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NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2007
Hometown hero
Alexa Welch Edlund/Associated Press
Spc. Stuart Davis, 23, gets a hug from his mother, Cabell, after returning him to Richmond, Va., from Iraq on Thursday. His brother, Andrew Davis, behind them, and his father, C.E. "Kip" Davis, right, look on. Davis returned with Virginia Air and Army National Guard.
HEALTH
Outbreak forces peanut butter recall
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA — Government scientists struggled Thursday to pinpoint the source of the first U.S. salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter, the kid favorite packed into millions of lunchboxes every day.
Nearly 300 people in 39 states have fallen ill since August, and federal health investigators said they strongly suspect Peter Pan peanut butter and certain batches of Wal Mart's Great Value house brand
- both manufactured by ConAgra Foods Inc.
Shoppers across the country were warned to throw out tars with a product code on the lid beginning with "2111," which denotes the plant where it was made.
How the dangerous germ got into the peanut butter was a mystery. But because peanuts are usually heated to high, germ-killing temperatures during the manufacturing process, government and industry officials said the contamination may have been caused by dirty jars or equipment.
"We think we have very strong evidence that this was the brand of peanut butter. Now it goes to the next step of going to the place where the peanut butter was made and focusing in on the testing," said Dr. Mike Lynch, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The suspect peanut butter was produced by ConAgra at its only peanut butter plant, in Sylvester, Ga., federal investigators said.
ConAgra said it was not clear how many jars are affected by the recall. But the plant is the sole producer of the nationally distributed Peter Pan
brand, and the recall covers all peanut butter - smooth and chunky alike - produced by the plant from May 2006 until now.
"We're talking a lot of jars of peanut butter." said
"We're trying to understand what else we can do or should be doing."
Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer of the Food and Drug Administrations Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
hospitalized, and there were no deaths, the CDC said.
CHRIS KIRCHER
ConAgra Spokesman
FDA inspectors visited the now shut down plant Wednesday and Thursday to try to pinpoint where the contamination could have happened. The FDA last inspected the plant in 2005. Testing was also being done on at least some of the salmonella victims' peanut butter jars, but investigators said some may have already been discarded.
About 85 percent of the infected people said they ate peanut butter, and about a quarter of them ate it at least once a day, the CDC's Lynch said. It was the only food that most of the patients had all recently eaten.
The highest number of cases were reported in New York, Pennsylvania. Virginia, Tennessee and Missouri. About 20 percent of all the ill were
"We think there's very strong evidence that it was this brand of peanut butter," Lynch said.
Salmonellasickens about 40,000 people a year in the U.S. and kills about 600. It can cause diarrhea, fever, dehydration,
But most cases of salmonella poisoning are caused by undercooked eggs and chicken. The only known salmonella outbreak in peanut butter, in Australia during the mid-1990s, was blamed on unsanitary plant conditions.
abdominal pain and vomiting.
ConAgra spokesman Chris Kircher said the company randomly tests 60 to 80 jars of peanut butter that come off its Sylvester plant's line each day for salmonella and other germs, and have had no positive results for years. But he said the plant was shut down as a precaution for further investigation.
"We're trying to understand what
else we need to do or should be doing" Kircher said.
An estimated 974 million pounds of peanut butter are sold each year in the U.S., and peanut butter and jelly is the most popular sandwich among children. Peter Pan is one of the nations top three brands, though well behind market leader Jif. Great Value peanut butter is also produced by some other manufacturers for Wal-Mart.
In a measure of peanut butter's popularity, ConAgra's hot line was swamped with so many calls after the recall was announced on Wednesday that many people got a busy signal. School officials in Houston confiscated students' sandwiches from home and replaced them with those made at schools. And in Georgia, a lawmaker representing one of the nation's biggest peanut-producing areas warned colleagues to throw out jars of peanut butter that he recently handed out.
The strain in this outbreak, Salmonella serotype Tennessee, is comparatively rare, as is salmonella contamination of peanut products, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
"It's taken them a long time to identify peanut butter as the cause, but that may be because they had to get over their denial. It's just not one of the first things you'd suspect," Smith DeWaal said.
>> NATION
Court sentences foster parents
Children reassigned to new homes
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NORWALK, Ohio — A couple who forced some of their 11 adopted, special-needs children to sleep in wire-and-wood cages were sentenced to two years in prison Thursday, after the parents insisted they were only trying to keep the kids safe.
Sharen Gravelle told the court the children were never confined as punishment but rather to protect them, including a child who wanted to jump out a second-floor window.
Two of the children, however, said in statements read in court that they were treated harshly while they lived with Sharen and Michael Gravelle. One wrote that they should be imprisoned "for as long as my siblings had to be in cages."
"Would you prefer that we let
Would them jump? Either way, wed be here. The difference is they're still alive," she said in a tearful, 26-minute statement.
Gravelle blamed social services officials for not helping her and her husband.
Michael, control the destructive behavior of some of the youngsters.
Each could have received up to five years in prison for each of the four felonies they were convicted of in December. They also were convicted of seven misdemeanors.
Sharen Gravelie kept her head down taking notes while the judge read the sentences. Michael Gravelie sat back in his chair, holding his face in his left hand.
