The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Thursday, September 26, 2013 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
LANSING, Mich.
Snyder signs law
to expand off-road
vehicle use
All 83 Michigan counties
can allow off-road recreation
vehicles on road shoulders under
legislation signed by Gov. Rick
Snyder.
Current law lets eight coun-
ties in the Lower Peninsula and
every county in Upper Peninsula
authorize the vehicles on local
road shoulders.
Laws signed Wednesday
allow off-road vehicles on more
roads if municipalities pass an
ordinance. Local governments
can ask the state transportation
department for permission to
allow off-road vehicles on high-
way shoulders, not including
interstates.
One law will expand off-road
vehicle uses not requiring a
license.
KENNEBUNK, Maine
George H.W. Bush
witnesses Maine
same-sex wedding
Former President George H.W.
Bush was an official witness at
the same-sex wedding of two
longtime friends, his spokesman
said Wednesday.
Bush and his wife, Barbara
Bush, attended the ceremony
joining Bonnie Clement and
Helen Thorgalsen as private
citizens and friends on Saturday,
spokesman Jim McGrath said.
Thorgalsen posted a photo on
her Facebook page showing Bush
signing the marriage license as a
witness. She captioned the photo:
"Getting our marriage license
witnessed!"
In the photo, Bush is seated in
a wheelchair, a stack of papers on
his lap and his left hand poised
with a pen. One bright red sock
and one bright blue one peek out
S below the cuffs of his blue slacks.
KARACHI, Pakistan
Earthquake off
Pakistani coast
creates island
Alongside the carnage of Paki-
stan's massive earthquake came
a new creation: a small island
of mud, stone and bubbling gas
pushed forth from the seabed.
Experts say the island was
formed by the massive movement
of the earth during the 7.7-mag-
nitude quake that hit Pakistan's
Baluchistan province on Tuesday,
killing at least 285 people.
"That big shock beneath the
earth causes a lot of disturbance,"
said Zahid Rafi, director of the
National Seismic Monitoring
Center.
The island appeared off the
coast of Gwadar, a port about 330
miles (533 kilometers) from Paki-
stan's largest city of Karachi and
75 miles (120 kilometers) from
Iran.
DAKAR, Senegal
Water cuts shorten
UN visit
For nearly two weeks, Dakar
residents have bathed in the
ocean, dug makeshift wells along
the beach and waited in long lines
near distribution trucks in search
of water that is no longer running
from the taps.
The capital city's poor outer
suburbs and wealthy expatriate
neighborhoods alike have been
affected by water cuts that offi-
cials blame on faulty equipment
located hundreds of kilometers
away.
Frustration with the govern-
S ment has mounted daily-com-
pounded by the fact that Senegal
is in the middle of the rainy sea-
son and large sections of the
city are simultaneously dealing
with flooding. Though water and
power cuts are common in devel-
oping countries, a two-week cut in
services is unprecedented in Sen-
egal, and young men have burned
tires in the streets in protest.
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports
Mall saftey is focus after
deadly Nairobi attacks
European Union Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, left, speaks to the media alongside Deputy Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom Nick Clegg during a news conference following the High Level Ministerial Event on the
Humanitarian situation in Syria meeting at the European Union Delegation offices.
Russia expects a resolution
on Syria within two days
Chemical weapons
to be dismantled
under agreement
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -
The U.N. Security Council, long
paralyzed by deep divisions
over how to deal with the Syrian
conflict, is about two days away
from agreeing on a resolution to
require Damascus to dismantle
its chemical weapons stock-
piles, Russia's deputy foreign
minister said Wednesday.
Gennady Gatilov told The
Associated Press that the text
of the resolution will include
a reference to Chapter 7 of the
U.N. Charter, which allows
for military and nonmilitary
actions to promote peace and
security.
But he stressed that there
will not be an automatic trig-
ger for such measures, which
means the council will have to
follow up with another resolu-
tion if Syria fails to comply.
