WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2008 News WWW.KANSAN.COM THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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THIS WEEK IN NEWS Model Naomi Campbell apologizes to police assault
Model Naomi Campbell said she was sorry she assaulted two police officers during a dispute about lost luggage aboard a British Airways plane. But she has refused to apologize to the airline, accusing it of racism.
British Airways strongly denied the charge.
Campbell, 38, was sentenced Friday to 200 hours of community service and fined 2,300 pounds ($4,600) after she pleaded guilty to kicking, spitting and swearing at the officers aboard a plane at Heathrow Airport in April.
In an interview with Sky News broadcast Saturday, Campbell said she regretted her behavior and said "I apologize profusely" to the police.
Midwest floodwaters cause food prices to soar
Raging Midwest floodwaters that swallowed crops and sent corn and soybean prices soaring are about to give consumers more grief at the grocery store.
In the latest bout of food inflation, beef, pork, poultry and even eggs, cheese and milk are expected to get more expensive as livestock owners go out of business or are forced to slaughter more cattle hogs, turkeys and chickens to cope with rocketing costs for corn-based animal feed.
The floods engulfed an estimated 2 million or more acres of corn and soybean fields in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois and other key growing states, sending world grain prices skyward on fears of a substantially smaller corn crop. The government will give a partial idea of how many
corn acres were lost before the end of the month, but experts say the trickle-down effect could be more dramatic later this year, affecting everything from Thanksgiving turkeys to Christmas hams.
Rod Brenneman, president and chief executive of Seaboard Foods, a pork supplier in Sawnee Mission, Kan. that produces 4 million hogs a year, said high corn costs were already forcing producers in his industry to cut back on the number of animals they raise.
"There's definitely liquidation of livestock happening," and that will cause meat prices to rise later this year and into 2009, said Brenneman, who is also the vice chairman of the American Meat Institute.
Zimbabwean candidate drops out of election
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of Zimbabwe's violence-wracked presidential runoff Sunday, declaring that the election was no longer credible and the loss of life among his supporters was simply too high.
The announcement cleared the way for President Robert Mugabe to continue his 28-year rule, despite mounting condemnation from even loyal African allies that the former independence hero has become a despot who has bankrupted the country's once thriving economy.
"We can't ask the people to cast their vote on June 27 when that vote will cost their lives. We will no longer participate in this violent sham of an election,"Tsvangirai said.
Tsvangirai called on the United Nations, the European Union and the Southern African regional bloc to intervene.
Obama's first candidate to reject public money
raise and spend as much as he wants -and, thus, implement his strategy to expand the Electoral College playing field.
Barack Obama faced two critical questions: where to play and how to pay. To answer both, the Democrat reversed course to become the first candidate to reject $85 million in public money for the general election.
The decision will allow the record-shattering fundraiser to
Associated Press, complied by Ramsey Cox