The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Wednesday, April 7, 2010 - 3A NEWS BRIEFS BERLIN TOWNSHIP, Mich. Detroit River refuge gets 35 more acres of land to expand The Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge is expanding with 35 acres of land in Monroe Coun- ty's Berlin Township. The acquisition was announced Tuesday by the U.S. Fish and Wild- life' Service, Monroe County, The Trust for Public Land and Ducks Unlimited Inc. It includes seasonal wetlands and land used for farming over the past 30 years. The property is home to great blue heron, egret and raptors. Michigan Democratic Congress- man John Dingell says in a state- ment the property 28 miles southwest of Detroit will benefit wildlife and area residents. Agricultural portions of the land will be returned to prairie and grassland. The refuge includes more than 5,700 acres of islands, wetlands and other protected habitats along the Detroit River and Lake Erie. LINDEN, N.J. Police ID bodies found dismembered in New Jersey Police have identified a man and woman whose dismembered body parts were found stuffed in bags and dumped on a residential street in a quiet northern New Jersey community. The Union County Prosecutor's Office is withholding the names until family members can be noti- fied. An office spokesman says noti- fications are under way. Prosecutor Theodore Romankow has said that an autop- sy showed one of the victims was a Hispanic male between 30 and 35 years old. Investigators still don't. know how long the pair had been dead or why they were dumped in Linden, about 20 miles outside Manhattan. Residents say the bags had been there at least since Thursday. The body pieces were found Monday by police and a sanitation worker who responded when a resi- dent called to complain about ille- gally dumped trash. WASHINGTON US hopes to ease Russia's fears on missile defense Secretary of State Hillary Rod- ham Clinton says the U.S. will con- tinue to try to seek common ground with Russia on missile defense despite the Kremlin's fear that such systems are aimed at crippling its nuclear arsenal. She told a Pentagon briefing she understands reservations being voiced by Moscow about a new nuclear arms reduction treaty to be signed later this week. Russia unsuccessfully sought to include limits on missile defenses during months of negotiations on the new arms treaty and yesterday said it reserves the right to with- draw from the pact if it deems U.S. missile defense systems in Europe as a threat. QUITO, Ecuador Writers at Ecuador state paper claim censorship Twenty columnists and con- tributors to the Ecuadorean state newspaper El Telegrafo said yes- terday they will no longer write for the paper because of alleged cen- sorship. In a signed letter sent to media outlets, the writers said they were quitting to protest "acts of censor- ship and the violation of the rights of free expression and press free- dom." In recent weeks, El Telegrafo's director and sections editor were removed from their posts and the deputy director resigned amid a disagreement with management over the direction the newspaper was headed. El Telegrafo was a private news- paper until three years ago when it was taken over by the government amid debts and legal problems. On April 1, a note from manage- ment directed that the newspaper's editorial section not publish "com- mentaries, strategic information and other strictly internal informa- tion" written by the columnists and contributors. - Compiled from Daily wire reports Quake offers tough lessons for U.S. coast President Barack Obama arrives in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, Friday, March 2', 2010, alter he phoned Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to discuss the new START treaty. Obama calls nuclear terrorism top threat White house aims to limit international threat and conflict WASHINGTON (AP) - Rewrit- ing America's nuclear strategy, the WhiteHouseyesterdayannounced a fundamental shift that calls the spread of atomic weapons to rogue states or terrorists a worse threat than the nuclear Armageddon feared during the Cold War. The Obama administration is suddenly moving on multiple fronts with a goal of limiting the threat of a catastrophic interna- tional conflict, although it's not yet clear how far and how fast the rest of the world is ready to fol- low. In releasing the results of an in-depth nuclear strategy review, President Barack Obama said his administration would narrow the circumstances in which the U.S. might launch a nuclear strike, that it would forgo the development of new nuclear warheads and would seek even deeper reductions in American and Russian arsenals. His defense secretary, Robert Gates, said the focus would now be on terror groups such as al-Qaida as well as North Korea's nuclear buildup and Iran's nuclear ambi- tions. "For the first time, prevent- ing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism is now at the top of America's nuclear agenda," Obama said, distanc- ing his administration from the decades-long U.S. focus on arms competition with Russia and on the threat posed by nuclear mis- siles on hair-trigger alert. "The greatest threat to U.S. and global security is no lon- ger a nuclear exchange between nations, but nuclear terrorism by violent extremists and nuclear proliferation to an increasing number of states," he said, spell- ing out the core theme of the new strategy. Obama's announcement set the stage for his trip to Prague Thurs- day to sign a new arms reduction agreement with Russia. And it pre- cedes a gathering in Washington next Monday of government lead- ers from more than 40 