The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Friday, April 6, 2012 - 3A

The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Friday, April 6, 2012 - 3A

NEWS BRIEFS
DETROIT
Detroit Mayor
Bing treated for
blood clots in lung
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is
being treated for blood clots in his
lungs, one day after he was read-
mitted to a hospital where he'd
recently undergone surgery for a
perforated colon.
The 68-year-old mayor was
readmitted Wednesday afternoon
to Henry Ford Hospital after
experiencing some discomfort.
Henry Ford chief executive
John Popovich said in a statement
yesterday that Bing is being treat-
ed for "pulmonary embolism" in
both lungs.
Popovich says the condition "is
often caused by a blood clot that
forms elsewhere in the body and
travels to the lungs."
He says Bing is alert and "in
good spirits."
PITTSFIELD TOWNSHIP, MICH.
Small plane
crashes near Ann
Arbor airport
An airport supervisor says a
man was taken to the hospital
after his single-engine, two-
seat plane crashed near the Ann
Arbor Municipal Airport.
Ann Arbor facilities supervi-
sor Lynn Crum says the man was
alone in the plane that took off
late yesterday morning. He says
the plane circled around and
crashed in a field about 150 feet
from the small airport's runway.
Mlive.com says it took rescu-
ers about 30 minutes to extricate
the pilot.
Crum says the man was "in
shock" but alive after the crash.
He was taken by ambulance to
University of Michigan Hospi-
tals.
A hospital spokeswoman says
she couldn't provide information
about the victim.
ATLANTA
Gingrich's think
tank files for
bankruptcy
The health care think tank cre-
ated by Republican presidential
candidate Newt Gingrich is going
out of business.
The Gingrich Group, also
known as the Center for Health
Transformation, filed for Chapter
7 bankruptcy in federal court in
Atlanta on Wednesday. The bank-
ruptcy filing marks an abrupt
turn for a group that raised mil-
lions of dollars just a few years
ago to support and promote Gin-
grich's health care ideas.
The center's filings indicate it
has liabilities between $1 million
and $10 million and between 50
and 99 creditors. The group had
assets of only up to $100,000, the
filing said.

Gingrich cut ties to the Center
for Health Transformation and
the Gingrich Group in May 2011
as he prepared his presidential
run, said his attorney Stefan Pas-
santino.
LONDON
U.K.'s Sky News:
We hacked in the
public interest
Rupert Murdoch's British sat-
ellite news channel yesterday
became the latest branch of the
mogul's global media empire to
acknowledge bending the rules in
an effort to stay ahead.
Sky News admitted its report-
ers hacked emails on two separate
occasions, insisting that it was
done in the public interest.
But legal experts said that's no
defense, the police are investigat-
ing, and Murdoch's goal of taking
full control of Sky News' profit-
able parent company, British Sky
Broadcasting Group PLC, may be
at risk.
Shares in BSkyB fell 5 percent
following the revelations but
recovered somewhat in late after-
noon trading, closing down about
2.4 percent at 642.5 pence ($10.16).
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports

Santorum huddles
with conservatives

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indidate works campaign.
The private meeting came as
stop Romney's Romney's supporters, includ-
ing high-profile conservatives
momentum from across the country, inten-
sified pressure on Santorum to
kSHINGTON (AP) - leave the race to allow Romney
blican presidential to focus on a general election
ul Rick Santorum met campaign against President
tely with conservative Barack Obama. The Demo-
rs yesterday to craft plans cratic president informally
to stop Mitt Romney's launched the general election
h to the nomination. Pres- earlier in the week, going after
g rival Newt Gingrich to Romney by name in a speech
the race was part of their and a multistate advertising
ll strategy. campaign.
e northern Virginia meet- The Santorum campaign
cluded a host of fiscal and insisted that the former Penn-
conservatives who have sylvania senator will not leave
loubted Romney's conser- the contest, despite Romney's
credentials. near-insurmountable delegate
ke halftime at a football lead. Romney has collected 658
you go into the locker delegates compared to 281 for
to gauge what has been Santorum, 135 for Gingrich and
ng and what hasn't," 51 for Ron Paul, according to
ng participant Rich- the AP tally.
k. Viguerie, chairman of Santorum's strategy depends
ervativeHQ.com, said in on winning Pennsylvania's pri-
tement. "The Santorum mary on April 24 and, with that
aign team recognizes momentum, finding success in
because of Mitt Rom- a series of May contests.
money advantage and But Santorum would need
upport from the Repub- 80 percent of the remaining
establishment and the delegates to win the nomina-
tream media, Rick has, tion before the party's national
me extent, lost control of convention in August. That
tive in the campaign." won't happen as long as Rom-
ong other topics, accord- ney stays in the race because
Viguerie, the participants most upcoming primaries use
ssed their perception that some type of proportional sys-
gate counts being pub- tem to award delegates, making
I by the Romney cam- it hard to win large numbers of
and the media are simply delegates in individual states.
urate." Santorum's only hope is a
e group decided to apply contested convention, which
pressure on Gingrich to becomes less and less likely
which they see as allowing with each Romney victory.
d conservatives to unite Yesterday's meeting aside,
d Santorum, according Santorum is largely taking a
official close to the cam- break from the campaign trail
. The official requested to observe the Easter holiday.
'mity to discuss private He returned to his Virginia
rsations. home Wednesday night after
e effort may be too late. appearing at some campaign
ey has twice as many events and going bowling in
ates as Santorum, accord- Pennsylvania, which he rep-
o The Associated Press resented in Congress for 16
and is on track to hav- years.
majority of delegates in Santorum has scheduled
Gingrich has ignored fundraising events for Monday
o leave the race for weeks and planned to resume cam-
hows no sign of bowing paigning Tuesday in Pennsyl-
ren after scaling back his vania.


