The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.cor
NEWS BRIEFS
ANN ARBOR
University sells out
ticket allotment to
Alabama game
Michigan has sold out its allot-
ment of tickets to the Cowboys
Classic game against Alabama.
The school announced yester-
day that it has sold nearly 25,000
tickets to the game against the
national champions on Sept. 1 in
Arlington, Texas.
Michigan chief marketing
officer Hunter Lochman says
the ticket demand was at least
as strong as it has been for any
event in the athletic depart-
ment's history.
Alabama spokesman Doug
Walker says the school also
expects to sell its allotment to Pa
old
the game.
LOS ANGELES
Elementary school
teacher will face
lewd act charges
Prosecutors have filed a lewd-
acts complaint against the sec-
ond of two teachers removed
from a Los Angeles-area elemen-
tary school, and the Board of
Education has voted to fire him.
Forty-nine-year-old Martin Sa
Springer is charged with com- st
mitting the acts upon one girl in ye
2009 and is due in court Tuesday co
afternoon. un
Meanwhile, Los Angeles Uni- no
fled School District spokesman th
Tom Waldman says the board ga
voted unanimously to terminate
Springer and he has 30 days to U.
appeal. ga
Springer has spent his entire tic
career at Miramonte Elementary be
School, the same campus where sa
veteran third-grade teacher
Mark Berndt is alleged to have wi
committed lewd acts with 23 ma
children between 2005 and 2010. st
Berndt was removed from wc
the school in January 2011 and ou
charged last week after months do
of investigation. Springer was ing
arrested Friday.
pa
LAGOS, Nigeria fiv
$4 million needed fe
to clean up lead er,
from deadly mine be
an
An international watchdog
said yesterday it will cost about 8
$4 million to clean up toxic lead wi
and secure mines in northern co
Nigeria, where activists say "the al
worst outbreak of lead poison- ity,
ing in modern history" has taken for
place.
At least 400 children have the
died since March 2010, and tha
thousands more continue to be ria
exposed to dangerously high lev-
els of lead, said Human Rights
Watch researcher Jane Cohen.
The children are being
exposed while processing ore in
these informal mines not owned
by any company, or when their
miner relatives return home
covered with lead dust. The chil-
dren's food and surroundings
also have been contaminated .
when people crush and grind
rocks at home to extract the ore.
SALVADOR, Brazil
Standoff between
Brazilian troops,
police continues
About 300 striking police offi-
cers and their relatives held out
yesterday as soldiers blockaded
a state legislature building in
northeastern Brazil, and pub-
lic worker, leaders threatened
a strike in Rio de Janeiro that
could threaten the world's larg-
est Carnival celebration.
About 1,000 soldiers and offi-
cers from an elite federal police
unit ringed the legislature in the
Bahia state capital of Salvador,
Brazil's third-largest city with
2.7 million people and a sched-
uled host for matches during the
2014 World Cup.
Negotiations failed to end the
strike in Salvador, officials said,
and authorities in Rio de Janeiro
also were preparing for police
discontent there.
a-Compiled from
L Daily mire reports
m
Wednesday, February 8, 2012 - 3A
Santorum regains
momentum with
three-state sweep
rtners Elen Pontac, left, and Shelly Bailes, right, of Davis, who have been married since June 16, 2008, hug Tina Reyn-
Ids, center as they watch the ruling of Proposition 8 at Cornerstone Restaurant at Headhunters in Sacramento, Calif..
Federal appeals court rules
Prop. 8 unnstitutional
Former senator
romps in Minn.,
Col, .and Mo.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A
resurgent Rick Santorum
won Republican presidential
caucuses in Minnesota and
Colorado on yesterday night,
a stunning sweep that raised
fresh questions about front-
runner Mitt Romney's appeal
among the ardent conservatives
at the core of the party's politi-
cal base.
Santorum triumphed, as well,
in a nonbinding Missouri pri-
mary that was worth bragging
rights but no national conven-
tion delegates.
"Conservatism is alive and
well in Missouri and Minne-
sota," the jubilant former Penn-
sylvania senator told cheering
supporters in St. Charles, Mo.
Challenging both his GOP rival
and the Democratic president,
he declared that on issues rang-
ing from health care to "Wall
Street bailouts, Mitt Rom-
ney has the same positions as
Barack Obama."
Returns from 83 percent of
Minnesota's precincts showed
Santorum with 45 percent sup-
port,:.Texas Rep. Ron Paul with
27 percent and Romney - who
won the state in his first try for
the nomination four years ago -
with 17 percent. Former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich trailed
with 11 percent.
It was closer in Colorado,
where returns from all the pre-
cincts showed Santorum with
40 percent of the vote to 35 for
Romney. Gingrich had 13, and
Paul claimed 12 percent.
