' . • 's - I* ** A Twinkie-shortage sparks snack-food outcrv in East BOSTON (AP) - Forget the high gas pices. Folks along the East Coast are swallow ing bitter news this week: There is a shortage of Twinkies and other snack-food favorites, cour tesy of a labor dispute. Supply problems are being reported from the nation’s capital to Maine, wreaking havoc on untold snack breaks. “I’ll have to eat healthy food,” complained Rubens Breeden, a 28-year-old state worker longing for Ring Dings and Devil Dogs on Tuesday. Charlie Bianchi, who works at a snack bar in one of the busiest state office buildings, has faced the wrath of the hungry masses. “All day long, they’re saying, ‘Where’s my Twinkies? Where’s my coffee cake? Where’s my pound cake? Where’s my Devil Dogs? Where’s my Yodels? Where’s my Ring Dings?’” Bianchi said. They re ready to kill. They look at me with doubt in their eyes. They think that I forgot to place the order. It s always the coffee slinger’s fault,” said Bianchi, 42, assistant manag er of Hal’s Place. Actually, a Teamsters strike # ” All day long, they ’re saying, ‘Where’s my Twinkles?... Where’s my Ring Dings? ” Charlie Bianchi snack bar worker has led to shortages in a variety of well-known bakery products, including Wonder bread and Hostess brands such as Twinkies. As shelves empty across the region, the area will have to do without deliveries of about 2 million Twinkies and cupcakes per week and another 400,000 loaves of Wonder bread, a company official estimated. The strike began a week ago when 1,400 Teamsters responsible for delivery and sales of products from Interstate Bakeries Co.’s only New England bakery in Biddeford, Maine, walked off the job. Since then, that bakery and others have shut down as Teamsters in other states honored the pickets. Interstate Bakeries officials say five bakeries in four states have closed. The union has accused the company of refusing to honor arbitration rulings. The com ^ pany maintains it was snut out ~ of the arbitration process, and L it has asked a judge to clarify r the process. One of the major sticking points has been the company’s requirement that drivers deliver more than one brand of Interstate products. The Teamsters say dri vers are supposed to be paid dif ferent amounts for each brand. rAll of this comes as the Twinkie, the yellow, spongy, cream-filled cake, approaches its 70th anniversary next month. In downtown Boston, shelves usually occupied by Hostess prod ucts were bare or getting there quick ly. To Breeden, the Massachusetts state worker, eating Twinkies and other snack cakes is just part of || growing up American. 1 “It’s like everything from p baseball to watching the Celtics,” he said. “Basically, every little kid does it; it’s like throwing rocks and playing in the mud.” * : • ' - ... - * • An evolutionary clue Research: Knuckle-walking an ancestral trait THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - A new fossil analysis is rattling the family tree with evidence that humans evolved directly from an ancestor that walked around on its knuckles like gorillas and chimpanzees. For decades, anthropolo gists have considered upright walking, or bipedalism, a defin ing characteristic of the human lineage. Knuckle-walking was thought to have evolved unique ly in apes after humans had taken a separate evolutionary path. But in an article in today’s issue of the journal Nature, researchers said they found fos sil evidence that two species of early humans descended from knuckle-walkers. “Instead of coming down out of the trees and walking upright, the ancestors of early upright walkers were already adapted to a life on the ground,” said Brian G. Richmond, an anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a co author of the study. In the two fossils studied, both of hominids that walked upright more than 3 million years ago, the researchers found structures in the wrist bones that once could have supported knuckle-walking by restricting movement of the wrist. The researchers believe those wrist structures were traits left over from distant ancestors, much like the tail bone or appendix. The study’s findings also challenge theories of a special chimpanzee-gorilla relation ship, which was based on the fact that they are the only pri mates to exhibit the unusual way of walking, Richmond said. “We showed the ancestor that gave rise to upright walkers and humans was a knuckle walker,” he said. “That means it’s shared between the ances tors of humans and chim panzees and gorillas.” The newly analyzed fossils belong to Australpithecus ana mensis and Australopithecus afarensis, known as Lucy. Both lived in Africa between 4.1 mil lion and 3 million years ago - at least a million years after the evolutionary split from apes. Richmond and colleague David Strait, who compared existing fossils with the bones of today’s apes, predict a hominid from 5 million years ago will show evidence of actu al knuckle-walking. “We didn’t actually find fossils from this critical time period,” Richmond said. “We found for the first time echoes of the earlier ancestor in the ear liest human fossils that we cur rently have.” Today’s chimps and gorillas as well as the early human fos sils have a bony projection from their forearms that the wrist locked into, preventing it from moving back more than 30 degrees. Task force to interview inmates ■ The group will gather opinions on medical services. By Michelle Starr Staff writer The task force to investi gate the state’s medical ser vices in correctional facilities will continue its query by interviewing inmates within a week. James Davis, assistant state ombudsman, said he sup ports the scheduled interviews because the task force should get the inmates’ opinions and not just testimony and infor mation from the Department of Corrections or the ombuds man’s office. The task force was created by Gov. Mike Johanns in December 1999 after Dr. Fraisal Ahmed, an employee of the Department of Correctional Services, spoke out to the state ombudsman’s office against medical treat ment inmates receive. Ahmed’s whistleblowing sparked an extensive report by the ombudsman’s office, which was released Nov. 23, 1999. David Montgomery, from the Department of Health and Human Services, said more than 100 inmates have requested to be interviewed by the task force. Montgomery said he did not think the task force would be able to conduct all of the requested interviews because of time constraints. But he said most of an executive session of a meeting held Wednesday was spent planning the interviews that will be conducted over the next three to four weeks. Along with planning inter views, the task force also developed its final requests for information at the meeting, Montgomery said. William Hastings, retired Nebraska supreme court chief justice and task force member, said the task force hopes to speak with inmates from each institution in the state. He also said he hoped that during the interviews, the task force would be able to tour the facilities it was unable to tom last month. In February, the task force toured medical facilities for the institutions in Lincoln. Along with planning inter views, the task force heard information about require ments for physicians’ assis tants to work in the department and how the department selects other medical staff, Hastings said. The next scheduled meet ing for the task force is April 7. Compassion. Is that too much to ask? One more class and you could graduate in May. One. The class that isn’t being offered until next fal There has to be another way. Abetter way Before you rearrange your life and put off graduation until December; consider UNLs College Independent Study Program. You can complete a class in as little as 35 days and take your place at graduation. No joke. Call us at 472-4321 for a free catalog or visit our office at the Nebraska Center for Continuing Education, Room 269, 33rd and Holdrege St. UNL’s most popular courses in: Accounting AGECON Art History Broadcasting Classics Ecology Economics English Finance Geography History Human Development Management Marketing Mathematics Nursing Nutrition Philosophy Physics Political Science Psychology Sociology I Division of Continuing Studios • Depsrtmsnt Th»Univ«*jtyo