The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com.
Thursday, November 17, 2011- 3A
The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Thursday, November17, 2011 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
HOUGHTON, Mich.
Michigan Tech
holds Elevator
Pitch Competition
Michigan Technological Uni-
versity has handed out prizes
topping out at $1,000 to students
in its annual Bob Mark Memo-
rial Elevator Pitch Competition.
The Houghton school says
students had three minutes to
"their next great business idea
to a panel of judges."
The top prize of $1,000 top
prize was awarded Monday to
Travis Beaulieu and Joel Florek.
They call their proposal Asfal-
isMed, a business that would
put people's medical informa-
tion on wallet-sized identifica-
tion cards.
AsfalisMed also is a semifi-
nalist in the statewide Accel-
erate Michigan innovation
competition taking place in
Ypsilanti.
David Shull is second place
finisher and takes home $500.
His business proposal is Picket,
a textbook rental operation.
SAN DIEGO
Feds find drug
tunnel linking San
Diego to Tijuana
An estimated 17 tons of mari-
juana were seized in the dis-
covery of a cross-border tunnel
that authorities said Wednesday
was one of the most significant
secret drug smuggling passages
ever found on the U.S.-Mexico
border.
The tunnel discovered Tues-
day stretched about 400 yards
(400 meters) and linked ware-
houses in San Diego and Tijuana,
authorities said.
U.S. authorities seized about
nine tons of marijuana inside a
truck and at the warehouse in
San Diego's Otay Mesa area, said
Derek Benner, U.S. Immigra-
tion and Customs Enforcement
special agent in charge of inves-
tigations in San Diego. Mexi-
can authorities recovered about
eight tons south of the border.
WASHINGTON
International space
station gets three
new crewmembers
The International Space Sta-
tion got three new crewmembers
yesterday, temporarily doubling
in crew size with the arrival of a
Russian Soyuz capsule.
The Soyuz TMA-22 delivered
NASA astronaut Dan Burbank
and Russians Anton Shkaplerov
and Anatoly Ivanishin, who blast-
ed off from Kazakhstan on Mon-
day. They moved onto the station
about two hours after their cap-
sule successfully docked.
The three newcomers were
greeted with hugs and hand-
shakes from American Michael
Fossum, Russian Sergey Volkov
and Japanese Satoshi Furukawa
who have been at the station since
June and are due to return to
Earth next week.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
Geckos smuggled
due to claims of
treating HIV virus
Claims that a nocturnal Asian
lizard can be used to help treat
the HIV virus have led to a sharp
boom in smuggling of the reptile,
putting it at risk, a conservation
group said Tuesday.
Demand for the Tokay Gecko
has skyrocketed in recent years
after online blogs, newspa-
per articles and wildlife trad-
ers extolled the consumption of
the lizard's tongue and internal
organs as a miracle cure for HIV,
TRAFFIC Southeast Asia said in
a report.
TRAFFIC said such claims
were unfounded and "indicative
of an elaborate hoax." The Phil-
ippines' government in July also
warned that using geckos to treat
AIDS and impotence may put
patients at risk.
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports
Majority of baby
boomers don't
have living wills
Students from University of california at Berkeley and other California colleges and Occupy San Francisco protesters
march along the Embarcadero as part of a demonstration in San Francisco yesterday.
Calif. UCOcpyprotests
focus on education cuts
64 percent without
health care powers
of attorney
WASHINGTON (AP) - Most
people don't want to think about
death, much less plan for it -
especially when they feel healthy
and young in their middle-age
years.
And that, some baby boomers
say, is one of the big reasons so few
of them have end-of-life legal doc-
uments such asa living will.
An Associated Press-Life-
GoesStrong.com poll found that
64 percent of boomers - those
born between 1946 and 1964 -
say they don't have a health care
proxy or living will. Those docu-
ments would guide medical deci-
sions should a patient be unable to
communicate with doctors.
"I'm very healthy for my age,"
said Mary McGee, 53, of Archbald,
Pa. "So, death and dying isn't on
my mind alot."
McGee, a computer program-
mer, exercises five to seven days
a week, everything from aerobics
to kickboxing, and her parents are
alive and healthy.
The same goes for 57-year-old
Sandy Morgan in Richmond, Va.
"You know when they say,
'Sixty is the new 40,' I really
believe that," said Morgan, a
retired teacher who is working
part time for an executive search
firm.
Morgan's parents are still
healthy intheir early 80s. She says
she runs three miles a day twice a
week, practices yoga twice a week
and takes partin a rigorous fitness
boot camp twice a week. End-of-
life decisions aren't on her radar.
"I just feel like it's something I'll
probably think about in my late
60s or 70s," said Morgan.
A living will spells out a
patient's wishes for medical care
if he or she is unable to communi-
cate with doctors.
The health care proxy, also
known as a health care power of
attorney, allows an individual to
select a person he or she trusts
to make decisions about medical
care should the patient become
incapacitated.
Kathy Brandt said living wills
and health care proxies are agood
idea for everyone whether they
are healthy and young or older and
not so healthy.
Brandt, a senior vice president
at the National Hospice and Palli-
ative Care Organization, said the
two documents can spare fami-
lies a painful fight and ensure
that patients receive - or don't
receive - the medical treatment
they wish should they end up in a
situation where they can't speak
for themselves.
The living will is not "all or
nothing," said Brandt. A person
could say he or she wants every-
thing, something or nothing. For
example, one person may want
heroic measures taken to prolong
life, while another may want to
be resuscitated but decide against
being dependent on breathing
machines long-term.
