Page 2 The Behrend Beacon Pittsburgh passengers' heroics may have curbed tragedy Firefighters look upon the wreckage of the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 which crashed near the plane had been taken over by Somerset, PA on Tuesday. Goverment officials speculate that this plane was headed for Washington three Middle Eastern men wear- D.C. while under the control of terrorists. Bush, Putin seek to set aside differences, focus on common foe by Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker The Washington Post President Vladimir Putin spoke twice with President Bush on Wednesday as the two sought to put aside recent policy disputes and forge a new relationship built on a joint battle against terrorists responsible for Tuesday's devastating attacks on the United States. Putin offered two planeloads of medicine and supplies as well as 70 rescue workers, and promised to share any intelligence information gathered about the origins of the airborne as saults on landmark buildings in New York and Washington. In deference to the U.S. tragedy, Putin canceled a military exercise simulating warfare with the United States and ordered a nationwide moment of silence Thurs day. Russia is likely to welcome, and even join, any military action against the militant Taliban regime in Af ghanistan, which has been harboring accused terrorist Osama bin Laden. In televised comments Wednesday night. Putin blamed bin Laden and his asso ciates for helping Chechen rebels who have been waging a war of indepen dence inside Russia for most of the past seven years and were blamed for I:i 3 :I ii Cl l l hill 1 scheduled for students who were closely affected by Tuesday's events These meetings were conducted more personally and confidentially than Wednesday's meetings. CIRT also offered sessions for resident advisors, giving them advice on how to handle the situation and gaining feedback from the reactions the RAs were observing in students. Daley said team will meet again Friday morning to decide the next steps and to review what has taken place so far. Since Tuesday the team members have been meeting mainly in small numbers and haven't assembled as a whole. At Friday's meeting CIRT will decide what the plan will be for next week. Daley would like to hold meetings with faculty and staff, offering advice on how to assist students. Future meetings with RAs may also be planned. More emails, posters, and in-class announcements may also be organized to keep students informed of the teams' resources and offerings. "This is just an incredible act that's just going to keep unfolding," Daley said. "Therefore, we will keep going as long as we are needed. a series of 1999 apartment bombings centered in Moscow. "We have reason to believe that bin Laden's people are connected with the events currently taking place in our ... Chechnya, - said Putin. "We know his people are present there. Our Ameri- "So we have a common foe, the common foe being international terrorism." can partners cannot but be concerned about this circumstance. So we have a common foe, the common foe being international terrorism." Putin dispatched his senior minis ters to emphasize to an international audience the point of common struggle. "We should learn together the lessons of the tragedy in the United States." said Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. "We are both victims already, both the United States and Russia; what we need is closer ties and efforts in fight ing terrorism," Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told CNN. Security Nobody needs to be suffering silently." Ken Miller, director of student affairs and also a member of CIRT, stressed that the team was formed with a more localized tragedy in mind. "We were thinking more of a student or faculty death" when we decided to create this team, Miller said. "We wanted to have a team in place so there wasn't a lot of scrambling should a situation arise," Miller explained. "We needed to have a specific game plan and idea of who would do what." Miller enumerated three main concerns CIRT has kept its focus on. Initially, the team wanted to assist students whose friends and family were directly impacted by the crisis, especially those connected to New York City. Second, CIRT wanted to provide support for the community. RAs were asked to look for students who seemed more withdrawn than normal. Faculty were to keep an eye out for students not attending classes. "We want students to know they don't have to be alone." Finally, CIRT is now watching out %SPECIAL Itte 's, 'Ac:‘ n „ A , TrAtril Council chief Vladimir Rushailo con sulted with his U.S. counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, about "a united international front in the war on ter rorism." For one day, at least, both sides were speaking from the same script. "We -Russian President Vladimir Putin both face a common enemy, the en emy of international terrorism, and it's important that the international com munity as a whole unite against it," U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said after meeting with the foreign minister. The calamitous events on American territory might provide an opening for Russia to redefine its relationship with the United States. The Kremlin has tried for some time to shift the inter national dialogue away from divisive issues such as missile defense and Russian abuses in Chechnya to the global threat of Islamic terrorism. for an abusive mentality toward reports of problems at other international students. Though locations, including University Park. Daley, Miller, and Bill Donahue, "We want students to know you The campus ministries held an ecumenical prayer service in Reed 114 at noon on Tuesday. The ministries have since held several more, smaller services and a large ceremony is being planned for next Wednesday, Sept. 19. manager of Police and Safety can't generalize just because Services, all have heard of no someone is from or looks like they specific incidents of harassment, it are from another country," Miller is still a concern. There have been said. "It is a scary time for everyone, Friday, September 14, 2001 by Charles Lane The Washington Post As United Airlines Flight 93 entered its last desperate mo ments aloft, there was terror and violence on board - but also hero- Minutes before the giant air liner smashed into a field south east of Pittsburgh, passenger Jer emy Glick used a cell phone to call his wife at home in New Jer sey and told her that he and sev eral other people on board had come up with a plan to resist the terrorists who had hijacked the plane, according to Glick's brother-in-law, Douglas Hurwitz. "They were going to stop who ever it was from doing what whatever it was they'd planned," Hurwitt said. "He knew that stop ping them was going to end all of their lives. But that was my brother-in-law. He was a take- charge guy." Anticipating his own death, Glick, who celebrated his 31st birthday on Sept. 3, told his wife, Lyzbeth, that he hoped she would have a good life and would take care of their three-month old baby girl, Hurwitt said. Glick explained to his wife that Russia has justified its campaign of