BEHREND BEACON 5 Local National News September 24, 2010 www.thebehrendbeacon.com 1. French workers on strike on pension reform Tens of thousands of workers in France are on strike in a second large event mirroring another large demonstration earlier this month. The trade unions are upset about an unpopular pension reform currently circulating in the upper house of France's parliament. Protestors are hoping this second strike will pres sure President Nicolas Sarkozy to overturn the pension reform, which will raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. LOCAL NEWS Erie man jailed over rape, burglary charges Police have charged a man in relation to crimes commit ted on the East Side of Erie. 24-year-old DeAngelo J. Troop of Erie allegedly raped a woman in her home early Wed r 00:y morning, accord , ing to,: Trool* , is th Erie County prison on a $lOO,OOO bond. He is charged with felony charges of rape and burglary. FACT OF THE WEEK •''.° I Did You Know? Barbie's full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts tvivtv hlog.tivebytivedigital corn Gannon University New programs made in science, math CHRISTINE PEFFER staff writer, Gannon Knight Gannon University is con tinuing to provide its students with new opportunities by de veloping three new programs in the math and science de partments that will be offered in the coming months. Dean of the College of En gineering and Business Melanie Hatch, Ph.D., has pi oneered the way for the addi tion of the new biomedical engineering program. Dr. Hatch said that biomedical is among the fastest growing areas of engineering, and Gannon is the only school in the area that offers it. The main focus of biomed ical engineering is biome chanics. This focus will require the addition of a new laboratory in Zurn Science Center, which has already re ceived some funding. The lab will include new 3-D technol ogy such as proalthedP Bodo and sumidal imildloWes Wl* as programs that will allow students to measure muscle functionality and loss. Approval for the program by the state is still pending. Once approved, the major Colombian troops kill senior rebel leader The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) lost their senior leader, Jorge Briceno Suarez, said the Colombian military, in a decisive airstrike. "The symbol of terrorism in Colombia has fallen," said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos from a United Nations General Assembly in New York. Suarez, also known as Mono Jojoy, was allegedly the second-in-command in a group of ten top commanders of the Farc. Ahmedinejad U.N. speech causes uproar Flickr Creative Commons / simononly Ahmedinejad's speech at the UN caused 32 nations, including the U.S., to walk out in protest. Dr. Chalks Coalfield acts as the patient of a sleep study. Pic tured also: students Lauren Bafik and Ana Barajas. will require some of the core engineering courses in addi tion to 12 credit hours of biol ogy The second new addition is a certification in polysoMnography being of fered by the resrphstory care PhinISEIL Polysomnography is the graphic portrayal of sleep that is used to study sleep dis orders. Charles Cornfield, Ph.D., and Robert Tarkowski, *Ph.D., were two of the main World News Campus Connection A brief look at what's u contributors responsible for getting the program ap proved this fall in order for it to be offered in the spring. "We are working toward advances in the health sci ence department that would be a good fit for Gannon Uni versity," Tarkowski said. Additions are also taking place in the mathematics de partment, where the actuarial science track has been added to the math major. 3. Pakistani scientists sentenced to 86 years of prison Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui, known as "Lady Qaeda" in the media, has been sentenced to 86 years in prison for trying to murder US officers in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, where her conviction has been very publicly criticized, hundreds of Pakistanis protested the arrest, claiming that Siddiqui is not only innocent but was mistreated in US detention. Delegates from the United States and all EU countries, among oth ers, walked out in protest of a speech made at the UN by Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Speaking during the first day of a week-long UN diplomatic con vention in New York, Ahmadinejad offended many delegates with comments on September 11. Largely, he blamed the United States government for orchestrat ing the attacks. He offered three possibilities for how and why the U.S. Government was responsible. First, he said that a "powerful and complex terrorist group" had penetrated the government and masterminded the attack. Secondly, he said that U.S. offi cials used the attack to improve the country's economy and to save Zionist groups in the Middle East. He said the majority of American people and administrators sup ported this view. on the campuses of Erie's other colleges Mercyhurst University Students describe Police altercations While it goes against the policy of Mercy hurst College's administration and the Office of Police & Safety to release information re garding confrontations between students and the police, stories of these altercations are easy to come by, as the apartments on cam pus are filled with ready witnesses. In the past, there have been multiple occasions where Police & Safety officers have dealt with students hiding firearms in their apartments, and one occasion where officers restrained a violent student only to find a firearm in the same room. Despite your opinion regarding the officers that walked into your apartment to close down the underage party you were hosting, you have likely felt comfortable knowing your hometown police officers were armed. If you are from Erie or Cleveland, the neces sity of an armed police force is all too clear. Police & Safety officers are more than simply the enforcers of Residence Life's rules, and to say such is to discount the vast majority of their jobs here on campus. The Erie Police Department's response time to Mercyhurst Campus has been reported in The Merciad as five minutes. Less than two weeks ago, when emergency services were called to a fight on Lewis Avenue, a second call needed to be made, and another ambulance sent out, as confusion between dispatch and the ambu lance caused the first to turn around when it arrived at Briggs Avenue, and leave an in- "When that news broke it was car ried widely by the private networks ... everyone condemned the sen tence," said Kamal Hyder, who re ports for Al Jazeera in Islamabad. "She made it explicit, through her own words and her conduct, her in tention to kill Americans, to cause `death to Americans, — wrote her Siddiqui's prosecutors. Officials believe that she is di rectly related to al-Qaida, having married an operative who is report edly connected to the attacks on 9/11. By this point, 32 countries had walked out of the room in protest. The United States delegates were joined by all 27 European Union countries as well as delegates from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Costa Rica. EVAN KOSER tufnal /annul eriltOf Despite the walk-out, Ahmedine jad continued with a third reason: that the attack was the handiwork of a true terrorist organization, but that the United States Government had "supported and took advan tage of the situation." Ahmedinejad also said that an in dependent fact-finding U.N. team should be formed to probe the at tacks. He warned against the at tacks becoming an issue similar to the Holocaust, in that "expressing opinion about it won't be banned." Mark Kornblau, spokesman of the U.S. Mission to the U.N., said that Ahmedinejad had "yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable," according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. staff writer, Mercyhurst Merciad NW g .2' DEVIN RUIC jured individual without mediCal attention for a longer period of time. There were two identifiable assailants who recently attacked a student. The two attack ers are described as large, strong males. At the time of the attack, only one Police & Safety officer responded, armed with a grand total of two items - pepper spray and a night stick. Had the attackers turned their attention to the officer responding to the fight, the sit uation could have become even more danger ous for the officer and the victim. However, if the officer had been able to re spond with a Taser, the officer would have been entering the situation with the upper hand. Taser International's website notes that the newest generation Taser shoots three sets of prongs and is entirely safe for use on bel ligerent suspects. While there have been sev eral deaths circumstantially related to the use of Tasers, multiple studies have been con ducted that dispel such worries. In a study published by Academic Emergency Medicine, sheep injected with methamphetamines, which negatively affect the cardiovascular system, showed no life-threatening cardio vascular symptoms after being Tased. The assailants vastly outnumbered their prey, and the Police & Safety officer who re sponded could have fallen victim to the same cowards who decided to gang up and attack the victim. The blood of any student or officer harmed while the officers remain unarmed will be on the hands of the administration of Mercyhurst College. The administration is simply lucky that on this occasion, there was not more. JOINING THE BEACON The Behrend Beacon offers far more opportunities than just giving clips to prospective journalists. We employ over 40 students from various ma jors and backgrounds. If you are a physics major and want to cover physics, let us know, and you can cover news in which you're inter ested on our Science page. 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