The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Monday, April 4, 2011 - 3A

NEWS BRIEFS
DETROIT
Critics say Sheen
bombs on opening
night of stage tour
Charlie Sheen and his "god-
desses" took the stage to thun-
derous applause Saturday night
for the first leg of his "Torpedo
of Truth" tour. The 70-minute
show hadn't even ended when
the first reviews were in, and
they were brutal
The former "Two and a Half
Men" star showed that comedic
success on the screen doesn't
necessarily translate to the
stage, and the capacity crowd at
Detroit's 5,100-seat Fox Theatre
rebelled before the show ended,
 chanting "refund!" and walking
out in droves.
Linda Fugate, 47, of the Detroit
suburb of Lincoln Park, left the
theater and walked up the street
yelling, "I want my money back!"
She said she paid $150 for two
seats.
NEW YORK
Southwest Airlines
cancels 600 flights
Southwest Airlines cancelled
about 600 flights this week-
end as the airline continues its
inspection of 79 of its Boeing 737
aircraft, in the aftermath of an
emergency landing of one of its
planes on Friday.
The airline cancelled 300
flights yesterday after cancelling
the same number on Saturday.
Southwest Airlines spokeswom-
an Whitney Eichinger said
yesterday it still hadn't made a
decision about today's flights.
"We are working as diligent-
ly as possible to minimize any
impact on (customers') travel
plans," Eichinger told The Asso-
ciated Press yesterday.
Southwest normally has about
3,400 flights each day though
it's slightly reduced on Saturday.
That means that almost 9 per-
cent of the total number of flights
were cancelled each of the two
days. No flights were cancelled
on Friday.
JAKARTA, Indonesia
Strong quake hits
southern Indonesia
A strong earthquake hit off
Indonesia's main island of Java
today, prompting authorities to
briefly issue a tsunami warn-
ing and sending thousands of
residents fleeing their homes in
panic.
There were no immediate
reports of injuries or damage
from the 6.7-magnitude quake,
which struck shortly after 3 a.m.
today (2000 GMT, 4 p.m. EDT).
The U.S. Geological Survey
said the temblor was centered
318 kilometers (nearly 200 miles)
off southern Java, just 24 kilo-
meters (iS miles) beneath the
ocean floor.
Thousands of people in the
town of Cilacap poured into the
streets and ran to high ground,

many gathering in mosques, wit-
nesses told El Shinta radio.
MOGADISHU, Somalia
Somali forces seize
town near Kenya
A commander allied with
Somalia's government says pro-
government forces captured a
town near Kenya from al-Qaida-
linked militants after hours of
fighting.
Abdikafi Farah of the Ras Kab-
moni Group that is allied with
the fragile Somali government
says hundreds of pro-govern-
ment fighters forced al-Shabab
militants to flee Dobley town
early yesterday.
Pro-government troops have
made gains against Islamist
militants in southern Somalia in
recent weeks. The troops forced
the militants to abandon sev-
eral western towns and strategic
places in Mogadishu.
Dobley's capture is part of
an offensive aimed at ending
militants' lock on much of the
country's southern and central
regions.
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports

British spy files
shed light on
Nazi saboteurs

Children play basketball on the ground outside a make-shift shelter in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, on Tuesday,
March 22, 2011, following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northeastern coast of Japan.
Disaster's after-math puts
stress on Japan 's children

Previously secret
account of 1942
mission unveiled
LONDON (AP) - The four
men wading ashore on a Flori-
da beach wearing nothing but
bathing trunks and German
army hats looked like an unlike-
ly invading force.
Declassified British intel-
ligence files describe how the
men were part of Nazi sabotage
teams sent to the U.S. in June
1942 to undermine the Ameri-
can war effort.
They were trained in bomb-
making, supplied with explo-
sives and instructed in how
to make timers from "easily
obtainable commodities such as
dried peas, lumps of sugar and
razor blades."
Fortunately for the U.S., they
were also spectacularly unsuc-
cessful.
"It was not brilliantly

planned," said Edward Hamp-
shire, a historian at Britain's
National Archives, which
released the wartime intelli-
gence documents Monday. "The
Germans picked the leader for
this very, very poorly. He imme-
diately wanted to give himself
up."
A detailed new account of the
mission - code-named Pasto-
rius after an early German set-
tler in the U.S. - is provided
in a report written in 1943 by
MI5 intelligence officer Victor
Rosthchild. It is one of a trove
of previously secret documents
which shed light on the Nazis'
desire to use sabotage, subter-
fuge and even poisoned sausages
to fight the war.
Pastorius was a mixture of
elaborate planning, bad luck and
human error.
Eight Germans who had lived
in the U.S. were dropped along
the Eastern seaboard - four on
Long Island, the rest south of
Jacksonville, Florida.