The children, who suffered from problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome and a disorder that involves eating nonfood items, ranged in age from 1 to 14 when authorities removed them in September 2005 from the Gravelelle' home in Wakeman, about 60 miles west of Cleveland. They were placed in foster care in fall 2005 and the couple lost custody last March.
Michael Gravelle, his face red and his voice rising, told the judge he and his wife "felt we were being led by the Lord" when they decided to bring the first child into their home.
"Because of them I don't have to steal food.I can use the bathroom whenever I want.Never again will I have to sleep in a box."
kids?" Michael Gravelle asked. "I prayed constantly for the answer."
He said the enclosures resulted from the suggestions of a social workers, who recommended strict rules to improve the children's behavior.
He said problems began when they took in a group of siblings with an array of behavior and emotional problems.
"I'm begging you." Michael Gravelle told the judge. "I do not deserve jail."
"What do you do with these
ANONYMOUS BOY Former Gravelle foster child
The two children whose statements were read in court, a girl and a boy, were in the courtroom Thursday. The boy wrote that he was "thankful that part of my life is behind me."
He said of his new foster parents, "Because of them I don't have to steal food. I can use the bathroom whenever I want. Never again will I have to sleep in a box"
The girl's statement said Sharen Gravelle treated the children more harshly than her husband did.
"are grown adults who know the difference between right and wrong. So I ask that they get as much time in jail for as long as my siblings had to be in cages."
"Mom, you walked around like you were God, then whenever you did go places you were Mother Teresa taking in the poor black kids that no one wanted," she said.
The Gravelies have said they will appeal their convictions. The judge allowed them to remain free on bond pending the appeal.
Prosecutors said the Gravelles were cruel. Witnesses, including the sheriff and some of the children, said the cages were urine stained and lacked pillows or mattresses, but a social worker and others who testified for the defense said they never witnessed abuse and that the children's behavior improved because of the bright blue and red cages.
One Gravelle child testified he was forced to live in a bathroom for 81 days, sleeping in a bathtub because of a bed-wetting problem. The Gravelles' attorneys said the boy exaggerated the length of his bathroom stay, and an expert for the defense testified that the technique helped the boy.
The girl said the Gravelles
GOVERNMENT
The couple has said they needed to keep some of the children in enclosed beds with alarms to protect them from their own dangerous behavior and stop them from wandering at night.
Bush grudgingly allows $464 billion increase
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON(AP)—President Bush on Thursday signed a $464 billion spending bill that closes out last year's unfinished budget business but made clear he wasn't entirely happy about it.
Bush said in a statement that he was pleased the bill sticks to his overall budget caps. But he said the Democratic-led Congress did so by shifting "funding needed for our armed forces to unrequested domestic programs."
The mammoth bill pulls together nine unfinished spending bills funding foreign aid and every domestic agency budget except the Homeland Security Department. This budget work should have been completed months ago but was delayed because of election-year pressures.
"The Congress should work to address these priorities without adding to the deficit," he said.
It freezes most accounts at 2006 levels while awarding exceptions for other programs favored by Democrats and many Republicans — paid for primarily by putting off
Among the beneficiaries is the National Institutes of Health, the FBI, and an increase in the maximum Pell Grant for lower-income college students. The rapidly growing veterans health care budget got a 13 percent boost. U.S. contributions to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis overseas would rise 40 percent
the cost of implementing a 2005 round of military base closings.
The bill provides increases for underperforming schools and community health centers, and grants to state and local law enforcement agencies. Amtrak's budget would be frozen at $1.3 billion instead of absorbing a $400 million cut proposed by Bush.
The president also said that Congress should do more to reform the process of specially funded pet projects in the upcoming bills funding the government for the 2008 fiscal year. Bush urged lawmakers to "continue to take steps to improve transparency for all earmarks, provide the option of an up or down vote for each earmark, and reduce the number and cost of earmarks by at least half"
HARVARD HONOR
Johansson receives sweet reward
Actress Scarlett Johansson, Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals 2007 woman of the year, rides in a car with Hasty Pudding president Josh Brener, right, and vice president of casting Justin Rodriguez, both Harvard University seniors, during a parade into Harvard Square in Cambridge. Mass. on Thursday.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Not quite the Oscar, but Scarlett Johansson was still all smiles Thursday about being crowned the Harvard Hasty Pudding woman of the year.
She participated in a mock SAT exam, and endured a lampooing of her famous unclad Vanity Fair cover pose. But the blonde actress kept mum when asked to make an analogy between director Woody Allen, in whose films she has appeared, and fashion designer Issac Mizrahi, who groped her breast on the red carpet at the Golden Globes last year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stephan Savola/Associated Press
"Thank you so much for this fabulous golden pot. It's been such a wonderful day. This is the closest I'll ever get to a Harvard degree for sure," Johansson said. "It's a real honor and I can't wait till later tonight when we party."
She was gleeful, though, in accepting the award.
Before the roast, Johansson led a parade through Harvard Square,
Ben Stiller is to be crowned Harvard's Hasty Pudding Man of
sitting in the back of a silver Bentley convertible, flanked by Harvard students in drag.
the Year on Feb. 23.
The awards are given to performers who have made a "lasting and impressive contribution to the world of entertainment"
by Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the nation's oldest undergraduate drama troupe.
Last year's honores were Halle Berry and Richard Gere.
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