The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Thursday, December 5, 2013 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
LANSING, Mich.
Michigan House
votes to maintain
right to ajury trial
The Michigan House has
voted unanimously to ensure
that the right to jury trials con-
tinues in certain lawsuits filed
against the state.
Wednesday's vote comes
after majority Republicans and
Gov. Rick Snyder passed a law
in November to take state law-
suits away from Ingham County
judges and other counties and
move them to four appeals court
judges comprisingthe new Court
of Claims.
Some question whether the
law still allows jury trials.
Republican Rep. Mike Shirkey
of Clark Lake says he sponsored
the bill to provide "perfect clar-
ity" that people who had the
right to a jury trial under the old
law will continue to have it. The
legislation also says the attorney
general doesn't have to transfer
all pending cases to new judges.
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif.
Shooter who killed
TSA officer has first
court apperance
The man charged with kill-
ing a Transportation Secu-
rity Administration officer and
wounding two other agents
and a civilian during a shooting
rampage at Los Angeles Inter-
national Airport made his first
court appearance Wednesday,
still showing signs of the gun-
shot wounds suffered when he
was arrested.
Paul Ciancia hadn't been seen
in public since the Nov. 1 attack
that created chaos at one of the
nation's busiest airports and
affected air travel around the
country.
The 23-year-old spoke in
whispers and showed no emo-
tion during the 10-minute hear-
ing in the West Valley Detention
Center in Rancho Cucamonga,
about 45 miles east of Los Ange-
les. He's being housed at the
facility in federal custody.
MIAMI
U.S. military to
discontinue reports
on hunger strikes
The U.S. military will no lon-
ger disclose to the media and
public whether prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay are on hun-
ger strike, a spokesman said
Wednesday, eliminating what
had long been an unofficial
barometer of conditions at the
secretive military outpost.
Hunger strikes have been
employed by men held at Guan-
tanamo since shortly after the
prison opened in January 2002
and the U.S. has long disclosed
how many are refusing to eat
and whether they meet military
guidelines to be force fed.
Officials have now deter-
mined it is no longer in their
interest to publicly disclose the
information, said Navy Cmdr.
John Fiolstrat, a spokesman for
the military's Joint Task Force-
Guantanamo.
KINGSTON, Jamaica
Jamaican scientist
creates medical
marijuana firm
A prominent Jamaican scien-
tist and entrepreneur is launch-
ing a company that aims to
capitalize on the growing inter-
national market for medical
marijuana.
Henry Lowe is a researcher
who specializes in medicinal
chemistry and the chairman of
an institute that develops thera-
peutic and cosmetic products
from various plants.
Lowe is calling his new ven-
ture "Medicanja." He says it will
focus on medicinal compounds
in marijuana, known locally as
"ganja," and will not violate any
laws or treaties.
-Compiled from
Daily wire reports
Stolen cobalt- 60
found abandoned
in Mexico City
Passengers on a Metro-North train view ongoing repair work near the Spuyten Duyvil station in the Bronx borough of
New York Wednesday, where a fatal derailment disrupted service on the Hudson Line of the railroad Sunday.
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er experienced train was going 82 mph into a
sharp turn where the speed limit
nentary loss of drops to 30 mph. That's when
the engineer says he snapped
awareness out of it and hit the brakes, but
it was too late. The train hurtled
N YORK (AP) - It's off the tracks, leaving a chain of
imes called highway hyp- twisted cars just inches from a
or white-line fever, and river in the Bronx.
niliar to anyone who has While the term highway
long distances along a hypnosis has been around for
onous route. decades, there's no technical
'ers are lulled into a semi- definition of it and scant specific
state and reach their des- medical study of it, although
n with little or no memory multiple studies have found that
s of the trip. But what if it long driving times on straight
aed to an engineer at the roads can cause people to lose
is of a speeding passenger focus.
Some experts equate high-
an driving a Metro-North way hypnosis with a sort of
ad commuter train that autopilot state - performing
off the rails Sunday in a task, usually competently,
ork, killing four passen- without awareness of it. Sleep
xperienced a momentary experts say the daze could
awareness as he zoomed really be a doze, especially if a
the tracks, according to driver has undiagnosed sleep
'yer and union represen- problems.
who called the episode a Whatever it is, nearly every
a "daze" or highway hyp- bus or train driver has expe-
rienced the feeling of being
r accounts raised ques- momentarily unaware while
bout just how widespread driving long hours, said Larry
blem isin the transporta- Hanley, president of the Amal-
dustry and what can be gamated Transit Union.
combat it. Hanley, who spent eight
he time of the crash, the years driving a bus in New York,
recalled spending a week on the
midnight-to-8 a.m. shift and
sometimes stopping to pick up
passengers who weren't there.
