4A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2005
Film festival offers glimpse of French culture
BY JOHN JORDAN
jjordan@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
A grant from the French government will fund the Tournées KU French Film Festival at the University of Kansas on Wednesday.
"Bon Voyage," the first ol five films to be shown, starts at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union.
An $1,800 grant from the French American Cultural Exchange will cover part of the cost of the festival. Money and support from the Kansas Memorial Union Corp. and
French department covered the remainder of the approximately $3,500 cost of the festival.
Delphine Nurdin, Dijon France, graduate student, said the festival was a great way to let students get a glimpse of French culture.
She said she missed her culture and "la qualité de la vie" — the quality of life.
"The refinement of French culture is top-of-the-line," Nurdin said.
Van Kelly, chairman of the department of French and Italian, said he hoped the festival would help introduce students to all facets of French culture.
French culture covers a wide geographical area, Kelly said, something the average American is unaware of. He selected five films to show the many
French sub-cultures. The films portray World War II-era Paris, religious and political issues in modern-day French-speaking parts of Africa, as well as urban
flight and immigration in today's France.
"Some people think Paris when they think France," Kelly said of French culture. "It's actually all around the world."
Delphine Selles, spokeswoman for the French American Cultural Exchange, said the purpose of the festival was to expose young people to the French language and culture.
Students don't get to see many French films because many theaters don't show them because of costs, language barriers and the difficulty of turning a profit Selles said.
Universities are a place to expose people to the language, she said. Demand for the grants has been rising every year.
"There's really high demand based from professors and budget cuts." Selles said.
Demand has led the exchange to allow universities to receive the grant only every five years.
This is the 10th anniversary of the exchange's establishment of the Tourées festival.
Four other films, all in French with English subtitles, will be shown for the festival in the next four weeks. Tickets are $2 per film.
Cause of capsizing remains a mystery
BOATING ACCIDENT
Meredith L. Kaiser/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Divers float alongside the Ethan Allen after they raised it from the bottom of Lake George in upstate New York, Monday. Twenty people died when the boat capsized.
Rules for life jackets, weight may have added to problems
BY CHRIS CAROLA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wayne Bennett, State Police superintendent, said that investigators do not know what initially caused the Ethan Allen to tip. But he said passengers either slid or were thrown to one side of the boat after it began lurching.
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. — The passengers aboard a tour boat that capsized on Lake George were sitting on long benches and slid sharply to one side of the vessel just before it flipped over, killing 20 people, authorities said Monday.
"And that, of course, would automatically mean an even bigger shift of weight," Bennett said.
The captain of the 40-foot
glass-enclosed boat told authorities it was hit by waves from at least one other vessel and turned over as he tried to steer out of them, authorities said earlier Monday. The boat flipped so fast that none of the 47 passengers — all senior citizens, most of them from Michigan — could put on a life jacket.
There was no immediate confirmation that another boat that could have churned up waves was in the area, and survivors were giving investigators differing versions of what happened before the boat went down, authorities said.
Eight people were hospitalized with shortness of breath, broken bones and other injuries.
Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the National Transpor
tation Safety Board, said investigators would focus on such things as the history of the boat, the pilot's record, whether the boat had enough crew members, and whether the number of passengers played a role in the accident.
"It's much too early to determine what happened out on that lake," Rosenker said.
The boat's captain, Richard Paris, was the only crew member aboard, but state rules allow for just one crewman for up to 50 passengers. Also, New York state regulations require that life jackets be made available for every person on a boat, but people do not have to wear them.
Earlier in the day, Bennett said the seats were not secured to the deck. But later, State Police said that was incorrect.
Rep. John Sweeney, R.-N.Y., said investigators are looking at whether there was too much weight on board the boat, even
though the vessel was just below its capacity of 50 people. He said the Coast Guard assumes a weight of 150 pounds per person in calculating a vessel's capacity — an assumption he said may have been off the mark.
Gov. George Pataki said licenses for two other boats operated by the Ethan Allen's owner, Shoreline Cruises, have been suspended while the investigation continues. He and others, however, said people should not draw any conclusions about the operator.
"I do not believe there is any criminal culpability on any of the parties we have spoken with," said Sheriff Larry Cleveland.
On Monday afternoon, crews using inflatable bags raised the sunken vessel 70 feet to the surface. They planned to pump it out and tow it to shore. NTSB investigators will then examine the wreck.
GOVERNMENT
FBI's emphasis on terrorism decreases crime investigation
BY MARK SHERMAN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating only about half the criminal cases it did before the Sept. 11 attacks because of its focus on stopping terrorist attacks.
Investigations of financial fraud, bank robberies and some drug cases have suffered as a result, but other federal agencies as well as state and local law enforcement have picked up the slack in most areas, Justice Department inspector general Glenn A. Fine said Monday.
"This reprioritization has affected not only the FBI's operations but also the investigative operations of other law enforcement agencies," Fine said.
The FBI did not comment.
Four years after the Sept. 11 attacks and FBI Director Robert Mueller's decision to make counterterrorism the bureau's top priority, the decline in traditional criminal investigations was steepest in drug cases and extended to organized crime, bank robberies, civil rights, health care fraud, corporate fraud and public corruption, Fine said in a 194-page audit.
Portions he said contained sensitive law enforcement information were blacked out.
Among the FBI's traditional criminal investigations, gang, obscenity and child pornography cases increased. Fine said. The report looked at cases opened and the deployment of agents in the 2000 government spending year — the last full
The FBI opened 62,782 criminal investigations in 2000 and 34,451 last year, a drop of 45 percent. Fine said. Drug cases declined by 70 percent, he said.
There were 2,200 fewer field agents investigating criminal matters in 2004, he said.
year before the attacks — and in 2004.
Drugs squads in some FBI field offices have been decimated. The Miami office lost six of its nine drug squads between 2000 and 2004. In Los Angeles, 57 of the 79 agents focusing on drug cases were reassigned.
"FBI field managers reported that the timeliness and quality of such investigations has been impaired," the report said. The Drug Enforcement Administration has filled the gap in some cities, the report said.
State and local law enforcement officials said they felt the effect of changes at the FBI most keenly in complex financial fraud cases that the FBI handled before Sept. 11.
Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, disputed that the new focus on terrorism has meant that other crimes go uninvestigated.
"Ninety-six percent of law enforcement assets in this country are at the state and local level," said Pasco, who runs the nation's largest union for law enforcement officers.
The Justice Department also has directed DEA and other federal agencies to take more responsibility for crimes in their domains, Pasco said.
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