THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2012
PAGE 3
NEWS OF THE WORLD
MIDDLE EAST
Associated Press
Youth watched soldier shoot his father
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan
An Afghan youth recounted on Monday the terrifying scene in his home as a lone U.S. soldier moved stealthily through it during a killing spree, then crouched down and shot his father in the thigh as he stepped out of the bedroom.
The soldier, now in U.S. custody, is accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in their homes in the middle of the night between Saturday and Sunday and then burning some of their corpses. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said nine of those killed were
children and three were women.
"He was walking around taking up positions in the house — in two or three places like he was searching," said 26-year-old witness Mohammad Zahir, who watched the gunman while hiding in another room. "He was on his knees when he shot my father" in the thigh, he told The Associated Press. His father was wounded but survived.
The shooting rampage unfolded in two villages near a U.S. base in southern Kandahar province.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AFRICA
Mass funeral for victims of explosion
At least 246 people were killed, but only 159 bodies have been identified.
BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo — Women wearing masks against the odor of death threw themselves over the graves of their dead children, while men had to be restrained to stop them from hurting themselves as more than 100 victims of last week's arms depot explosion were laid to rest in a mass funeral Sunday.
Republic of Congo's government scrambled to organize Sunday's mass burial, which took place exactly one week after an arms depot inside a military barracks caught fire, setting
off a lethal rain of grenades, mortar rounds, shells and rockets.
Extra carpenters had to be hired to build the coffins. The municipal morgue stayed open all night so that families could finish the ritual washing of the bodies.
At least 246 people were killed, but only 159 of the bodies could be identified in time for Sunday's funeral. The scene at the morgue in the hours before the burial, and at the cemetery after the coffins were lowered, was one of chaos, punctuated by pain.
AFRICA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Authorities suspect al-Shabab militia sympathizers are linked to the attack.
Death toll from bus attack rises to six
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya's internal security minister says the death toll from an attack on a bus stop in the capital has risen to six.
George Saitoti said Sunday that 63 people were injured in the attack at a downtown bus stop in Nairobi on Saturday night. Police said it seemed that three explosive devices, possibly grenades, had been thrown from a moving vehicle into a crowd.
Saitoti says Kenyan authorities
suspect sympathizers with Somalia's al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militia are behind the attack.
The group has been linked to a string of attacks on Kenyan soil after Kenya sent troops into Somalia in October.
Kenya was worried that instability from Somalia's 21-year-old civil war was spilling across the two countries' shared border.
EUROPE
TIRANA, Albania — An Albanian court on Monday sentenced 19 people to prison for a series of explosions at an munition disposal factory that killed 26 people, but angry relatives of the victims insisted the punishments were far too lenient and that top government officials have avoided justice.
19 punished for deadly explosions
Some 300 more people were injured and 5,500 nearby homes damaged or destroyed in the explosions on March 15, 2008, at the disposal factory in Gerdec, near Tirana, the capital. The blasts sent shrapnel
and shell fragments raining down on homes and vehicles, and houses more than a mile away were damaged by the blast.
The Tirana court issued the guilty verdicts for 19 defendants, sentencing them to between one and 18 years on charges of gross mismanagement and related offenses, while nine others were cleared. Murder charges initially brought against them were dropped.
Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment for three of the defendants.
RESEARCH
Professor finds large flea fossils in Mongolia
MARSHALL SCHMIDT
mschmidt@kansan.com
Discovering fleas more than an inch long might make most people's skin crawl, but that's not the case for Dr. Michael Engel, professor of entomology at the University. Engel recently published research detailing the discovery of 165 million-year-old flea fossil records found in Mongolia.
Previous fossils suggested fleas developed on bird and animal hosts around 45 million years, but this recent finding implies these large flea ancestors originally lived on dinosaurs. However, proving this concept proves to be more difficult.
"The probability of finding such a flea on a host is astronomically low," Enkel said.
While the impact of studying such ancient insects may seem small, Engel said insects' effects on mankind are huge, especially in regards to medicine, pollination and food production. According to Engel, nearly one third of the food we eat requires pollination via insects. Since every third bite of food humans take relies on insect pollination, Engel said understanding insect development can guide ecology policy, especially
with respect to the effects of climate change on insects.
"We can have a fundamental understanding of a group of organisms that affect our existence, upon which we are dependent," Engel said.
Caroline Chaboo, assistant professor of entomology, said insects and plants developed at a similar time more than 400 million years ago.
"These two groups have shaped how the world looks, past and present." Chaboo said. "It's hard for people to appreciate just how many species of insects there are in the world."
Steve Davis, a graduate student from Gaithersburg, Maryland, is working toward his Ph.D under Engel. Davis is currently researching the evolutionary development of weevils, which are beetles that feed off nuts, grains and fruits. Davis's research is applicable in disease transmission, agriculture, bioengineering and horticulture.
Chaboo said that of the 1.2 million species of animals identified, 925,000 are insects. She estimates that there are actually between five and eight million species of insects in the world.
"Conducting entomological research, just as in any other field of biological, scientific, or academic
As for Engel's next step in research, he is not expecting to find any similar flea fossil specimens anytime soon, due to the rarity of such a find. Instead, he has recently dug in India for insects preserved in amber deposits, similar to the mosquitos used to clone dinosaurs in the movie "Jurassic Park."
1 inch
CONTRIBUTED BY
MICHAEL ENGEL
research, is a never-ending process of discovery and learning of the natural world" Davis said.
"Looking at what has happened and what is happening to insects greatly informs us about the functioning, health and future about the planet which sustains us," Engel said.
Edited by Bre Roach
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A former University professor of chemistry and Nobel Prize winner died of complications with Parkinson's Disease on Saturday at the age of 84 in Corona del Mar. Calif.
He was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995 for his research in ozone layer formation and depletion.
F. Sherwood Rowland, a professor at the University of California Irvine at the time of his death, taught at Kansas between 1956 and 1964.
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Former professor and Nobel Prize winner dies
Rowland spent his time at UC Irvine
COLLEGE PARK, Mo
of Manila honor
— Laura Sather
According to the Los Angeles Times, Rowland is survived by his wife, two children and two grandchildren.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — A University
researching radioactive processes in chemistry, and in the 1970s, he found that CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbon gases, which could be found in spray bottles, weren't as harmless as scientists had previously thought they were — a discovery that helped him win the Nobel Prize. He found that the gases stayed in the atmosphere and caused harm to the earth. Scientists now say that CFCs contribute to the "Greenhouse Effect," which includes global warming.
Honor student threatens killing spree on website
NATIONAL
Song
student who warned on websites he was going to "kill enough people to make it national news" was arrested after several people arraged the three
reported the threat
to police, perhaps thwarting a campus rampage apparently planned for Monday.
Song, a 19-year-old sophomore, was shaking and crying when he was taken into custody, campus police chief David Mitchell said.
While the threat was dismissed by some online as harmless, a former student who used to work with campus police took it seriously and first called authorities Saturday night. By Sunday, authorities had set up surveillance on Alexander Song and arrested him on campus.
authorities said.
Song was not armed at the time of his arrest
Associated Press
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