WEST

U. OF COLORADO TO REVIEW TENURE AFTER 9/11 FLAP

The University of Colorado yesterday ordered a review of its tenure system after one of its professors created a furor by likening the World Trade Center victims to Nazi bureaucrats.

The university’s governing Board of Regents voted to form a panel to examine the way the school awards tenure and the way professors are evaluated after they get it.

The university president, Elizabeth Hoffman, said some changes are likely at the conclusion of the review.

Tenure, which protects faculty members from being fired except for blatant misconduct, was thrust into the spotlight by the controversy surrounding an essay by professor Ward Churchill in which he called the September 11 victims “little Eichmanns” – a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi bureaucrat who helped carry out the Holocaust.

Mr. Churchill, a tenured professor of ethnic studies, has said he was arguing that some World Trade Center victims were participating in an unfair American economic system that provoked the terrorist attacks.

Since the publicity about his essay, Mr. Churchill and the university have faced questions about how he managed to get tenure.

– Associated Press

JUDGE DROPS CHARGE AGAINST SENATOR CLINTON’S FORMER AIDE

A federal judge dismissed a criminal charge against the former finance director of Senator Clinton’s 2000 election campaign who is charged with filing false campaign statements. U.S. District Judge Howard Matz dropped one of four charges in an indictment against David Rosen, ruling Wednesday that prosecutors used an invoice from a Hollywood gala as the basis for two counts.

In January, Mr. Rosen pleaded innocent to charges of filing fictitious campaign reports with the Federal Election Commission that understated contributions for an August 2000 fundraiser that honored President Clinton. Prosecutors said the event cost more than $1.2 million, but Mr. Rosen reported contributions of about $400,000. If convicted on three remaining counts, Mr. Rosen could face as many as 15 years in prison.

The judge refused to dismiss the entire case after Mr. Rosen argued it should have been filed in Washington, D.C., where his attorneys said the campaign statements were filed. However, Judge Matz said Mr. Rosen could submit another dismissal motion on other grounds, including why prosecutors kept the indictment under seal after it was returned by a grand jury in 2003. The indictment was unsealed in January.

– Associated Press

FINGERPRINT EVIDENCE SHOWN IN MICHAEL JACKSON TRIAL

A sheriff’s technician testified yesterday in Michael Jackson’s molestation trial that she found a fingerprint from the brother of Mr. Jackson’s accuser in an adult magazine seized from the singer’s home. Over defense objections, prosecutors also showed jurors hard-core sex images from magazine pages on which they said other prints were found, although they did not immediately identify the prints.

“These are graphic images with fingerprints we will show are particularly relevant to this case,” said Gordon Auchincloss, the deputy district attorney.

The prosecution began presenting testimony on fingerprint evidence to support the boys’ accounts that the pop star showed them sexually explicit magazines at his Neverland ranch.

The testimony followed an effort by defense attorney Robert Sanger to undermine the reliability of the results. He elicited testimony that the magazines were not tested for fingerprints until months after they were seized – and then only after some of them were used in grand jury hearings in which the accuser could have handled them. Technician Lisa Hemman said the brother’s fingerprint was found on a page of a magazine called Finally Legal.

– Associated Press

WASHINGTON

SCIENTISTS RECOVER PRESERVED SOFT TISSUE FROM T.REX

WASHINGTON – Scientists who had to break a dinosaur bone to remove it from its sandstone location say they have recovered 70-million-year-old soft tissues from inside the bone.

The find included what appear to be blood vessels, and possibly even cells, from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The material is currently being studied, and if scientists can isolate proteins from the material they may be able to learn new details of how dinosaurs lived, lead researcher Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University said. The find is reported in a paper appearing in Friday’s edition of the journal Science. The material came from the thighbone of a T. Rex, known as MOR 1125, found in a sandstone formation in Montana. The bone was broken in removing it from the site and Ms. Schweitzer and colleagues then analyzed the material inside the bone. “The vessels and contents are similar in all respects to blood vessels recovered from … ostrich bone,” they reported.

In recent years evidence has accumulated that modern birds descended from dinosaurs, and Ms. Schweitzer said she chose to compare the dinosaur remains with those of an ostrich because it is the largest bird available. Brooks Hanson, a deputy editor of Science, noted that there are few examples of soft tissues that have been preserved, largely leaves or petrified wood and a few examples of insects in amber or humans and mammoths in peat or ice. But soft tissues are rare in older finds, “that’s why in a 70-million-year-old fossil is so interesting,” he said.

– Associated Press