The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Monday, March 8, 2010 - 3A
The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Monday, March 8, 2010 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
COMMERCE, Texas
Gunman shot
outside Walmart
A man walked into a Walmart
in Texas carrying at least two
guns before engaging in a shoot-
out with police outside the store,
authorities said. The man was
killed and an. off-duty officer in
the store who had tried to stop
him was Injured.
The incident in the east Texas
city of Commerce began when
police received a call of shots
being fired from a car in nearby
Greenville, about 50 miles north-
east of Dallas, said City of Com-
merce spokeswoman Marty
Cunningham.
Commerce police intercepted
the car just outside the city limits,
where the man exchanged gun-
fire with officers, Cunningham
said. He then drove to Walmart
and entered the store "carrying a
long gun and pistol," the spokes-
woman said.
PITTSBURGH
Student found dead
in frat house at
* Caregie Mellon
A man who had been celebrat-
ing a friend's birthday by drinking
and socializing was found dead
yesterday in a Carnegie Mellon
University fraternity house, police
said.
The 22-year-old man "likely
drank too much" while celebrating
Saturday night, police Detective
Christine Williams said.
The man, whose identity wasn't
disclosed because his parents
hadn't been notified, was found
yesterday afternoon by one of
the friend's roommates at the Pi
Kappa Alpha house, police said.
He was a student at the University
of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, about
30 miles southeast of Carnegie
Mellon.
His cause of death hasn't been
determined.
WASH INGTON
Obama urged to t
change position on
terrorist trials
A Republican senator is offering
the White House a deal on terror
trials.
Sen. Lindsey Graham says that if
the president agrees to try alleged
Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik
Mohammed and four accused
henchmen in military tribunals,
he will press fellow Republicans to
vote to close the Guantanamo Bay
prison.
Graham, interviewed yester-
day on CBS' "Face the Nation,"
says reversing Attorney Gen-
eral Eric Holder's plan to try the
suspected terrorists in a civilian
court in New York City would be
seen as an act of leadership by the
public.
The White House is reviewing
Holder's plan and no new recom-
mendation has been presented to
the president. A decision is not
expected for several weeks.
Beyond Mohammed's case,
Graham also said a new legal
framework is needed to deal with
the most dangerous detainees at
Guantanamo.
10S, Nigeria
200 slaughtered in
religious conflict
Rioters armed with machetes
slaughtered more than 200 people
overnight yesterday as religious
violence flared anew between
Christians and Muslims in central
Nigeria, witnesses said. Hundreds
of people fled their homes, fearing
reprisal attacks.
The bodies of the dead - includ-
ing many women and children -
lined dusty streets in three mostly
Christian villages south of the
regional capital of Jos, local jour-
nalists and a civif rights group said.
They said at least 200 bodies had
been counted by yesterday after-
noon. ._
Torched homes smoldered after
the 3 a.m. attacks that a region-
wide curfew enforced by the coun-
try's police and military should
have stopped.
The killings represent the lat-
est religious violence in an area
once known as Nigeria's top tour-
ist destination, adding to the tally
of thousands already killed in the
last decade in the name of reli-
gious and political ambitions.
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports
Ira is head to
polls en masse
despite attacks
IVAN PISARENKO/AP
Soldiers arrest a looter at a market in Hualpen, near Concepcion, Chile, on Tuesday. Troops enforce a curfew in this earthquAke-
stricken coastal region after looters rampage through stores.
Chilean pol ce force
looters to return goods
Poll shows 85 percent
of Chileans want
looters prosecuted
CONCEPCION, Chile (AP) -
The officers came with bullhorns
to impoverished neighborhoods
near the epicenter of Chile's dev-
astating earthquake, warning
looters to return what they stole
or face police raids.
And so they did, depositing
everything from mattresses to
refrigerators and flat-screen TVs.
It took 35 truckloads to recover
it all. Together with looted mer-
chandise recovered by police, the
material is worth nearly $2 mil-
lion, officers said.
Touring a police gymnasium
full of the recovered goods yes-
terday, President Michelle Bach-
elet called the looting one of
"the other aftershocks of this
tragic earthquake," and vowed
that those responsible would feel
the full weight of the law: prison
terms of two to five years.
"These are items that have
nothing to do with survival -
they reflect the moral damage of
the people, some of whom came
just to find things they could
make money from," she said, add-
ing that the government also will
prosecute anyone responsible for
price speculation in the disaster
area.
