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Thursday, July 10, 2008

Over 1000 cases of illness have now been identified in a foodborne salmonellosis outbreak that began in mid-April 2008 in the United States.

As of July 8, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 1013 confirmed infections throughout the United States, along with four cases in Canada. 203 hospitalizations have been linked to the outbreak. It has caused at least one death, and it may have been a contributing factor in another. The pathogen responsible is the rare Saintpaul strain of Salmonella enterica.

Nearly half of the reported illnesses were in Texas and New Mexico. According to unnamed sources close to the investigation, most illness clusters in the outbreak involve Mexican restaurants. Illness clusters in the hard hit state of Illinois were publicly identified by local health departments as involving three Mexican restaurants.

The CDC is in the process of investigating the outbreak and trying to identify the contamination’s point of origin. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently suspects that the contaminated food product is an ingredient in fresh salsa, such as fresh jalapeño pepper, fresh serrano pepper, fresh cilantro, or certain types of raw tomato.

Some produce industry insiders doubt that fresh produce is to blame for the outbreak. They point to the absence of Salmonella on all of the tested produce samples to date, as well as divergent results from produce tracebacks. They also say that the extended time frame of new sicknesses makes it unlikely that either raw tomatoes or fresh jalapeños, the government’s two main suspects, could be responsible. Will Steele, President and CEO of Frontera Produce, said that “the outbreak is probably related to processed goods and they’re looking in the wrong closets.”

Steele’s Texas based company has been forced to hold shipments of fresh jalapeño peppers after loads of produce were repeatedly flagged by the FDA for testing. Although independent testing of both loads showed no sign of Salmonella, the peppers are still on hold until the FDA finishes its own testing of the second load flagged on July 1st. “There are still no results,” Steele says. “The salability of that produce in two to three days is gone. We ceased harvesting. There is no sense in bringing in more product and having it rot.”

Steele, like others in the produce industry, believes that the FDA should be focusing on processed produce instead of fresh produce. “Methodology is backward,” he says. “FDA is reaching for answers. You can’t tie jalapeño pepper shipped on June 30 back to April 10.”

Still, the FDA and the CDC consider testing of fresh jalapeños and other fresh produce a high priority. The CDC writes that “the accumulated data from all investigations indicate that jalapeño peppers caused some illnesses.”

The FDA is cautioning that people who would be in the most danger if infected with Salmonella (infants, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems) should avoid eating the suspected types of produce listed on their website.

Saturday, October 8, 2005

Numerous smuggled artifacts were found at an Austrian tour guide’s home. Five Italians were arrested and twenty-eight others are now being investigated. The Austrian, known as “Mozart” in the art trafficking world, received a citation for his involvement.

Police claim that some 600 artifacts, which had been illegally excavated, were found. Most ranged from 8th century BCE to the 5th century CE. Many of the items were gold and silver, along with ceramics. One item, a cup, has been valued at several thousand Euros.

The artifacts were plundered from an archaeological site near Rome by “Mozart” using his tour guide credentials. Italian authorities expect that the plundered artifacts will finally be displayed in Italian museums.

Monday, November 26, 2007

In the 18 months since Andrea Muizelaar was crowned winner of the reality TV series Canada’s Next Top Model, her life has been a complete whirlwind. From working in a dollar store in her hometown of Whitby, Ontario, to modeling haute couture in Toronto, she had reached her dream of becoming a true Top Model.

But at what cost? Unknown to casual television viewers, Muizelaar had been enveloped in the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, which inevitably became too much for her to bear. She gave up modeling and moved back to Whitby, where she sought treatment for her disorder, re-entered college, and now works at a bank. Where is she now? Happy and healthy, she says.

Recently Andrea Muizelaar sat down with Wikinews reporter Mike Halterman in a candid interview that stretched to nearly two hours, as she told all about her hopes and aspirations, her battle with anorexia, and just what really happened on Canada’s Next Top Model.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Pichilemu, Chile – A power outage affected many areas of Chile this evening. It is presumed to have been caused by a fault in the Chilean Sistema Interconectado Central (Central Interconnected System). Power was cut off between the Antofagasta Region and Los Lagos Region, including cities like Santiago, Valparaíso, La Serena, Pichilemu and Talca, at 20:50 (23:50 UTC). After twenty minutes, power was restored in some parts of Providencia.

It surprised the people that were in shopping centers and in massive events, like the game between Deportes La Serena and Audax Italiano, which was cancelled, and the solidarity concert “Rock por Chile” (“Rock for Chile”) that was being performed in Santiago’s Movistar Arena. The outage also interrupted the Chilean Subway; personnel are currently evacuating users.

The communications manager of Chilectra, the Chilean main power provider, reported to TVN that the power is coming back slowly to the Metropolitan Region. “We don’t know exactly what happened. We are not receiving power in the distribution network in Santiago. The power is coming back, but is probable that in the outlying areas will be more difficult. […] After the earthquake we did the corresponding fixes, so we don’t know if this is related to the earthquake directly,” Larraín said.

The Presidency General Clerk Minister, Cristián Larroulet said, as reported by El Mercurio, that the power was going to be restored in around three hours. “Effectively there’s an outage from Taltal until Los Lagos, probably because of the debility of the lines because of the earthquakes […] It is another consequence of the earthquake that affected our country,” he added.

The Interior Minister, Rodrigo Hinzpeter, as reported by El Mercurio at 22:20 local time (01:20 UTC), informed from the ONEMI that the outage that affected many areas of Chile was produced by a failure in a 500 kilowatts transformer from Charrúa-Temuco, that caused a major fault in the Central Interconnected System.

According to Clemente Pérez, Santiago’s Metro chief executive, Santiago’s subway was going to work normally today if the power service remains stable. The Central Interconnected System chief executive, Eduardo Ricke Muñoz, estimated at 22:44 local time (01:44 UTC) that the power service was going to be rerun in all the affected areas in the following two hours. It was later reported by El Mercurio that the failed transformer was located near Los Ángeles, in the Bío Bío Region.

At 23:54 local time (02:54 UTC), Rodrigo Hinzpeter said: “We still cannot rerun the power service in the Bío Bío region, but we are doing our best and we hope to restablish it in the next few hours”.

At 00:30 local time (03:30 UTC), ONEMI reported that the power was restored in an 88 per cent. They detailed by region:

• In the Antofagasta Region, the power in Taltal was restored.
• In the Atacama Region, the power was restored totally.
• In the Coquimbo Region, 98% of power has been restored.
• In the Valparaíso Region, the power was restored totally.
• In the Metropolitan Region, the power was restored totally.
• In the O’Higgins Region, the power was rerun completely.
• In the Maule Region, the power was completely restored.
• In the Bío Bío Region, power has not been restored (0%).
• In the Araucanía Region, 90% of the power supply has been restored.
• In the Los Ríos Region, the power was completely restored.
• In the Los Lagos Region, 90% of the power supply has been restored.

At 01:28 local time (04:28 UTC), Rodrigo Hinzpeter, the Interior Minister, informed via his Twitter account (@rhinzpeter), that the 93% of the power supply was rerun. The State Clerk also warranted that in Concepción, the power was restored in a 40%.

Later, ONEMI ratified the information that Hinzpeter provided, and detailed the power recovering region by region, and the regions that have changed their percentage are:

• The Coquimbo Region, the power was restored in a 98%.
• In the Bío Bío Region, the power has been restored in a 40%. San Pedro de La Paz, Coronel, Lota, Tomé and Penco have the power rerun. Arauco, Lebu and Talcahuano still don’t have power.
• The Los Lagos Region, has the power restored completely.