The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
ATLANTA
Delta, Northwest
announce merger,
but face opposition
If Delta and Northwest are going
to create the world's largest airline,
they'll first have unions to cajole,
politicians to placate, and antitrust
regulators to convince.
Two of Northwest's largest
unions immediately declared their
opposition.
Most importantly, the airlines
will need antitrust approval from
federal regulators. In 2001, an
attempted merger of United Air-
lines and US Airways fell apart
amid antitrust concerns. Execu-
tives at Delta and Northwest said
they are aiming to close their deal
by the end of this year, which would
be before the end of the merger-
friendly Bush administration.
The takeover announced yester-
day calls for the combined airline
to be named Delta, remainbased in
Atlanta, and be run by Delta CEO
Richard Anderson.
WASHINGTON
Congress agrees Iraq
should pay more for
rebuilding efforts
Iraq's financial free ride maybe
over.
After five years, Republicans
and Democrats seem to have
found common ground on at
least one aspectof the war. From
the fiercest foes of the war to the
most steadfast Bush supporters,
they are looking at Iraq's surging
oil income and saying Baghdad
should start picking up more of
the tab, particularly for rebuilding
hospitals, roads, power lines and
the rest of the shattered country.
"I think the American people
are growing weary not only of the
war, but they are looking at why
Baghdad can't pay more of these
costs. And the answer is they can,"
said Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
Nelson, a Democrat, is draft-
ing legislation with Republican
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and
Democrat Evan Bayh of Indiana
that would restrict future recon-
struction dollars to loans instead
of grants.
ROME
Berlusconi regains
top spot in Italy
Media billionaire Silvio Ber-
lusconi won a decisive victory
yesterday in Italy's parliamentary
election, setting the colorful con-
servative and staunch U.S. ally on
course to his third stint as premier.
The victory in voting Sunday and
yesterdaybyparties supportingthe
71-year-old Berlusconi avenged his
loss two years ago to a center-left
coalition.
"I'm moved. I feel a great re-
sponsibility," he said in a phone
call to RAI public television while
monitoring election results at his
villa outside Milan.
BAGHDAD
Iraqi troops free
kidnapped reporter
0 Iraqi troops freed a kidnapped
British journalist for CBS News
yesterday after finding him hooded
and bound in a house during a raid
in a Shiite militia stronghold in
Basra.
Richard Butler's rescue after
two months in captivity was a wel-
come success story for the Iraqi
military, which has been strongly
criticized for its effort to impose
order on Iraq's second-largest city,
an oil hub 340 miles southeast of
Baghdad.
It came on a day in which nearly
40 people were killed or found
dead nationwide - half of them in
bombings near or in the northwest-
ern city of Mosul.
Butler, 47, was thin but in good
condition and laughing as he was
shown on Iraqi state television
hugging well-wishers and greeting
beaming Iraqi officials.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports
..DE AT HS
4034
Number of American service mem-
bers who have died in the war in
Iraq, according to The Associated
Press. The following deaths were
identified yesterday:
Army Spc. William E. Allmon,
25, Ardmore, Okla.
OLYMPICS
From Page 1A
bone responded apathetically.
"I personally don't care," he
said. He can go or do what he
wants, but I feel like boycot-
ting is pretty extreme," he said.
"It's what everyone has worked
so hard for their entire life, so I
don't think I would ever protest
the Olympic Games if I had the
choice."
Senior swimmer Alex
Vanderkaay, who will compete for
a spot on the U.S. Olympic team
at the Olympic trials in July, said
people should be able to make the
distinction between the games and
their opinion on another nation's
politics.
"I definitely don't agree with
what's going on over there," he
said. "But I just think that mix-
ing it with what is going to happen
there in a couple months is making
it worse."
Bush has said he plans to attend
the opening ceremony August 8,
despite calls from Democratic
presidential candidates Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama and
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) to boycott. If he does
attend, Bush would become the
first U.S. president to attend an
Olympic Games hosted on foreign
soil.
