The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Thursday, October 9, 2008 - 3A The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Thursday, October 9, 2008 - IA NEWS BRIEFS WASHINGTON Fed cuts interest rate to 1.5 percent Wall Street bounced higher and lower yesterday trying to make up its mind about an unprecedented coordinated interest rate cut by central banks around the world. In the end it settled on a familiar feel- ing - fear - and plunged again. The Federal Reserve, desperate- ly trying to jump-start the lending that keeps the U.S. economy mov- ing, dropped its closely watched federal funds rate to 1.5 percent. The cut from 2 percent took the i rate to its lowest level in more than four years. Central banks in England, China, Canada, Sweden and Swit- zerland and the European Central Bank also cut rates after a series of high-stakes phone calls over sever- al days between Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his counterparts. KNOXVILLE, Tenn. Lawmaker's son charged in Palin e-mail hacking The son of a Democratic Ten- nessee state lawmaker charged with hacking the e-mail account of Republican vice presidential can- didate Sarah Palin has pleaded not guilty. David Kernell (kur-NEHL'), 20, of Knoxville, Tenn., entered the plea in federal court in Knoxville on Wednesday. His father is long- time state Rep. Mike Kernell of Memphis. -David Kernell was released without posting bond, but the court imposed several conditions. Kernell, an economics student at the University of Tennessee, is not allowed to own a computer and can use the Internet only for checking e-mail and doing class work. KANSAS CITY, Mo Missouri officials investigate voter registration fraud Officials in Missouri, a hard- fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or dupli- cate voter-registration forms sub- mitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states. Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Com- munity Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednes- day, the final day Missourians could register to vote. "I don't even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy," Davis said. "We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don't exist, people who have driver's license numbers that won't verify or Social Security numbers that won't verify. Some have no address at all." WASHINGTON Pelosi proposes stimulus bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that a $150 billion economic stimulus plan is needed now because of the faltering econ- omy and she may call the House into session after the election to pass it. Pelosi told reporters that the stock market meltdown, which has caused an estimated $2 trillion loss from pension funds, was afactor in her recommendation for a second stimulus bill. The first relief plan sent out $600-$1,200 tax rebate checks to most individuals and couples this year. The House did pass a $61 billion economic aid proposal last month before lawmakers left Capitol Hill ahead of the Nov. 4 election. But a similar plan failed to pass the Sen- ate. President Bush had promised a veto anyway. - Compiled from Daily wire reports 4180 Number of American service members who have died in the war in Iraq, according to The Associated Press. There were no deaths identified yesterday. Two U.S. scientists win Nobel Prize for cell work GAME TIME Chemists' work with jellyfish reveals cell details (AP) - Three U.S.-based scien- tists won a Nobel Prize yesterday for turning a glowing green pro- tein from jellyfish into a revolu- tionary way to watch the tiniest details of life within cells and liv- ing creatures. Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese citizen who works in the United States, and Americans Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien shared the chemistry prize for discover- ing and developing green fluores- cent protein, or GFP. When exposed to ultraviolet light, the protein glows green. It can act as a marker on otherwise invisible proteins within cells to trace them as they go about their business. It can tag individual cells in tissue. And it can show when and where particular genes turn on and off. Researchers worldwide now use GFP to track development of brain cells, the growth of tumors and the spread of cancer cells. It has let them study nerve cell damage from Alzheimer's disease and see how insulin-producing beta cells arise in the pancreas of a growing embryo, for example. In awarding the prize, the Royal Swedish Academy com- pared the impact of GFP on science to the invention of the microscope. For the past decade, the academy said, the protein has been "a guiding star " for scien- tists. GFP's chemical cousins pro- duce other colors, which let sci- entists follow multiple cells or proteins simultaneously. "This is a technology that has literally transformed medical research," said Dr. John Fran- gioni, an associate professor of medicine and radiology at Har- vard Medical