Thousands of quake survivors
participated in the looting, which
began only hours after the dev-
astating earthquake and grew to
include grandmothers and small
children. Outnumbered police
could only stand and watch,
urging people to take only the
food they needed, until soldiers
arrived and restored order.
The looting hampered rescue
and recovery efforts by distract-
ing firefighters and police and
deeply wounded the national
pride of Chileans who yearn to be
considered part of the first world.
"The damage it caused (to
Chile's international image) is
lamentable. Now they'll throw
all of us in the same bag," said
Juan Lagos.Rosales, a construc-
tion worker forced to sleep in
a tent with his wife and infant
daughter outside their fallen
house.
Some excuse the looting as
a natural result of the yawning
wealth gap in Chile, where the
poor are exposed to expensive
consumer goods without any
ability to buy them. The top 20
percent of wage earners make an
average of $3,200 a month, com-
pared to $340 a month for the
bottom 20 percent, according to
the national statistics institute.
When the earthquake shat-
tered store windows, the temp-
tation was too great, said father
Luis Figueroa Vinet, a deacon
at Concepcion's main cathedral.
"The pig isn't guilty for what pov-
erty brings," he said, invoking
a colorful Chilean adage about
inequality. '
But a poll yesterday suggests 85
percent of Chileans want the loot-
ers prosecuted - a view shared
by city worker Aran Fuentes, who
said the looting let all Chileans
down: "After all that we've done
for other countries, to present
ourselves to the rest of the world
as looters really hurts."
Police Lt. Oscar Llanten cred-
ited the return of more than
950 items to teamwork between
police and members of the looters'
own communities, who tipped off
officers. The items included doz-
ens of stoves, refrigerators, soft
chairs and sofas, now-soiled mat-
tresses, bicycles, plastic toys, tele-
visions and a copying machine.
Many Chileans squarely blame
Bachelet for failing to stop the
looting before it spread through-
out the disaster area.
Insurgents kill 36 in
attacks aimed at
voters, polling places
BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraqis defied
insurgents who lobbed hand gre-
nades at voters and bombed a
polling station yesterday in an
attempt to intimidate those tak-
ing part in elections that will
determine whether their coun-
try can overcome deep sectarian
divides as U.S. forces prepare to
leave.
The conclusion of the vote,
however, did not spell an immedi-
ate end to political uncertainty. It
could be days until results cdme in
and with the fractured nature of
Iraqi politics, it could take months
to form a government.
Sunnis and Shiites seemed
united in one way yesterday -
defiance in the face of violence.
Many came out of polling booths
waving fingers dipped in purple
ink in a now-iconic image syn-
onymous with Iraq's democracy.
In one Baghdad neighborhood,
relatives who had just lost a fam-
ily member in a bombing walked
down to the polling booth to vote.
The violence was a direct chal-
lenge to Prime Minister Nouri al-
Maliki who has gained popularity
as violence across the country has
plummeted.
"I voted for Nouri al-Maliki
because I trust him as a man who
succeeded in getting rid of mili-
tias and building a strong state,"
said Saadi Mahdi, a 43-year old
engineer in the southern oil city
of Basra. It was there that al-
Maliki first established himself
as a leader willing to go against
his fellow Shiites when he routed
militias aligned with anti-Ameri-
can cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
It was an election day that
demonstrated starkly how far the
country, a rare democracy in the
Middle East, has come since the
last nationwide parliamentary
vote in December 2005 and how
much still holds it back.
Instead of unified sectarian
parties playing strictly to their
Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish vot-
ers, the political blocs contest-
ing the election were much more
fractured and made at least some
effort to cross over into other
sects. Whereas only party names
were known in the 2005 ballot
- in order to protect candidates
from assassination - this time
cities were plastered with candi-
dates' faces on posters as Iraqis
voted for individual people.
And the American military
presence so prominent in 2005
was limited on election day to
helicopters buzzing over head as a
massive deployment of Iraqi forc-
es took the lead on the ground.
Still the violence that shook
Baghdad served as a reminder of
the insurgency's persistence and
adaptability.
Insurgents used mostly rock-
ets, mortars and explosive-filled
plastic bottles hidden under trash
to terrorize voters on their way to
the polls. With those tactics, they
managed to get around a vehicle
ban in place across the capital for
most of the day and killed 36 peo-
ple, almost all of them in Baghdad.
Al-Maliki faced a double chal-
lenge at the polls. Al-Sadr has
aligned with another Shiite reli-
gious party - the Supreme Islam-
ic Iraqi Council - to seek the
prime minister's job. On the other
side, al-Maliki is beingchallenged
by former Prime Minister Ayad
Allawi, a secular Shiite, whose
nonsectarian stance and criticism
of the current government has
won him secular Shiite followers
as well as Sunni supporters.