French President Nicolas Sar-
kozy said he hasn't ruled out the
possibility of boycotting the open-
ing ceremony of the Beijing -
Olympics. German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, Britain's Prince
Charles and the Japanese royal
family have also said they plan
not to attend the Olympics.
"I think a lot of people are
mixing the athletics and the
politics, and I think it hurts
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both situations," Vanderkaay said.
"I consider them completely sepa-
rate, I don't look at it as having the
Olympic Gamnes in China as sup-
porting their political stance on a
lot of issues."
Catrambone and Vanderkaay
said their focus remains on train-
ing.
One thing is clear, though: a
complete boycott of the games is
not an option any athlete wants.
"Those athletes have worked
really hard to get to that point,"
Vanderkaay said. "A lot of people
have dedicated their entire lives
to try and get to the Olympics,
and for a politician to say that we
can't participate in a certain event,
that's just not fair."
This isn't the first time that
the host country of the Olympics
has faced mounting pressure as
the games near. In 1980, then-
U.S. President Jimmy Carter pro-
tested the 1979 Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan by threatening that
the U.S. would boycott the Mos-
cow Olympics if troops hadn't
been pulled out of the country by a
certain time. The U.S., along with
61 other countries, didn't partici-
pate in those Olympics, despite
being invited.
Four years later, a Soviet-led
boycott of the Los Angeles Olym-
pic Games -which many deemed
the Soviets' revenge for the lack
of participation in the previous
games - spurred 16 countries to
sit the contests out.
Study: 'U' students, like animals,
have offered sex for benefits
Findings show men
were more likely to
offer gifts for sex
By BETH WITTENSTEIN
Daily StaffReporter
What would you do for a pair
of Michigan-Ohio State football
tickets?
Some University students
might offer sex for tickets to "The
Game," according to Daniel Kru-
ger, a research scientist in the
School of Public Health.
Students who participated in
Kruger's study last fall reported
that they had been offered - or
themselves offered - sex for tick-
ets to sporting events or help
with laundry, vacuuming or class
papers.
In the study, researchers asked
freshmen and sophomorestudents
inintroductorypsychologyclasses
to answer questions about experi-
ences they might have had where
sexual relations were suggested in
exchange for "investment of time
or effort or something of material
value," Kruger said.
Kruger designed the study to
test his hypothesis that some stu-
dents succumb to gender roles,
which designate women as child-
bearers and men as financial sup-
porters.
"Women provide the vast
majority of the biological compo-
nent, men bring in resources to
help offspring survive," he said.
The results of the study seem
to support traditional gender
roles, with almost twice as many
men saying that they had offered
resources for sex. About 27 per-
cent of men said they had offered
an investment at least "once or
twice," as opposed to 14 percent
of women.
The study also showed that
women are more likely to receive
offers of investment for sex. About
20 percent of women reported
being offered goods or services for
sex, while 14 percent of men said
they had.
Students in the study reported
that90 percentofthese exchanges
occurred outside long-term rela-
tionships. Kruger said this sur-
prised him because the patterns
are more typical in long-term
relationships and marriages.
"There's an implicit agreement
for the exchange of resources in
marriage," Kruger said.
He said the findings were
interesting because University
students are relatively affluent.
Kruger said the study suggests
that students negotiate exchanges
"not out of necessity, but because
they can."
Students seemed surprised
at the results. LSA sophomore
Devon Davis said he'd heard of
people offering money to have
another student write a paper for
them;but never heard of sex being
offered.
LSA freshman Emmy Kirksey
had a similar reaction.
"That's a bit much for a paper,"
she said. "If it's happening, it
shouldn't be,"
Kruger's research, published
in the latest edition of Evolution-
ary Psychology, lists examples of
animals like primates, humming-
birds and penguins trading sex for
investment. .
Kruger said comparing humans
with animals is extremely useful
as an "explanatory framework"
for human activity. In the last
20 years, he said, evolutionary
research has become increasingly
acceptable to both academics and
the general public.
"There is a greater realization
of the power of evolutionary the-
ory and human behavior," he said.
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