A professor of electrical engineering at the State University of New York at Binghamton returned to the United States on Sunday after being detained in Khazakstan for over a month on charges of currency smuggling, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported Tuesday. Victor Skormin, who emigrated from Kazakhstan to the United States in 1978, was arrested at the airport in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, on Sept. 28 with $14,221 in American bills he had earned for giving two guest lectures in Kazakhstan. Skormin said he was unaware that the sum exceeded customs regulations. The Kazakh immigration service confiscated the cash and held Skormin in the country until a court could hear his case. During the detainment, Skormin, who only has one, partially functional kidney, ran out of his medicine and became ill. He said he was only able to avoid kidney failure because friends helped him secure more medicine. Skormin was found guilty on Oct. 24 and ordered to pay a $2,000 fine but since his money had been confiscated, he was forced to borrow from his doctoral students, according to the Chronicle.
The Center for Cross-Cultural Study, a Massachusetts-based study-abroad program provider, paid $15,000 to the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control last month, in a settlement involving pre-2004 study-abroad programs in Cuba that broke Treasury regulations, according to Inside Higher Ed. The Center, which has organized programs for numerous American universities, was under federal investigation for a program in Cuba it facilitated for Willamette University. In 2004 the Treasury Department strengthened regulations on academic travel to Cuba and the Center cancelled its programs there. Jerry Guidera, the operations director for the Center, said that the settlement was not an indication of the Center's wrongdoing. "We're convinced that we would have won in court," Guidera said. He added that the Center remains optimistic about the future of programs in Cuba.
Biofuel technology company Mascoma, founded by two Thayer School of Engineering professors, has announced a new partnership with timber, mining and project management company JM Longyear, according to Checkbiotech.org. The two companies will construct a cellulosic ethanol production plant in Kinross, Mich., and create a new company, Frontier Renewable Resources, which will own the plant. Mascoma, which hopes to begin construction of the plant in 2010, has already received nearly $50 million in funding from the state of Michigan and the Department of Energy, the web site reported.
