Professor put on leave after abortion controversyA professor at Northern Kentucky University was put on leave after admitting she encouraged students to destroy an anti-abortion display on campus.
Sally Jacobsen, a professor of literature and language, will not return to the school and will retire at the end of the semester, the Associated Press reported.
According to the AP, Jacobsen acknowledged that, on April 12, she led graduate students to rip up 400 crosses that were supposed to represent a cemetery for aborted fetuses. A group called Northern Right to Life had set up the display a week earlier.
Katie Walker, a representative of the group, told the AP she hopes those who destroyed the crosses will be prosecuted.
"I just hope they're held accountable for their actions," Walker said.
University of Michigan ends Coke boycottThe University of Michigan announced last week it will end its boycott of Coca-Cola products, following the soft drink giant's announcement that it plans to investigate its labor and environmental practices in Colombia and India.
The Associated Press reported that Michigan, in conjunction with at least 12 other schools including New York University, stopped purchasing Coke products Jan 1. after labor groups in Colombia accused Coke of conspiring with paramilitary groups to intimidate and harm workers at the company's plants. Coke is now supporting an investigation of its plants led by the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency.
In a letter to Michigan, Coke officials wrote that the company is also in talks with a non-profit organization to examine practices in India, the AP reported.
CalTech hackedStudents at Massachusetts Institute of Technology successfully pulled a prank on the California Institute of Technology, stealing a 1.7-ton cannon from CalTech's Pasadena, Calif., campus and transporting it 3,000 miles across the country to MIT's campus in Cambridge, Mass.
In a press release on the Web site mitcannon.com, a group identifying itself as Howe & Ser Moving Company took credit for the prank, or hack, as it is called at MIT. The pranksters remained anonymous, as is MIT tradition, but a person identifying himself as "Tim Howe" told MIT's student newspaper, the Tech, that 10 people traveled to California to steal the Fleming Cannon at 5:30 a.m. on March 28. But Howe would not reveal to the Tech how the prank was performed.
The cannon appeared on the MIT campus April 6. On April 10, 23 CalTech students from Fleming House, which owns the cannon, and seven CalTech alums arrived at MIT and, after much manual labor, put the cannon on a flatbed truck for its return to California. Showing that the prank was received in good humor, the Fleming House students left a miniature version of the cannon at MIT, and MIT students invited the visitors to a barbeque after the cannon's retrieval.
