THE UNIVERSITY DARLY KANSAN
MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2009
NEWS
The running of the buffalo
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Weston White/KANSAN
Joe Howard (third from left), Colorado University senior, sprints down the final stretch with Ralphie V and other handlers before the start of the second half of the football game against Kansas. Ralphie leads the football team out on the field both at the start of the game and second half. Howard is in his third year as a Ralphie Handler and said when the students started chanting "Ralphie," it gave him a big adrenaline rush.
CRIME
Imprisoned priest claims innocence
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Robinson was sentenced to a mandatory term of 15 years to life in prison.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Roman Catholic priest imprisoned for killing a nun 29 years ago told a newspaper that he was innocent, but a prosecutor and the victim's nephew wondered why he was only making the claim now.
Lee Pahl, the nun's nephew, said he believed at the trial that Robinson was the killer and continues to believe it. He's also bothered that Robinson, who retired as a priest in 2004, has not been defrocked.
The Rev. Gerald Robinson, now 71, was convicted in 2006 for killing Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in 1980 by strangling her and stabbing her 31 times in a Toledo hospital chapel. Church historians have said it's the only documented case of a Catholic priest killing a nun.
"I didn't do this." Robinson told The Columbus Dispatch for Sunday editions. "I have no idea why anyone would do it".
"As a convicted murderer, he shouldn't be allowed to keep his title as a priest," Pahl said.
"For him now to come out and say he didn't do it — I would say to him. You missed your chance to say that when it counted," said Dean Mandros. "He didn't take the stand because he knew he couldn't answer the questions."
The lead prosecutor said Robinson should have made his claim in court.
Lawyers for the Ohio Innocence Project are continuing tests to determine whether DNA under Pahl's fingernails matches someone else. The DNA doesn't match Robinson, and it also didn't match the Rev. Jerome Swiatecki, the late priest whom Robinson's attorneys believed should have been
An 8-inch letter opener that was a gift to Robinson became the central piece of evidence that prosecutors used to tie him to the crime.
Robinson was charged with murder in 2004 after questioning by cold-case detectives.
INTERNATIONAL
Opposition party cries foul
Some accuse President Karzai of delaying U.N. report on election
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KABUL — Afghanistan's political opposition accused President Hamid Karzai on Sunday of delaying release of a U.N.-backed investigation into fraud in the August presidential balloting and pressuring election officials to declare him the winner.
International demands mounted for Karzai to agree to a runoff if the fraud probe shows that he failed to win a majority of votes in the Aug. 20 ballot.
A top U.S. official warned that decision on whether to send
thousands more American troops to battle Talibanled insurgents must wait until the Afghan election crisis is resolved and a credible government is installed in Kabul.
Preliminary results showed Karzai won the election with more than 54
The complaints panel finished its investigation last week. But the announcement of its findings has been repeatedly delayed because the separate, Karzai-influenced Independent Election Commission has questioned the panel's methodology and statistical formulas.
percent of the vote. However, if the Electoral Complaints Commission voids enough Karzai votes, the incumbent would be forced into a runoff against his chief challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
Abdullah's deputy campaign manager, Saleh Mohammad Registani, accused Karai of pressuring his supporters on the election commission to delay release of the fraud probe because they will show him below the 50 percent threshold to avoid a second round of voting.
Karzai campaign spokesman Waheed Omar said the president had done nothing to influence the election commission.
"Karzai is the main problem in this situation," Registani told The Associated Press. He said Karzai was insisting that the commission announce that he had won a clear majority — even after the fraud probe.
"There is no way we can influence them, and even if we can, we are not going to do it." Omar said.
"For the moment we are worried ... because it seems that not everybody is ready to accept the results."
BERNARD KOUCHNER French foreign minister
According to Afghan law, the complaints commission is the final arbiter on election challenges. However, members of the election commission have insisted that they have the authority to question or challenge methods used by the panel in investigating alleged fraud.
Karzai has insisted that results of
the fraud investigation be announced before he will agree to a runoff, and his aides have expressed confidence that the president's total will end up over 50 percent.
That has raised concern in Kabul that Karzai might refuse to accept
findings pointing to the need for a runoff, a move that would plunge this country into a political crisis at a time when Taliban strength is growing.
"For the moment we are worried ... because it seems that not everybody is ready to accept the results," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told reporters Sunday in Kabul. "They must accept the results."
Various formulas have been floated in Kabul to resolve the impasse, including a proposal that Abdullah would concede defeat and forego a runoff in return for a power-sharing agreement with Karzai.
Kouchner said Karzai and Abdullah should declare they would be willing to accept the findings of the complaints panel even before they are released because "we need a consensus"
However, the proposals all depend on Karzai accepting the fraud panel's findings even if they show him failing to win re-election outright.
and both sides "have to sacrifice."
"At the end of the day, a government is necessary," Kouchner said.
That point was underscored Sunday by President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Emanuel said the main issue facing Obama was not how many U.S. troops were fighting in Afghanistan "but whether, in fact, there's an Afghan partner."
Afghan Election Commission members work among the suspicious ballot boxes during the recounting process at the main election office in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Oct. 7. Election workers have begun recounting ballots from the disputed Aug. 20 presidential election, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai's top challenger Abdullah Abdulah has already expressed his deepest concerns about the alleged massive frauds of the country's presidential election.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In Sunday talk show interviews, Emanuel repeatedly expressed doubts about the Kabul government as a reliable partner for the U.S.
"There isn't a security force, an army, the type of services that are important for the Afghans to become true partners." Emanuel said. "It would be reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop level if, in fact, you haven't done a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there's an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that the U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing."
Kerry and Emanuel were on
Kerry, who visited Afghanistan over the weekend, said Obama should wait until the election process had become clearer before he decides whether to accept recommendations by his top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for tens of thousands more troops.
CNN'S "State of the Union" and CBS' "Face the Nation."
The U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan has already been troubled by a spike in combat deaths which has undermined public support in the United States and Western Europe. The specter of an Afghan government tainted by election fraud has raised questions abroad whether saving Afghanistan is worth the sacrifice.
A U.S. service member was killed Sunday by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, raising to at least 30 the number of U.S. troops killed this month in the Afghan war.
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