School. "For the first time, scientists could study both genes and proteins in living cells and in living animals." Last year, in what the Nobel citation called a "spectacular experiment," Harvard research- ers announced that they had tagged brain cells in mice with some 90 colors. The technique is called "Brainbow." GFP was first discovered by Shimomura at Princeton Uni- versity. He'd been seeking the protein that lets a certain kind of jellyfish glow green around its edge. In the summer of 1961, he and a colleague processed, tissue from about 10,000 jellyfish they'd collected near the island town of Friday Harbor, Wash. The next year, they reported the finding of GFP. Some 30 years later, Chalfie showed that the GFP gene could make individual nerve cells in a, tiny worm glow bright green. Tsien's work provided GFP- like proteins that extended the scientific palette to a variety of colors. Tsien "really made it atool that was extremely useful to lots of people," Chalfie told reporters. Shimomura, 80, now works at the Marine Biological Labora- tory in Woods Hole, Mass., and the Boston University Medical School. Chalfie, 61, is a professor at Columbia University in New York, while Tsien, 56, is a profes- sor at the University of California, San Diego, and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medi- cal Institute. The trio will split the $1.4 mil- lion award. LSA Junior Artun Kircali, LSA senior Dan Kechele, and Architecture senior Cam Stewart participated in an intense Mario-Kart tournament at Pierpont Commons yesterday. The winner of this dusty duel :ent home with a grand prize of $25. Two journalists, mtnissing.in Lebanon Obama, MeCain would both add to health care An bot WAS] McCain reduce, sured by if fully p Barack C number' sis predi Some presiden plans i can Mc amount, when it uninsur( lion. Bu consulti mistic s number health cc lican no McCa to cost from 20 Obama's accordin yesterda vides sp the total McCa credit o or $5,00 health would ri ple now coveragi He also ialysis shows across state lines when buying insurance; that would bypass h will expand states where insurance is more expensive and comprehensive. coverage The Lewin Group agreed that many workers would lose their HINGTON (AP) - John employer-sponsored health cov- 's health plan would erage under McCain's plan. That the ranks of the unin- is because some companies would about 21.1 million people discontinue coverage if most rut in place by 2010, while workers could use the tax credit Obama's would reduce the to get coverage elsewhere. In all, by 26.6 million, an analy- about 16 million would lose cover- cts. age, the firm.said. previous reviews of the Some businesses would begin itial candidates' health offering health insurance for ndicated that Republi- the first time, partially offset- Cain's proposals would ting those losses. In particular, to little more than a wash companies with younger work- comes to the number of ers would benefit from McCain's ed, now at about 45 mil- proposal to let them shop in other t The Lewin Group, a states, said John Sheils, the firm's ng firm, drew a more opti- senior vice president. They would cenario about the overall find that lower premiums made it of people who would get possible to offer a health insur- overage under the Repub- ance benefit. minee's plan. Also, nearly 24 million people in's plan was projected would use the tax credits McCa- more than $2 trillion in has proposed to buy coverage 10 through 2019, while directly from insurers through would cost $1.17 trillion, the individual market. g to the analysis released Kenneth Thorpe, a professor at y. Neither candidate pro- Emory University who conducts recifics on how to cover similar analysis and advice for 1. Democratic candidates' health in has proposed a tax plans, said he disagreed with the f $2,500 for individuals firm's estimate for McCain's plan. 0 for a family that buys More than half of the workers insurance. The credit who would lose employer-spon- eplace the tax break pe6- sored coverage have a chronic get for obtaining health health condition that would price e through their work. them out of getting insurance in wants to let people shop the individual market. "They pulled the same overes- timates for Bush last time with a similar bill," Thorpe said. About half the uninsured adults are age 19-34. They are the young- est and cheapest to cover, and the ones who generally would gain coverage under McCain's propos- al, Sheils said. "The people who are sick are going to have a lot of trouble affording coverage, even with the credit," Sheils said. Sheils said Obama's plan is friendlier to those with chronic health conditions. It will cover about half the uninsured with chronic conditions, such as diabe- tes. Meanwhile, McCain's plan will cover about a quarter of the unin- sured with a chronic condition. Obama's plan would expand health insurance coverage through public programs such as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. He