do!

5
518 F
icatton.,corp


A