"They symbolize the unity
of Iraq," Hasan Ai, a Sunni
Turkoman, in the northern city
of Tal Afar, in Ninevah province,
who voted forAllawi's Iraqiyaalli-
ance. "It will bring us together."
No one coalition is expected to
win an outright majority in the
325-seat parliament so the coali-
tion that gets the largest num-
ber of votes will be tasked with
cobbling together a government
with other partners - possibly a
tough task for al-Maliki who has
angered parties across the politi-
cal spectrum during his nearly
four years in office. But in Iraq's
freewheeling democracy, no one
believes that any political align-
ment is off the negotiating table.
The two Kurdish parties,
known for their political unity,
are thought to be key to forming
any future government. But even
they have been divided with an
upstart party called "Gorran" eat-
ing into their dominance.
Kurds have 4sarnessed their
power with the two main par-
ties - KDP and PUK - forming
a solid front on the national level
on issues they consider important
such as determining the future'of
disputed areas claimed by both
Arabs and Kurds. But Gorran's
rise could mean a less unified front
that may weaken Kurdish power.
Many have viewed the elec-
tionfas a key test of whether the
country can finally overcome the
sectarianism that has divided
Iraq, a country once ruled by
Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted
Sunni-minority rule then by a
Shiite-majority government.
But the election season showed
just how difficult it will be for
Iraq to put that deadly chapter
behind it. Instead of issues such
as security or government ser-
vices dominating the campaign,
it centered on the country's divi-
sive Baathist past after a govern-
ment committee with murky legal
standing banned hundreds of
candidates for alleged ties to Sad-
dam's regime - including many
high-profile Sunni candidates.
After polls opened in the morn-
ing, loudspeakers from mosques
across the country called on Iraq-
is to vote. In the Shiite Baghdad
neighborhood of Hurriyah - where
three people were killed when
someone threw a grenade into a
crowd of voters - clerics chal-
lenged people togo to thepolls like
"arrows to the enemies' chest."
Haitians apprehensive about
withdrawal of American forces
10,000 United
Nations forces
and Haitian police
remain to keep order
following the catastrop
earthquake.
"I would like for then
Haiti until they rebuild
try and everybody can
their house," said Marj
a 27-year-old mother ofi
warmed a bowl of bea
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) family over a charcoal
- U.S. troops are withdrawingfrom fake grass of the nation.
the shattered capital, leaving many U.S. officials say thel
Haitians anxious that the most vis- ipated draw down of trc
ible portion of international is end- a sign of waning coms
ing even as the city is still mired in Haiti, only a change in
misery and vulnerable to unrest. of the operation. Sec
,As troops packed their duf- now be the responsibi
fels and began to fly home this 10,000-strong U.N. pez
weekend, Haitians and some aid force and the Haitian p
workers wondered whether U.N. A smaller number of
peacekeepers and local police es - the exact numb'
are up to the task of maintaining yet been determined
order. More than a half-million needed as the U.N. as
people still live in vast encamp- government reassert cc
ments that have grown more Gen. Douglas Fraser, h
unpleasant in recent days with the Southern Command,w
early onset of rainy season. the Haiti operation.
Some also fear the departure of "Our mission is larg
the American troops is a sign of
dwindling international interest
in the plight of the Haitian people
hic Jan. 12
m to stay in
I the coun-
go back to
orie Louis,
two, as she
ns for her
fire on the
al stadium.
long-antic-
oops is not
mitment to
the nature
urity will
lity of the
acekeeping.
olice.
F U.S. forc-
er has not
- will be
nd Haitian
ontrol, said
ead of U.S.
which runs
ely accom-
plished," Fraser said.
American forces arrived in the
immediate aftermath of the quake
to treat the wounded, provide
emergency water and rations and
help prevent a feared outbreak of
violence among desperate survi-
vors. They also helped reopen the
airport and seaport.
There has been no widespread
violence but security is a real issue.
A U.N. food convoy traveling from
Gonaives to Dessalines on Friday
was stopped and overrun by peo-
ple, who looted two trucks before
peacekeepers regained control,
U.N. officials said.
They managed to escort the
other two back to Gonaives. There
were no reports of injuries.
The military operation was
criticized by some Haitian sena-
tors and foreign leaders as heavy-
handed and inappropriate in a
country that had been occupied
by American forces for nearly two
decades in the early 20th century.
-.5m
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