Romney showed no sign of
disappointment in remarks to
supporters.
"This was a good night for
Rick Santorum. I want to con-
gratulate Sen. Santorum, but I
expect to become the nominee
with your help," he told sup-
porters in Denver.
If the night was good for San-
torum, it was
grim for Gin-
grich, who
made scant2 I
effortin anyof
the states that s
voted during
the day. He ran far off the pace
in both caucus states, forced to
watch from the sidelines while
Santorum boasted of being the
candidate with conservative
appeal.
There were 37 Republican
National Convention delegates
at stake in Minnesota and 33
more in Colorado, and together,
they accounted for the largest
one-day combined total so far in
the raceforthe GOP nomination.
The victories were the first
for Santorum since he eked out a
34-vote win in the lead-off Iowa
caucuses a month ago, and he
reveled in the moment. "I don't
stand here to be the conserva-
tive alternative to Mitt Romney.
I stand here to be the conser-
vative alternative to Barack
Obama," he told his supporters.
He had faded far fromthe lead
in the primaries and caucuses
since, and Gingrich seemed to
eclipse him as the leading con-
servative rival to Romney when
he won the South Carolina pri-
mary late last month.
While Romney throttled
back after victories in Florida
and Nevada in the past several
days, Santorum campaigned
aggressively in all three states
on the ballot, seeking a break-
through to revitalize his cam-
paign.
Case likely to
be appealed to
Supreme Court
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --
me-sex marriage moved one
ep closer to the Supreme Court
sterday when a federal appeals
urt ruled California's ban
iconstitutional, saying it serves
opurpose other than to "lessen
e status and human dignity" of
ys.
A three-judge panel of the 9th
S. Circuit Court of Appeals
ve gay marriage opponents
me to appeal the 2-1 decision
fore orderingthe state to allow
me-sex weddings to resume.
"I'm ecstatic. I recognize that
e have a ways to go yet. We
ay have one or two more legal
eps," said Jane Leyland, who
as gathered with a small crowd
tside the federal courthouse in
wntown San Francisco, cheer-
g as they learned of the ruling.
Leyland married her longtime
rtner, Terry Gilb, during the
e-month window when same-
x marriage was legal in Cali-
rnia.
"But when we first got togeth-
I would have never dreamed
a million years that we would
allowed to be legally married,
d here we are."
The ban known as Proposition
was approved by voters in 2008
th 52 percent of the vote. The
urt said it was unconstitution-
because it singled out a minor-
'group for disparate treatment
r no compelling reason.
The justices concluded that
e law had no purpose other
an to deny gay couples mar-
ge, since California already
grants them all the rights and
benefits of marriage if they regis-
ter as domestic partners.
"Had Marilyn Monroe's film
been called 'How to Register a
Domestic Partnership with a
Millionaire,' it would not have
conveyed the same meaning
as did her famous movie, even
though the underlying drama
for same-sex couples is no differ-
ent," the court said.
The lone dissenting judge
insisted that the ban could help
ensure that children are raised
by married, opposite-sex par-
ents.
The appeals court focused its
decision exclusively on Califor-
nia's ban, not the bigger debate,
even though the court has juris-
diction in nine Western states.
Whether same-sex couples
may ever be denied the right
to marry "is an important and
highly controversial question,"
the court said. "We need not
and do not answer the broader
question in this case."
Six states allow gay couples
to wed - Connecticut, New
Hampshire, Iowa, Massachu-
setts, New York and Vermont
- as well as the District of
Columbia. California, as the
nation's most populous state
and home to more than 98,000
same-sex couples, would be
the gay rights movement's big-
gest prize of them all.
The 9th Circuit concluded
that a trial court judge had
correctly interpreted the Con-
stitution and Supreme Court
precedents when he threw out
Proposition 8.
The measure "serves no
purpose,, and has no effect,
other than to lessen the sta-
tus and human dignity of gays
and lesbians in California, and
to officially reclassify their rela-
tionships and families as inferior
to those of opposite-sex couples,"
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, one of
the court's most liberal judges,
wrote in the 2-1 opinion.
Opponents of gay marriage
planned to ask the Supreme
Court to overturn the ruling,
which came more than a year
after the appeals court panel
heard arguments in the case.
"We are not surprised that
this Hollywood-orchestrated
attack on marriage - tried in San
Francisco - turned out this way.
But we are confident that the
expressed will of the American
people in favor of marriage will
be upheld at the Supreme Court,"
said Brian Raum, senior counsel
for the Alliance Defense Fund, a
Christian legal aid group based
in Arizona that helped defend
Proposition 8.
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