The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
NEWS BRIEFS
WASHINGTON
Bush: 10 months is
'plenty of time' for
Mideast peace deal
With only 10 months left in his
term and Israeli-Palestinian talks
collapsed over renewed violence,
President Bush said yesterday there
is "plenty of time" to get a Mideast
peace deal before he leaves.
"This is a process that always
has two steps forward and one step
back," Bush said after meeting at
the White House with Jordan's
King Abdullah II. "We just need
to make sure that it's just one step
back."
Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice is in the region this week try-
ing to rescue peace negotiations
from a low point.
WASHINGTON
With housing market
slipping, Bernanke
urges more loan relief
Battling a dangerous wave of
home foreclosures, Federal Reserve
Chairman Ben Bernanke called
yesterday for additional relief and
urged lenders to help distressed
owners by lowering the amount of
their loans.
"This situation calls for a vigor-
ous response," Bernanke said in a
speech to a banking group meeting
in Orlando, Fla.
Even with some relief efforts
under way by industry and gov-
ernment, foreclosures and late
payments on home mortgages are
likely to rise "for a while longer,"
Bernanke warned.
Rising foreclosures threaten to
V worsen the problems in the housing
market and for the national econo-
my, which many fear is on the verge
of a recession or in one already.
DETROIT
GM, UAW get OK to
form union-run trust
for retired workers
A federal judge in Detroit has
given preliminary approval to a
settlement between General Mo-
tors Corp. and the United Auto
Workers that would set up a union-
run trust for retiree health care.
U.S. District Judge Robert Cle-
land made his decision yesterday
after a brief hearing.
Cleland says the settlement is
very impressive and praises the
cooperation between GM and the
union.
GM and the UAW agreed to
form the trust as part of contract
negotiations last fall, but needed
court approval for it to take effect.
Workers and retirees will be
given details of the settlement by
March 28.
BAGHDAD
Military helicopter
crash kills 8
An Iraqi military helicopter
crashed in northern Iraq, killing an
American soldier and seven other
people, the U.S. military said yes-
terday.
The announcement came on a
day that recorded little violence in
Iraq. The country's president an-
nounced he would visit neighbor-
ing Turkey, and the prime minister
called for the release of akidnapped
Chaldean Catholic archbishop.
The Russian-made M-17 heli-
copter was found Tuesday south
of Beiji, about 90 miles south of
Mosul, a day after it was reported
missing. The Iraqi Defense Minis-
try said the aircraft got caught in
bad weather.
All eight people on board the
helicopter died, including the U.S.
soldier, said military spokesman Lt.
Michael Street.
An Iraqi air force official said six
Iraqis and two foreigners were on
board. The official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity because he
wasn't authorized to release the in-
formation, did not give the nation-
ality of the other foreigner. Street
said he was unaware that another
foreigner was aboard the helicop-
ter. - Compiled from
Daily wire reports
. 3,973
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.
DISTRIBUTION
From Page 1A
"The Daily will not support any
policy that unnecessarily limits
the rights of student publications
to distribute in LSA buildings,
even if that policy makes spe-
cial allowances for the Daily and
other well-established newspa-
pers," the letter said.
Grossman said he had little
contact with LSA regarding the
policy, other than writing the let-
ter.
He said he had planned to meet
with officials from the Facilities
and operations Office, but the
meeting - and also a separate
student forum to discuss the pol-
icy - never materialized.
O'Brien declared the
announcement "a victory for all
the different student publica-
tions on campus and a victory
for the First Amendment." He
singled out student publications
like the Review and the Daily
for their coverage of the policy
and its potential impact on stu-
dents' free speech rights, which
sparked discussion both on and
off campus.
"We really made sure there
was as broad of an awareness as
possible in the pool of concerned
constituents," he said.
Still, O'Brien said he doubted
whether the scrapped policy
was the last students would see
of University policies aimed at
regulating how student publi-
cations and organizations can
distribute print material on
campus.
"They should let things be or
should work with student groups
to address the litter problem," he
said. But he added, "They'll make
an attempt at some other similar
policy down the road."
Michigan Student Assem-
bly president Mohammad Dar
said he believed the decision to
drop the policy to be the cor-
rect one.
