The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Friday; October 24, 2008 - 3A
The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Friday, October 24, 2008 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
BAGHDAD
Iraqi minister
escapes assignation
Iraq's labor minister escaped
assassination yesterday when a
suicide bomber rammed an explo-
sives-laden SUV into his convoy,
killing at least nine people in one
of the safest areas of the capital.
The blast came on a day when
the U.S. relinquished control of a
province that includes much of the
area south of Baghdad once known
as the "triangle of death." Babil is
the 12th of 18 Iraqi provinces to be
placed under Iraqi control, paving
the way for U.S. forces eventually
to go home. Americans will stay in
the area to help the Iraqis when
needed.
The bomber drove his Toyota
Land Cruiser into the convoy car-
rying Labor and Social Affairs
Minister Mahmoud Mohammed
al-Radhi as it passed near Tahrir
Square in the busy Bab al-Sharji
market area - not far from the
U.S.-protected Green Zone.
The blast left a 15-foot crater in
the road and the smell of gunpow-
der in the air. The Shiite minister
was unharmed, but three guards
were killed, ministry spokesman
Abdullah al-Lami said.
NEW YORK
McCain won't
attend election
night party
John McCain's election night
watch party might be missing
John McCain.
Instead of appearing before a
throng of supporters at the Bilt-
more Hotel in Phoenix on the
evening of Nov. 4, the Republi-
can presidential nominee plans
to deliver postelection remarks
to a small group of reporters and
guests on the hotel's lawn.
Aides said yestersday that the
arrangement was due to space
limitations and that McCain might
drop by the election watch party
at some other point.
McCain's remarks will be piped
electronically into the party and
media filing center, aides said.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Missiles strike
Taliban school
Suspected U.S. missiles struck a
religious school linked to the Tali-
ban on yesterday, killing nine peo-
ple in the lawless border region
where al-Qaida and its Taliban
allies are believed to plot attacks
on American and NATO forces in
Afghanistan.
The strike came hours after
Parliament warned against any
incursions on Pakistani soil and
condemned the wave of terror-
ism tearing at the country, while
stressing the need for dialogue.
The suspected U.S. missiles hit
the religious school on the out-
skirts of Miran Shah, the main
town in the region of North Wa-
ziristan, four intelligence officials
said. No students were believed to
be at the school at the time.
Relying on informants and
agents in the area, two officials
said nine people were killed, in-
cluding four pulled lifeless from
the rubble hours after the strike,
and two others were wounded.
DETROIT
Chrysler to cut
nearly 2,000 jobs
Chrysler LLC will cut 1,825 jobs
by eliminating one shift at a Tole-
do Jeep plant and accelerating the
closure of its sport utility vehicle
factory in Newark, Del., because
of the slowing global economy and
a shift toward smaller vehicles.
About 825 workers at the Toledo
North Assembly Plant will be laid
off indefinitely as of Dec. 31. The
Newark closure also will be effec-
tive at the end of the year and af-
fect about 1,000 jobs, the company
said yesterday in a news release.
The cuts are about 6 percent of
Chrysler's U.S. hourly work force
of 33,000. .
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports
4,186
Number of American service
members who have died in the
war in Iraq, according to The
Associated Press. There were no
deaths identified yesterday.
Regents vote to expand
Mott plan, Law School
PROJECTS, From Page 1A
demand for beds in the hospital
would outpace the University's
supply by the 2009 fiscal year.
With the expansion, the hospital
will be able to fully satisfy that
demand through at the least the
2016 fiscal year, she said.
When Regent Julia Darlow
(D - Ann Arbor) questioned the,
timing of the expansion request,
which comes in the middle of an
economic slowdown for the state,
Warner said there's a "window
of opportunity" which will allow
construction to be conducted in
the "least disruptive" and "least
costly manner."
In an interview after the meet-
ing, Robert Kelch, executive vice
president for medical affairs, said
the need to meet demand drove
health system officials to propose
the expansion.
"We're running the hospital
at very, very high occupancy," he
said. "So much so that we unfor-
tunately have to turn patients
away."
When asked how many patients
the University has to turn away
annually, Kelch said that it's hard
to give numbers on the topic, but
that the hospital delays "admis-
sions everyday and we occasion-
PROPOSAL 2
From Page1A
Institute, spoke in favor of the ini-
tiative.
Prior to the debate, the stu-
dent groups met to develop four
questions for Burke and Mosher.
A quick question and answer ses-
sion followed the planned por-
tion of the debate.
