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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
NATIONAL SECURITY
Rice directs tough talk at Iran
BY ANNE GEARAN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2005
BRUSSELS, Belgium — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put Iran and Europe on notice yesterday that their negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program cannot go on forever.
Nearing the end of a fence-ending tour of European allies, Rice said the United States had set no deadline on the Iran talks, but she also said the Bush administration had not changed its view that the United Nations should step in to get tougher on Iran.
In Washington, President
Bush said the Iranians needed to know that the free world was working together to send a clear message: Don't develop a nuclear weapon.
"And the reason we're sending that message is because Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a very destabilizing force in the world," Bush said.
Iran says its program is for nuclear power, not weapons. In Tehran, President Mohammad Khatami said yesterday that no Iranian government would ever abandon the progress the country has made in developing peaceful nuclear technology.
Khatami said that if the talks with Britain, France and
Germany fail, his government would not be bound by its undertaking to suspend enrichment.
"If other parties are not committed to their promises, we will not be committed to our promises at all," Khatami told a meeting of diplomats.
Rice has spoken in tough terms about Iran during this trip, but she has been careful to leave any criticism of the Europeans unsaid.
Asked at yesterday's news conference how long the diplomatic efforts should continue, Rice replied, "We've set no deadline, no timeline. The Iranians know what they need to do."
Yves logghe/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
U. S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses the media at NATO headquarters in Brussels yesterday. She said Iran couldn't delay accountability for a suspected nuclear weapons program
Book rentals save students money
BY KAVITA KUMAR
KRT CAMPUS
EDUCATION
KRT CAMPUS
One of the biggest, yet least-known, bargains in higher education is housed in 7,500 square feet on the edge of the campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
Stacked in rows of bookshelves are tens of thousands of textbooks there for the renting, saving students from spending many hundreds of dollars to buy them.
In the last year or so, SIUE, Southeast Missouri State University and a couple dozen other schools that have run textbook rental programs for decades have been fielding calls from around the country about how they work.
The last few months. it seems like we've been
besieged," said King Lambird, assistant director of SIUE's Textbook Service.
That's less than the wholesale cost of 20 of the
Gov. Rod Blagojevich's office is considering textbook rentals as one of a number of ideas to help soften the blow of skyrocketing textbook prices at Illinois' other public universities. One of his aides visited SIUE a few months ago. Legislators in California considered rental programs last year, and cash-strapped students at various campuses have taken an interest in the programs as well.
SIUE's program has been around since the school started in the mid-1960s. It is fully supported by student fees, based on the number of credit hours they take. For a student with a full course load, that amounts to $80 to $100 a semester.
most expensive books in the school's system, which are each more than $100. The school has 149 textbooks that cost more than $80 each. Students at other colleges would not only have to pay that price for one book, but would probably pay 25 percent more to allow for bookstore mark-ups.
At Southeast Missouri State, in Cape Girardeau, students pay $83.75 a semester to rent textbooks for five courses.
Compare that to the nearly $900 a year the average student will spend on textbooks, according to a survey released last month by the state Public Interest Research Groups
The producer price index of college textbooks—the price at which publishers sell the books—has gone up 41.8 percent since 1998, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
NATION
Kansas counties get federal funds to repair ice damage
WASHINGTON President Bush declared disaster status yesterday for 32 Kansas counties hardest hit by last month's ice storm that left hundreds of thousands of people without electrical power.
Bush acted on the request from Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who sought the federal assistance for the counties that were among the 56 for which she declared a disaster emergency on Jan. 4.
The president's declaration covers the period from Jan. 4-6. It makes federal funds available, on a cost-sharing basis, to the state, local governments and some nonprofit organizations within the counties for emergency work and the repair and replacement of facilities damaged by the storm. It includes the cost for dealing with such things as downed power lines and poles, and debris removal.
In the state's request, it estimated eligible damage in the affected counties at $39 million.
The Associated Press
WORLD
Ballot problems discovered; violence continues in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi officials said Wednesday they must recount votes from about 300 ballot boxes because of various discrepancies, delaying final results from the landmark national elections. Hundreds — perhaps thousands — of other ballots were declared invalid because of alleged tampering.
Postelection violence mounted, raising fears that the Jan. 30 balloting had done little to ease the country's grave security crisis.
An American soldier was killed Wednesday and another wounded in an ambush north of the capital, the U.S. military said. Two other American soldiers died earlier in the week, the command said Wednesday.
Gunmen ambushed a convoy of Kurdish party officials in Baghdad, killing one and wounding four. And in the southern city of Basra, gunmen killed an Iraqi journalist working for a U.S.-funded TV station and his 3-year-old son as they left their home.
The Associated Press