The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - 3 NEWS BRIEFS WASHINGTON Officials say Obama to nominate Gregg for commerce spot President Barack Obama plans to nominate Sen. Judd Gregg as com- merce secretary on Tuesday, the White House confirmed on the eve of the announcement as the New Hampshire Republican disclosed an apparent deal that would keep his seat out of Democratic hands. "I have made it clear to the Sen ate leadership on both sides of the aisle and to the governor that I would not leave the Senate if I felt my departure would cause a change inthe makeup of the Senate," Gregg said Monday in a statement. The White House confirmed the Gregg choice on the condition of anonim- ity because the announcement had not yet been made. New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch confirmed the "understand- log," stopping just short of prom- ising to appoint a Republican or an independent to serve out the remaining two years of Gregg's term. The deal would give Obama his top choice for a team tasked with steering the nation out of reces- sion. Republicans get to keep Gregg's seat for two more years, retaining the crucial 41 Senate seats they need to filibuster major- ity Democrats. ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia Dismay as Gadhafi chosen to lead African Union Moammar Gadhafi of Libya was elected Monday as leader of the African Union, a position long sought by the eccentric dictator who wants to push his oil-rich nation into the international main- stream after years of isolation. Gadhafi, once ostracized by the West for sponsoring terrorism, has been trying to increase both Lib- ya's global stature and its regional influence - mediating African conflicts, sponsoring efforts to spread Islam on the continent and pushing for the creation of a single African government. Still, some African leaders offered tepid praise for the choice of the strongman who. grabbed power in a 1969 coup. Rights groups called him a poor model for Africa at a time when demo- cratic gains are being reversed in countries such as Mauritania and Guinea. CHICAGO Wisecracking mobster Joey the Clown gets life term Reputed mob boss Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo was sen- tenced Monday to life in federal prison for serving as a leader of Chi- cago's organized crime family and the murder of a government witness in a union pension fraud case. Lombardo, 80, was among three reputed mob bosses and two alleged henchmen convicted in September 2007 at the landmark Operation Family Secrets trial which lifted the curtain of secrecy from the seamy operations of Chicago's underworld. "The worst things you have done are terrible and I see no regret in them," U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel said in imposing sentence. He also sentenced Lombardo sepa- rately to 168 months for going on Sthe lam for eight months after he was charged. DEARBORN, Mich. Congressional agency miscounts Dingell record date U.S. Rep. John Dingell has received a recount, and it means he'll set a longevity record three days earlier than thought. The U.S. House historian's office says the 82-year-old Dearborn Democrat will become the longest serving member Feb. 11, 2009. That will be his 19,420th day in office. The current record-holder is ex- Rep. Jamie Whitten, D-Miss., who died in 1995. The Congressional Research Service earlier said Dingell would break the record Feb. 14. Dingell's office said Monday the historian's office and the research service found a mistake in the count of how many days Dingell had served. He was first elected Dec. 13, 1955. - Compiled from Daily wire reports Mullen: Afghanistan is no Vietnam Pentagon to deploy additional 15,000 troops this spring WASHINGTON (AP) - The top U.S.military officer cautioned Mon- day against comparing the Penta- gon'srenewedfocusonAfghanistan to the Vietnam War, citing terror- ism and a non-occupation strategy as "dramatic differences" between the two conflicts. "Afghanistan is much more com- plex," said Navy Adm. Mike Mul- len, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He added: "I certainly recog- nize - and having been in Viet- nam myself - that there are those who make comparisons. I would be pretty careful about that though, for lots of reasons." Mullen's comments came as the Pentagon prepares to deploy an additional 15,000 Army and Marine troops to Afghanistan this spring and summer in the Obama adminis- tration's military campaign to shut down the Taliban and al-Qaida. Ultimately, an estimated 60,000 U.S. troops could be in Afghanistan over the next year as Obama starts ordering soldiers from Iraq. There are currently about 32,000 Ameri- can troops in Afghanistan. Speaking to a Washington meet- ing of the Reserve Officers Asso- ciation, Mullen stopped short of predicting how long U.S. troops would remain in Afghanistan. He said the main difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam is that "we are not an occupying force." "We have no intention of that," Mullen said. "There isn't any of the 42-plus countries who are there that have that intention. ... That said, we cannot send a message to the Afghan people that we are." Chief among the concerns, Mul- len said, is makingsure Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for al-Qaida leaders who moved to lawless Pakistan tribal regions in