The U.S. and Russia had been
at odds on how to enforce the
resolution. U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry and Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
met for nearly 90 minutes at the
United Nations, and American
officials said that while there
had been progress in some
areas, they couldn't agree on the
text, which the U.S. had been
insisting be enforceable.
President Barack Obama's
threatened U.S. strikes against
President Bashar Assad's
regime following an Aug. 21
suspected poison gas attack
has led to a flurry of diplomatic
activity. Kerry made a surprise
offer that Syria could avert
U.S. military action by turn-
ing over "every single bit of his
chemical weapons" to interna-
tional control within a week.
Russia, Syria's most important
ally, and Assad's government
quickly agreed on the broad
proposal, but it has taken time
and tough negotiations to
work out the details.
The five permanent veto-
wielding members of the Secu-
rity Council - the U.S., Russia,
China, Britain and France -
known as the P-S have been
discussing for the past few
weeks what to include in a new
resolution requiringthat Syria's
chemical weapons stockpile be
secured and dismantled. The
council has been blocked on
Syria, with Russia and China
vetoing three Western-backed
resolutions aimed at pressuring
President Bashar Assad to end
the violence which has killed
over 100,000 people.
But Gatilov told AP the nego-
tiations are "going quite well"
and the draft resolution should
be finalized "very soon - with-
in the next two day, I think."
As for Chapter 7, he said, "It
will be mentioned but there is
the understanding, of course,
(that) there is no automaticity in
engaging Chapter 7."
Britain's U.N. Ambassador
Mark Lyall Grant also reported
progress.
"We are still working in the
P-5 constructively on a text," he
told AP.
"But there are still some dif-
ferences," Lyall Grant said. "We
hope to be able to iron them
out, maybe even today, but cer-
tainly in the next few days so
that we can adopt a resolution
- a strong binding enforceable
resolution with a united voice of
the Security Council as soon as
possible."
Mixed reactions
globally to security
change proposal
NEW YORK (AP) - Some
malls around the world have been
scramblingto add securityguards
to look for suspicious people fol-
lowing a deadly attack on a shop-
ping center in Nairobi over the
weekend. But for other malls, it's
been business as usual.
The mixed reactions by malls
across the globe isn't unusual
in an industry whose secu-
rity efforts vary from unarmed
guards in most shopping centers
in the U.S. to metal detectors and
bag searches in places like Israel
to main entrances that resemble
airport security lines in India.
The disparity offers a glimpse of
why any moves following the Nai-
robi incident to increase mall secu-
rityin countriesthat have less strict
procedures aren't likely to last: The
industry continues to struggle with
how to keep shoppers safe without
scaringthem away.
"No one wants, when you go
shopping, to be strip searched,
to be interviewed in a room by a
security guard," said Simon Ben-
nett, director, Civil Safety and
Security Unit at the University of
Leicester in England. "That might
be acceptable in aviation, but it is
not in commercial retail."
Security concerns come after
12 to 15 militants from the Somali
Islamic extremist group al-Sha-
bab, wielding grenades, took con-
trol of the upscale Westgate mall
in Nairobi. Terrorists held Kenya
security forces for four days, kill-
ing at least 67 civilians and gov-
ernment troops and injuring 175
others.
The Kenyan government said
Tuesday that the attackers were
defeated, with several suspects
killed or arrested. On Wednes-
day, FBI agents began fingerprint,
DNA and ballistic analysis to
help figure out the identities and
nationalities ofthevictims and al-
Shabab gunmen.
In the aftermath of the attack,
security was tight at the Junc-
tion Mall in Nairobi. Two of three
entry gates were locked shut. Cars
were searched more carefully
than usual, with guards look-
ing in glove compartments. Two
armed soldiers were stationed
inside the mall and mall secu-
rity guards who search patrons
with metal detector wands at
entry points said the soldiers had
been deployed after the Westgate
attack.
In the U.S., the International
Council of Shopping Centers, a
trade group of shopping centers
representing about one third of
retail space globally, said the U.S.
government's Department of
Homeland Security is reaching out
to corporate security at all malls.
At the same time, the group
said some of the malls in the U.S.
and South Africa are beefing up
private security personnel, while
others are bringing in more off
dutypolice officers. Mall ofAmer-
ica, the biggest U.S. mall, added
extra uniformed security officers
and stepped up other measures,
but officials at the Blooming-
ton, Minn.-based mall declined
to elaborate. "We will ... remain
vigilant as we always do in simi-
lar situations," said Dan Jasper, a
mall spokesman.
In general, U.S. malls focus on
reacting to a shooting more than
preventing one. Malls depend on
private security personnel, most
of whom don't carry guns, though
they do work with local police.
And while they're trained to look
for suspicious behavior and report
that to authorities, they're dis-
couraged from intervening.
"Shoppers at this point perhaps
don't have an appetite for extraor-
dinary measures," said Kenneth
Hamilton, executive vice presi-
dent of IPC International, the
largest provider of shopping cen-
ter security of malls in the U.S.
Scalia expects legality of
of NSA surveillence to be
decided in U.S. courts
Justice said
suveillance best
determined by gov't
McLEAN, Va. (AP) -
Supreme Court Justice Anto-
nin Scalia said Wednesday that
the courts ultimately will have
to determine the legality of
surveillance programs by the
National Security Agency.
And he's not sure that's a
good thing in an era of complex
security threats against the
United States.
Scalia told the Northern
Virginia Technology Council
that questions about how much
information the NSA can col-
lect about Americans' telephone
calls and under what circum-
stances the agency can monitor
conversations are best answered
by the elected branches of gov-
ernment.
But he said that the Supreme
Court took that power for itself
in 1960s-era expansions of pri-
vacy rights, including prohibi-
tions on wiretapping without a
judge's approval.
"The consequence of that is
that whether the NSA can do
the stuff it's been doing ... which
used to be a question for the
people ... will now be resolved by
the branch of government that
knows the least about the issues
in question, the branch that
knows the least about the extent
of the threat against which the
wiretapping is directed," he said.
Scalia did not raise the
issue in his speech, but instead
responded to a question about
it. He repeatedly used the term
"wiretap" in his comments,
but indicated later that he was
speaking more generally about
NSA surveillance, including the
massive collection of Ameri-
cans' phone records.
In July, following the disclo-
sures by NSA leaker Edward
Snowden about the extent of the
agency's surveillance programs,
the Electronic Privacy Informa-
tion Center asked the Supreme
Court directly to bar NSA from
collecting phone call records
on millions of U.S. customers.
The court has not yet decided
whether to hear the case.
Civil liberties groups also
have filed lawsuits challenging
the program as a violation of
Americans' privacy.
Earlier this year, the Court
ruled in a 5-4 vote that clients
represented by the American
Civil Liberties Union lacked
standing to challenge a 2008 law
under which the NSA conducts
aspects of its surveillance. Scalia
voted with the majority to turn
away that challenge to the law.
Scalia said the Constitu-
tion calls for a balancing test to
determine whether any search
or seizure is reasonable, and
that depends on the threat that
is posed - another question he
said courts are ill-equipped to
answer.
He talked about the pat-
downs and other searches that
occur at airports as an example
of that balancing act.
"That's a terrible intrusion
of privacy," he said. "But you're
willing to do it because of the
seriousness of the threat."
Among the issues in the chal-
lenges to the collection of phone
records is that the court ruled EV
in 1979 that police ordinarily do A
not need a judge-approved war- A
rant to get information about
who someone has called, as
opposed to monitoring the call
itself.
As for the question about
tech companies' obligations to
inform clients about an illegal 8fl1 iTVII 5
intrusion of their information,
Scalia said that, yes, a company titiiOtiErDONnr
should speak up if it knows a tU1II NLtNIL IQ
customer has had its data ille-
gally seized. "But it's pretty
hard to know that.... If it's a gov-
ernmental wiretap, presumably
it's been approved by somebody, H R°
some lawyer expert in the field
who said it was OK, and you bet-
ter be damn sure you're right m s1
before you blow the cover." 1