The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 7 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 7 . Pakistan releases detained Iranians amid tension Tehran alleges Pakistan intelligence is linked to deadly suicide attack QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - Paki- stan today released 11 Iranians detained near the countries' border amid tensions over a deadly suicide attack in Iran that Tehran alleges has links to Pakistani intelligence officials, police said. Authorities had first said the 11 were members of Iran's elite Revo- lutionary Guards, but then reversed course and identified them only as security officers. They were arrest- ed yesterday after shooting out the tires of a car carrying smugglers, Pakistan authorities said. The arrests threatened to add to the strain between the two nations triggered by the Oct. 18 attack on the Iranian side of the border. They came a day after the Pakistani pres- ident met Iran's interior minister and vowed to track down the per- petrators of the blast. Police official Dadur Rehman said the paramilitary Frontier Corps released the Iranians after an investigation. "I do not have any idea why they were released," Rehman added in a phone call with The Associated Press from the area where the Ira- nians were held. He said he had not been privy to the interrogation. Pakistan has been accused of supporting militant activities in two other neighboring countries, Afghanistan and India, greatly complicating relations with both of them. Strains in its relationship with another regional power would only add to Pakistan's problems as it battles al-Qaida and the Taliban within its borders. One Pakistani official said three senior officers among the detainees probably belonged to Iran's power- ful Revolutionary Guard. Iran's Press TV carried what it described as a statement from the guld condemning the arrests, but saying thatthe 11 were not its mem- bers. The report cited."informed" sources as saying the arrested men were "border guards hunting fuel smugglers (who) accidentally entered Pakistan." INVESTIGATION From Page 1 matters under review by the insti- tution and the enforcement staff concerning the football program." But it leaves the door open to "new information" that is sometimes uncovered during investigations "that leads to expanded inqui- ries." Signed by David Prince, the NCAA's vice president of enforce- ment, the letter says that the NCAA intends to complete the investiga- tion by Dec. 31, 2009. Coleman will receive updates from the NCAA on the investiga- tion every six months, according to the letter. If major violations of NCAA rules are "substantiated," the let- ter continued, the Committee on Infractions will then take over the case and consider it either through a hearing process or a summary disposition process. The latter involves a "written report that is jointly prepared by the institution, enforcement staff and all involved parties," accord- ing to the letter. The letter closed by asking for Coleman's "cooperation and assis- tance to the end that complete information related to (the case) may be developed." According to the NCAA's bylaws, the notice of inquiry is a procedural step in the progression of an NCA.A REC SPORTS From Page 1 not be negatively affected by the transition. He said club and varsity club teamswill continueto compete seriously and will have continued access to the Athletic Department's facilities. The relocation will also allow Rec Sports to further cater to the needs of the student and faculty bodies because it will allow the department to integrate itself with other facets of student life on cam- pus, Canning said. Canningsaid the OutdoorAdven- tures and Challenge Programs will benefit most from the move to Stu- dent Affairs. He emphasized that student groups will have more loan attemptto boost securityin the region, Iran put the Revolution- ary Guard directly in control of Sis- tan-Baluchistan province in April. Its officers typically take the lead in any operations on Iran's border. The 11 officers were taken into custody in Mashkel district, about seven kilometers (four miles) from the countries' border in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, paramilitary offi- cial Mohammad Naseer Baluch said. He said they were arrested soon after they shot out the tires of a car driven by "two petty smugglers." The Oct. 18 suicide attack killed 15 members of the Revolutionary Guard, including five senior com- manders, and at least 27 others in the town of Pishin. Iranian officials blamed a Sunni rebel group known as Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, in the attack. Iran's president and the guard chief have since publicly accused Pakistan's intelligence service of supporting Jundallah. Last week Iran's police chief Gen. Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghadam accused Paki- stan of"havinga direct responsibil- ity" for the attack. Pakistan President Asif Ali Zard- ari met with Iran's interior minister in Islamabad on Sunday to discuss the attack. Afterward, he vowed to cooper- ate in capturing any attackers and said those behind the blasts "were the enemies of both countries." Pakistani officials Monday said the arrested Iranians were in two cars and had no travel documents. Pakistan and Iran have had generally good relations in recent years and in May the two countries signed a landmark pact for a natu- ral gas pipeline into Pakistan. Jundallah has waged a low-level insurgency in Iran's southeast in recent years, claiming to fight on behalf of the Baluchi ethnic minor- ity, which it says is persecuted by Iran's government. Iran has also accused the United States and Brit- ain of having links with Jundallah, chargesbothnationa deny., Iran's 120,000-member Revolu- .tionary Guardis its strongest mili- tary force and is directly linked to the ruling clerics. It also controls Iran's missile program and guards its nuclear facilities. investigation into potential viola- tions. "If the enforcement staff has developed reasonably reliable information indicating that an institution has been in