Throughout the debate, Burke
stressed whathe called the "prob-
lematic" language of Proposal 2,
saying the initiative is trampling
on the state's right to regulate
stem cell research in Michigan
and that it opens the door to the
possibility of cloning.
"This proposal is bad legisla-
tion, with all the loopholes that
are inherent in this language,"
Burke said.
Mosher combated Burke's
claim that if the initiative passes
on Nov. 4, it would "open the door
to taxpayer funding" for embry-
onic stem cell research, by saying
that Proposal 2 does not contain
provisions for taxpayer funding.
Mosher stressed the impor-
tance of embryonic stem cell
research for findingcures for dis-
eases like Parkinson's Disease or
spinal chord injuries.
"We want to allow Michigan
Court releases
more Beatty,
Kilpatrick text
messages
DETROIT (AP) - More
sexually explicit text messages
between the city's former mayor
and his ex-chief of staff were
released yesterday, just days
before Kwame Kilpatrick goes to
jail for lying abouttheir affair.
Former aide Christine Beatty,
who is charged with perjury and
obstruction of justice, tried to
keep them sealed. But a Wayne
County judge ordered them on
the public record, and the Mich-
igan Court of Appeals refused to
stop him.
A series from November 2003
goes on for more than an hour
as Beatty describes what she
would do with Kilpatrick if they
were together.
"Don't STOP! PLEASE," he
replies.
Hundreds of messages were
filed by prosecutors to show
that Kilpatrick and Beatty sent
and received them on city pag-
ers. They were attached to a
court filing that had been sealed
for months.
"Wouldn't the mayor of a
major American city complain
to someone if he was receiv-
ing these types of messages by
accident?" Wayne County assis-
tant prosecutor Robert Moran
wrote.
Besides communications
with Beatty, the messages
reveal contact between Kil-
patrick and other women who
are not identified in the court
filing.
The pager seems always at
hand, even at sporting events
when he sends texts to a woman
at the same game.
ally can't get patients in - at least
every week."
Kelch said this expansion had
always been under consideration,
but Health System officials waited
to make the proposal uptil they
were sure it was economically fea-
sible and demand would continue
to grow.
In addition to the hospital
expansion, the Regents gave the
go-ahead on schematic designs for
the Law School Commons and a
new instructional building for the
Law School, which together are
expected to cost the University
$102 million.
The project will be funded by
private donations, returns on Uni-
versity investments and the law
school.
This construction will be the
first renovations on Hutchins
Hall, the school's main classroom
building, since it opened in 1933.
The schematics approved by the
Regents were designed by Hart-
man-Cox Architects of Washing-
ton D.C.
The new instructional and
administrative building, which
will be located on an unused
grassy area east of Hutchins Hall
and south of the Legal Research
building, will add more class-
rooms and clinical spaces to the
law school.
scientists to participate in the
war against disease," Mosher
said.
LSA junior Lauren. Bennett,
president of Students for Life,
said having the debate was
important because Proposal 2
has been overshadowed this elec-
tion season.
"This is a very pertinent elec-
tion issue. With all of these issues,
a lot of the attention has gone to
the candidates themselves, and
not a lot has gone to Proposal 2,"
she said.
Bennett then pointed to Pro-
posal 2's support on campus,
including from University Presi-
dent Mary Sue Coleman, who
has been an outspoken supporter
of the initiative, as a reason why
opposing arguments need to be
presented.
"A lot of members of the Uni-
versity, including our president
and many researchers here, have
been pushing for this proposal
and there really hasn't been an
opportunity for students to hear
why there is opposition to it,"
Bennett added.
Early polls have indicated the
initiative has support statewide.
In a Detroit Free Press-Local 4
poll of Michigan voters conduct-
ed in September,. 58 percent of
respondents supported the pro-
Planners envisionthe Commons
as "the heart of the Law School."
It will include group study spaces,
gathering spots for students, and
a caf.
In a speech before the Regents,
Law School Dean Evan Caminker
said the only additions to the law
school in the last 75 years have
been for library space, not for aca-
demic space. But since 1933, the
size of the school's student body
has doubled and the size of the
faculty has quadrupled.
Caminker also said the new
space was necessary because the
way law is taught has changed
to become "more collaborative"
and "more experiential," which
"requires different kinds of spaces
than just the traditional classroom
experience."
In an interview after the meet-
ing, University President Mary
Sue Coleman said the changes to
the law school campus are neces-
sary.
