THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2007
NEWS
5A
》SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
Photo media program to begin this spring
BY NINA LIBBY editor@kansan.com
The KU School of Fine Arts has announced the creation of a new major. Photo media, a major based on photography and digital media, will be available to students beginning in the spring semester.
Gregory Thomas, chairman of the department of design, said there had been a demand from students for a major in this area for some time.
"I was upset to learn that we were losing 11-12 students annually from the surrounding areas because we didn't offer a photography major."
Thomas said.
In an effort to accommodate the interest of students, Thomas and other faculty members structured the new curriculum in a way that encompassed a variety of courses that relate to photo media.
"We are going to have eight departments or areas of study in the photo media major. The only other department in art that has this many areas of study is design," Thomas said.
The eight departments will include classes such as visual literacy, photographic composition, digital media, computer imaging and
motion graphics. The new program will make the University one of the only Big 12 schools to offer a major
"We are predicting that the department will be popular. Photo media will focus not only on photography but also the program begins this January, the department will have plenty of facilities to accommodate the new photo media
essional market" Thomas said. Thomas said that when the pro-
"Photo media will focus not only on photography but also the professional market."
GREGORY THOMAS Department of design chairman
students. The Art and Design building will also undergo some renovation during the summer.
classrooms digital labs and photo studios." Thomas said. "We are looking to have enough credibility to eventually work with Epson and Nikon."
"In the summer, we will reconstruct dark rooms, make multimedia
To major in photo media, students must be accepted into the School of Fine Arts. Many required courses for photo media will correlate with the design curriculum.
"Any student who is a photo media major will be required to take fine arts prerequisites," design lecturer Luke Jordan said. "The new major will be a program that will require students to take all the courses a Design major would have to take"
Students can earn a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Fine Arts in
photo media. Tyler Waugh, Topeka junior, said he planned on starting the photo media program in January.
Thomas said he was excited about the new program.
"I am currently majoring in expanded media, which correlates with the photo media major," Waugh said. "To finalize my major will allow me to structure my schedule."
"We hope to receive good feedback and some financial support from alumni." Thomas said.
Edited by Elizabeth Cattell
WORLD
Anti-terrorist group halts imminent bomb attack in Germany
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BERLIN — Three militants from an Islamic group linked to al-Qaida were planning "imminen" bomb attacks against Americans in Germany when an elite anti-terrorist unit raided their small-town hideout after months of intense surveillance, officials said Wednesday.
The men — two German converts to Islam and a Turkish citizen who prosecutors said shared a "profound hatred of U.S. citizens"
— allegedly obtained military-style detonators and enough chemicals to make bombs more powerful than those that killed 191 commuters in Madrid in 2004 and 52 in London in 2005.
Frankfurt International Airport and the nearby U.S. Ramstein Air Base reportedly were the suspects' primary targets.
Prosecutors indicated police defused the danger earlier in the six-month investigation by stealthily substituting a harmless chemical for the raw bomb material amassed by the suspects. They said police moved in Tuesday when the alleged
plotters seemed ready to try to make bombs.
Coming less than a week before the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., it was the second consecutive day that European authorities announced they had thwarted a major attack. Danish officials said Tuesday they had broken up a bomb plot by arresting six Danish citizens and two other residents with links to senior al-Qaida terrorists.
Security experts said the two purported plots are a reminder that Muslim extremists are not driven just by anger at the United States and its policies.
Islamic radicals "treat the whole Western world as their enemy," said Tadeusz Wrobel, an analyst of military and security issues in Warsaw.
Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer who is an analyst at Chatham House, a London think tank, said the radical ideology embraced by Islamic militants outweighs national loyalty, noting that many of those arrested in alleged European terror plots in recent years grew up here.
"They're not Germans, Brits or French. They are radical Muslims living in these countries," he said.
Prosecutors said the three men arrested in Germany underwent training at camps in Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union and had formed a German cell of the al-Qaida-influenced group. Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is believed hiding in Pakistan.
An unidentified man, left, believed to be a terror suspect, is led away Wednesday at the German Federal Court in Karlsruhe, southern Germany. Authorities said they had arrested three suspected Islamic terrorists from a group with "profound hatred of U.S. citizens" for plotting imminent, massive bomb attacks on U.S. facilities in Germany.
Officials described the Islamic Jihad Union as a Sunni Muslim group based in Central Asia that is an offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an extremist organization with origins in that former Soviet state.
"This group distinguishes itself through its profound hatred of U.S. citizens," Joerg Ziercke, head of the Federal Crime Office, Germany's equivalent of the FBI, told reporters.
Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms said the three suspects intended to attack institutions and establishments frequented by Americans in Germany, including discos, pubs and airports. Her office said the plan was to set off car bombs.
"We were able to succeed in recognizing and preventing the most serious and massive bombings," Harms said at a news conference. She declined to name specific targets.
Germany's government had been increasingly worried about the danger of terror plots after attacks on its troops serving in Afghanistan, and security measures had been stepped up.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the FBI and Department of Homeland Security saw "no imminent threat to the U.S. domestically following these arrests."
"This shows that terrorist dangers, in our country as well, are not abstract but are real," Chancellor Angela Merkel said. She thanked security officials for foiling the attack and called the arrests a "very, very great success."
An unidentified man, center, believed to be a terror suspect, is led a helicopter by masked police. Wednesday at the German Federal Court in Karlsruhe, southern Germany.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said President Bush was pleased a potential attack was thwarted and expressed appreciation for the work of German authorities.
Germany's elite GSG-9 antiterrorist unit arrested two of the suspects at a vacation home in Oberschledorn, a town of some 900 people in central Germany, officials
said. The third suspect fled out a bathroom window but was caught about 300 yards away, they said.
The suspects were taken before a judge in closed sessions Wednesday at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlshuhe and ordered held pending trial.
Prosecutors said the three identified only as Fritz Martin G., 28; Adem Y., 28; and Daniel Martin S., 21 first came to the attention of police when one or more of them carried out surveillance of U.S. military facilities in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in late 2006.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Officials said that during the first part of this year, the men acquired 12 containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide solution, which can be combined with other material to make explosives — as did the four London suicide bombers who blew up three subway cars and a bus on July 7, 2005.
The arrests came a little over a year after two bombs fashioned from gas canisters failed to explode
on German commuter trains. Officials said that attack was motivated by anger over cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. Several suspects are on trial in Lebanon, and a Lebanese
man has been charged in Germany.
Additionally, three of the four suicide pilots involved in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the U.S. had lived and studied in Hamburg.
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