violation of NCAA legislation that requires further investigation," the bylaws read, "the enforcement staff shall provide a notice of inquiry in writing to the chancellor or presi- dent..." According to the NCAA's web- site, the enforcement staff is not obligated to publicly release the notice of inquiry. Instead, it is up to the discretion of the school under investigation to decide if it wants to release the notice. In a pair of statements released yesterday, Coleman and Athletic Director Bill Martin defended the program and said the school would cooperate fully with the NCAA investigation. "As I said at the onset of this review, we place the highest impor- tance on the well-being of our stu- dent-athletes and the integrity of our program," Coleman's statement read. "We continue to work with the NCAA to ensure that a thorough and objective investigation occurs." In his statement, Martin wrote, "We continue to cooperate with the NCAA on this matter, which is why we reached out to both the Big Ten and the NCAA as soon as we heard the allegations. We remain commit- ted to following both the letter and the intent of the NCAA rules." access to use the programs' ropes courses as means to facilitate team building and leadership. "They have the programs, and we're the laboratory for those groups to go out together and learn to work together as a team," Can- ning said. "That's what we do." Harper spoke eagerly about the bright future she thinks Rec Sports will have as part of Student Affairs. She emphasized that students, who make up a majority of the rec- reational facilities' clientele, will continue to bea focus of Rec Sports and Student Affairs. "We want to focus on Recreation succeeding and get some resources there," she said. "That's what's so exciting about it because it allows us really to make progress." University President Mary Sue Coleman speaks to the Faculty Senate Assembly yesterday in Palmer Commons. FACULTY From Page 1 across the country "are trying to deal with this era of constraining resources." However, Coleman stressed that the University faces many chal- lenges concerning the budget mov- ing forward. "I don't want to tell you that everything is just rosy, and we don't have anything to worry about because that's not true," she said to the assembly. She cited the fact that both the endowment and private giving were down more than 20 per- cent last year. State support has also declined 10 percent over the last seven years, and the Univer- sity has reduced spending from its general fund by more than $135 million within that same time period. Over the next three years, Cole- man said the University will most likely have to identify an additional $100 million in savings. She said this combination of fac- tors has led the University to be more "prudent" and "strategic" in handling the budget in order to guarantee a sense of stability for the future. "To make it better for our suc- cessors, we want to keep the insti- FIRE From Page 1 the Tice Family Partnership for $700,000. The company also owns Pizza House, a popular campus restaurant located less than a block away. The building was put back on the market in 2004 for $1.2 million but there were no bids on the new offer, according to city records. It is unclear why the building remained unoccupied for such a long period of time. Calls to the owners were not returned as of Monday evening. The building, which caught fire just before 11 p.m. Saturday night and burned for almost an hour before firefighters could contain the flames, was left heavily dam- aged. The roof of the structure entirely collapsed during the fire and the interior is almost com- pletely gutted. Chamberlain said it appears the fire began on a corner of an upper floor of the building. Once the fire began, the flames quickly perme- SUMMIT From Page 1 ter for Stem Cell Biology, said the summit's venue in Michigan recog- nizes the state's advances not only in the field of stem cell science but also in its political stance onthe issue. "Our own state legislature had been sending the opposite mes- sage (before Proposal 2) by cre- ating laws that threatened to put stem cell biologists in jail for doing the same things that the state of California, for example, would pay millions of dollars for people to do," Morrison said. Morrison said the passage of the constitutional amendment defied the underlying politics and instead reflected the strong opinions of the general public. "The special interest groups that opposed (the amendment) were extraordinarily well funded and organized and yet people still, by a clear margin, voted for (the amendment)," he said. "That makes an important point that tution strong because we are about the infinite horizon," she said. "We are not about what happens next quarter or next year, so this is some- thing we continue to work on." Coleman cited several cost-cut- ting measures including forming new faculty travel policies, offering more classes in spring and summer terms, sharing the staff for central- ized servers and making better use of buildings. Coleman said cooperation among administrators, faculty and staff will "make a big impact on the institution" and will help the Uni- versity deal with budget issues. "Because the budget problem isn't just my problem, it's not the regents' problem, it's everybody's problem," she said to the assem- bly, "the challenges are there for everybody, and so I appreciate cer- tainly any help that you can give us as we're thinking about how to tackle this." CHANGES TO GRIEVANCE REVIEW BOARD After Coleman spoke, Senate Assembly members discussed changes to the composition of the Grievance Review Board - a body that hears complaints from Uni- versity faculty against other facul- ty, staff or administrators and aims to settle disputes. ated the building. A major concern was that the flames would spread to Univer- sity Towers, a heavily populated student housing apartment build- ing located next door. Though the building was evacuated during the fire for safety purposes, only damage to the complex was a few broken windows and some smoke and water