"If you compare it, if you do
benchmarks with other law
schools, we have fallen way far
behind," she said. "This is way
overdue."
Coleman also said that the
emphasis on student spaces in
the project iq important, as law
school students currentlyhave no
central gathering place.
posal, 31 percent opposed it and
11 percent said they were unde-
cided.
LSA senior Landon Krantz,
president of Student Society for
Stem Cell Research, stressed the
importance of voting in support
of this initiative.
"Michigan is one of the select
few states that has this research
being illegal," he said. "It is time
for research in Michigan to catch
up and modernize and to join
the rest of country and world to
support stem cell research of all
kinds."
After the debate, Burke said
he was pleased with the event,
which filled Auditorium D of
Angell Hall.
"I think this was awesome,"
he said. "I'm glad that there
was a collaboration like this put
together. We need to be people
that can have respectful debates
and discussions and dialogue."
University alum Victor Sinadi-
noski said he believed the debate
went very well, but also recog-
nized the difficulty of addressing
all issues in the allotted time.
"Given the amount of time
and the urgency of the proposal,
I think they did a good job mak-
ing it clear, but I think there were
a lot of things on both sides that
were left out." Sinadinoski said.
Proposal
At meeting, regents
approve Coleman's
words of support
By JACOB SMILOVITZ
Daily StaffReporter
FLINT - University President
Mary Sue Coleman continued her
outspoken support of stem cell
research yesterday, when she deliv-
ered an impassioned speech to the
University's Board of Regents and
other top school officials, calling
misinformation about the state bal-
lotinitiativeProposal2"aninsultto
medical researchers everywhere."
Proposal 2, which is slated to go
before Michigan voters on Nov. 4,
would loosen the state's restrictions
on stem cell research using cells
harvested fromhuman embryos.
In an interview earlier this
month, Coleman made clear her
personal support for the initiative,
saying its passage would be a boost
to Michigan's economy and help
the state recruit the best scientists
to its universities.
University faculty and officials
walk a fine line in discussing their
positions on political issues due to
the University's nonpartisan tax-
exempt status, but Coleman's com-
ments fell on kind earsyesterday.
After saying that all citizens
should inform themselves about all
candidates and issues on the ballot
next month, Coleman's comments
quickly turned to the need for vot-
ers to learn about Proposal 2.
"There is currently a tremen-
dous amount of misinformation
being presented about stem cell
research," she said. "In fact, some
of the claims are outrageous and
blatantly false."
Coleman, who spent 19 years in
the biochemistry department at
the University of Kentucky, said
the medical benefits of stem cell
research are still being discovered.
"The potential of stem cells to
help us better understand human
biology and how disease affects
our bodies is, at this point, limit-
less," she said.
She said that lifting the ban on
4
Coleman continues
2 praise
stem cell research would allow the
University to expand its research
in the field.
"University of Michigan is a rec-
ognized leader of adult stem cell
research," she said. "With greater
research into embryonic stem cells,
we can expand our development of
therapies and cures and extend our
commitment to the well-being of
the people in Michigan."
Coleman concluded by repeating
that voters should learnmore about
the initiative.
"Again, I urge people to edu-
cate themselves about the science
and about the ballot issue in order
to make an informed, thoughtful
choice."
As Coleman tried to move to the
meeting's next order of business,
Regent Laurence Deitch (D-Bing-
ham Farms) interrupted her.
"President Coleman, Iwouldlike
to take a second to compliment you
and thank you for your advocacy on
behalf of Proposal 2," Deitch said.
He said that "putting aside the
potentiality for helping the human
race," the bill is "extraordinarily
important for the future of the Uni-
versity and the future of the state."
Deitch said that when leader-
ship is needed on important issues,
those in power often worry too
much about the political implica-
tions of choosing a side.
"Too often, people in positions
of leadership remain silent, or are
wishy-washy on things that they
actually believe in, lest they offend
anyone," he said. "Your leadership
has been exemplary and extraordi-
nary on this matter."
RegentS.MartinTaylorfollowed
Deitch in praising Coleman. He
said he agreed withDeitch "whole-
heartedly," but that the Regents
expect Coleman to "do more."
Coleman jokingly responded,
"I'lltake that as an order."
In an interview after the meet-
ing, Deitch said he sees the initia-
tive as a bipartisan issue, and has
no problem with the president of
a public university taking a public
position on it.
"We're in a democracy. And
that's why I'm delighted to see her
leading on it," he said.
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