6A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2007
CRIME
CRIME Spray-painted date heralds CD release, not crime job
The KU Office of Public Safety issued a statement to students Tuesday morning saying that the date, 10-23-07, spray-painted on the sidewalk outside Lewis Hall was not related to an incident of vandalism that took place last week. Police said the sidewalk was decorated to advertise for a band.
According to police reports, someone shot three windows at Lewis Hall sometime on Oct. 13 or Oct. 14.
Mark Dent
NATION
Wildfires threaten homes, businesses in California
SAN DIEGO — Walls of flame consumed hundreds of homes across Southern California on Tuesday, and authorities ordered people in more than 350,000 homes to flee the flames.
The blazes bedeviled firefighters as fires roared from mountain passes to the coastline, spreading so quickly that even hotels serving as temporary shelters for evacuees had to be evacuated. Two people have been killed.
By day three, the dozen wildfire had burned more than 1,300 homes and businesses, and the destruction may only be the start for the region. With temperatures rising and winds remaining fierce, the flames were proving nearly impossible to fight.
Marilee Bishop of Running Springs and her 10 year-old daughter, Erica, rubbed their eyes Tuesday morning as they woke up in a Wal-Mart parking lot where they spent the night after being forced to leave their home.
"No one ever expects something like this to happen to them," said Bishop.
Since they began Sunday, the fires have burned at least 583 square miles — an area larger than New York City. Fully a quarter of the California coast was ablaze. Flames climbed halfway toward the Nevada line, devastating numerous communities.
Associated Press
Floods ravage New Orleans
》 WEATHER
Rains pour in cities recovering from Hurricane Katrina
BY CAIN BURDEAU ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW ORLEANS — Heavy rains lashed the flood-prone city Monday, inundating areas that had only recently recovered from Hurricane Katrina and leading the Army Corps of Engineers to close a gate on a suburban canal where the waters threatened to top the walls.
After more than 8 inches of rain fell on parts of New Orleans by late afternoon, Mayor Ray Nagin shut City Hall early, and schools also closed. People were asked to stay indoors until the flood potential subsided. More rain was expected overnight.
Waist-high water in parts of eastern Orleans soaked businesses, some of which had recently reopened after being damaged by 2005's Hurricane Katrina.
All the city's pumps were working properly, emergency preparedness officials said. Still, they urged motorists to stay off the streets to avoid creating wakes that could send water into homes and businesses.
Officials closed a gate on the Harvey灌井 in Jefferson Parish; it was one of several in the area placed under new safety guidelines after Katrina's waters breached two New Orleans canals, causing catastrophic
The corps has worked to strengthen the canal, about five miles from downtown, but engineers worried that water being driven into it might lead to flooding. The area around the canal includes homes and businesses.
flooding.
Unlike the canal walls that broke during Katrina, the walls on the Harvey Canal are not considered at
threat of being breached by rising waters, said Chris Accardo, the corps' operations chief.
"The gates were closed to minimize seepage and overtapine" he said.
Engineers want to be sure "that we don't put pressure" on the flood walls.
Theater in the Uptown neighborhood, a cultural icon and favorite refuge for Ignatus J. Reilly, the antihero in John Kennedy Toole's novel "A Confederacy of Dunces," said Eric Ramstein, the theater's manager.
said Amanda Jones, a corps spokeswoman.
Robert Ricks, a lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in Slidell, said that a flood watch was extended to midnight Monday and that some areas could expect
"Unlike the canal walls that broke during Katrina, the walls on the Harvey Canal are not considered at threat of being breached by raising waters."
Water accumulated quickly in some older neighborhoods, a reminder of the city's vulnerability to storms and reliance on a complicated system of pumps and canals for drainage.
CHRIS ACCARDO Corps' operations chief
10 inches or more of rain. Much of southeast Louisiana remained under a flood warning until 7 a.m. Tuesday.
Despite the flooding potential, the rain also offered relief to parts of Louisiana that have been abnormally dry.
Water nearly got into the Prytania
Until Monday's drenching rain, for New Orleans was about 11 inches below normal for the year.
The scattered showers and thunderstorms also came as a blessing to other drought-striken areas of the Southeast on Monday. Still, climatologists say it will take more than a few scatter storms to pull the
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lauren Robinson from New Orleans walks through the water in the upown area of New Orleans on her way to study in a coffeehouse on Monday. Bands of heavy rain flooded streets and threatened homes and businesses in New Orleans and the surrounding suburbs Monday. The rain caused traffic jams and forced police to close some roads.
region out of a record drought.
Rainfall in Atlanta is almost 17 inches below normal for the year, and state officials have warned that a north Georgia reservoir that supplies more than 3 million people
with water could be depleted within three months.
Almost one-third of the Southeast is covered by an "exceptional" drought — the worst drought category.
WAR IN IRAQ
Death toll nears 4,000
in more than three year.
As of Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007, at least 3,836 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 3,125 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT.
The AP count is three higher
The British military has reported 171 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.
Associated Press
PAKISTAN
Violence follows campaign
KARACHI, Pakistan — Former Prime Minister benazir Bhutto said Tuesday she had received a new death threat but would start campaigning in Pakistani cities in the next couple days, avoiding mass rallies.
BY MATTHEW PENNINGTON
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Five days after the suicide bombing that killed at least 136 at her homecoming procession in Karachi, Bhutto said her lawyer received a letter from an unidentified "friend of al-Qaida" threatening to slaughter her "like a goat."
Bhutto said the letter was addressed to her lawyer, Farooq Naik, and had been left for him at the Supreme Court in Islamabad. She said Naik was alerting the chief justice of the threat.
"They are trying to derail the democratic process because they know if the people are employed and educated the forces of extremism and terrorism will be weakened," she said.
"There are elements who want who to kill us." Bhutto said at her heavily guarded residence in this southern city. "They are petrified that the Pakistan People's Party will return (to power) and that democracy will return."
The authenticity of the letter
could not be confirmed. Bhutto said the writer claimed to be the "head of the suicide bombers and a friend of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden."
Bhutto returned Thursday from eight years in exile to campaign for parliamentary elections due in January, after months of talks with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that could see them working side-by-side in the next government.
She said that after discussions, her party had decided she should avoid staging mass rallies because of the risk of suicide and roadside bombings, but would still address public meetings.
"The party decided I should go from Karachi to Islamabad, Lahore or Larkana (Bhutto's hometown) in the next couple of days. We will not be holding public rallies but will be traveling to meet the people in other provinces," she said.
Bhutto has blamed alleged extremist elements in the government and the security apparatus for the bombing that ripped through Thursday's rally in Karachi — claims the government denies.
bers of the ruling party, including its chief, were behind Thursday's attack.
She alleges they include remnants of the regime of former military leader Gen. Zia-ul Haq, who oversaw muadheeen groups that fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, then became Taliban and al-Qaida. She alleges some mem-
That has raised questions about how the parties could form a coalition in support of Musharraf after the elections. Although Bhutto and Musharraf are rivals, both are moderates keen to combat religious extremism. And Musharraf has signed an amnesty to quash graft cases against Bhutto.
Bhutto's party has said she is on a list of people who are not allowed to leave the country, but local media reports say that is not the case.
He said there is "nothing of this sort" between her party and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q but maintained they were both likely to be part of the next coalition. He forecast they would be joined by the Islamist Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party — whose deputy leader met with Bhutto on Tuesday.
Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a close musharraf aide, predicted Tuesday that the People's Party would be part of the next government. "There is good understanding between Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto," he said.
However, Ahmed said he did not expect Bhutto to become prime minister for a third time.
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