Saturday, August 21, 2010
FDA warning about egg recall
The FDA advised consumers to:
- Toss recalled eggs or return them to the store for a refund.
- See a doctor if you think you are ill after eating recalled eggs.
- Keep eggs refrigerated at all times.
- Throw out cracked or dirty eggs.
- Wash hands, utensils and preparation surfaces with soap and water after contact with raw eggs.
- Cook eggs until both the white and the yolk are firm and eat promptly after cooking.
- The FDA also warned consumers not to keep eggs warm or at room temperature for more than two hours, and not to eat raw eggs or restaurant dishes made with raw, undercooked or unpasteurized eggs.Eating undercooked eggs should also be avoided, especially by young children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems or debilitating illness, the agency added.Harmful bacteria such as salmonella are the most common cause of foodborne illnesses, according to federal health officials.
A half-billion eggs have been recalled in the nationwide
A half-billion eggs have been recalled in the nationwide investigation of a salmonella outbreak that Friday expanded to include a second Iowa farm. More than 1,000 people have already been sickened and the toll of illnesses is expected to increase.
Iowa's Hillandale Farms said Friday it was recalling more than 170 million eggs after laboratory tests confirmed salmonella. The company did not say if its action was connected to the recall by Wright County Egg, another Iowa farm that recalled 380 million eggs earlier this week. The latest recall puts the total number of potentially tainted eggs at over half a billion.
An FDA spokeswoman said the two recalls are related. The strain of salmonella causing the poisoning is the same in both cases, salmonella enteritidis.
The eggs recalled Friday were distributed under the brand names Hillandale Farms, Sunny Farms, Sunny Meadow, Wholesome Farms and West Creek. The new recall applies to eggs sold between April and August.
Hillandale said the eggs were distributed to grocery distribution centers, retail groceries and food service companies which service or are located in fourteen states, including Arkansas, California, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin.
A sign warns customers of the recall of certain lots of eggs that had been previously sold at a supermarket in Los Angeles on Thursday. A salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds and led to the recall of hundreds of millions of eggs from one Iowa firm will likely grow, federal health officials said Thursday. No eggs currently on the shelf at this store were affected by the recall.
A food safety expert at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., said the source of the outbreak could be rodents, shipments of contaminated hens, or tainted feed. Microbiology professor Patrick McDonough said he was not surprised to hear about two recalls involving different egg companies, because in other outbreaks there have also been multiple sources.
Both plants could have a rodent problem, or both plants could have gotten hens that were already infected, or feed that was contaminated.
"You need biosecurity of the hen house, you want a rodent control program and you want to have hens put into that environment that are salmonella free," McDonough said.
The salmonella bacteria is not passed from hen to hen, but usually from rodent droppings to chickens, he added. This strain of bacteria is found inside a chicken's ovaries, and gets inside an egg.
CDC officials said Thursday that the number of illnesses related to the outbreak is expected to grow. That's because illnesses occurring after mid-July may not be reported yet, said Dr. Christopher Braden, an epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control.
Almost 2,000 illnesses from the strain of salmonella linked to both recalls were reported between May and July, almost 1,300 more than usual, Braden said. No deaths have been reported. The CDC is continuing to receive information from state health departments as people report their illnesses.
The most common symptoms of salmonella are diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever within eight hours to 72 hours of eating a contaminated product. It can be life-threatening, especially to those with weakened immune systems.
The form of salmonella tied to the outbreak can be passed from chickens that appear healthy. And it grows inside eggs, not just on the shell, Braden noted.
Thoroughly cooking eggs can kill the bacteria. But health officials are recommending people throw away or return the recalled eggs.
© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserve
Friday, August 20, 2010
New auditions for "Glee"
This little guy heard about the audition for next season Glee. I'm sure he has the dance moves down.
Guess How has crabs?
Nicknamed Crabzilla, thought to be the biggest sea crab, after it was transported to the Sea Life Scheveningen, near The Hague in The Netherlands.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Remember the movie "Annie" well see what she looks like now
Director:John HustonWriters:Carol Sobieski (screenplay)Thomas Meehan (book)See more »Contact:View company contact information for Annie on IMDbPro.Release Date:18 June 1982 (USA) See more »Genre:Family | Musical See more »Tagline:The movie of 'Tomorrow'Plot:Broadway musical based on the Little Orphan Annie comic strip. A young orphan girls adventures in finding a family that will take her.Full summary » | Add synopsis »Plot Keywords:Orphan | Little Orphan Annie | Orphanage | 1930s | Mopping FloorSee more »Awards:Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 10 nominations
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
1 Smallest Hotels on the plant is in TOKYO
Atsushi Nakanishi is among the jobless living in a capsule hotel, renting a bunk with no door. More Photos »
Multimedia
Atsushi Nakanishi has condensed his possessions to two suitcases, which he stores in lockers at the capsule hotel where he lives.
“It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black suit — one of just two he owns after discarding the rest of his wardrobe for lack of space. “You get used to it.”
When Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 opened nearly two decades ago, Japan was just beginning to pull back from its bubble economy, and the hotel’s tiny plastic cubicles offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home.