Brandt pointed to high-profile
cases such as the Florida family
fight over Terri Schiavo as a smart
reason to draft a living will and
health care proxy.
At 26, Schiavo collapsed at her
St. Petersburg home in 1990 with
no end-of-life care instructions
in writing. Her heart stopped and
she suffered what doctors said
was irreversible brain damage
that left her in a permanent veg-
etative state. Her husband said
his wife would not have wanted to
live in a vegetative state; her par-
ents wanted her kept alive.
Students pitch
tents at Berkeley
despite policy that
forbids camping
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -
Police arrested a number of
Occupy protesters and students
yesterday who stormed into a
downtown San Francisco bank
and shouted slogans as they
tried to set up camp in the lobby.
The arrests came after more
than 100 demonstrators rushed
into a Bank of America branch,
chanting "money for schools
and education, not for banks
and corporations."
Police officers in riot gear
cuffed the activists one-by-one
as hundreds more demonstra-
tors surrounded the building,
blocking entrances and exits.
Deputy Police Chief Kevin
Cashman said 80 arrests were
expected for trespassing. Sus-
pects were taken to jail, cited
and released.
Elsewhere, students and anti-
Wall Street activists settled into
a new encampment at the Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley,
and visited the state Capitol to
demand the restoration of fund-
ing for higher education.
At Berkeley, police watched
over about two dozen tents that
were pitched Tuesday night on
a student plaza despite a cam-
pus policy that forbids camping.
Police warned that protesters
could be arrested if they didn't
leave.
Seth Weinberg, a 20-year-
old cognitive science major,
said he slept in a tent on Sproul
Plaza to press the university to
lobby for more public educa-
tion funding.
"There should be a way for
anyone who wants to go to col-
lege if they choose to," Wein-
berg said. "What the university
doesn't understand is that we
are not camping out. This is a
constant protest."
In Sacramento, about 75 stu-
dent leaders and a few admin-
istrators from UC Berkeley and
the University of California,
Davis lobbied lawmakers and
the governor to allocate more
money to education.
Adam Thongsavat, stu-
dent body president at UC
Davis, called on lawmakers
to be "more courageous, more
aggressive and more thought-
ful."
"Come to our campuses and
see how your actions affect
us," he said. "I want you all
to tell us why prisons deserve
more spending than universi-
ties."
University of California
President Mark Yudof issued
a statement of support for the
students' "passion and convic-
tion" in support of public higher
education.
"We also suffer together the
strains caused by what has been
a long pattern of state disinvest-
ment in the University of Cali-
fornia," he said.
Protesters in San Francisco
marched through downtown
in a demonstration partly orga-
nized by ReFund California, a
coalition of student groups and
university employee unions.
The group bused in protest-
ers from UC Berkeley, the Uni-
versity of California, Merced
and other schools to join Occu-
py San Francisco activists as
they marched to the bank and
the state building.
The marches in support of
higher education came as police
in San Francisco and San Diego
cleared encampments in those
Millionaires on
Capitol Hilask
for higher taxes,
Full Scale Gym, Yoga Studio, Sauna & Steam Rooms, Theat(
2 Hot Tubs, BBQ Grills, Study Lounges, Group Meeting SpacE
Fully Furnished Luxury Apartments With In-unit Washer & Dry
Located 3 Minutes from the Diag @ S. University & S. Forest
Supercommittee
hopes to cut $1.2
trillion before
Thanksgiving
WASHINGTON (AP) - Lob-
byists for a day, a band of mil-
lionaires stormed Capitol Hill
yesterday to urge Congress to
tax them more.
They had a little trouble get-
tingin. Itturns outthereare pro-
cedures, even for the really rich.
But once inside, their message
was embraced by liberals and
tolerated by some conservatives
- including the ideological lead-
er of anti-tax lawmakers, who
had some advice for them, too.
"If you think the federal gov-
ernment can spend your money
better than you can, then by all
means" pay more in taxes than
you owe, said Grover Norquist,
the head of a group that has
gotten almost all congressio-
nal Republicans to pledge to
vote against tax hikes. The IRS
should have a little line on the
form where people can donate
money to the government, he
suggested, 'just like the tip line
on a restaurant receipt."
In the silence left by the pri-
vate efforts of the "supercom-
mittee" to find $1.2 trillion or
more in deficit cuts by Thanks-
giving, free advice flowed in
public.
And not just any advice: pie-
in-the-sky suggestions from
those not connected to the
talks, mostly to reopen debates
that have led nowhere. The mil-
lionaires want the panel to raise
taxes on people who earn more
than $1 million, even though
most Republicans are commit-
ted against the idea. And 150
House member and senators
urged a much bigger debt-and-
deficit deal, even as a small-
scope agreement is proving
elusive.
While they were at it, the
lawmakers insisted that bipar-
tisanship was not, in fact, dead.
This group of House mem-
bers and senators shared a stage
and some jokes and signed a let-
ter urging the supercommittee
of Republicans and Democrats
to find the required $1.2 trillion
in cuts - plus about $2.8 trillion
more. They all want the panel
to avoid triggering automatic
cuts as a penalty for failing.
"Congress working together,"
read posters behind the group.
So this uneasy alliance of 150
Republicans and Democrats
will vote for whatever deal the
supercommittee strikes?
"No," said House Democratic
Whip Steny Hoyer. "Nobody's
going to commit to the deal
until they see the deal."
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