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Many Red Flags Preceded a Recall of Hamburger
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and ANDREW MARTIN, The New York Times, October 23, 2007
ELIZABETH, N.J. — Over the summer, as Americans fired up their grills, the Topps Meat factory here scrambled to produce thousands of frozen hamburger patties for Wal-Mart and other customers, putting intense pressure on workers.
As output rose, federal regulators said in interviews, the company was neglecting critical safeguards meant to protect consumers. Three big batches of hamburger contaminated with a potentially deadly germ emerged from the plant, making at least 40 people sick and prompting the second-largest beef recall in history.
Topps is now out of business, but the case points up broader problems in the nation’s system for protecting consumers from food-borne illness.
( Read More )
Citing Global Warming, Kansas Denies Plant Permit
By MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times, October 20, 2007
A Kansas regulator has turned down a permit for a large coal-fired power plant solely because of the global warming gases it would emit.
Opponents of the plant say this is the first instance of a regulatory agency’s rejecting a permit for that reason alone.
( Read More )
Environmental Laws Waived to Press Work on Border Fence
By JULIA PRESTON, The New York Times, October 23, 2007
Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, waived several environmental laws yesterday to continue building a border fence through a national conservation area in Arizona, bypassing a federal court ruling that had suspended the fence construction.
( Read More )
The Elderly Always Sleep Worse, and Other Myths of Aging
By GINA KOLATA, The New York Times, October 23, 2007
As every sleep researcher knows, the surest way to hear complaints about sleep is to ask the elderly.
“Older people complain more about their sleep; they just do,” said Dr. Michael Vitiello, a sleep researcher who is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington.
And for years, sleep scientists thought they knew what was going on: sleep starts to deteriorate in late middle age and steadily erodes from then on. It seemed so obvious that few thought to question the prevailing wisdom.
Now, though, new research is leading many to change their minds. To researchers’ great surprise, it turns out that sleep does not change much from age 60 on. And poor sleep, it turns out, is not because of aging itself, but mostly because of illnesses or the medications used to treat them.
( Read More )
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and ANDREW MARTIN, The New York Times, October 23, 2007
ELIZABETH, N.J. — Over the summer, as Americans fired up their grills, the Topps Meat factory here scrambled to produce thousands of frozen hamburger patties for Wal-Mart and other customers, putting intense pressure on workers.
As output rose, federal regulators said in interviews, the company was neglecting critical safeguards meant to protect consumers. Three big batches of hamburger contaminated with a potentially deadly germ emerged from the plant, making at least 40 people sick and prompting the second-largest beef recall in history.
Topps is now out of business, but the case points up broader problems in the nation’s system for protecting consumers from food-borne illness.
( Read More )
Citing Global Warming, Kansas Denies Plant Permit
By MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times, October 20, 2007
A Kansas regulator has turned down a permit for a large coal-fired power plant solely because of the global warming gases it would emit.
Opponents of the plant say this is the first instance of a regulatory agency’s rejecting a permit for that reason alone.
( Read More )
Environmental Laws Waived to Press Work on Border Fence
By JULIA PRESTON, The New York Times, October 23, 2007
Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, waived several environmental laws yesterday to continue building a border fence through a national conservation area in Arizona, bypassing a federal court ruling that had suspended the fence construction.
( Read More )
The Elderly Always Sleep Worse, and Other Myths of Aging
By GINA KOLATA, The New York Times, October 23, 2007
As every sleep researcher knows, the surest way to hear complaints about sleep is to ask the elderly.
“Older people complain more about their sleep; they just do,” said Dr. Michael Vitiello, a sleep researcher who is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington.
And for years, sleep scientists thought they knew what was going on: sleep starts to deteriorate in late middle age and steadily erodes from then on. It seemed so obvious that few thought to question the prevailing wisdom.
Now, though, new research is leading many to change their minds. To researchers’ great surprise, it turns out that sleep does not change much from age 60 on. And poor sleep, it turns out, is not because of aging itself, but mostly because of illnesses or the medications used to treat them.
( Read More )