repression in Chechnya as a necessary response to acts of domestic terrorism it blamed on Chechen rebels. Now, Russian officials say, Americans should sympathize more with Russia's determination to bring Chechnya to heel. They have been equally quick to note that Bush's proposed nuclear shield would have done nothing to stop the hijacked planes that plowed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Vershbow, however, stressed that the newfound togetherness on terror ism would not change Washington's concerns about Russian brutality in Chechnya. "There is a terrorist dimen sion to the Chechnya conflict," he said, "but we also have to say that the Russian approach to solving that con flict is leading them down the wrong path." Neither side provided many details about the Bush and Putin telephone calls. The White House said the first one lasted about five minutes and the second about seven minutes. A Krem lin spokesman said the leaders dis cussed concrete plans for mutual ac tion against terrorism. One thing Russia might be able to provide Washington is information. ing red headbands. The terrorists, wielding knives and brandishing a red box they claimed contained a bomb, ordered the passengers, pilots and flight attendants to ward the rear of the plane, then took over the cockpit. The story of Glick's words adds to the account of passenger resis tance already given by another passenger's mother on NBC's To day show Wednesday morning. Alice Hoglan of California says her son, Mark Bingham, also spoke of a plan to tackle the hi jackers in a last-minute cell phone call to her. Flight 93 was the only one of four hijacked planes that did not smash into a major target on the ground, and some officials are al ready saying that the actions of people on board may have pre vented an even greater tragedy. Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, the ranking Democrat on the congressional defense appro priations committee, said at the crash site that he believes a struggle took place in the plane's cockpit and that the plane was headed for a significant target in Washington, D.C. "There had to have been a struggle and someone heroically kept the plane from heading to Washington," he said. No country has more experience fight ing in Afghanistan than Russia, which as part of the Soviet Union lost a di sastrous war there in the 1980 s that helped give rise to bin Laden. Russian experts agreed that bin Laden was the most likely suspect as a prime organizer of Tuesday's at tacks. But they differed on whether factions within the Talihan are will ing to hand him over to the United States. "Inside the Taliban, leaders differ over whether bin Laden should be ex tradited so that the Taliban can achieve the world recognition it needs in or der for the regime to survive," said Yevgeny Pakhomov, a Russian jour nalist who specializes in the region. Vyacheslav Belokrenitsky, chair man of the department of the Near and Middle East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said, "The radical Islamic Arabs in Afghanistan, who include bin Laden, are not only guests but partly masters of the situation in the coun try, which makes it very difficult for the Taliban leaders to maneuver." According to a report by the Monterey Institute of International Studies, bin Laden has relied on ties throughout the former Soviet Union to finance his movement and attempt to acquire weapons of mass destruc tion. but just imagine not being from this country and being far from home right now." Donahue said while Police and Safety haven't heard of any problems on campus with harassment, they are being sensitive to hate crimes. He said he hasn't had to add on any extra staff at this point, but it is an option. He has also been in continuous contact with University Park Police Services for advice and protocol. Daley said she is concerned that students may become more Intolerant this weekend if alcohol use comes into play. Donahue said he has taken that into consideration, and that he has already been adding extra staff on the weekends due to the nice weather and the events being scheduled. The Office of Student Affairs took the responsibility of fielding calls from concerned parents. Miller said many just wanted to get messages to their children that they were okay. Many others were questioning whether classes had been canceled on Tuesday. Also, he received several calls from parents wishing to get their children from the Child Care Center early. Robert Wynne, editor-in-chief behrcolls@aol.com Top firefighters are among the dead by William Murphy and Elizabeth Moore Newsday New York City's fire de partment apparently lost some of the best of its ranks when the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed Tues day morning after being rammed by two planes. More than 300 firefighters were missing, but Mayor Rudolph Giuliani confirmed only the deaths of some of his top commanders: •William Feehan of Queens, the first deputy fire commissioner, and the sec ond-in-command to Fire Commissioner Tom Von Essen. •Peter J. Ganci Jr., the chief of department and its highest ranking uniformed officer. •The Rev. Mychal Judge, a Catholic chaplain who often presides at funeral masses for firefighters. •Capt. Raymond Downey of Deer Park, N.Y., a well known expert on search and rescue who led the city's team to help Oklahoma City after its federal building was bombed in 1995. The extent of the losses were staggering. Von Essen said still missing were all members of the department's five elite rescue units who were working Tuesday. The number of dead firefighters will be hard to establish im mediately, the sources said, because an unknown number who were getting off work at 9 a.m. stayed on and rode out with the day shift to help. James Boyle, former head of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, said his son, Michael, was among the missing. Michael had been sched uled to get off the night tour, Boyle said, but stayed on. Boyle said he found out when he got to his son's firehouse and saw his son's car outside and his civilian clothes in his locker. Miller said initially the Office of Student Affairs was considering pulling the names of all the students from New York City and assisting them. However, he soon realized that more and more people would be affected because so many members of the Behrend community were connected to people in New York City. "The world is shrinking. We are more connected than we think we are." Miller said Chris Rizzo, director of student activities, was to meet with several campus organizations Thursday night to help organize disaster relief efforts, fund raising, and blood donations on campus. The Campus Ministries have also united to hold several ecumenical services on campus, said Kathy Coleman, interim coordinator of the Protestant campus ministry. On Tuesday a large but informal prayer session was held in Reed during lunchtime. On Wednesday two more structured prayer services were held. And next Wednesday, September 19, a large evening service is being planned, though specific details were not available at press time.
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