requires all children to have health coverage. In all, about 16 million people would gain cov- erage through those programs. An additional 10 million would use government subsidies to buy insurance coverage. Neera Tanden, domestic policy director for the Obama campaign, disputed several aspects of the report. In particular, she said gains in coverage under Obama's plan would come primarily from people using the tax credit to buy private insurance, not through the expansion of Medicaid and SCHIP. Pair was traveling from Beirut to Tripoli BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Two American journalists vacationing in Lebanon have not been heard from since Oct.1 and are believed missing, the U.S. Embassy said yesterday, appealing for infor- mation on their possible where- abouts. An embassy statement said Holli Chmela, 27, and Taylor Luck, 23, reportedly left Beirut en route to the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli. The city is a predominantly Sunni Muslim city where mili- tants and Islamic fundamental- ists are known to be active. It has witnessed sectarian fighting in the past few months as well as two car bombs targeting Leba- nese troops that killed 25 people and left dozens others wounded. Earlier this week, the embas- sy had issued a statement to its citizens about potential violent actions targeting Americans in Lebanon and called on its nationals to increase their secu- rity awareness. It said the threats were particularly high in the first half of October. I The embassy says the pair had arrived in Lebanon on Sept. 29 from Amman, Jordan for a vaca- tion and told a friend on Oct. 1 that they were traveling from Bei- rut to Tripoli through the coastal town of Byblos in the north that day. They were then to cross by land to Syria before returning to Jordan where they were due to report to work on Oct. 4. "The families ... are asking for the public's assistance in provid- ing information on the possible whereabouts of the two U.S. citi- zens," the statement said. Lebanese security officials told The Associated Press they are searching for the two. The officials said authorities are searching for the two based on information they had gone missing and were trying to ascer- tain whether they had left the country. They spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with military regulations and because of the sensitivity of the subject. The alleged disappearance of the two Americans was reported earlier Wednesday by the local Al-Akhbar newspaper, which said they arrived in Lebanon Sept. 29, stayed in a hotel in Beirut and checked out the next day, without leaving the country. They have not been heard of since, it said. A Jordanian security official confirmed that the two were believed missing. He said U.S. authorities in Beirut were inves- tigating and that Jordanian authorities are not involved. He - spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. The U.S. Embassy said it was coordinating efforts with embas- sies in Amman and Damascus as well as with the State Department in Washington. Nimr Shalala, manager of the Beirut hotel where Chmela and Luck had stayed, said they left the hotel Sept. 30 after a one-night stay. "They checked out, took all their belongings and didn't say anything," he told The AP. August Student Di airstrike L AT E FRI-S l1 E. 33, saysneXt toMCh military9 WASHINGTON (AP) - The military now says U.S. air- strikes in Afghanistan on Aug. 22 killed 33 civilians, far more than the U.S. had acknowl- edged. A statement released Wednesday by the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East summarizes the findings of an investigation. The state- 7 ment from Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey asserts that despite those deaths, U. S. forces J involved in the attack in west- 9 ern Herat province acted based on credible intelligence, in self- defense and in line with rules 5 of engagement. The attack was on a sus-16 pected Taliban compound. Dempsey says the investigation 1 also found that 22 insurgents 1 were killed.n The U.S. military originally 3 1 said five to seven civilians had died. The Afghan government and the U.N. have said the civil- ian toll was 90. ,. J. ;'< , ' - ti. -Um Your Path Continues at Lehigh. The College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University seeks graduate students who will contribute to a vibrant community of scholars and join us in exploring knowledge and practice through innovative research. Experience the individual attention usually found in a small, liberal arts college; yet take advantage of state-of-the-art laboratories, libraries and research facilities offered only at a premier research university. Discover Our Degrees in: American Studies - M.A. History - M.A., Ph.D. Biological Sciences - Ph.D. Mathematics -M.S., Ph.D. Chemistry - M.S., Ph.D. Photonics - M.S. Clinical Chemistry - M.S. 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