* The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Monday, November 1, 2010 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
bETROIT
City reports 58 fires
during Halloween
Detroit reports 58 fires during
the first two days of the three-day
Halloween anti-arson watch period
officials call Angels' Night.
Mayor Dave Bing's office said
yesterday that the 58 fires as of
midnight Saturday are eight more
than at that point in 2009.
Volunteers are working with city
officials on a "Watch Your Block"
anti-arson campaign.
The city says 119 fires were
reported last year over the three-
day period, down from 136 in 2008.
More than 800 fires were started in
1984, the height of what then was
known as Devil's Night.
Flint firefighters handled eight
fires on the night before Hallow-
een, compared with five in the same
period lastyear.
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.
Lawyers dispute
suicide allegations
in Rutgers case
Lawyers for two former Rutgers
University freshmen accused of
webtasting a male classmate hav-
ing sex with another man are dis-
puting allegations against them.
, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei
were charged with invasion of
privacy after prosecutors say Ravi
used a webtam Sept. 19 to capture
his roommate, Tyler Clementi,
having a gay sexual encounter.
Clementi jumped to his death off
the George Washington Bridge
days later.
But Steven Altman and Rubin
Sinins, who represent Ravi and
Wei respectively, told The Star-
Ledger of Newark that the web-
cam stream was only viewed on a
single computer and did not show
the men having sex.
Law enforcement officials
wouldn't discuss the lawyers'
claims, citing the ongoing investi-
gation.
Ravi and Wei recently with-
drew from Rutgers. Prosecutors
are considering whether to charge
them with a hate crime.
ISTANBUL
32 wounded in
Istanbul bombing
A suicide bomber blew himself
up yesterday beside a police vehi-
cle in a major Istanbul square near
tourist hotels and a bus terminal,
wounding 32 people, including 15
policemen.
The attack in Taksim Square,
which was followed by police
gunfire and sent hundreds of
panicked people racing for cover,
coincided with the possible
end of a unilateral cease-fire by
Kurdish rebels, but there was no
immediate claim of responsibil-
ity. Turkey, a NATO ally that has
deployed troops in a noncombat
role in Afghanistan, is also home
to cells of radical leftists and
Islamic militants.
Istanbul police chief Huseyin
Capkin said the bomber tried but
failed to get into a parked police
van and detonated the bomb
just outside the vehicle, blowing
himself to pieces. Riot police are
routinely stationed at Taksim, a
popular spot for street demonstra-
tions that abuts a major pedestrian
walkway whose shops and restau-
rants are usually packed.
At least 32 people, including 15
police officers, were injured, at
least two of them seriously, Istan-
bul Gov. Huseyin Avni Mutlu said.
SAO PAOLO
Brazil elects first
female president
A former Marxist guerrilla who
vas tortured and imprisoned dur-
ing Brazil's long dictatorship was
elected yesterday as president of
Latin America's biggest nation,
a country in the midst of an eco-
Oomic and political rise.
A statement from the Supreme
Electoral Court, which oversees
elections, said governing party
candidate Dilma Rousseff won the
rlection. When she takes office
Jan. 1, she will be Brazil's first
female leader.
With nearly 95 percent of the
* allots counted, Rousseff had 55.6
percent compared to 44.4 percent
for her centrist rival, Jose Serra,
the electoral court said.
Rousseff, the hand-chosen can-
didate of wildly popular President
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, won by
cementing her image to Silva's,
whose policies she promised to
Continue.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports.
Hasan Jamali/AP
Ao unidentified Yemeni man walks past the UPS office on Saturday in San'a, Yemen. Yemeni authorities are checking dozens
more packages in the search for those who tried to mail bombs to Chicago-area synagogues in a brazen plot that heightened
fears of a new al Qaida terror attack.
Pol ce continue hunt for
Yemen bomb suspects
Police arrest young
medical student,
detain mother
SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - Their
first suspect in custody, Yemeni
police continued to search for
the terrorists believed respon-
sible for mailinga pair of power-
ful bombs to attack the United
States. U.S. and Yemeni officials
were increasingly seeing al-Qai-
da's hand in the failed plot.
Yemeni police arrested a young
woman who was a medical stu-
dent on suspicion of mailing a
pair of bombs powerful enough to
take down airplanes, officials said
Sunday. They also detained her
mother.
Investigators were hunting the
impoverished Mideast country for
more conspirators. U.S. officials
included in that group the same
bombmaker suspected of design-
ing the explosive for a failed bomb-
ing on a Detroit-bound airliner last
Christmas.