the post-9/11 hunt for Osama bin Laden. "We cannot accept that al-Qaida leadership which continues to plan against us every single day - and I mean us, here in America - to have that safe haven in Pakistan nor could resume one in Afghanistan," Mullen said. Efforts to eliminate govern- ment corruption and develop the poor nation also marks a con- trast between the U.S. mission in Afghanistan from Vietnam, Mullen said. Defense Secretary Robert Gates met Monday with President Barack Obama, but White House spokes- man Robert Gibbs would not say whether the two discussed troop levels in Afghanistan.. Meanwhile, the Pentagon released a long-awaited study Mon- day describing crumbling security and a peak in violence in Afghani- stan in spring and summer of 2008. Reacting to the study, House Armed Services Committee Chair- man Ike Skelton, D-Mo., said in a statement that the situation in Afghanistan is troubling and will need more time and effort. "The mission in Afghanistan continues to be limited by short- falls in both military and civilian resources," Skelton said. "The prob- lems are manifold: too few trainers and mentors for the Afghan Nation- al Security Forces; pervasive cor- ruption and alack of leadership and human capital within the Govern- ment of Afghanistan; slow progress in economic reconstruction and in the counternarcotics fight; and the ongoing existence of insurgent safe havens along the border with Pakistan, one of the greatest chal- lenges to long-term security in the region." The quarterly status report, required by Congress, focused mostly on data available between April and September 2008 but included some year-end details, including: -Between January and Decem- ber 10, 2008, 132 U.S. personnel in Afghanistan died as the result of hostile action, up from 82 in 2007. -The Afghan National Army Air Corps is beefing up its reconnais- sance and gunship fleets and added 27 new helicopters and cargo planes by the end of December. -As of December, NATO had provided only 42 Operational Men- tor Liaison Teams out of 103 prom- ised to train the Afghan National Security Forces. Senate confirms Eric Holder as first black AG CLAY JACKSON/AP Kentucky National guard members William Swartwood, left, and Jerry Bailey help unload branches from the back of a truck owned by Russell Justice yesterday at the quarry in Danville, KY. FEMA gets decent m -arks for ice stor-m response. Former prosecutor, judge confirmed with 75-21 vote WASHINGTON (AP) - Eric Holder won Senate confirmation . Monday as the nation's first Afri- can-American attorney general, after supporters from both parties touted his dream resume and easily overcameRepublicanconcernsover his commitment to fight terrorism and his unwillingness to back the right to keep and bear arms. The vote was 75-21, with all the opposition coming from Republi- cans. Holder's chief supporter, Sen. Patrick Leahy, said the confir- mation was a fulfillment of civil rights leader Martin Luther King's dream that everyone would be judged by the content of their character. "Come on the right side of his- tory;" said Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Holder becomes the only black in the Obama administration in what has traditionally been known* as the president's Cabinet. Three other African-Americans have been chosen for top administration positions that hold the same rank. Holder was a federal prosecu- tor, judge and the No. 2 Justice Department official in the Clinton administration. Even his critics agreed that Holder was well-qual- ified, but they questioned his posi- tions and independence. The debate turned partisan in its first moments, when Leahy, expressed anger that a few Repub- licans demanded a pledge from Holder that he wouldn't prosecute intelligence agents who participat- ed in harsh interrogations. Leahy singled out Texas Repub- lican John Cornyn as one who wanted to "turn a blind eye to pos- sible lawbreaking before investi- gating whether it occurred." "No one should be seeking to trade a vote for such a pledge," Leahy said. When Cornyn rose to announce his vote against Holder, he did not make such a demand. However, he accused the nominee of chang- ing his once-supportive position - on the need to detain terrorism suspects without all the rights of the Geneva Convention - to one of harshly criticizingBush administration's counterterror- ism policies. "His contrasting positions from 2002 to 2008 make me wonder if this is the same person," Cornyn said. "It makes me wonder what he truly believes." Cornyn and Sen. Tom Coburn said Holder was hostile to the right of individuals to own guns, despite a Supreme Court ruling last June affirming the right to have weapons for self-defense in the home. Holder said at his confirmation hearings: "I understand that the Supreme Court has spoken." But he added that some restrictions on guns could still be legal. Death toll raised to 24 in Kentucky, 55 nationwide EDDYVILLE, Ky. (AP) - In the first real test of the Obama admin- istration's ability to respond to a disaster, Kentucky officials are giving the federal government good marks for its response to a deadly ice storm. Yet more than 300,000 resi- dents remained without power Monday and some areas had yet to see aid workers nearly a week after the storm, a fact not lost on some local authorities. "We haven't seen FEMA. They haven't been