The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Thursday, January 27, 2011- 3A

The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Thursday, January 27, 2011 - 3A

NEWS BRIEFS
ANN ARBOR, Mich.
Nonprofit plans to
expand schools'
energy efficiency
An Ann Arbor-based nonprof-
it technical resource center says
it's expanding the energy effi-
ciency of Michigan schools by
installing solar and wind power
generation systems at 90 institu-
tions during the next three years.
Energy Works Michigan said
Thursday that the expansion of
its Michigan Renewable Schools
Program is made possible by a
$4.4 million contract with the
Michigan Public Service Com-
mission.
The program already has
helped install 30 renewable
energy systems in 24 school dis-
tricts in 2009 and 2010. Forty
more districts received energy
audits and technical assistance
in taking actions to cut costs and
increase energy efficiency.
MANITOWOC, Wis.
Obama: U.S. needs
to spend more on
innovations
President Barack Obama
campaigned vigorously for his
a revamped economic message
yesterday, warning that other
countries have been grasping for
first place in the global market-
place as the U.S. fell down on the
job.
The president delivered the
argument in Wisconsin, a state
that will be critical to his re-
election prospects, a day after a
State of the Union address where
he contended that the U.S. has to
step up its spending on innova-
tion and infrastructure in order
to compete globally and create
jobs at home.
The president said yesterday
that while China invested in
clean energy technologies, "we
fell down on the job. We weren't
moving as fast as we should
have."
BAGHDAD
A' resident remains
the last missing
soldier in Iraq
The U.S. soldier was out of
uniform when he sneaked off
base on a motorcycle to visit his
Iraqi wife in central Baghdad.
The militiamen hiding nearby
weren't fooled. They were seen
seizing him at gunpoint.
More than four years later,
Ahmed Kousay al-Taie, a resi-
dent of Ann Arbor, Michigan
who was born in Iraq, is the only
American service member still
missing here. His family fears he
will never be found.
Kidnappings of foreigners
and Iraqis for ransom or politi-
cal motives were common as the
insurgency gained steam after
the 2003 U.S-led invasion. The
February 2006 bombing of a Shi-

ite mosque by Sunni insurgents
caused retaliatory bloodshed to
spiral.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti
Officials test for
polio after cholera
outbreakin Haiti
Health officials are looking
into the cases of four people who
became paralyzed in northwest-
ern Haiti while recovering from
cholera.
The experts are trying to
determine if the patients in Port-
de-Paix were sickened by polio.
Local health authorities
reported suspected cases on Jan.
10. Of four showing paralysis
three died and one is hospital-
ized in the capital.
Officials from the Pan Ameri-
can Health Organization, Haiti's
Ministry of Health and U.S. Cen-
ters for Disease Control and Pre-
vention say they doubt polio is
the cause.
PAHO spokeswoman Nyka
Alexander says the surviving
patient has tested negative for
that disease.
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports

Bush Cabinet
broke law in '06
midterm election

LEFTERIS PITARAKIS/AP
Egyptian anti-government activists chant slogans as they gather inside the Lawyers Syndicate in downtown Cairs,
Egypt. Egyptian anti-government activists clashed with police for a second day yesterday.
Protests against
govern-ment continue

Report shows federal
funds used to send
officials to districts
of GOP candidates
WASHINGTON (AP) - In
the run-up to the 2006 midterm
election in which Republicans
lost control of the House, the
Bush administration repeatedly
broke the law by using federal
funds to send Cabinet secretar-
ies and other high-level political
appointees to congressional dis-
tricts of GOP candidates in tight
races, according to a government
report.
"Because those trips were
classified as official, funds from
the U.S. Treasury were used to
finance the trips and reimburse-
ment from the relevant cam-
paigns was never sought," stated

the report by the Office of Special
Counsel, an independent federal
agency that enforces Hatch Act
restrictions on partisan political
activity inside the federal govern-
ment.
"In other cases, even when
trips were correctly designated as
political, agencies used U.S. Trea-
sury funds to cover the costs asso-
ciated with the trips and did not
recoup those funds as required
by the Hatch Act and its regula-
tions," the office concluded.
OSC found that 10 agencies
used federal funds to pay for
political appointees to travel to
events supporting Republican
candidates in 2006 in an opera-
tion monitored closely by the
White House Office of Politi-
cal Affairs. The report says that
aspects of OPA that came in con-
flict with the Hatch Act during
the Bush era "have apparently
existed for decades."