"I'm happy to see policy in its
current form was repealed," he
said. "The free speech rights of
not only student publications, but
all students on campus should be
paramount."
The policy would have man-
dated that all publications and
organizations fall under the over-
sight of the Board for Student
Publications - which manages
the Gargoyle humor magazine,
the Michiganensian yearbook
and The Michigan Daily - or be
registered with the Michigan
Student Assembly in order to dis-
tribute or post student-created
print material in an LSA build-
ing.
Johnston said last month that
the policy was created to reduce
the amount of discarded papers
scattered on the floors in LSA
buildings.
If people walking in LSA build-
ings slipped on the loose papers
and injured themselves, John-
ston said, it could create a pos-
sible liability for the University.
Althoughthe legal experts said
the policy veered "dangerously
close" to infringing on students'
free speech rights guaranteed by
the First Amendment, Johnston
said the policy, the product of two
years worth of discussions, was
meant to help less established
publications better distribute
their work.
He emphasized that the policy
was in no way created in order
to censor the content of student-
created material.
"My office isn't in the business
of restricting content, and LSA
isn't in the business of restricting
content, either," he said.
ALERT
From Page 1A
mobile phone numbers into Wol-
verine Access. The numbers will be
housed confidentially at the Uni-
versity and can be removed from
the system at a later time, Brown
said.
The text messages will include
the time, date and subject of the
alert, with brief precautionary
instructions. DPS won't use abbre-
viation conventions common to
the medium, out of fear that older
recipients would not understand
them.
Brown said that the text mes-
sages should reach students and
employees in minutes while e-mail
messages take between one to
two hours, but other traffic on the
phone and e-mail message systems
CELEBRATION
From Page 1A
Obama.
And when Obama's lead nar-
rowed in Texas, after networks
originally showed him leading
Clinton there, risers covered
in students supporting Clinton
screamed back and forth to one
another, asking "Whose house?
our house! Which house? White
House!"
But the supporters' focus
quickly shifted when analysts
announced that Clinton would
likely take Ohio. Shortly after
the announcement that she'd
won the Buckeye State, sup-
porters erupted into unre-
lenting screams at the sight of
Clinton.
"For all the people of Ohio
and across America who's ever
been counted out but refused to
at the University could be slowed
because of the immense load of the
alert system.
Brown said she didn't know
exactly how much the Univer-
sity will pay for the service, but
described it as "six figures."
During the meeting, Brown said
there hasn't been an occasion in
her nine years working for DPS in
which the emergency alert system
would have been used.
When someone asked whether
the alert would have been used in
January, when a University student
fatally shot a home intruder near
campus, she said no.
The University came under fire
for its slow notification process
following the shooting. After that
incident, DPS sent out a campus-
wide e-mail message, which took
10 hours to reach some students
and never reached others.
be knocked out, struggled, but
stood right back up, and never
gives up - this one is for you,"
she said.
Campaign staffers watching
the event from the balcony led
chants and threw confetti while
dancing and drinking from bot-
tles of Miller Lite.
Younger members of the
crowd - some as young as 2
- took running slides across the
floor and doing dances through
bits of red and blue paper that
came up to their knees.
Adam Ledford, a sophomore
at Miami University in Ohio,
who spent the weekend cam-
paigning for Clinton, said wins
in Ohio and Texas would give
his candidate the momentum
she needed to win the Demo-
cratic nomination.
"People are going to see she's
serious, that's she's a fighter,"
Ledford said.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008 - 3A
Information Technology Cen-
tral Services has whittled that
time down to about two hours now,
Brown said. These messages will
continue to be sent out to all Uni-
versity students, faculty and staff.
Dar said he advocates sending a
campus-wide e-mail announcing
the service and explaining how to
sign up.
DPS has signed a one-year con-
tract with 3n, an international
provider of mass notification sys-
tems, to provide the service. The
University chose the company;
Brown said, because it's the only
one equipped to handle the 73,000
people affiliated with the Univer-
sity who are eligible to sign up. 3n
has an agreement with the major
United States cell phone carriers,
giving their emergency text mes-
sages priority over other messages
on the networks.
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