Minnesota State University Reporter

Issue date: 2/12/08 Section: News Bits

MSU

• Student Financial Services will be holding sessions to assist students in completing financial aid applications for the upcoming school year. 

 Session Dates are Feb. 21, 28; March 3, 6, 20, 27; and April 3.

All sessions are from 4:30-6:00 pm in ACC 125



• Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner will discuss "Methamphetamine and the Plague of Addiction" 2 p.m. Wednesday in Ostrander Auditorium of Centennial Student Union.

Her presentation is the fifth annual College of Social & Behavioral Sciences Advisory Board Lecture. Students, faculty, staff and the public are invited to the free event.

 

• Memorial Library will hold a used book sale Friday and Saturday with special pricing on encyclopedias and other items.

On Friday, the sale will be from noon to 5 p.m., and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Used books will be $1. The event is open to students, faculty, staff and the public.

Free Parking will be available during sale hours in Green Lot 13.

Those who are purchasing for a non-profit organization should bring a purchase order including the tax-exempt number.

Those who have questions may Call Leslie Peterson at (507) 389-2290.

National

• A former police officer accused of killing his pregnant lover sobbed on the witness stand Monday that he accidentally struck her when she wouldn't let him out of her house.

"I didn't mean to hurt her," Bobby Cutts Jr. testified, clutching a handful of white tissues.

Cutts, 30, said he was at Jessie Davis' home to pick up his 21?2-year-old son, Blake, and was telling her to hurry. He started to leave after she didn't move more quickly to get Blake ready, he said, but she stopped him. He pointed his finger at her face, and she bit it, he testified.

Cutts tried to leave again, but Davis grabbed his arm and told him he couldn't, the suspect testified. He pulled his arm away and threw his elbow back, telling jurors that it landed in Davis' throat area and that she fell hard.

During four hours of testimony, Cutts also said he drove around with the body and later mulched his yard and went to work, trying to tell himself nothing was wrong.

Thousands searched for the 26-year-old Davis for more than a week, until Cutts led authorities to the body wrapped in a comforter in the park.

Cutts could receive the death penalty if convicted of killing Davis, who was nearly full term with a female fetus when she died last June.

Cutts said he performed CPR, then tried to use bleach to revive her; a large bleach stain was found in her room.

"She wasn't responding and I knew she was dead," Cutts testified.

Under questioning from his own attorney, Fernando Mack, Cutts said he didn't know why he failed to call police.

Cutts testified that he didn't want Blake to see his mother, so he put Davis' body in the bed of her truck and went to a friend's house while the boy slept.

Later, he said he drove around in a panic, not knowing what to do.

When asked by Barr why he didn't call 911 after he struck Davis, Cutts said that had he tried, using Davis' cell phone, but that he couldn't get the phone to work.



• Living to 100 is easier than you might think.

Surprising new research suggests that even people who develop heart disease or diabetes late in life have a decent shot at reaching the century mark.

"It has been generally assumed that living to 100 years of age was limited to those who had not developed chronic illness," said Dr. William Hall of the University of Rochester.

Hall has a theory for how these people could live to that age. In an editorial in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, where the study was published, he writes that it might be thanks to doctors who aggressively treat these older folks' health problems, rather than taking an "ageist" approach that assumes they wouldn't benefit.

World

• East Timor declared a state of emergency Tuesday after attacks on the country's top leaders in a failed coup left the president in "extremely serious" condition with gunshot wounds.

The assassination attempt Monday against President Jose Ramos-Horta and the failed attack on Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao - East Timor's the independence icons - thrust the desperately poor country into a fresh crisis amid fears of more unrest and political turmoil.

Surgeons operated on Ramos-Horta for three hours overnight to remove bullet fragments and repair his chest wounds, Dr. Len Notaros, the general manager of the Royal Darwin Hospital, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Tuesday.

"His condition remains extremely serious but by the same token, stable," Notaros said. "The next few days will be the telling point."

Ramos-Horta, who won the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent resistance to the decades-long Indonesian occupation, was shot in the chest and stomach by gunmen in two cars around dawn Monday, officials said.



• Virgin CEO Richard Branson offered Monday to set up an "environmental war room" to lead the world's efforts to find a fix for global warming.

The British billionaire, speaking at the start of a U.N. debate on climate change, said it would be run by a world figure in global warming and could serve as "a tool for the U.N." to ferret out good ideas and calculate each nation's costs.

"The 'war room' will be independent of politics," Branson said. "But in the end it will need the United Nations, governments and other organizations to help make sure implementation happens."

Branson outlined the idea at a press conference with U.N. General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim and actress Daryl Hannah, and then again at a luncheon for the delegates attending the two-day debate.

The need for developing nations and the world's cities to take over the lead on the fight against global warming was a common refrain among diplomats, mayors and business leaders - though they recognized it will take the inclusion of the United States and China, the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, to fix the problem.

"This is just as important as stopping nuclear proliferation. This is just as important as stopping terrorism," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.


From Associated Press, MSU press releases

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools