The Michigan Daily - michigandaiiy.com
Thursday, A pril 2, 2009 - 3A
The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Thursday, April 2, 2009 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
S LANSING
New appointee to
help communities
tied to auto industry
The man leading the White
House effort to help cities that
depend on the auto industry says
he "gets it" when it comes to under-
standing Michigan's plight.
Ed Montgomery told reporters
yesterday he wants to know what
Michigan needs to get out of its
economic slump and weather the
sharp turndown in the domestic
auto industry.
He spoke to Gov. Jennifer Gra-
nholmand her economics teamear-
lier yesterday and planned to hold
a similar conversation in Detroit
with Mayor Ken Cockrel.
Appointed just two days ago by
President Barack Obama's admin-
istration, Montgomery says he's
returning to Washington to find
ways federal agencies can help
Michigan communities.
The former Michigan State Uni-
versity economics professor has
Michigan in-laws who work in the
auto industry.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.
Federal judge offers
no fix for Michigan
prison conditions
A federal judge won't order new
remedies in mental-health care in
a long-running legal case about
. Michigan prison conditions.
U.S. District Judge RobertJonk-
er (YON'-ker) said Tuesday the
state has followed court orders on
staffing, daily rounds with inmates
and coordination between medical
and mental-health staff.
The death of a 21-year-old men-
tally ill inmate in Jackson in 2006
put a spotlight on psychiatric
care.
Jonker rejected an effort to
force the Corrections Department
to add more staff. His ruling came
in a decades-old case that began
with conditions at Jackson prison,
now closed. Lawyers for inmates
plan to appeal.
Jonker says the case now cen-
ters mostly on inmates temporar-
ily housed at a Jackson facility
ewhere.
JERUSALEM
Israel's new foreign
minister takes hard
line on peace process
Israel's new hard-line foreign
minister delivered a scathing cri-
tique of Mideast peace efforts yes-
terday, rejecting the past year of
U.S.-led negotiations and telling a
room crowded with cringing dip-
lomats that concessions to the Pal-
estinians only invite war.
Avigdor Lieberman's first
speech since taking office, along
with accusations by the moderate
Palestinian president that the new
Israeli government opposes peace,
signaled tough times ahead for the
Obama administration's regional
diplomacy.
"Whoever thinks that conces-
sions ... will achieve something
is wrong. He will bring pressures
and more wars," Lieberman said.
"What we have to explain to the
world is that the list of priorities
must change."
MIAMI, Fla.
Federal officials
seize Madoff's yacht
and smallboat
Federal authorities seized dis-
graced financier Bernard Madoff's
vintage yacht and a smaller boat
from two Florida marinas early
Wednesday, part of an effort to
recoup assets to pay back his swin-
dled investors.
The 55-foot yacht named "Bull"
and a 24-foot motor boat were
taken from marinas on Florida's
east coast, said Barry Golden, a
spokesman for the U.S. Marshals
Service. The yacht, a 1969 Rybo-
vich, is worth $2.2 million.
"A lot of money was put into
maintaining this boat," said Gold-
en. "This boat was extremely well
kept, extremely clean. Engine com-
partment was spotless. It looked
like somebody took a bottle of 409
and scrubbed it every day."
Madoff, 70, is in jail pending
sentencing for pleading guilty to
charges he swindled billions from
investors in what could be the big-
gest scam in Wall Street history.
He faces a maximum sentence of
150 years behind bars.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports
4,000 protestors gather in
London's financial district
Clean-up added
to delays for W.
Quad residents
More than 30
i
people arrested on,
eve of G20 summit
LONDON (AP) - Chanting G-20
protesters clashed withriot police in
central London on yesterday, over-
whelming police lines, vandalizing
the Bank of England and smashing
windows at the Royal Bank of Scot-
land. An effigy of a banker was set
ablaze, drawing cheers.
More than 30 people were
arrested after some 4,000 anar-
chists, anti-capitalists, environ-
mentalists and others clogged
London's financial district for
what demonstrators branded
"Financial Fool's Day." The pro-
tests were called ahead of today's
Group of20 summitofworld lead-
ers, who hope to take concrete
steps to resolve the global finan-
cial crisis that has lashed nations
and workers worldwide.
The protests in London's finan-
cial district - known as "The
City" - began as Prime Minis-
ter Gordon Brown and President
Barack Obama held a news con-
ference at Britain's Foreign Min-
istry elsewhere in the capital.
A battered effigy of a banker
in a bowler's hat hung on a traf-
fic light near the Bank of England
as protesters waved signs saying:
STUDENT VETERANS
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training seem like they should
transfer," he said. "Leadership is
something that the University of
Michigan prides itself on."
Blumke stated that the main
purpose of the proposal is to ease
the shift from active duty to uni-
versity life for student veterans.
He added that the bill will aid
Michigan's economy by attract-
ing student veterans to the state
to attend school.
"We want to help our friends
come home and not have to
deal with the obstacles that
we've had to face," Blumke said.
"We want to help them make a
smooth transition to college and
help the'Michigan economy at
the same time."
Michigan Student Assembly
"Resistance is Fertile," and "Make
Love not Leverage."
Bankers have been lambasted
as being greedy and blamed for
the recession that is making job-
less ranks soar. Other banners
read "Banks are evil" and "Eat the
bankers," and "0 percent interest
in others." Some bankers went
to work in casual wear yesterday
fearing they could be targeted.