Experts say
psychological
damage can be
reversed by routine
KARAKUWA, Japan (AP) -
Zoom in for a snapshot of appar-
ent normalcy: children sitting in
a circle, clasping playing cards
tightly in their hands. They
laugh, chat and occasionally hop
up to break into a goofy dance.
Zoom out and the picture
changes: The children are kneel-
ing on mattresses in a chilly
classroom they now call home.
An elderly woman cries nearby,
wondering whether her mother
was killed by Japan's tsunami.
Outside the school, a teacher
fiddles with a radiation detec-
tor, checking to ensure the levels
aren't high enough to make them
sick - or worse.
Behind the smiling faces of
thousands of children in shelters
across this wave-battered waste-
land, experts say there is often
serious anxiety as everything
these youngsters once held as
normal is suddenly anything but.
"That's what is so wonder-
fully adaptive about children.
They can move very easily into
playing or laughing," says psy-
chologist Susie Burke, a disas-
ter response specialist with the
Australian Psychological Soci-
ety. "But that's not saying they're
not deeply distressed and upset
about what's going on."
Reminders of the tiniest vic-
tims are scattered throughout
the wreckage: a little girl's white
shoe caked in mud, a red rub-
ber ball coated in dust, a sodden
comic book whose ink has run.

As many as 25,000 people may
have been killed in the March 11
earthquake and tsunami that
devastated Japan's northeast
coast and damaged a nuclear
plant, sending radiation spew-
ing into the environment. Tens
of thousands are still living in
shelters.
For the children, the monster
in the closet has been replaced
by the monster of Mother
Nature: The ground they play on
can rattle and crack, the ocean
they swim in can morph into a
killer wave, the air they breathe
might carry harmful radioactive
particles.
Ten-year-old Fumie Unoura
remembers well the terror of
the day. She was sitting in class
when the earth began to shake,
sending her and her classmates
scrambling under their desks
for cover. When the rumbling
stopped, the teacher shepherded
the students outside, where their
town had turned to rubble.
"I saw the dust rising up,"
she recalled days later, standing
outside a shelter in the shattered
coastal city of Rikuzentakata.
With the tsunami coming, she
ran as fast as her short legs could
carry her, surrounded by others
sprinting for safety.
She escaped with her life but
little else. Her home is ruined.
She sleeps on the floor of a school
gym with her family and more
than a thousand other survivors.
She misses her Nintendo DS.
Her father, Masanari Unoura,
volunteers at the shelter. He wor-
ries constantly about what will
become of his life, where they
will live, how he will clean up the
ruins of their home.
"We parents have alot to think
about," he says. "Whereas the

kids are basically free."
It is not so simple, experts say.
In fact, the disruption of daily
life, if prolonged, can be more
damagingthanthe disaster itself,
says psychologist Gaithri Fer-
nando, who led a study on how
the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
affected children in Sri Lanka.
Suddenly discovering they
have no water to bathe, no bed of
their own and no school where
they can see their friends can be
highly upsetting, says Fernando,
a professor at California State
University in Los Angeles.
Experts say getting children
back into a routine - even an
unusual one - is key.
Unoura and his family are
doing this. Every morning, they
join others at the shelter for
group exercise sessions broad-
cast on the radio. They have
breakfast as a family, and then
Fumie and her older sister Shiho
have time to play until they all
meet for lunch. Fumie's teacher
stops by regularly with home-
work assignments - a source of
complaint for his daughter, her
father notes with a grin.
That kind of basic structure
to the day helps prevent long-
term psychological damage, says
Burke, the Australian psycholo-
gist.
"It gives them a sense that
their world is predictable, and
when we feel things are predict-
able, we beginto relax," she says.
"A disaster makes us realize or
think the world isn't predict-
able."
Save the Children, an inter-
national aid agency, has set up
safe spaces for children to meet
and play throughoutthe tsunami
zone, with toys, games, crayons
and paper.