REBECCA BLACKWELL/AP
Coup leader Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo, center, is accompanied by Burkina Faso Foreign Affairs Minister Djibril Bas-
sole, left, as he addresses the press at junta headquarters in Kati, outside Bamako, Mali last Sunday.
"
Malian rebels call for cease-
fire after capturing remote

Humanitarian aid
to return to war-
torn nation
BAMAKO, Mali (AP) - The
rebel group that recently seized
control of Mali's remote north
in a maneuver that effectively
partitioned the country in two
announced a cease-fire yester-
day, saying they had reached
their military goal.
Moussa Ag Assarid, a spokes-
man for the National Movement
for the Liberation of the Azawad,
said the group was declaring the
cease-fire to allow humanitar-
ian aid to resume in the north,
where shops were looted.
In Ivory Coast, the military
chiefs of the nations bordering
Mali met yesterday to hash out
their plan for a military inter-
vention. Deputy Ivorian Defense
Minister Paul Koffi Koffi said
military action is being consid-
ered both to reverse the coup
that deposed Mali's president
last month, as well asto preserve
Mali's territorial integrity after
the rebel advance in the north.
He instructed the army chiefs
of the 15 nations in West Africa
to draft a detailed plan, includ-

ing how many troops each
intends to send, how quickly
they could ready them and what
logistical means they plan to
contribute.
In Paris, Foreign Minister
Alain Juppe said France is ready
to help African forces on a logis-
tical level. The chief of staff of
the French army, Adm. Edouard
Guillaud, traveled yesterday to
Burkina Faso to discuss details
with the president.
The rebels launched their
insurgency in January, say-
ing they wanted to establish an
independent Tuareg homeland
in the north, known as the Aza-
wad. They only succeeded in
taking small towns until March
21, when disgruntled soldiers
stormed the presidential palace
in the distant capital of Bamako,
overthrowing the democrati-
cally elected president.
Inthe confusionthatfollowed
the coup, the rebels launched a
new offensive and succeeded
in taking the capitals of the
three main northern provinces,
including Kidal, which fell last
Friday, Gao on Saturday and
Timbuktu on Sunday.
"The NMLA has reached the
end of its military operations for
the liberation of the territory
of the Azawad," said Assarid,
speaking by telephone from
Paris.
"Since the day before yes-
terday when our units reached
Douentza which we consider to
be the frontier of the Azawad,"
he said, referring to a town some
600 kilometers (375 miles) from
Bamako, "the military offensive
is declared over."
Assarid's group is the larg-
est rebel group involved in the
offensive, but it is not the only
one, and in the three main
towns in the north, local offi-
cials say they cannot be sure
which of the rebel armies
has the upper hand. Western
observers have expressed con-
cern over the presence of an
Islamist faction called Ansar
Dine, which planted its omi-
nous black flag in all three of
the provincial capitals. This
week, the group announced it
was imposing Sharia law in the
ancient city of Timbuktu.
The mayor of Timbuktu said
nearly all of the estimated 300