here," said Jaime Green, a spokeswoman for the emergency operations center in Lyon County, about 95 miles northwest of Nashville, Tenn. Federal authorities insisted they responded as soon as the state asked for help and promised to keep providing whatever aid was necessary. FEMA has been under the microscope since the Bush admin- istration's botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which" Barack~Obama and other Democrats made a favorite topic on the presidential campaign trail. FEMA was reorganized and strengthened after that, and it has avoided the onslaught of negative feedback Katrina generated. The agency hasn't been tested the same way it was after the hur- ricane, however. Gov. Steve Beshear raised Ken- tucky's death toll to 24 on Mon- day, meaning the storm has been blamed in at least 55 deaths nation- wide. And while it also knocked out power to more than a million cus- tomers from the Southern Plains to the East Coast, it's still considered a medium-sized disaster, the kind FEMA has traditionally been suc- cessful handling. The Kentucky disaster w.ill be closely watched, said Rich- ard Sylves, professor of politi- cal science at the University of Delaware, particularly because Obama hasn't yet named the top FEMA officials, many of whom must go through Senate confir- mation. "If it's perceived not to be handled very well, or if there's a sense that there's-insensitivity at the federal level to the plight of people suffering, I imagine the people President Obama has appointed to senior positions in FEMA will be grilled in their con- firmation hearings," said Sylves, who has written four books on federal disaster policy. Beshear asked Obama for a disaster declaration to free up fed- eral assistance Thursday, two days after the storm hit, and Obama issued it hours later. Trucks load- ed with supplies began arriving at a staging area at Fort Campbell, Ky., on Friday morning, said Mary Hudak, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. On Saturday, Beshear ordered all of the state's Army National Guardsmen into action to distrib- ute supplies, many of which came from FEMA. Beshear has consistently praised Obama, a fellow Demo- crat, for the attention he's devoted to what Beshear calls the biggest natural disaster to hit his state. Maritime colleges to train sailors in fight against pirates 298 piracy incidents reported in 2008 PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - With an alarming number of tank- ers and cargoshipsgettinghijacked on the high seas, the nation's mari- time academies are offering more training to merchant seamen in how to fend off attacks from pirates armed not with cutlasses and flint- locks but automatic weapons and grenade launchers. Collegesareteachingstudentsto fishtail their vessels at high speed, drive off intruders with high-pres- sure water hoses and illuminate their decks with floodlights. Anti-piracy training is not new. Nor are the techniques. But the lessons have taken on new urgency - and more courses are planned - because of the record number of attacks worldwide in 2008 by outlaws who seize ships and hold them for ransom. At the California Maritime Acad- emy in Vallejo, Calif., professor Donna Nincic teaches two courses on piracy. Students learn where the piracy hotspots are and how they have shifted over the years. "If I've done anything, I've shown them that this isn't a joke, it's not about parrots and eye patches and Blackbeard and all that," Nincic said. "It's very real and it's a problem without an easy solution." Emily Rizzo, a student at the MassachusettsMaritimeAcademy in Buzzards Bay, Mass., worked aboard a 760-foot cargo ship last year as part of her training. As the vessel sailed the Malacca Straits in Southeast Asia, she served on "pirate watches," learned to use hoses and took part in drills with alarms indicating the ship had been boarded. The training "brought to light just how serious it is," said Rizzo, a 22-year-old senior from Milwau- kee. "The pirates can get on board these huge ships and they know whatthey're doing. It's not like the old days." The International Maritime Bureau reported 293 piracy inci- dents in 2008, an increase of 11 percent from the year before. For- ty-nine vessels were hijacked, and 889 crew members were taken hostage. Eleven were killed and 21 reported missing and presumed dead, according to the bureau. Piracy hotspots have been iden- tified offEastAfrica and in South- east Asia, South America and the Caribbean. Typically, small numbers of pirates - as few as two and up to 15 or 16 - draw up alongside ships in motorized skiffs and use grappling hooks and rope ladders to clamber aboard. Some of the biggest ships might have no more than two dozen crew members. often the pirates are armed with knives and guns. Pirates off the coast of Somalia have taken to firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. In the old days, ships were armed with cannons to guard against pirates. But nowadays, crew members for the most part do not carry guns. And maritime instructors say that arming crews is not the answer. It is illegal for crews to carry weapons in the territorial waters of many nations, and ship captains are wary of armingcrew members for fear of mutinies, Nincic said. Also, some worry that arming crew members would only cause the violence to escalate. LATE NIGHT DELIVERY!