Two men, one of whom owned a goat slaughterhouse in Kinsman, Ill., have been charted with plotting to fly to Denmark and kill one of the cartoonists whose cartoon of Islamic prophet Mohammed sparked an international outcry last year.

David Headley, whose birth name is Daood Gilani, and Tahawwur Hussain Rana were arrested earlier this month by FBI agents. Rana's goat-slaughtering business was also raided in the process. Rana is alleged to have arranged the flight to murder cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and has been charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorism conspiracy, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

Rana's attorney, Patrick Blegen, said, "Mr. Rana is a well-respected businessman in the Chicagoland community. He adamantly denies the charges and eagerly awaits his opportunity to contest them in court and to clear his and his family's name. We would ask that the community respect the fact that these are merely allegations and not proof."

Source: Chicago Sun-Times

Dell Allen scholarship established at K-State

To honor Dell Allen for his industry contributions and to support the next generation of meat scientists, Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health has created a scholarship at Kansas State University in his name.

The establishment of the Dell Allen Scholarship was announced last night at the Meat Industry Hall of Fame banquet in Chicago where Allen was one of the inaugural inductees to the hall of fame.

"Allen has played a significant role in shaping today’s U.S. meat industry," says David Yates, Ph.D., associate director of production technologies, Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health. "Whether in the classroom, lab or boardroom, he has spent his career working to make our industry, and the people in it, even stronger."

Allen became a faculty member at Kansas State University after completing his doctorate and taught at the university for 22 years in the department of Animal Sciences and Industry. In 1988, he left K-State to work for Excel Corp. as director of quality and training. During his tenure at Excel, which became Cargill Meat Solutions, Allen was an influential speaker at international food safety conferences and collaborated with government agencies, agriculture industry groups and consumer advocates. He held various leadership roles before retiring in 2004 as vice president of technical services and food safety.

"We are grateful to Allen for his years of service to K-State and his lasting influence on our program and students," says Ken Odde, professor and department head, Animal Sciences and Industry at K-State. "The Dell Allen Scholarship is a prime way to support the future of the industry while honoring one of today’s leaders."

The Dell Allen Scholarship will be provided to a K-State meat science graduate student. Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health will fund the scholarship for a minimum of three years.

Source: Intervet/Schering-Plough Animal Health

Troy Smith, Sonic Founder, dies at 87

Troy N. Smith, Sr., the founder of the Top Hat which later became Sonic, America's Drive-In, died Monday, Oct. 26. He was 87.

His daughter, Leslie Baugh, confirmed his death, saying her father had been in declining health recently.

Born in 1922, Smith grew up in the oil patch in east central Oklahoma, attending Mountain View School and Seminole High School. In 1940, he married Dollie Twiggs before going into the Army Air Corps in 1943.

After World War II ended, Smith returned to Oklahoma, to Dollie and his two small children, and began driving a milk truck, then a bread truck route as he pursued a desire to own his own business. Between 1948 and 1953, Smith tried his hand at operating various restaurant concepts in Shawnee, Oklahoma, oftentimes while running his bread route. His first was a small diner called The Cottage Cafe. A year later, he sold the Cottage Cafe and opened a larger restaurant called Troy's Grill featuring Troy's Panful O'Chicken. It was a loyal Troy's Grill customer who asked Smith to co-own a root beer stand and convert an old log home into an upscale steak house which was located on the same property. Smith liked the location of the businesses and idea of running a fine dining restaurant.

In 1953 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, Smith and his partner were operating the Top Hat root beer stand and the Log House Restaurant. For five years, they ran both restaurants. However, the two concepts had very different economics. Smith learned that high-end restaurants might earn more gross revenue, but profits were limited. In 1955, Smith ended his partnership and got out of the Log House Restaurant. The Top Hat had been the cash cow for the Log House because profit margins were four times greater than those of the steakhouse. Smith eventually put all of his efforts into the root beer stand while discovering a better way to make money in the restaurant business. It was called a drive-in.

During this time, he pioneered the use of angled and covered parking, along with an intercom speaker system that allowed customers to place orders from their cars. "Service With the Speed of Sound," became the tagline for the Top Hat.

Over the next six years, Smith, in partnership with Charlie Pappe of Woodward, Oklahoma, opened Top Hats in three other Oklahoma communities, Stillwater, Woodward and Enid. The Top Hat concept took off and the pair found themselves fielding queries from interested entrepreneurs who wanted the chance to run their own businesses. An attempt to copyright the Top Hat name in 1958 failed so Smith and Pappe looked up "speed of sound" in the dictionary and discovered the word "sonic". The first Top Hat to adopt the fledgling chain's new name of Sonic, was the drive-in located in Stillwater. From that point on, Sonic Drive-Ins began popping up in small towns throughout Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and Arkansas. Today, there are nearly 3,600 Sonic Drive-Ins located in 42 states.

Source: Sonic