Largest protest in
years ominous for
current regime
CAIRO (AP) - Thousands
of Egyptians vented their
rage against President Hosni
Mubarak's autocratic govern-
ment in a second day of protests
yesterday that defied a ban on
public gatherings. Baton-wield-
ing police responded with tear
gas and beatings in a crack-
down that showed zero toler-
ance for dissent.
Egypt's largest anti-govern-
ment protests in years echoed
the uprising in Tunisia, threat-
ening to destabilize the leader-
ship of the most important U.S.
ally in the Arab world. The abil-
ity of the protesters to sustain
the momentum for two days in
the face of such a heavy-handed
police response was a rare feat
in this country.
One protester and a police-
man were killed yesterday,
bringing the two-day death toll
to six. Some 860 people have
been rounded up, and Face-
book, Twitter and cell phones
- key to organizing protests -
have been disrupted.
Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton called on
Egypt to adopt broad reforms
and not crack down on the anti-
government crowds. She urged
the Mubarak regime to "take
this opportunity to implement
political, economic and social
reforms that will answer the
legitimate interests of the
Egyptian people."
Still, there was no indication
that Mubarak, who has ruled
with an iron fist for nearly 30
years, intends to relinquish

power or make democratic or
economic concessions, and no
sign he would rein in his secu-
rity forces.
The defiant demonstrations
continued late into the night. In
Cairo, dozens of riotpolice with
helmets and shields charged
more than 2,000 marchers on
a downtown boulevard along
the Nile. Smaller clashes broke
out across the capital. In one,
protesters stoned police, who
responded with a volley of tear
gas from a bridge over the Nile.
One protester, businessman
Said Abdel-Motalib, called the
civil unrest "a red light to the
regime. This is a warning."
In cities across Egypt, pro-
testers incensed by Egypt's
grinding poverty, rising prices
and high unemployment hurled
rocks and firebombs at police
and smashed the windows of
military vehicles.
The Interior Ministry
warned yesterday that police
would not tolerate any gather-
ings, and thousands of security
forces were out on the streets
poised to move quickly against
any unrest. Many were plain-
clothes officers whose leather
jackets and casual sweat shirts
allowed them to blend in easily
with protesters.
Thousands of policemen
in riot gear and backed by
armored vehicles also took up
posts in Cairo, onbridges across
the Nile, at major intersections
and squares, as well as outside
key installations, including the
state TV building and the head-
quarters of Mubarak's ruling
National Democratic Party.
Police fired tear gas to
disperse a crowd of sev-
eral hundred activists on a
main thoroughfare, chasing

them through side streets as
both sides pelted each other
with rocks while hundreds
of onlookers watched. Plain-
clothes officers shoved some
into waiting vans, slapping
them in the face.
Observing the clashes,
Omima Maher, a 37-year-old
housewife lamented her money
woes. "Everything is so hor-
rible. I hope we can change it,"
she said.
A policeman and a demon-
strator were killed yesterday
when a car ran them over dur-
ing a protest in a poor central
Cairo neighborhood, security
officials said. Earlier, three
demonstrators died in clashes
in the city of Suez and one
policemen was killed in Cairo
violence.
In Suez, east of Cairo, a
peaceful gathering turned vio-
lent at sunset when protesters
threw rocks ata morgue where
they were waiting for the body
of a man killed a day earlier.
Police broke up the crowd with
tear gas, rubber bullets andlive.
ammunition fired into the air.
Women screamed as they
called their sons home, and men
vomited in the streets from the
acrid white tear gas that filled
the air.
Protesters also firebombed
the ruling party headquarters
and a police station, damaging
both buildings as burning trash
littered the streets.
In the southern city of
Assiut, witnesses said riot
police set upon some 100 activ-
ists, beating them with batons
and arresting nearly half of
them. "Down, down Hosni
Mubarak!" chanted the crowd.
"Oh, people, join us or you will
be next."

