KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / MONDAY, JANUARY 31, 2011 / NEWS
3A
POLITICS
Carter comments on Mubarak's fate
PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter, who brokered a peace accord between Israel and Egypt in 1978, on Sunday called the political unrest and rioting in Egypt earth-shaking and said that President Hosni Mubarak probably will have to step down.
Carter told a Sunday school class that he teaches that the unrest is "the most profound situation in the Middle East" since he left office in 1981. He said he thinks the unrest will ease in the next week, but his "guess is Mubarak will have to leave."
woman confirmed them.
"The United States wants Mubarak to stay in power, but the people have decided," Carter said.
The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported Carter's remarks made at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains and his spokes-
Mubarak was vice president at the time and became president in 1981 when Sadat was assassinated by opponents of the agreement.
Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin together for the peace accord signed in Washington, D.C. Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the treaty.
Carter said that as Mubarak's 30-year rule has continued, the Egyptian leader has become more politically corrupt." He has perpetuated himself in office," Carter said.
STATE
To avoid fines, texters should put away phones
BY LAURA
NIGHTENGALE
Inightengale@kansan.com
With service providers AT&T and Verizon, unlimited text messaging features cost about $20 per month. But now, under Kansas State Law, just one of those messages could cost up to $133 in fines and court costs if sent while users are driving.
The Kansas Texting Law took effect Jan. 1, allowing officers to issue citations for texting and driving. The law extends to all wireless communication except phone calls, including BlackBerry messaging and e-mailing.
Lawrence Police Sergeant Matt Sarna says that while officers have already issued citations this year and will continue to ticket under the new law, punishing texters will not become a priority.
"It's not something that we're going to go after hard," Sarna said.
If an officer notices that a driver is distracted and using a wireless device, the officer will
pull the driver over, said Sarna.
Operating a wireless device while driving is now a primary offense in Kansas, meaning violators can be pulled over just for using their phones. Since making and receiving phone calls is still legal, officers must distinguish between users who are sending messages and those who are simply dialing a phone number.
"It's pretty easy to tell when they're at a stop light and someone's looking down and texting." Sarna said. "If there's any doubt at all, they're not going to pull them over."
A study released in September by the Highway Loss Data Institute indicated that other states that have enacted similar bans experienced no improvement in frequency of collisions.
Despite criticism of such laws, police are optimistic it will help people to be more aware of situations in which texting can be dangerous.
"Hopefully it'll be someone decides not to text until they're home, and it'll save somebody's life," Sarna sa
Edited by Amanda Sorell
ALCOHOL(CONTINUED FROM 1A)
BY CHRIS HONG chong@kansan.com
After Robert Decker's freshman year in 2007, he developed an appreciation for high-quality beer. The only problem was that Decker, a graduate student from Stillwater, Okla., could not legally buy alcohol. Although Decker's problem was common among younger students, his solution was a bit unorthodox: he began brewing the beer himself.
"It was a means for me to sort of start exploring the world of beer with a hands-on approach," Decker said. The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) is an organization where homebrewers connect through all things beer. The AHA currently has 24,000 members,
Homebrewing Facts
- Homebrewing is legal in all states except Alabama and Mississippi. Sale of homebrew is prohibited.
- Lawrence Brewers Guild (www.lawrencebrewers.org) meets the 2nd Thursday of every month at 7PM at Unitarian Fellowship of Lawrence,1263 N. 1100 Road. Annual dues are $16.
Justice on campus
- Ale-and-Vino (http://www.ale-n-vino.com/), Topeka, and Bacchus & Barleycorn (http://www.bacchus-barleycorn.com/), Shawnee, both sell brewing kits and supplies.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor exits the Dole Institute of Politics after meeting with law students of KU, Washburn and high school students from the surrounding area on Friday. During the forum, Sotomayor discussed her experience during her time at the Yale School of Law, which she graduated from in 1979, and what it is like to sit on the nation's highest court since she was appointed in 2009 by President Obama.
ard Ting/KANSAN
CRIME
Five Ivy League students charged in drug bust
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK - They were students who juggled an elite education with criminal extracurriculars, dealing an array of drugs from Ivy League dorm rooms and frat houses, prosecutors say.
But beneath the surface of academic success, some of the Columbia University students charged in a campus drug takedown struggled with substance abuse, their lawyers say. Attorneys for two of the five students plan to ask a court to prescribe treatment instead of prison
With the bid for what's known as "diversion" to treatment, the Columbia bust "is probably the case that's going to cause light to be shed on what these new laws mean: When diversion is appropriate, and what the Legislature intended when it cut back so drastically the Rockefeller laws," said Marc Agnifilo, who represents one of the students, Christopher Coles.
one of the most high-profile tests so far a recent overhaul of New York's once-notoriously stringent drug laws.
The outcome will be watched closely by opponents and proponents of 2009 changes to mitigate what were known as the Rockefeller drug laws.
Coles and fellow students Harrison David, Adam Klein, Jose Perez and Michael Wymbs were arrested in December, have pleaded not guilty and are due back in court in March. Authorities called the arrests one of the largest drug takedowns at a New York City college in recent memory, and the prestigious setting made the case a media magnet.
Each student made some of the 31 sales in which an undercover officer bought about $11,000 worth
of marijuana, cocaine, LSD, Ecstasy and prescription stimulants over five months, authorities said. Drugs, paraphernalia and more than $6,600 in cash were found in the students' rooms, according to the office of special narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan.
Prosecutors have indicated they're likely to add to the charges, but at least for now, only David faces mandatory prison time if convicted.
The 2009 revisions took away some mandatory minimum terms — after the harshest terms were eliminated in 2004 — and let hundreds of nonviolent drug offenders seek to shorten their sentences.
Coles and Wymbs hope a judge will use that discretion to channel their cases to a special drug court, their lawyers said. Drug court defendants generally undergo a year or more of treatment and may end up with their charges dismissed or reduced to misdemeanors.
The latest changes also gave judges more latitude to send nonviolent offenders to treatment programs or other alternatives to prison, on the premise that addressing addictions would do more to change some offenders' criminal behavior than would lock them up.
anthropology and political science major involved in a campus effort to combat sexual violence, Coles told police he sold drugs to pay tuition, prosecutors said.
Coles, 20, is charged with selling marijuana and pairing in some amphetamine sales with Perez. An
But Coles' lawyer said the student was in the throes of a roughly $70-a-day marijuana habit. It had become so problematic that his father had called Columbia to express concern, Agnifilo said; a university spokesman declined to comment.
Wymbs, charged with selling LSD and Ecstasy, also has "a demonstrable problem with some substances," said his lawyer, Michael Bachner, declining to be more specific.