The World in Brief

Miers named for high court spot

Carolyn Smith

Badger Herald (U. Wisconsin)… Miers named for high court spot

Carolyn Smith

Badger Herald (U. Wisconsin)

(U-WIRE) – President George W. Bush announced his nomination of Harriet Miers for Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Monday.

Miers was nominated to fill the seat vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who resigned July 1, citing personal reasons for leaving the nation’s highest court.

Miers was the first woman hired at Dallas’s Locke, Purnell, Rain ‘ Harrell law firm, she was the first woman to be elected president of the State Bar of Texas and has represented major corporations such as Microsoft, Walt Disney Co. and SunGard Data Systems Inc.

Most recently, Miers served as counsel to the president. Bush appointed her to that position in February.

Those who oppose Miers’ nomination question her legal experience with the court system and say too little is known about her career and opinions on key issues.

Sectarian violence could pose threat to Iraq’s future

Alex Rodriguez

Chicago Tribune

BAGHDAD, Iraq – In the dead of night, bands of armed men in Iraqi commando uniforms stormed Baghdad’s Hurriyah neighborhood in late August, breaking down doors with sledgehammers and grenades.

If the family inside was Shiite, the gunmen moved on to another house, witnesses said. If the family was Sunni, the gunmen tore through the building, demolishing furniture and manhandling those inside. More than 70 young Sunni Arab men were whisked away.

The fate of 36 of them became known two days later, in a dry riverbed 110 miles southeast of Baghdad. All had been shot once in the head; some bore signs of torture and mutilation. Later at Baghdad’s city morgue, families gathered to collect the bodies.

A wave of sectarian violence has swept across Iraq in recent months, turning some Baghdad neighborhoods and Iraqi cities elsewhere into war zones and raising fears that the country is edging closer toward civil war.

The Aug. 24 raid in the Hurriyah neighborhood has been followed by a series of mass killings believed to be sectarian in nature, most of them targeting Iraq’s majority Shiite community.

Hispanics getting less aid for college, study finds

Dawn Nott

Daily Californian (UC-Berkeley)

(U-WIRE) BERKELEY, Calif. – Hispanic students were found to receive the lowest federal financial aid awards of any ethnic group, according to a recent report by Excelenciain Education, Inc. and the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

According to the report released in August, although more Hispanics nationally are receiving federal aid than they were previously, their average aid package is worth less than those awarded to students of other ethnicities.

Eighty percent of the Hispanic undergraduate population applied for financial aid in 2003-04, while only 63 percent actually received some form of aid. The report highlighted grants and loans, and did not include private sources.

The report showed that the average financial aid award for Hispanics in 2003-04 was $6,250, below the national average of $6,890.