"You find yourself stopping,
and you open the doors, and all
you see is a mailbox," he said,
adding that fatigue and work
schedule changes play a role.
The National Transporta-
tion Safety Board, which has yet
to determine the cause of the
crash, concluded talking with
the engineer Tuesday. Investi-
gators continued interviewing
the train's other crew members.
Investigators have said the engi-
neer, William Rockefeller, had
enough time off for a full night's
rest before the crash, but they
were looking at his activities in
the previous days.
Highway hypnosis doesn't
show up often in medical litera-
ture, but numerous researchers
have looked at the effect that
monotonous drivingcan have on
alertness and reaction time.
In one early paper on the phe-
nomenon, published in 1962,
retired Rutgers University psy-
chologist Griffith Wynne Wil-
liams wrote that the modern
superhighway's smooth, unin-
terrupted stretches of concrete
could put people in a daze.
Dangerous material
discovered in a
rural town, posing
little threat
MEXICO CITY (AP) - A
missing shipment of radioactive
cobalt-60 was found Wednes-
day near where the stolen truck
transporting the material was
abandoned in central Mexico,
the country's nuclear safety
director said.
The highly radioactive mate-
rial had been removed from its
container, officials said, and one
predicted that anyone involved
in opening the box could be in
grave danger of dying within
days.
The cobalt-60 was left in a
rural area about a kilometer (a
half a mile) from Hueypoxtla,
an agricultural town of about
4,000 people, but it posed no
threat or a need for an evacu-
ation, said Juan Eibenschutz,
director general of the National
Commission of Nuclear Safety
and Safeguards.
"Fortunately there are no
people where the source of
radioactivity is," Eibenschutz
said.
Commission physicist Mar-
donio Jimenez said it was the
first time cobalt-60 had been
stolen and extracted from its
container. The only threat was
to whoever opened the box
and later discarded the pellets
of high-intensity radioactive
material that was being trans-
ported to a waste site. It had
been used in medical equipment
for radiation therapy.
"The person or people who
this took out are in very great
risk of dying," Jimenez said,
adding that the normal survival
rate would be between one and
three days.
He said there was no word so
far of anyone reporting to area
hospitals with radiation expo-
sure. He said those who exposed
themselves to the pellets could
not contaminate others.
Federal police and military
units on the scene put up a
cordon of 500 meters (yards)
around the site.
The cargo truck hauling
the cobalt-60 was stolen from
a gas station early Tuesday in
the neighboring state of Hidal-
go, about 40 kilometers (24
miles) from where the material
was recovered, Jimenez said.
Authorities had put out an alert
in six central states and the cap-
ital looking for it.
The truck was taking the
cobalt to a nuclear waste facility
in the state of Mexico, which is
adjacent to Mexico City
The material was used in
obsolete radiation therapy
equipmentthat isbeingreplaced
throughout Mexico's public
health system. It was coming
from the general hospital in the
northern border city of Tijuana,
Eibenshutz said.
Before the container was
found, he said the thieves most
likely wanted the white 2007
Volkswagen cargo vehicle with
a moveable platform and crane.
Kerry to present security plans
to Israeli, Palestine in next visit
U.S. involvement to
increase in peace
efforts in Mideast
JERUSALEM (AP) - Sec-
retary of State John Kerry will
present the outlines of a West
Bank security plan in meetings
with Israeli and Palestinian
leaders this week, stepping up
American involvement in hopes
of reviving faltering Mideast
peace efforts, U.S. officials said
Wednesday.
The proposal will mark the
first time that Kerry, who was
to arrive in Israel late Wednes-
day, has directly intervened
in the talks since they began
in late July. By all accounts,
the negotiations have made no
progress, despite an April tar-
get date for reaching a deal.
Kerry has lots riding on the
outcome of the negotiations.
The sides agreed to resume
talks, their first substantive dia-
logue in five years, under heavy
American pressure, and he
has repeatedly shuttled to the
region and held lengthy phone
conversations with Israeli and
Palestinian leaders in hopes of
pushing them forward.
Negotiators have said dis-
cussions touched on all key
issues in the long-festering con-
flict, primarily Israeli security
concerns and possible border
arrangements between Israel
and a future Palestine. But they
say the talks have amounted to
little more than restating posi-
tions.
The Palestinians seek all of
the West Bank, east Jerusalem
and Gaza Strip, areas captured
by Israel in 1967, for an inde-
pendent state. They say that
Israel's pre-1967 boundaries
should be the basis for a future
border, allowing for slight mod-
ifications through negotiated
land swaps.