countries to discuss improving safeguards against terrorists acquiring nucle- ar bombs. In May, the White House will once again help lead the call for dis- armament at the United Nations in New York during an international conference on strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Congressional Democrats hailed yesterday's announce- ment, but some Republicans said it could weaken the nation's defense. Rep. Buck McKeon of Califor- nia, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Commit- tee, said the policy change could carry "clear consequences" for security and he was troubled by "some of the language and per- ceived signals imbedded" in the policy. U.S. officials look to Chile as model for natural disaster preparation SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - As the Easter earthquake shook South- ern California, the state's disaster management chief was thousands of miles away in Chile, examin- ing what experts say is the best case study yet for how a truly cata- strophic earthquake could impact the United States. Chile and the U.S. Pacific coast have more in common than their geology; they share advanced con- struction codes, bustling coastal cities, modern skyscrapers and vet- eran emergency services. These were all put to the test in Chile, which despite its exten- sive planning lost 432 lives in the 8.8-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami - lessons that California, Oregon and Washing- ton have yet to fully learn despite deepexperiencewithlesserquakes. They include: Coastal flood maps mean nothing without local enforcement. Hospitals need to not only stay upright but also stay open. Stringent building standards require stringent inspections. And tourists need to be taught about the dangers of tsunamis, which caused the greatest loss of life in Chile, wip- ing out seaside campgrounds on the last weekend of summer vacation. "People living there know that when the earth shakes, it's like an alarm going off: Get out. But visi- tors aren't conditioned like that," said Matthew Bettenhausen, the secretary of California's Emergen- cy Management Agency. Most of Chile's modern build- ings emerged with little more than broken plaster, but there were some spectacular failures among recent- ly built structures. Some experts blame code violations that lax inspections failed to catch. "It's not enough to have a good law - you have to follow it," says Rodolfo Saragoni, the University of Chile's top seismic engineer. Chileans who lost their homes are asking how building firms got away with cuttingcorners. "I've never made walls this thin for this kind of building," said civil engineer Carolina Astorga, show- ing the AP the damaged founda- tions of her 19-story apartment building in Santiago. She moved in a month before the quake. Now the building is sunken, leaning and uninhabitable. "They save more rebar, more money and it comes out cheaper for the contractor. But here are the consequences." Code enforcement in California, asinChile,fallstolocalgovernments. Some are sticklers, but others are essentially "paper building depart- ments, where they're pushing paper but not actually rigorously enforcing building codes," said Fred Turner, a structural engineer with the state's Seismic Safety Commission. "I'm afraid there are a few juris- dictions in California that are prob- ably not much better," Turner added. Likewise, the tsunami responsi- ble for most of Chile's death toll was perfectly predictable from official flood maps published on the navy's Web site. But the coastal cities dev- astated by the waves did nothingftor incorporate the charts in public planning. Toyota issues internal repairs- procedures Pope Benedict XVI blesses a child during Palm Sunday mass in St. Peter's square at the Vatican on Sunday. The Pope opened Holy Week on Sunday amid one of the most serious crises facing the church in decades. Vatican speaks out agalns anti -Catholic 'hate' campain Pope targeted for opposing abortion, same-sex marriage VATICAN CITY (AP) - The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI yesterday, claim- ing accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catho- lic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abor- tion and same-sex marriage. Vatican Radio broadcast com- ments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope and the Vati- can newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal. "The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Car- dinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio. Herranz didn't identify the lobbies but "defense of life" is Vatican shorthand for anti-abor- tion efforts. Also arguing that Benedict's promotion of conservative fam- ily models had provoked the so- called attacks was the Vatican's dean of the College of Cardinal', Angelo Sodano. "By now, it's a cultural con- trast," Sodano told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Roma- no. "The pope embodies moral truths that aren't accepted, and so, the shortcomings and errors of priests are used as weapons against the church." Also rallying to Benedict's side was Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who heads the Vatican City State's governing apparatus. The pope "has done all that he could have" against sex abuse by clergy of minors, Lajolo said on Vatican radio, decrying what he described as a campaign of "hatred against the Catholic church." Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, a Minne- apolis, Minnesota-based minister in the United Church of Christ who is faith work director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, described the cardinals' comments as "diversionary coun- terattacks" that are an affront both to the victims of clergy abuse and to gays and lesbians. "It makes me heartsick," she said. Sex abuse allegations, as well as accusations of cover-ups by diocesan bishops and Vatican offi- cials, have swept across Europe in recent weeks. Benedict has been criticized for not halting the actions of abusive priests when he was a Vatican cardinal and earlier while he was the archbishop of Munich in his native Germany. The mainland European scan- dals - in Germany, Italy, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland - are erupting after decades of abuse cases in the United States, Can- ada, Australia, Ireland and other areas. In Germany, nearly 2,700 people called the church's sex- ual abuse hot line in the first three days it was operating, a Catholic church spokesman said yesterday.A team of psychologists and other experts have spoken with 394 people so far, ranging from several minutes up to an hour, Trier Diocese spokesman Stephan Kronenburg said. "Most callers reported cases of sexual abuse," he told The Associ- ated Press. Benedict has ignored victims' demands that he accept respon- sibility for what they say is his own personal and institutional responsibility for failing to swift- ly kick abusive priests out of the priesthood, or at least keep them away from children. But he has been protected by a vanguard of senior Vatican prel- ates who are fending off what they contend is an orchestrated attempt to attack the leader of the world's more than 1 billion Catho- lics. Documents: Toyota lagged in issuing US warnings WASHINGTON (AP) - Toyota issued internal repair procedures to its own distributors in 31 European countries about sticking accelera- tor pedals months before it warned U.S. regulators about the problem - and on the same day it told the U.S. government it would conduct a recall over loose floor mats, accord- ing to Toyota documents obtained yesterday by The Associated Press. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood earlier this week cited the Sept. 29 European warn- ings in his decision to assess a record $16.4 million fine on the Japanese automaker for failing to alert the U.S. government to its safety problems quickly enough. LaHood on yesterday said Toyota made a "huge mistake" by not dis- closing safety problems with gas pedals on some of its most popu- lar models sooner. Detailed chronologies provided by Toyota to the government and obtained by the AP show rising concerns at the end of 2009 about sticking gas pedals and complaints from Toyota owners in the U.S. about the problem. According to the documents, Toyota's European division issued technical informa- tion to the European distributors "identifying a production improve- ment and repair procedure to address complaints by customers in those countries of sticking accel- erator pedals, sudden rpm increase and/or sudden vehicle accelera- tion." On the same day, Toyota told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of its decision to recall several Toyota and Lexus vehicle models "to address the risk of accelerator pedal entrapment by all-weather floor mats," accord- ing to a timeline of the company's handling of the floor mat recall. The two timelines, entitled "pre- liminary chronology of principal events," were provided to the gov- ernment on March 24. Toyota has said the problems involved separate issues and in the case of the sticking gas pedals, the problem was related to the buildup of condensation on sliding surfaces in the accelerator system that helps drivers push down or release the gas pedal. The documents obtained by AP were among 70,000 pages of papers turned over to government investigators. They detail internal communications and testing of the sticking pedals before Toyota presented its findings to NHTSA four months later, during a meet- ing in Washington on Jan. 19. Two days later, Toyota announced it would recall 2.3 million vehicles to address the sticking pedals. On Oct. 7, according to the time- line, a staff member of Toyota's productplanning and management division at the company's head- quarters in Japan sent a Toyota colleague in North America a copy of engineering change instruc- tions describing the same design changes for the accelerator pedal of a Toyota RAV4 as was implemented. in Europe. Two weeks later, the timeline says a member of the product planning team in North America received a call from a colleague in Japan "instructing him not to implement the (engineeringchange: instructions) noted above." Toyota notified NHTSA in November 2009 of three cases of sticking pedals in Corollas sold in the United States that were report-; ed to the company in late Octo- ber. In November and December, Toyota engineers examined pedals. from the Corollas and "concluded that the phenomenon experienced in the United States was essentially the same as the phenomenon expe- rienced in Europe." In mid-January, Toyota held, internal meetings "to discussstatus of production changes and to pre- pare for meetings with NHTSA" on Jan. 19, according to the timeline. LaHood told reporters in Chica- go on Tuesday that he wouldn't be surprised if a review of documents from Toyota Motor Corp. uncov- ered additional safety lapses by the Japanese automaker. "This is the first thing that we' have found. It may not be the last thing," LaHood said, addingthat "it would not surprise me if we discov- ered other information." Under federal law, automakers must notify the National High- way Traffic Safety Administration within five days of determiningthat a safety defect exists and promptly, conduct a recall.