The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Tuesday, December 1, 2009 - 3 NEWS BRIEFS BUENOS AIRES First gay marriage in Latin America put on hold An Argentine judge put a hold yesterday on another court's deci- sion to permit the first gay marriage in Latin America, but supporters of the couple said they would try to go ahead with the ceremony anyway. The official court Web site said national judge Marta Gomez Alsina ordered the wedding blocked until the issue can be considered by the Supreme Court. Jose Maria Di Bello and his part- ner, Alex Freyre, set plans to wed Tuesday based on an earlier ruling by a city judge in Buenos Aires. "They are shocked and saddened by the news, but still have hopes that the wedding will go forth as planned," said Maria Rachid, presi- dent of the Argentine Federation for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals who coordinated the team of laywers that filed the cou- ple's suit. HOUSTON, Tx. Prisoner holds guards at gunpoint A convicted sex offender sen- tenced to life in prison pulled a gun on two guards during a prison transfer yesterday-- and held them hostage temporarily before fleeing on foot in one of the guard's uni- forms, authorities said. At the time of the escape, the inmate was in a wheelchair, which he claimed he needed to help move him around, officials said. The guards were transferring Arcade Joseph Comeaux Jr. from a prison in Huntsville, north of Hous- ton, to one in Beaumont, in south- eastTexas, whenhepulledoutagun and toldthe guards to stop thevehi- cle, said Michelle Lyons, a spokes- woman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Comeaux took control of the transport van at 6:30 a.m., near- ly two hours into the trip, as the vehicle was going through Con- roe, just north of Houston. He told the guards to continue driv- ing until they reached Baytown, a refinery town east of Houston, officials said. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Officer who tased 10 yr. old fired for not using attached * camera The police officer in a small Arkansas town who used a stun gun on an unruly 10-year-old girl has been fired for violating depart- ment policy - not for using the Taser itself but for failing to use the camera attached to it, according to the town's mayor. Ozark Mayor Vernon McDaniel said he received notice of Officer Dustin Bradshaw's firing on Mon- day morning. Bradshaw previously was suspended for seven days with pay. His termination was effective Friday. "The policy that Officer Brad- shaw failed to obey is failure to have his camera placed on his Taser," police Chief Jim Noggle wrote in a memo to McDaniel. "It is the officer's duty to insure all of his equipment is present and in work- ing order." LANSING, Mich. Man accused of child molestation commits suicide A Lansing man has commit- ted suicide amid charges that he molested the younger brother of a member of the Boy Scout troop he once helped lead. A Lansing State Journal report says authorities learned Monday that 54-year7old Roger Ellison Young-had killed himself. Young faced two counts each of first-degree and second-degree criminal sexual conduct. He was free on a $75,000 bond with a pre- liminary hearing scheduled for Friday. Court documents say police on Sept. 22 found child pornography in Young's Lansing home, as well as evidence that a boy was coerced to appear in pornographic photos. The boy now is 12 years old. Young was removed from his post as assistant scoutmaster of the East Lansing troop after the allega- tions emerged. - Compiled from Daily wire reports Guantanamo detainees arrive in Italy for trial Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks to local residents in Arnold Park, Iowa on June 10. While gov., Huckabee pardoned Seattle police shootings suspect Suspect could be former gov.'s Willie Horton if he runs for pres. once again LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee had a hand pardoning or commuting many more pris- oners than his three immediate predecessors combined. Maurice Clemmons, the suspect in Sun- day's slaying of four Seattle-area police officers, was among them. For a politician considering another run for the White House, Clemmons could become Hucka- bee's Willie Horton. "In a primary between a law- and-order Republican and him, I think it could definitely be a vulnerability," said Art English, a political scientist at the Univer- sity of Arkansas at Little Rock. "It is very damaging when you have someone like that whose sentence was commuted. That's pretty high profile and very devastating and very tragic." English said it's hard to avoid. comparing the case to Horton, a convicted killer who raped a woman and assaulted her fiance while on release as part of a pris- on furlough program supported by Michael Dukakis when he was governor of Massachusetts. Allies of former President George H.W. Bush ran ads criticiz- ing Dukakis for his support of the program, undermining the Demo- crat's presidential campaign. As recently as Sunday, hours before the shooting suspect was linked to him, Huckabee said he was leaning against running again for president, telling "Fox News Sunday" he was "less likely rather than more likely" to run. Yesterday, Huckabee offered little explanation for why he made Clemmons eligible for parole in 2000, and called the case a failure of the justice systems in Arkansas and Washington. "If I could have known nine years ago and could have looked into the future, would I have acted favorably upon the Parole Board's recommendation? Of course not," Huckabee told Fox News Radio yesterday. Huckabee was expected to dis- cuss the Clemmons case Monday night during an interview with Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. Clemmons was among 1,033 people who were pardoned or had their sentences reduced during Huckabee's101/2years as goversor, a number that far surpasses that of his three predecessors combined. Bill Clinton, Frank White and Jim Guy Tucker granted 507 clemen- cies in the 171/2 years they served. Beebe, Huckabee's Democratic successor, has issued 273 commu- tations and pardons since taking office in January 2007 - all but one of them were pardons after the completion of the inmates' prison terms. Huckabee's role in gaining the release of a convicted rapist, Wayne DuMond, was the subject of an attack ad during his presi- dential run. While Huckabee's predecessor, Tucker, reduced DuMond's sentence making him eligible for parole, Huckabee took steps almost immediately after taking office to win DuMond's release. Two members of the state parole board said Huckabee pres- sured them to show DuMond mercy, while Huckabee publicly questioned whether DuMond was guilty of the rape of a teenage girl. During the presidential prima- ries, a conservative group aired television commercials in South Carolina featuring the mother of Carol Sue Shields, whom DuMond killed in 2000 after his release. Pulaski County Prosecu- tor Larry Jegley, whose office opposed Clemmons' parole in 2000 and 2004, said ,Huckabee created a flaw in the Arkansas jus- tice system by freeing the number of prisoners he did. "(Clemmons) should have stayed locked up like the jury wanted him and we wouldn't even be having this discussion," Jegley said. "I just have been figuratively holding my breath and hoping something like this wouldn't hap- pen," Jegley said. "I just think that a lot of the people that were subjects of clemency during that period of time were some very dangerous people who didn't need to be let out." Two Thnisians are suspected of having ties to al-Qaida ROME (AP) - Two Tunisians who hadbeen detained at Guantan- amo arrived in Italy late yesterday and will be tried on international terrorism charges for having alleg- edly recruited fighters for Afghani- stan, officials said. Adel Ben Mabrouk, 39, and Mohamed Ben Riadh Nasri, 43, are suspected of being members of a terror group with ties to al-Qaida. They were immediately taken into custody upon arrival in Milan and were being interrogated, a pros- ecutor told The Associated Pres. A third Guantanamo detainee was being relocated to France, and a fourth to Hungary, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the release. - The detainee headed to France is Saber Lahmar, who had earlier been cleared for release. Lahmar's lawyer Robert Kirsch would not specifically confirm his client was en route to France, but said: "We are grateful for the cour- age and generosity of the French people and government," add- ing that Lahmar will now have "a chance to rebuild his life in France." Lahmar is one of six Algerians who were detained in Bosnia in 2001 on suspicion of plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Saraje- vo, but a judge later cleared five of them, including Lahmar, for lack of KETTLE From Page 1 keys to those locks," Williams said. wver> explained. "fyou jiggle them, they will open." Despite the fact that the bell ringer left the bucket unattended, he won't face any repercussions. "He is one of our good workers," Williams said. "He's not being dis- ciplined at all - he didn't do any- thing wrong." Carlos Carter, a Salvation Army employee who works as a bell ring- er in Ann Arbor, said the incident made him afraid to leave his kettle unattended. "I was scared to leave the buck- et (Sunday)," Carter said, working outside Borders on East Liberty Street yesterday. "I sacrificed my lunch for this." Williams said paid employees of the Salvation Army's Christmas Charity program typically get two 15-minute breaks and one half- hour lunch break during an eight- hour shift. Volunteers on the other hand only work for a couple of hours at a time and typically do not go on breaks. Williams told the Daily that the evidence. The identity ofthe detainee being transferred to Hungary was not immediately available. The Wash- ington Post said he was a Palestin- ian. In September, two Uzbeks were sent to Ireland, and recently two Syrians arrived in Portugal. But they were freed. In the case of the Tunisians, Italian magistrates had previously accused them of inter- national terrorism stemming from crimes allegedly committed as far back as i997 and they arrived in Italy already in detention. Italy took in the Tunisians as a "concrete political sign" of Italy's commitment to help the U.S. close Guantanamo, Justice Minister Angelino Alfano said in a state- ment. The Italian prosecutor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mabrouk and Nasri traveled fromItalytoAfghanistanand, once there, maintained a "functional relationship inside the organiza- tion" of Tunisians here to recruit fighters for suicide missions. Nasri was allegedly the head of the organization and was described by the U.S. military as a "danger- ous" Tunisian operative when he appeared before a U.S. military review panel. President Barack Obama con- firmed last month that he would miss his January deadline to close the Guantanamo prison - partly because he cannot persuade other nations to take the detainees. The U.S. administration says about 90 of the 211 men now held at the U.S. military base can be released or repatriated. last time a Salvation Army bucket was stolen in Ann Arbor was over two years ago. It was a prank, and the missing bucket was eventually found. But Williams said she is con- cerned that this incident is the result of the down