Israeli Prime Minister Benja-
min Netanyahu rejects a return
to the 1967 lines, and has sig-
naled he wants to retain large
parts of the West Bank, where
hundreds of thousands of Jew-
ish settlers live. Netanyahu
also opposes any shared control
over east Jerusalem, the Pales-
tinians hoped-for capital. Israel
withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
The U.S. diplomatic offi-
cials said Kerry and his secu-
rity adviser, retired Gen. John
Allen, have been working on
security issues in hopes of
breaking the deadlock. They
believe the absence of any con-
crete plans so far is a main rea-
son for the lack of progress.
The American officials spoke
on condition of anonymity
because Kerry has not yet pre-
sented his proposals.
The Haaretz daily said that
Allen would present his ideas
at a meeting with Netanyahu
on Thursday. After that meet-
ing, Kerry is scheduled to head
to the West Bank for talks with
Palestinian President Mah-
moud Abbas. It said the Ameri-
can thinking is that if Israeli
security concerns can be met,
other issues, such as borders,
will then fall into place.
One U.S. official said Allen
"has been working closely on
the ground with his Israeli
counterparts." The official
said the Americans realize
that security is "paramount" as
Israel contemplates taking "cal-
culated risks for peace."
A U.S. official traveling with
Kerry in Moldova on Wednes-
day said the ideas were not a
"plan" that could be accepted
or rejected. Instead, it was
described as part of an ongoing
effort to help ease Israeli secu-
rity concerns. The official said
many of the ideas have already
been raised with the Israelis in
prior meetings.
The officials refused to pro-
vide details on Allen's work,
including whether it might
include stationing international
forces along the West Bank bor-
der with Jordan. Netanyahu
has insisted that Israel main-
tain a security presence in the
West Bank as part of any final
deal.
Yuval Diskin, a former direc-
tor of Israel's Shin Bet internal
security service, gave a boost
to Kerry's efforts, saying in a
speech Wednesday that it is
imperative that Israel reach a
peace deal establishing a Pales-
tinian state as soon as possible.
In a jab at Netanyahu, he
said the continued occupation
of millions of Palestinians pre-
sented a much bigger threat to
Israeli security than the Irani-
an nuclear program. Netanyahu
has made Iran his top priority.
"Now is the time to make
decisions," Diskin told a gath-
ering of peace activists in Tel
Aviv.
He said the Jewish settler
population is rapidly reaching
the point of no return, where
it will become impossible to
remove them. That could lead
to the establishment of a bina-
tional state in which Arabs ulti-
mately outnumber Jews. In the
meantime, he said Palestinian
frustrations are rising, as evi-
denced by a string of unrelated
attacks on Israelis in recent
months.
"The concentration of fumes
is so high that a little spark
could lead to a big explosion,"
he said.
Mohammed Ishtayeh, a for-
mer Palestinian peace negotia-
tor, said he resigned last month
because the gaps with Israel
were getting wider.
"We went to these talks to
avoid the blame game, we know
the result, there will be no
result," he said. "Israel wants to
annex the West Bank ... It wants
to give us some local autonomy
over the people and annex the
land."
Israeli and Palestinian offi-
cials declined comment on
Kerry's security plan, say-
ing they had not yet seen any
details.
But Ishtayeh said he had
little faith in the American
bridging proposals, saying the
U.S. is unfairly biased toward
Israel.
After star death, studio
stops film's production
'Fast & Furious 7' Universal had been trying to
fast-track "Fast & Furious 7" for
haults after star a July 11 release, a date that's
P 'Walker's likely tobe postponed. Universal
Paul ansdeath hasn't yet announced any release
date change.
NEW YORK (AP) - Universal "Right now, all of us at Uni-
Pictures has shut down produc- versal are dedicated to provid-
tion on "Fast & Furious 7" indefi- ing support to Paul's immediate
nitely following the death of its family and our extended 'Fast &
star, Paul Walker. Furious' family of cast, crew and
The studio announced filmmakers," the studio said in a
Wednesday that the film will statement.
shut down "for a period of time Walker was killed by injuries
so we can assess all options avail- from both the impact and sub-
able to move forward with the sequent fire when the high-pow-
franchise." ered Porsche driven by his friend
The seventh installment of crashed, according to autopsy
the street car racing series had results released Wednesday.
begun shooting in September. The actor died from the "com-
While much of "Fast & Furious bined effects of traumatic and
7" has been filmed, it's far from thermal injuries," according to
complete. the autopsy released by the Los
When Walker died in a fiery Angeles County coroner's office.
car crash Saturday north of Los At the wheel was Roger Rodas,
Angeles, the film was on break Walker's friend, financial adviser
for the Thanksgiving holiday. and co-owner of a professional
Shooting had been planned to racing team. The two died when
resume Monday in Atlanta, but Rodas' 2005 Porsche Carrera GT
production was put on hold fol- smashed into a light pole and
lowing Walker's death. tree, then exploded in flames.