Now, Hotel Shinjuku 510’s capsules, no larger than 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide, and not tall enough to stand up in, have become an affordable option for some people with nowhere else to go as Japan endures its worst recession since World War II.
Once-booming exporters laid off workers en masse in 2009 as the global economic crisis pushed down demand. Many of the newly unemployed, forced from their company-sponsored housing or unable to make rent, have become homeless.
The country’s woes have led the government to open emergency shelters over the New Year holiday in a nationwide drive to help the homeless. The Democratic Party, which swept to power in September, wants to avoid the fate of the previous pro-business government, which was caught off-guard when unemployed workers pitched tents near public offices last year to call attention to their plight.
“In this bitter-cold New Year’s season, the government intends to do all it can to help those who face hardship,” Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said in a video posted Dec. 26 on YouTube. “You are not alone.”
On Friday, he visited a Tokyo shelter housing 700 homeless people, telling reporters that “help can’t wait.”
Mr. Nakanishi considers himself relatively lucky. After working odd jobs on an Isuzu assembly line, at pachinko parlors and as a security guard, Mr. Nakanishi, 40, moved into the capsule hotel in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district in April to save on rent while he worked night shifts at a delivery company.
Mr. Nakanishi, who studied economics at a regional university, dreams of becoming a lawyer and pores over legal manuals during the day. But with no job since Christmas, he does not know how much longer he can afford a capsule bed.
The rent is surprisingly high for such a small space: 59,000 yen a month, or about $640, for an upper bunk. But with no upfront deposit or extra utility charges, and basic amenities like fresh linens and free use of a communal bath and sauna, the cost is far less than renting an apartment in Tokyo, Mr. Nakanishi says.
Still, it is a bleak world where deep sleep is rare. The capsules do not have doors, only screens that pull down. Every bump of the shoulder on the plastic walls, every muffled cough, echoes loudly through the rows.
Each capsule is furnished only with a light, a small TV with earphones, coat hooks, a thin blanket and a hard pillow of rice husks.
Most possessions, from shirts to shaving cream, must be kept in lockers. There is a common room with old couches, a dining area and rows of sinks. Cigarette smoke is everywhere, as are security cameras. But the hotel staff does its best to put guests at ease: “Welcome home,” employees say at the entrance.
“Our main clients used to be salarymen who were out drinking and missed the last train,” said Tetsuya Akasako, head manager at the hotel.
But about two years ago, the hotel started to notice that guests were staying weeks, then months, he said. This year, it introduced a reduced rent for dwellers of a month or longer; now, about 100 of the hotel’s 300 capsules are rented out by the month.
After requests from its long-term dwellers, the hotel received special government permission to let them register their capsules as their official abode; that made it easier to land job interviews.
At 2 a.m. on one recent December night, two young women watched the American television show “24” on a TV inside the sauna. One said she had traveled to Tokyo from her native Gunma, north of the city, to look for work. She intended to be a hostess at one of the capital’s cabaret clubs, where women engage in conversation with men for a fee.
The woman, 20, said she was hoping to land a job with a club that would put her up in an apartment. She declined to give her name because she did not want her family to know her whereabouts.
“It’s tough to live like this, but it won’t be for too long,” she said. “At least there are more jobs here than in Gunma.”
The government says about 15,800 people live on the streets in Japan, but aid groups put the figure much higher, with at least 10,000 in Tokyo alone. Those numbers do not count the city’s “hidden” homeless, like those who live in capsule hotels. There is also a floating population that sleeps overnight in the country’s many 24-hour Internet cafes and saunas.
The jobless rate, at 5.2 percent, is at a record high, and the number of households on welfare has risen sharply. The country’s 15.7 percent poverty rate is one of the highest among industrialized nations.
These statistics have helped shatter an image, held since the country’s rise as an industrial power in the 1970s, that Japan is a classless society.
“When the country enjoyed rapid economic growth, standards of living improved across the board and class differences were obscured,” said Prof. Hiroshi Ishida of the University of Tokyo. “With a stagnating economy, class is more visible again.”
The government has poured money into bolstering Japan’s social welfare system, promising cash payments to households with children and abolishing tuition fees at public high schools.
Still, Naoto Iwaya, 46, is on the verge of joining the hopeless. A former tuna fisherman, he has been living at another capsule hotel in Tokyo since August. He most recently worked on a landfill at the city’s Haneda Airport, but that job ended last month.
“I have looked and looked, but there are no jobs. Now my savings are almost gone,” Mr. Iwaya said, after checking into an emergency shelter in Tokyo. He will be allowed to stay until Monday.
After that, he said, “I don’t know where I can go.”
Monday, August 16, 2010
Ronnie got arrested ( Drama all ready wit Jersey Shore)
Jersey Shore star Ronnie Ortiz-Magro was arrested over the weekend on charges of outstanding warrants from two separate New Jersey townships, Seaside Heights Police tell TVGuide.com.
The 24-year-old reality star was brought to Seaside Heights Police Department following his arrest on Sunday, where he was processed and later released after satisfying the conditions of the warrants.
Ortiz-Magro was arrested last September on charges of aggravated assault.
Fellow cast member Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi was also arrested last month on charges of disorderly conduct.
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