economy. "People are getting desperate," she said. Williams said that if the perpe- trator is caught, he or she will be prosecuted. "If we don't do anything about this, the public won't trust us with their money - we need to keep people's trust in what we're doing," Williams said. Lieutenant Mark St. Amour of AAPD called the incident "dis- turbing." "Stealing from the people who were probably trying to help the people who actually took it seemed pretty low," he said. The incident in Ann Arbor comes at a time when similar inci- dents have taken place in other cit- ies around the country. A man was arrested Sunday in Maumee, Ohio for stealing one of the red kettles, The Associated Press Reported. Fox News Boston reported on its website that a kettle was stolen outside of a Wagreens in Dover, N.H. on Sunday. Float plane crash in Canada kills six Two American residents were among the casualties SATURNA, British Columbia (AP) - A float plane crashed off Canada's Pacific coast, killing six people, including a Vancouver doc- tor and her six month-old baby, as well as two American residents. Two people on board survived. The Dehavilland Beaver aircraft went down Sunday during take- off in Lyall ilarbour, off Saturna Island in British Columbia's Gulf Islands - about 50 miles (80 kilo- meters) south of Vancouver. Only two of the eight on board - the pilot and a female passenger - were rescued within minutes of the crash and both are expected to survive, although one has seri- ous injuries, the other is listed in stable condition. Bill Yearwood of Canada's Transportation Safety Board said investigators are hop- REPORT From Page 1 from the past six years, according to the press release. "This information will help us set realistic targets now, and itwill enable us to measure our progress toward those goals in the future," Ken Keeler, lead author of the report and a senior environmen- tal sustainability representative in the Office of Campus Sustainabil- ity, wrote in the release. In an attempt to increase reach, the report was published in an eight-page pamphlet this year rather than in a 40-page report as in past years, according to a press release. The full report will be published later in the year. Jlach year, the Univ5rsity ing the pilot can tell them what went wrong. A float plane is an air- craft equipped with pontoons for water landings. Coast guard spokesman Troy Haddock said divers recovered the bodies of six people who were trapped in the plane which sank in 11 meters (36 feet) of water, moments after going down. James White heard the crash and rushed to his boat to look for survi- vors, butwhile he gotinto Lyall Har- bour within minutes, the plane had already slipped beneath the water. "There was no sign of anybody else or any other debris from the aircraft so I think it probably sank pretty fast," White said. He found a woman and the pilot close together in the water, both conscious and begging for help. White couldn't pull the two of them into his boat on his own, so he tied them to the side of his ves- sel for a few minutes until other boats came to help. Captain Bob Evans at the Joint spends between $110 million and $120 million on energy, accord- ing to the press release. Campus buildings are responsible for 90 percent of this energy. Energy reduction was empha- sized throughout the report, which highlighted key parts of the University that have undergone changes to be more environmen- tally sound. For example, about 250 million BTUs of energy are saved each year because of a solar collector array on top of the Uni- versity's central power plant. Planet Blue - a University-led sustainability initiative - saw its first full year last year, which came after the program was first piloted infive Universitybuildings, accord- ing to the report. These buildings saw an average reduced energy consumption off6 pmrcent. Rescue Co-Ordination Centre in Victoria said officials searched for seven hours before finding the plane and recovering the victims. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have identified the victims as 41-year-old Vancouver doctor Kerry Margaret Morrissey, her baby Sarah, 55-year-old Catherine White-Holman of Vancouver and 60-year-old Thomas Gordon Glenn of White Rock, British Columbia. The two American residents were 44-year-old Cindy Shafer and 49-year-old Richard Bruce Haskett of Huntington Beach, California. Last year there were two fatal float plane crashes off the coast of British Columbia. In August 2008, five people were killed when a Pacific Coastal Airlines Grumman Goose crashed on Vancouver Island. In November 2008, one man survived a crash that killed seven others on Thor- manby Island, located between the British Columbia mainland and northern Vancouver Island. The Rackham Building saw a 32-percent reduction, the Insti- tute for Social Research saw a 26-percent reduction and the Space Research Building saw a 17-percent reduction. However, the Chemistry Building and Flem- ing Administration Building didn't see reductions. In the press release, Alexander said the program could potentially save the University more than 10 to 20 percent on its energy budget. Planet Blue will have been imple- mented in 30 University buildings by the end of the year. The report also outlined other more specific initiatives, like the Transportation Services Cam- paign, which encourages students to use more environmentally sus- tainable modes of transportation, like busej and carpooling. University of Michigan's Largest - Ha Selection of REALTY UnitsAvailableforImmediate Occupancy Off Ca i pus Now Leasing for 2010-2011 Houses up to 14 bedrooms us n g 616Church St.7341 995-9200 www archrealtyco.com