Offensive ads of female
bodies could be banned

Italian television
company criticized
for 'vulgar' images
ROME (AP) - The government
of Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who
is involved in a sex scandal many
say fosters a demeaning image of
Italian women, took action yes-
terday against ads that use vulgar
images of the female body.
The initiative drew praise in
a country where scantily-clad
women are used to promote just
about everything. But it also
attracted sarcasm, after wide-
spread reports that parties at a
Berlusconi villa involved scores
of young girls, sometimes topless,
drinking and dancing.
The minister for equal oppor-
tunity, Mara Carfagna, signed a
protocol with an association of
advertisers and other industry
operators to set up a panel that
could ban ads that are "plainly
wrong, dangerous, vulgar and
offensive."
Carfagna, a former showgirl
who once posed for a racy calen-
dar, fended off questions during
a press conference about Berlus-
coni, who is under investigation in
Milan on suspicion he paid for sex
with a 17-year-old Moroccan and
used his officeto coveritup.
The 74-year-old Italian leader

has denied wrongdoing.
Carfagna said she had thought
of postponing the announcement
to a "more serene moment," but
she also defended Berlusconi, say-
ing nothing had been proved and
that it was not her place to pass
"moral judgment."
An opposition politician, Debo-
ra Serracchiani, welcomed the ad
initiative, but also asked Carfagna
if "offering thousands of euros to
have groups of beautiful girls over
for dinner ... shows a healthy rela-
tions with women's bodies."
Morethan2,000Italianwomen
have recently signed an online
petition to promote a different
kind of woman than the one typi-
cally associated withw Berlus-
coni, whose private TV channels
for decades have been filled with
semi-naked, voluptuous girls. The
campaign, entitled "Basta!" or
"Enough?" and coordinated by the
leftist newspaper L'Unita, aims to
tell Berlusconi that not all women
in Italy are prostitutes or show-
girls.
Famiglia Cristiana, an influen-
tial Catholic magazine that is dis-
tributed in parishes across Italy,
said in an editorial Wednesday
that men, too, should feel "out-
raged at the public humiliation
of women." It was the latest criti-
cism from a Catholic publication,
signaling the church's growing
unease over the scandal.

Calif. residents against plans
for construction of mosque

Opponents fear
radicalism, increase
in traffic
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Oppo-
nents of a proposed mosque in
the Southern California city of
Temecula collected hundreds
of signatures, bombarded city
planners with angry letters and
e-mails, and even staged pro-
tests with bullhorns and dogs.
None of it worked.
The City Council approved
plans early yesterday for the
25,000-square-foot, two-story
mosque after a nine-hour meet-
ing that included rants against
Islam as well as technical
debates about traffic concerns
and flood plains.
The Islamic Center of Tem-
ecula Valley is one of several
across the U.S. that has seized
the nation's attention in recent
months as controversy raged
over plans for a $100 million
mosque and educational center
two blocks from the site of the
Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. A
mosque planned in the suburbs
of Nashville, Tenn., has also
sparked a dispute.
The Temecula center has
owned the land for years but
didn't encounter resistance

until planning work on the
mosque coincided with debate
over the New York site, putting
150 Muslim families at the cen-
ter of a bitter fight, said Imam
Mahmoud Harmoush.
Some residents worried the
California mosque would be a
center for radical Islam and add
to traffic woes in the rapidly
developing region. The mosque
spent more than $17,000 in
the past year, which included
studies on the 4.3-acre site to
address code concerns raised
by its opponents, mosque lead-
ers said.
"It's amazing how people
shift their positions and really
don't listen," Harmoush said.
"They say, 'Maybe somewhere
they are mutilating women,
somewhere they are beating
their wives.' If somebody did
something in Jordan or Paki-
stan or Iran, that doesn't mean
American Muslims will do it
here."
Opponents said they would
meet today to discuss whether
to file a legal challenge over a
parking issue.
They insist their protest
is not based on religion but
instead on concerns about
increased traffic on an already
overburdened road, and flood-
ing issues that could impact

the mosque's neighbors - two
Christian churches.
In response, the City Council
modified the construction per-
mit to include traffic reviews
every five years and ban the use
of external speakers that could
be used for calls to prayer.
Those modifications will
be helpful for residents who
will be closely watching the
mosque for problems, said
George Rombach, a member of
Concerned American Citizens,
which was formed to oppose
the mosque.
"Part of the victory last
night was it gave us more tools
to do that - but it's totally un-
American to punish somebody
for something they haven't
done," said Rombach, who said
he was not motivated by reli-
gious bias.
Mano Bakh, an Iranian-
born U.S. citizen who rejected
the Islamic faith of his child-
hood, founded Concerned
American Citizens and said
he remained suspicious of why
so much space was needed to
worship.
"A 25,000-square-foot build-
ing for less than 150 families,
where is the logic? That tells
you something," Bakh said. "It
is in my opinion a center of rad-
icalization."

Ifl-H,,0. KI