Company expands recall to peanuts
Company expands recall to peanuts
WASHINGTON — A New Mexico food company that produced the peanut butter linked to an outbreak of salmonella poisoning has expanded an ongoing recall of its products to include raw and roasted peanuts.
The Food and Drug Administration said Sunland Inc. added raw and roasted shelled and in-shell peanuts sold in quantities from 2 ounces to 50 pounds to its recall.
FDA inspectors have found salmonella in raw peanuts from the Sunland processing plant.
Sunland manufactured the peanut butter sold by Trader Joe’s and linked to 35 salmonella illnesses across 19 states. Sunland has recalled everything made in its contaminated plant since March 2010.
Crews search park for missing hikers
KALISPELL, Mont. — Rescue teams at Glacier National Park searched in winter conditions among rugged terrain Sunday for two East Coast hikers reported missing by family members. Park officials said 50 searchers were looking for Neal Peckens, 32, of Virginia, and Jason Hiser, 32, of Maryland.
Weather was the biggest challenge facing searchers, who have found 18 inches of snow on the trail at higher elevations and five-foot drifts in some areas, spokeswoman Denise Germann said.
Germann said it’s not clear if they were prepared for cold weather, or if they have much experience in the backcountry. Searchers believe the two were hiking and not mountain climbing.
Pandas formerly
on Chinese diet
BEIJING — A Chinese scientist has concluded humans used to eat pandas. Wei Guangbiao said prehistoric man ate the bears in what is now part of the city of Chongqing in southwest China.
Wei, head of the Institute of Three Gorges Paleoanthropology at a Chongqing museum, said many excavated panda fossils “showed that pandas were once slashed to death by man.”
“In primitive times, people wouldn’t kill animals that were useless to them,” he said, therefore the pandas must have been used as food.
Wei said wild pandas lived in Chongqing’s mountains 10,000 to 1 million years ago.
Al-Qaida leader killed in Algeria
ALGIERS, Algeria — Algeria announced the death of a regional al-Qaida official in an army ambush.
The report carried by the state news agency Sunday said Bekkai Boualem, in charge of al-Qaida in North Africa’s foreign relations, was killed. His identity was confirmed by family members who collected the body.
The army ambush killed him in the mountainous Kabylie region on Friday.
Afghan officials burn drug material
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan counternarcotics police poured gasoline on more than 24 tons of narcotics and other illegal substances, then set the pile ablaze on the outskirts of Kabul on Sunday, officials said.
Baz Mohammad Ahmadi, deputy minister of counternarcotics at the Interior Ministry, said the destroyed drugs included 3,900 pounds of heroin, 6,070 pounds of opium and 308 pounds of hashish. More than 3,200 gallons of alcohol as well as raisins used to make alcohol also were destroyed.
He said 907 suspects had been arrested in connection with the seizure of the drugs and other materials.
Compiled from
The Associated Press