Christians based in the city fled
after Ansar Dine's spiritual chief
Iyad Ag Ghali gave an inter-
view on local radio outlining the
tenets of Sharia law: Women are
to be covered at all times, thieves
will have their hands cut off and
adulterers will be stoned.
"The problem for us is that we
don't know who is the master of
our town," said the mayor, Ous-
mane Halle, explaining that the
Islamist faction had taken over
the city's military camp, while
the NMLA was stationed at the
airport.
"What I deplore is the depar-
ture of the Christian commu-
nity," he said. The city has been
honored as a UNESCO World
Heritage site for its collection
of ancient Islamic manuscripts,
propagating a moderate inter-
pretation of the religion.
"Many said to me that they
are obliged to leave," he said.
"And they are right. I cannot
guarantee their safety. And
these are people that have lived
side by side with us for centu-
ries."
In astatementUnited Nations
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
on yesterday strongly con-
demned the forcible seizure of
power in Mali. The bloc repre-
senting nations in West Africa
has imposed harsh sanctions in
an effort to force out the mili-
tary junta. Since Monday, Mali
has been under an embargo, its
borders closed. As a result, the
country is struggling to import
fuel, which comes overland from
neighboring Senegal and Ivory
Coast.
. Rolling blackouts have started
in the capital, with many neigh-
borhoods now only having elec-
tricity at night. A representative
of the state energy company said
on state television Wednesday
that they were running at 50 per-
cent capacity due to the embargo,
and things could get worse. The
government is prioritizing who
gets power, with hospitals and
military installations ahead of
residential areas.
"Mali has never experienced
such a situation," Mali's U.N.
Ambassador Omar Daou told the
Security Council on Wednesday.
"Our people are divided. Our
country is threatened with parti-
tion."

Connecticut on track to become
17th state without death penalty '

After 10 hour
debate, state
Senate votes for
abolishment
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -
The state Senate voted yester-
day to abolish the death penalty
in Connecticut, a state that has
executed only one prisoner in
a half-century and is now on
track to join a national trend
away from capital punishment.
In an early morningvote that
followed more than 10 hours
of debate, the Senate approved
legislation that would set life
imprisonment as the maxi-
mum punishment for all future
cases. The bill, which has the
support of the state's Demo-
cratic governor, now goes to the
Democrat-controlled House
of Representatives, where it's
expected to win approval.
In the past five years, four
other states have abolished the
death penalty - New Mexi-
co, Illinois, New Jersey and
New York. Connecticut would
become the 17th state without a
death penalty.
Repeal proposals are also
pending in several other states
including Kansas and Ken-
tucky, while advocates in Cali-
fornia have gathered enough
signatures for an initiative to
throw out the death penalty
that is expected to go before
voters in November.
"I think with the revelations
of so many mistakes, aided by
DNA testing, it's been made
clear that the death penalty
risks (innocent) lives," said
Richard Dieter, executive
director of the Death Penalty
Information Center, a nonprofit
capital punishment tracking
organization in Washington,
D.C.

Connecticut religious leaders who oppose the death penalty stop for a prayer
during a marchto the state Capitol on Tuesday.

Executions in the U.S. have
declined from a high of 98 in
1999 to 43 last year, Dieter said.
The number of people sen-
tenced to death each year has
also dropped sharply, from 300
a decade ago to 78 last year, he
said.
Connecticut state Sen. Eric
Coleman, D-Bloomfield, called
the 20-16 vote "a pivotal step."
"It moves us towards a
more enlightened posture on
the issue and puts us more in
line with other New England
states," he said.
The legislation wouldn't
affect sentences of the 11
inmates now on Connecti-
cut's death row. Many officials
insisted on that as a condition
of their support for repeal in a
state where two men were sen-
tenced to death for a gruesome
2007 home invasion that killed
a woman and her two daugh-
ters and evoked comparisons
to Truman Capote's "In Cold
Blood."
Similar legislation never
made it to the Senate floor for a
vote last year after some sena-

tors voiced concern about act-
ing when the second of two
suspects in that case was still
facing trial.
Two paroled burglars, Ste-
ven Hayes and Joshua Komis-
arjevsky, were convicted of
killing Jennifer Hawke-Petit
and her daughters, 17-year-old
Hayley and 11-year-old Michae-
la, in their suburban home in
Cheshire. The girls' father, Wil-
liam Petit, was beaten but sur-
vived.
Now that both men have been
sentenced to death, some law-
makers who previously opposed
the penalty - including Sen.
Edith Prague, D-Columbia -
shifted their support.
"I cannot stand the thought
of being responsible for some-
body being falsely accused and
facing the death penalty," she
said. "For me, this is a moral
issue and realizing that mis-
takes are obviously made."
Before the Senate voted, Wil-
liam Petit told reporters before
a state Capitol news conference
that he didn't think capital pun-
ishment would be abolished.

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