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Iraqi cabinet approves timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal
BAGHDAD – On Nov. 16, Iraq’s cabinet approved a security pact that sets a timetable for the nearly complete withdrawal of American forces within three years, but the agreement faces an uncertain outlook in Iraq’s parliament.
The largest Sunni party in Iraq, the Iraqi Islamic Party, wants the agreement to go to a nationwide referendum. Its affiliated parties complain that their efforts to amend the plan to require the release of detainees and to provide compensation for war victims were ignored by lawmakers who shaped the pact.
Followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, meanwhile, view the agreement as an affirmation of the American occupation and oppose it outright.
Closing Guantanamo faces hurdle: Yemeni detainees
SANAA, Yemen – President-elect Barack Obama’s pledge to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, faces a major obstacle: Yemen.
The Bush administration has transferred hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners to the custody of their home countries, but it’s been unable to win assurances from Yemen – whose approximately 100 prisoners are the largest group still jailed at Guantanamo – that the men, if they’re returned, won’t pose a threat to the United States.
By striking similar deals with nations such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, Bush administration officials have dramatically reduced Guantanamo’s population over the past three years.
Yemen, however, which has failed to stop homegrown militants from staging major attacks on American targets in the past decade, says it can’t continue to hold prisoners without charges.
Yemeni officials say they’re ready to try many of the men and imprison those who are convicted, but they complain that U.S. officials refuse to share evidence with them.
National
Survey reveals big salaries for college presidents
CHICAGO – A dozen presidents of private colleges earned more than $1 million in compensation during the 2006-07 year, including Northwestern University chief Henry Bienen, who was the second-highest paid college executive in the nation. The annual survey of presidential pay released Monday, Nov. 17 by The Chronicle of Higher Education found that 89 private college presidents took home more than $500,000 in annual compensation, more than double the number who did five years earlier.
News of the increase comes amid concerns that the economic downturn and skyrocketing tuition costs could put a college diploma further out of reach for many prospective students.
*Arbiter note: According to the 2008-2009 budget, President Bob Kustra earns $299,410 annually.*
All sides in gay marriage fight in California want state high court to step in
SAN JOSE, Calif. – There is scant common ground when it comes to Proposition 8, but all sides in the fight over the future of gay marriage in California now seem to agree on one thing – the state Supreme Court needs to step in and resolve a series of legal challenges that are growing by the day.
On Monday, Nov. 17, California Attorney General Jerry Brown formally jumped into the legal fray, urging the Supreme Court to move swiftly to decide the legality of Proposition 8. In court briefs, Brown also argued it would be a mistake for the high court to put the same-sex marriage ban on hold while the legal challenges unfold because of the “uncertainty” it would generate across California.
In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, Brown steered clear of taking a position on the validity of the voter-approved ballot measure, which restored California’s ban on gay marriages. Instead, the attorney general argued the justices must agree to review legal challenges to Proposition 8 to “provide certainty and finality in this matter.”
Proposition 8 supporters agreed with the attorney general, filing a brief Monday that likewise encouraged the Supreme Court to tackle lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the gay marriage ban.
“The people have a right to know as quickly as possible the status and definition of marriage under the California Constitution,” Prop 8 lawyers wrote in court papers.
There is no timetable for the Supreme Court to act.
Local/BSU
Alumna leads class in wind energy project
Last year, Boise State University alumna Katie Cutler asked her Gifted Program students at Jerome Middle School to come up with a service project. They brainstormed everything from organizing a book drive to candy striping, but the final vote was for exploring wind energy.
On Wednesday, Nov. 12, Cutler’s students threw the switch on a wind turbine they helped install with the support of teachers and administrators, community members, state and federal agencies, a charitable foundation and growing national interest in renewable energy. It is a culmination of student work inside and outside the classroom, from researching to building functional models.
Humanitarian Geophysics Project selected for new Geoscientists without Borders Program
A team of scientists and students from Boise State University and their collaborators at Chiang Mai University in Thailand have been selected to participate in the first round of the brand new Geoscientists without Borders program.
Launched earlier this year by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists Foundation, the program’ aims to apply geophysical technology to the pressing needs of communities around the world. Boise State’s proposal, written by research scientist Lee Liberty, builds on existing connections to Chiang Mai University made by emeritus professor Spencer Wood and long-term work done by the university’s Center for the Geophysical Investigation of the Shallow Subsurface.
What The?
An attorney drops her briefs
A married female attorney had sexual relations with four
married men, after which her husband, also a lawyer, threatened to sue each of his wife’s lovers unless they paid him for his “emotional distress.”
The four, who had the encounters with the woman over a
six-month period, paid him a total of $144,000.
But a Texas grand jury says the couple was engaged in a scam of coercion and deception and indicted them for theft.
On second thought…
A man, serving a sentence for theft, escaped from the Frontenac prison in Kingston, Ontario, during the height of a blinding
snowstorm.
But the weather was so bad, he returned to the jail early the next morning and asked to be let back into his cell.
COMPILED BY ARBITER STAFF