WEDNESDAY, JUNE4, 2003
NEWS IN BRIEF
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 15
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Amendment on its head," said Harvey Silverglate, a former Harvard law professor who co-founded the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Instead of designating places where students can speak, schools should be designating only places where they cannot, Silverglate said.
Some universities have agreed. Since November, West Virginia University has dropped its free speech zones after a legal challenge,and the University of Texas opened its entire Austin campus to demonstrations after a campus clash between abortion activists.
Silverglate's group sued Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania this year over a diversity policy that warns against "unconscious attitudes toward individuals which surface through the use of discriminatory semantics" and conduct or "attitude" that "annoys" others.
Reyes said administrators used intimidating tactics such as summoning campus police to supervise demonstrations and threatening administrative action against students who push the limits on speech.
UTEP Dean of Students William Schafer did not return repeated requests for comment. He told the El Paso Times in March that the university supported "the free exchange of information and expression."
lowa students arrested while protesting Phelps
DES MOINES, Iowa — Four people were arrested during an anti-homosexual protest at a high school graduation where a gay student was given a scholarship.
They were accused of throwing cream pies Saturday at the followers of a Kansas-based anti-gay pastor.
The members of the Rev. Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, demonstrated at Des Moines Lincoln High School's graduation at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. The church members were protesting because senior class president Julius Carter was awarded a college scholarship in honor of Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming college student who was tortured and killed in 1998.
The First Friday Breakfast Club, an Iowa association of gay men, conducted a counterprotest.
Police Maj. Russell Underwood said officers were on hand for both groups' safety.
Shortly before the graduation began, four people dressed in black approached Phelps' group and threw pies at them.
Police charged Timothy Bossenberg, 22, no address available; Sean Glynn, 20, of Des Moines; Sean Chilcoat, 19, of Des Moines; and Lacey Hanson, 19, of
Altoona, with disorderly conduct.
Black classical ballet legend Janet Collins dies at age of 86
FORT WORTH, Texas — Janet Collins, the first black prima ballerina to appear at the Metropolitan Opera and one of a few black women to become prominent in American classical ballet, died May 28. She was 86.
In 1951, Collins performed lead roles in Aida and Carmen, and danced in La Gioconda and Samson and Delilah at the Met in New York City. That was four years before Marian Anderson made her historic debut as the first black to sing a principal role at the Met.
In a 2000 interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Collins recalled she was not allowed to tour with the company during the offseason because she could not perform onstage with white dancers in the South.
Collins left the Met in 1954. During the 1950s, she toured with her own dance group throughout the United States and Canada and taught.
Collins also danced in films, including the 1943 musical Stormy Weather and 1946's The Thrill of Brazil.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1974 paid homage to Collins and Pearl Primus as pioneering black women in dance.
WORLD
Heat wave in India claims 160, raising death toll to nearly 800
HYDERABAD, India - Sunstroke and dehydration claimed another 160 lives in a southern Indian state, raising the death toll from a two-week heat wave to nearly 800, a relief official said.
Temperatures rose as high as 118.2 degrees Fahrenheit and meteorologists promised no relief from the heat wave for another two days in Andhra Pradesh state, the state's chief relief official, D.C. Roshaiah, said Saturday.
Hundreds of people were treated for dehydration and sunstroke, complaining of high fevers and vomiting at hospitals in 20 of 23 districts, Roshiaiah said. A total of 795 people have died in the heat wave so far, he said.
Last year, a heat wave reached 122 degrees and killed more than 1,000 people in the state, most of them elderly.
World Health Organization worried about Toronto SARS
TORONTO — Increasing SARS cases in Canada's largest city is worrying the World Health Organization, which discussed the possibility of re-imposing a travel advisory on Toronto, a representative said Tuesday.
Health officials have reported 62 proba
MED CENTER
University fires professor for espionage involvement
The Associated Press
LAWRENCE — A researcher involved in a conspiracy to steal research materials on Alzheimer's disease from the Cleveland Clinic has been fired by the University of Kansas.
Hiroaki Serizawa, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, pleaded guilty last week to making false statements to the FBI regarding the storage of the stolen genetic materials in the summer of 1999.
"He's off the payroll at the end of June," University of Kansas Medical Center spokesman Dennis McCulloch said.
Serizawa was sentenced to three years probation, 150 hours of community service and a $500 fine. He pleaded guilty last year to avoid economic espionage charges.
Serizawa admitted that he lied to FBI agents in Sept. 1999 about having recent contact with Takashi Okamoto, who was a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic at the time, and about the number of vials of genetic material he was storing at his lab for Okamoto.
The government alleges that Okamoto removed research samples from the clinic, brought them to Serizawa's lab for storage, and left several
hundred vials full of tap water in their place. Okamoto is charged with conspiracy, economic espionage and interstate shipment of stolen property. The Justice Department intends to seek his extradition from Japan.
Serizawa has been under "increased supervision" since 2001 and spends little time on campus, McCulloch said.
the time on camp he goes," he said. "He's basically doing little more than coming in and picking up his mail."
McCulloch said Serizawa has completed a research project since he was notified of his dismissal earlier this year.
"We have to emphasize there is no violation of research going on on this campus," McCulloch said. "There is no loss of integrity of our research. This was a personal situation between Mr. Serizawa and the other research in Cleveland. It has not and will not impact anything here."
On their Web site, Zapol and Laird say the case is an "unprecedented assault" on the free exchange of ideas and research materials by scientists.
David Zapol and Diana Laird, two professors at Stanford University, are seeking a pardon for Serizawa as well as raising funds to help the researcher pay his legal bills.
ble cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome in a new cluster of cases that became known after the initial outbreak in March and April was believed under control.
The second cluster of SARS cases landed Toronto back on a WHO list of SARS-affected cities or regions. The U.N. agency previously issued a travel advisory for Toronto, but rescinded it a week later after Canadian officials complained it was unwarranted and promised better screening of international travelers for SARS.
The biggest outbreak of SARS outside of Asia has killed 32 people in the Toronto area, including a 60-year-old man who died May 20 and had his case reported Monday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reinstated a travel alert for Toronto, informing travelers of a health concern there.
A new WHO travel advisory would devastate the city already reeling from the SARS outbreak, which has overwhelmed the health care system and hurt the vital convention and tourism industry.
U.S soldier killed on patrol in central Iraq near Balad
BAGHDAD, Iraq一A U.S. soldier was shot and killed while on patrol in central Iraq early Tuesday, a military spokesman said.
The shooting took place near the town of Balad, 55 miles north of the capital, said Maj. William Thurmond, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's V Corps.
Thurmond said he had no further details on the incident and that the soldier's name was being withheld pending notification of the family.
The area around Balad is under control of the 4th Infantry Division.
There has been a series of hit-and-run attacks on U.S. troops across the central region of the country since the end of ground combat almost two months ago. Several dozen soldiers have been killed or wounded.
The Associated Press