Some bolder financial workers
leaned out office windows, taunt-
ing the demonstrators and waving
10 pound notes at them. Two men
- one wearing a suit - exchanged
punches before police intervened.
Groups of protesters converged
on the central bank, with Tibetan,
Palestinian, communist, and anar-
chist flags poking out from the
crowd. Tensions rose as officers
refused to let the protesters leave
the small plaza in front of the bank.
Protesters pelted police stand-
ing guard at the Royal Exchange
with paint, eggs, fruit and other
projectiles, and a small group
of anarchists, skinheads, and
masked protesters repeatedly
attacked a police cordon flanking
the Bank of England.
Some in the crowd urinated
against the bank and the message
"Built on blood" was scrawled
in chalk in front of the building.
Police helicopters hovered above.
A particularly ferocious bala-
President Abhishek Mahanti
attended the Senate hearing in
Lansing to support the student
veterans' proposal. Mahanti, an
Engineering junior, expressed his
desire to encourage veterans to
attend the University, as well as
the University's need to accom-
modate student veterans.
"There is a need for student
veterans on campus and a need
to make them feel welcome," he
said. "These are the people who
will be our future politicians
and the leaders of our nation
because of their service to the
country."
After returning from Lansing,
Mahanti and Blumke said they
both had an overwhelmingly
positive feeling about the pro-
posal hearing.
- From an observer's stand-
point, Mahanti noted the student
veterans' preparedness and orga-
clava-wearing mob broke into
a closed RBS bank branch and
stole keyboards, using them to
break windows. Other protesters
spray-painted graffiti on the RBS
building, writing"Class War" and
"Thieves." Mounted riot police
eventually pushed them back.
RBS has been the focus of par-
ticular anger because it was bailed
outbythe British government after
a series of disastrous deals brought
it to the brink of bankruptcy. Still,
its former chief executive Fred
Goodwin - age 50 - managed to
walk off with an annual pension
of 703,000 pounds ($1.2 million)
even as unemployment in Britain
rises from some 2 million.
"Every job I apply for there's
already 150 people who have also
applied," said protester Nathan
Dean, 35, who lost his informa-
tion technology job three weeks
ago. "I have had to sign on to the
dole (welfare) for the first time in
my life. You end up having to pay
your mortgage on your credit card
and you fall into debt twice over."
There were surreal moments:
Earlier in the morning, police
impounded an armored person-
nel carrier - complete with what
looked like a machine-gun turret
- near London's Liverpool Street
Station as slack-jawed office
workers took pictures with their
cell phones.
nization as a strong point to the
proposal hearing.
"They laid it all out for the
senators to just take under their
wing," he said.
Blumke was also encouraged
by the meeting and said he hopes
to see the proposal realized by
August of this year.
"I don't think it could have
gone any better," he said. "The
state senators were all really
supportive and wanted to know
more about what universities
we're approaching."
Blumke isn't new to Lan-
sing, he's testified there before
in hopes of getting the G.I. Gill
passed.
According to statistics in the
proposal, the University current-
ly ranks ninth in the Big Ten in
the number of student veterans
enrolled in classes, with only 48
enrolled at the University.
From Page1A
lot better in the beginning, because
a lot of people didn't believe there
was really anything going on," she
said. "We heard everything through
the grapevine kind of in the begin-
ning, but then the RAs came and
notified us."
Logan said there is some dif-
ficulty with communication dur-
ing any emergency because of
the necessity to take care of the
situation at hand before notify-
ing affected individuals of the
situation. He also said it was dif-
ficult to contact all of the residents
involved because many chose to
leave the evacuation sites.
"There is the issue that we don't
always know what's going on in a
timely basis," he said, "because in
an emergency the first thing to do
is deal with the emergency, so I do
know that there were students who
were unhappy."
The students were allowed back
into their rooms sometime between
3 a.m. and 4 a.m., depending on
where they lived within West Quad,
Logan said.
Department of Public Safety
spokeswoman Diane Brown said
multiple steps had to be taken
before students were allowed back
into the building even after the
fire was put out. And because the
fire was an arson, West Quad was
determined as a crime scene where
police interviews and fingerprint-
ing had to be taken.
In addition to the crime scene
investigation, the waiting time
was augmented by the need for
an air quality test before resi-
dents were permitted to re-enter
the building. Brown said the Uni-
versity takes the fire marshal's
OK a step further, waiting extra
time to ensure the safety of the
building.
"The University administration
has a set of stronger responsibili-
ties for students, staff and faculty,"
Brown said. "The administration
wants to go that one step further
to ensure that buildings really have
good air quality, etc. in order to be
reoccupied."
The sprinkler system also con-
tributed to the wait delays, Brown
said. Though the fire was on the
lowest level of West Quad, which
she said made it easier to contain,
there was still water damage to
about 20 rooms that had to be miti-
gated.
"You can't stop the sprinkler
system," Brown said. "That whole
portion of the piping system has to
drain out, so even if the fire is put
out very quickly, a lot of water still
comes down."
Logan said he has not heard of
a lot of criticism from the students
who were displaced once they re-
entered the residence hall.
"It was something nobody
wanted to have happen, and it
is disturbing that this was an
arson," he said. "But after the
event, it seems that we're not
getting a lot of criticism from the
students."
On the Road to a Cure
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