9-11 kin decry museum
plans to house remains
Families upset after fighter-son Christian died at the
World Trade Center, contended
never being formally that families had not been con-
sulted about where the remains
told of plans would be placed and felt the pro-
posed location was disrespect-
NEW YORK (AP) - Some ful. She said city and museum
relatives of victims who died a officials have never formally
decade ago at the World Trade informed relatives of those killed
Center decried a plan yesterday about the plans.
to place more than 9,000 uniden- Rosemary Cain, whose fire-
tified pieces of human remains fighter-son George also died
at a subterranean site at the Sept. 11agreed.
National September 11 Memorial "The families have a right to
& Museum. consultation," Cain said. "It's a
A plan that would locate the disgrace, and it's wrong."
unclaimed and unidentified However, Christy Ferer, who
remains seven stories below ;lpst 'her husband in the terror
ground behind a wall featuring attacks and worked as a liaison
a quote from Virgil is unaccept- for Mayor Michael Bloomberg
able, they said. with 9/11 families, said the loca-
"The families here today say tion was done at the behest of
no," said the families' attorney, families.
Norman Siegel. "They believe "They wanted them placed
that the remains should be placed as close to bedrock as possible,"
in a respectful and accessible Ferer said in a telephone inter-
location, such as something akin view. She said there were numer-
to the Tomb of the Unknowns ous meetings over the years about
above ground and separate from the museum and memorial. The
the museum." remains will bet placed in the
The families might consider memorial section of the facility,
legal action in the future but and relatives of those who died
have no current plans to sue, Sie- will have private access, she said.
gel said. "The outreach we did on this
Sally Regenhard, whose fire- is voluminous," she said.

U.S. Justice Department appeals
Florida judge's health care ruling

Department rules
health care plan
constitutional
ATLANTA (AP) - The fed-
eral health care overhaul's core
requirement to make virtually
all citizens buy health insurance
or face tax penalties is constitu-
tional because Congress has the
authority to regulate interstate
business, the Justice Department
said in its appeal of a ruling that
struck down the Obama admin-
istration's signature legislation.
The government's 62-page
motion filed Friday to the 11th
Circuit Court of Appeals argued
that Congress had the power to
enact the overhaul's minimum
coverage requirements because
it is a "rational means of regulat-
ing the way participants in the
health care market pay for their
services."
The motion also warned other
pieces of the overhaul, includ-
ing a law that blocks insurers
from denying coverage to people
because of pre-existing condi-
tions, would be "unworkable"
without a minimum coverage
provision.
Twenty-six states filed a
lawsuit that said Congress had
exceeded its authority by requir-

ing that all citizens buy health
insurance or face tax penalties.
U.S. District Judge Roger Vin-
son of Florida agreed in a Jan. 31
ruling that said President Barack
Obama's entire health care over-
haulis unconstitutional.Itis con-
sidered the most sweeping ruling
against the health care law.
Vinson ruled against the over-
haul on grounds that Congress
exceeded its authority by requir-
ing nearly all Americans to carry
health insurance, an idea dating
back to Republican proposals
from the 1990s but now almost
universally rejected by conserva-
tives.
His ruling followed the same
reasoning as one last year f=rom
a federal judge in Virginia who
struck down the insurance
requirement. But while the first
judge left the rest of the law
intact, Vinson invalidated provi-
sions that range from Medicare
discounts for seniors with high
prescription costs to a change
that allows adult children up to
age 26 to remain on their parents'
coverage.
At the center ofVinson's ruling
and the government's challenge
is the legality of the requirement
that Americans carry health
insurance except in cases of
financial hardship. Those who
cannot show they are covered by

an employer, government pro-
gram or their own policy would
face fines from the IRS when the
program takes effect in 2014.
Vinson ruled that lawmakers
do not have the power to penalize
citizens for not doing something,
but the Justice Department said
he overreached.
The government disputedVin-
son's claim that Congress can't
penalize someone for not buy-
ing health care coverage, saying
the requirement was a "quintes-
sential exercise" of the legisla-
tive branch's powers. It said the
judge "impermissibly substituted
its own judgment for that of the
elected branches" by declaring
an insurance requirement can't
be imposed until people actually
seek medical care.
"Common sense, experience,
and economic analysis confirm
the testimony to Congress that a
'health insurance market could
never survive or even form if
people could buy their insurance
on the way to the hospital."'
Some states, including Alaska,
have cited Vinson's decision in
refusing to cooperate with the
health care law. But the judge
issued another ruling in March
ordering states to continue
implementing the law while the
case makes its way through the
courts.

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