damage, according to University spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham. The 600 displaced students Saturday night were allowed back into their homes within a few hours of the fire breaking out. University Towersmanagement did not inform residents when the building was reopened early Sun- day morning and was unwilling to answer any questions Sunday afternoon. But resident Navya Varshney, an LSA sophomore, said that the management had begun to provide answers on Monday. A note was posted yesterday next to the elevators in the build- ing asking residents to report any damage caused by the fire to the front desk. Currently, the board consists of three members - two of the members are from the department of the faculty member making the complaint and one is from an out- side department. Last January, Provost Teresa Sullivan asked the Faculty Griev- ance Process Task Force to imple- ment standards proposed the previous year by the Policy Task Force and create a report. In the report, one of the proposals that came from the Policy Task Force was that all three members hear- ing the grievance come from out- side departments. However, theProcessTaskForce recommended the board consist of two members from an externalunit and one from the original unit. According to the Faculty Griev- ance Process Response report, the Process Task Force believed a member from the department of the grievant "would provide perspective and insight into the culture of the unit that could be gained in no other way." During the meeting, Senate Assemblymembersdebatedwheth- er or not to adopt the changes to the Grievance Review Board. The provost must approve the changes before they go into effect. Members discussed whether it was fair to have two external members and one internal member - arguing that the internal mem- ber might be biased for or against the grievant. Despite these recommenda- tions, the assembly voted to have the boards comprise of five mem- bers, with three members from an external department and two members from the department of the grievant. The assembly decided both the faculty member making the com- plaint and the member who the complaint was made against could make separate lists of people they would like to have as the internal department member. Each party would then choose one name from the other party's list. Robert Fraser, SACUA vice chair, said the board drops griev- ances that aren't considered valid. "Typically that ends the discus- sion," Fraser said. "If it's not con- sidered grievable, it stops there. There are a very few occasions when SACUA has pressed upon the provost that this needs to be recon- sidered." However, the new proposal states that a grievant may appeal a complaint found not grievable to SACUA. This is the first time there has been a proposed process to deal with grievance appeals. - Chelsea Lange contributed to this report. A firefighter clears charred waste after a fire gutted the old Pinba on the north side of South University Avenue late Saturday night. Momo Tea, located on the other side of the burned build- ing, has been closed since the fire due to damage in the kitchen. A sign on the door states they are doing reconstruction and will be open soon. - Daily News Editor Matt Aaronson contributed to this report. resonates nationally." The proposal passed with 53 percent of the vote. Dr. Eva Feldman, director of the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute, said the leg- islative support has allowed the University of Michigan to form a consortium for stem cell thera- pies with a goal of developing new stem cell lines with embry- onic and induced pluripotent stem cells. Moreover, she said the consor- tium would form one basis of dis- cussion at the forthcoming stem cell summit. "The summit draws attention to the fact that, within one year, we have gone from being perceived as a university community that was somewhat behind and almost 'backwards' in the stem cell arena to a mover and shaker in the stem cell field," Feldman said. Feldman, who is also the director of both the U-M Amyotrophic Lat- eral Sclerosis (ALS) Clinic and the Program for Neurology Research and Discovery, will be one of the speakers featured at the summit. Having recently acquired FDA approval for a phase one human clinical trial, Feldman will soon use direct spinal cord transplantation of stem cells in an effort to treat Lou Gehrig's disease in 12 patients. Feldman said she expects to present these landmark trials at the summit next year and any pre- liminary data that may be gleaned from her first set of patients. "Being the principal investiga- tor of the very first stem cell trial of this kind in Lou Gehrig's disease, I think it helps show the outside community that, here at the Uni- versity of Michigan, we can take these ideas about stem cells and actualize them," she said. Dr. Gerard Doherty, chief of Endocrine Surgery at the U-M Medical School, is another Uni- versity stem cell researcher who anticipates presenting his work at the summit. In a recently pub- lished study by Doherty and his research team, he used embryonic stem cells to differentiate into mature parathyroid cells, which are important to bone health. No stranger to legislative bar- riers in the field, Doherty said his study was constrained to the use of one of the 60 stem cell lines made available during the Bush admin- istration. President Barack Obama has since reversed the executive order limiting federal funding on stem cell research. As a consequence of the recent national and regional advance- ments in stem cell research advo- cacy, the 2010 World Stem Cell summit in Detroit is expected to garner more attention and scien- tific collaboration than its prede- cessor in Baltimore last year. "There are a lot of scientific meetings and some of them are standard that happen every year and some that sort of grow up around specific topics, lasting for a few years before fading away," Doherty said. "This one has been increasing in momentum because of the international interest in stem cell biology and the bur- geoning amount of information we have."