Authorities were also looking
at two language institutions the
plotters may have been associated
with.
The explosives, addressed to
Chicago-area synagogues, were
pulled off airplanes in England
and the United Arab Emirates
early Friday morning, touching off
a tense search for other devices.
More details emerged Saturday
about the plot that exploited secu-
rity gaps in the worldwide ship-
ping system.
British Prime Minister David
Cameron said he believes the
explosive device found in central
England was intended to detonate
on the plane, while British Home
Secretary Theresa May said the
bomb was powerful enough to
take down the aircraft. A U.S. offi-
cial said the second device found
in Dubai was thought to be simi-
larly potent.
But it still wasn't clear whether
the bombs, which officials said
were wired to cell phones, timers
and power supplies, could have
been detonated remotely while
the planes were in the air, or when
the packages were halfway around
the world in the U.S. Still, the fact
that they made it onto airplanes
showed that nearly a decade since
the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, terror-
ists continue to probe and find
security vulnerabilities.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah
Saleh told reporters that the Unit-
ed States and United Arab Emir-
ates had provided intelligence that
helped identify the woman sus-
pected of mailing the packages.
A Yemeni security official said
the young woman was a medical
student and that her mother also
was detained, but officials pointed
to additional suspects believed to
have used forged documents and
ID cards. One member of Yemen's
anti-terrorism unit said the other
suspects hadbeen tied to al-Qaida.
Yemeni and U.S. officials spoke
on condition of anonymity to dis-
cuss the ongoing investigation
unfolding on three continents.
Al-Qaida's Yemen branch,
known as al-Qaida in the Ara-
bian Peninsula, took credit for
the failed bomb last Christmas
that used PETN, an industrial
explosive that was also in the mail
bombs found Friday.
The suspected bombmaker
behind the Christmas Day attack,
Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, is also
the prime suspect in the mail bomb
plot, several U.S. officials said. Al-
Asiri also helped make another
PETN device for a failed suicide
attempt against a top Saudi coun-
terterrorism official last year. The
official survived, but his attacker
died in the blast.
Obama's toxin proposal may
enforce more site cleanups
Officials to examine
areas contaminated
by dioxin
MIDLAND, Mich. (AP) - The
government has spent many mil-
lions of dollars in recent decades
cleaning up sites contaminated
with dioxin and, in extreme
cases, relocating residents of
entire neighborhoods tainted by
the toxin.
But tough new pollution stan-
dards proposed by the Obama
administration could require
additional dioxin cleanups at
scores of abandoned factories,
military bases, landfills and
other locations declared safe
years ago, officials say.
If the guidelines receive final
approval, federal and state offi-
cials will examine sites with
known dioxin contamination
to identify those needing work
and what the work will cost.
Among those expected to be
reviewed are notorious places
such as the former village of
Times Beach, Mo., where about
2,000 people were relocated
in the 1980s after dioxin-laced
waste oil was sprayed on roads
to control dust.
The Environmental Protec-
tion Agency plan has escalated
a decades-long debate over
the danger of dioxin, a family
of chemical byproducts from
industries such as pesticide and
herbicide production, waste
incineration and smelting. One
form of dioxin was in Agent
Orange, the defoliant used by
U.S. forces during the Vietnam
War.
The EPA is expected to make
a final decision this fall on the
new standards. But congressio-
nal critics and chemical com-
panies say the agency is acting
hastily and should wait until
it completes a reassessment of
dioxin's health effects in the
coming months.
"They're proposing these
sweeping changes to regula-
tions without giving us an
idea of how many sites will be
affected, how many homes will
be affected, what the economic
impact would be," said Rep. Dave
Camp, a Republican whose Mich-
igan district includes a SO-mile-
long watershed polluted with
dioxin from a Dow Chemical Co.
plant.
EPA officials say they want
to move ahead because they are
convinced dioxin is hazardous at
lower concentrations than previ-
ously thought. If necessary, they
say, the standards can be adjusted
later.
"We're driven by the need
to protect against excessive
risk of both cancer and non-
cancer health concerns," said
Mathy Stanislaus, EPA assistant
administrator for solid waste
and emergency response. "We
believe (the current standards)
are not sufficiently protective
and more stringent numbers are
needed."
The Associated Press obtained
an EPA list of 92 current and:
former Superfund locations
where records show that dioxin
is among the soil contaminants,
making them candidates for a
review under the new standards.
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