' . • '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.
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