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. Hypnosis ma ave caused New York train derailment Drip mol NE someti nosis c it's fan driven monotc Driv trance tinatiot of part: happen control train? A m Railroa went New Y gers, e3 loss of downt his law tative, "nod," nosis. Then tions al the pro tion in done to At t 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.