It seems a large explosion that blasted through a Citrus Height apartment complex on Sunday was caused by improper use of a bunch of bug bombs.

“Thank goodness no one was hurt in the explosion that was preventable had the tenant followed label instructions,” says Department of Pesticide Regulation Director Mary-Ann Warmerdam. “I can’t emphasize enough the importance of following instructions for any pesticide product.”

One 6-ounce or 8-ounce fogger is enough for an apartment and other small living spaces. Too many foggers will not control pests better than using the amount recommended, she says. .....

According to the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire Department, one of the tenants in the Citrus Heights apartment complex set off at least 10 foggers to control a cockroach infestation in his unit. Three families were left homeless by the explosion fire investigators determined was ignited by a refrigerator.........

They are smaller than your fingernail and come out at night. By the time you see them, it may be too late. That's the case for a suburban family who says they were attacked by bed bugs inside their hotel room at a popular Disney resort. CBS 2's Pamela Jones reports.

The family says they wanted a trip to remember. And they got that. But now, they're warning people to check the beds in their hotels when they check in.

The home video shows that it started as a happy Disney World vacation. But the family says it ended in a red, itchy mess.

Melissa Pecina said bumps appeared after bed bugs attacked her in her hotel room.

"And I had a lot of them," Melissa said. "I think I counted over 200 at one point." .........

Scientists here have determined that combining bed bugs’ own chemical signals with a common insect control agent makes that treatment more effective at killing the bugs.

The researchers found that stirring up the bed bugs by spraying their environment with synthetic versions of their alarm pheromones makes them more likely to walk through agents called desiccant dusts, which kill the bugs by making them highly susceptible to dehydration.

A blend of two pheromones applied in concert with a silica gel desiccant dust proved to be the most lethal combination.

In the past decade, bed bugs have become an increasing problem in industries ranging from agriculture and housing to travel and hospitality, so much so that the Environmental Protection Agency hosted a National Bed Bug Summit in April of this year.........

Helicopters will begin dropping poisoned rat-bait on Rangitoto and Motutapu islands in less than a fortnight as the Department of Conservation prepares to repopulate them with rare birds including the kiwi.

The bait drop is the latest stage in more than a decade's work to turn the islands into a bird sanctuary.........

ATLANTA -- Scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus.

The so-called Lujo virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall. Four of them died.

It's not clear how the first person became infected, but the bug comes from a family of viruses found in rodents, said Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in the discovery.

"This one is really, really aggressive," he said of the virus.

A paper on the virus by Lipkin and his collaborators was published online Thursday in PLoS Pathogens.........

A 42-year-old Evansville man has died from an apparent spider bite, officials said Tuesday.

Keith E. Reed was found dead in bed in his Evansville home Monday morning with a bite on his leg consistent with that of a brown recluse spider, said Vanderburgh County Coroner Annie Groves.

The cause of death is preliminarily listed as a spider bite while officials await further tests to confirm it. But Groves said there were other indicators.

Reed had been camping in the last couple weeks at Scales Lake Park in Boonville, Ind., telling his wife later that he believed he had been bitten by something, Groves said.

Reed sought medical attention for the bite but only a couple days before he died, Groves said. The venom had likely already gotten into his bloodstream by that point, she said.

Presuming the tests verify the spider bite as the cause, Groves said it would mark the first such death in Evansville she could recall..........

The fire at a substation outside Charlottetown that knocked out power to half of P.E.I. at the end of April was caused by a squirrel, says Maritime Electric.

The squirrel got into the West Royalty substation and gnawed on some wires. The resulting fire eventually led to 55,000 customers being without power and caused $200,000 worth of damage.

"Normally a squirrel wouldn't be able to do that type of damage, maybe a circuit or two, and a small outage, but … we [also] actually had a failure of a piece of equipment," said Maritime Electric spokeswoman Kim Griffin.

"The investigation is still underway in that we're still trying to figure out which happened first."

Griffin said the utility has learned some lessons from the experience, and will be tightening up rodent control at its facilities.

"In some areas where there may be an opening, or anyone who has had problems with even squirrels in their own home, they know the damage that occurs once they get inside," said Griffin.

"It appears that the squirrel was inside, we're not sure for how long, but in terms of being able to get in and do a substantial amount of damage on our wires, it was that as well as a system failure itself."...........

Fresno County Coroner David Hadden said Wednesday that a maggot infestation at the county morgue is making working conditions there "intolerable," and criticized county supervisors for delaying plans for a new facility.

Supervisor Judy Case said uncertainty over the budget has slowed progress on what she called the county's top capital project.

Morgue employees, meanwhile, talked about the maggots, which they say quickly turn into swirling black flies that swarm throughout the autopsy area.

"They're everywhere," Deputy Coroner Kelly Wiesel said. "They dive-bomb you and, eventually, they just drop dead on the floor."

Wiesel said that while morgue workers encounter maggots and flies when they are sent to death scenes, "these are homegrown."

Dr. Michael Chambliss, an assistant pathologist, said he and another worker thought the infestation was localized until they moved equipment.

"It was like an army of maggots all along the wall," he said. "You can see them everywhere -- along the baseboard, coming out of the wall.

"They're in your hair, bouncing on your face, bouncing on your clothes." He added that it is difficult to keep flies out of bodies pathologists are examining.

On a tour of the morgue, a facility built in the 1940s, Hadden pointed out dead and dying insects and cracked linoleum, which he said was a perfect breeding area for pests and bacteria. At one point he admonished a television cameraman who put down his equipment nearby.

"Don't put anything on the floor!" he said, wincing...........

WASHINGTON, D.C. —  At the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Marshals today seized more than $1.5 million worth of food products, including herbs and botanicals, stored under filthy conditions at the American Mercantile Corporation of Memphis, Tenn.

During an inspection of American Mercantile in March, FDA investigators discovered evidence of extensive rodent and insect infestation throughout the company’s warehouse. The company failed to correct these problems.  Acting on a warrant issued by the United Stated District Court in Memphis, U.S. Marshals seized all FDA-regulated food products exposed to rodent and insect contamination at the facility. The seized products violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act because they were held under insanitary conditions under which they may have become contaminated with filth..........

After a chunk of the facade fell off the Alliance Bank parking ramp and landed near the front door of Hunan Garden on Saturday night, Bob Kessler suspected the culprit was pigeon poop.

No one was hurt when the 15-by-2-foot section dropped, raining plaster, baby pigeons and heaps of droppings onto the sidewalk at Sixth and Cedar streets in St. Paul.

The collapse actually could help Kessler, head of St. Paul's Department of Safety and Inspections, persuade downtown building managers to buy into the city's soon-to-be-proposed Downtown Pigeon Control Project.

"The idea is to have a humane pigeon-control program that will reduce the population so we can better manage damage from their droppings," he said. "This is like the sky fell on somebody.".........

NEW ORLEANS —  A south Louisiana woman claims in a lawsuit that a nutria known as Norman ran at her in her local Walmart, scaring her into a panic attack and a foot injury that required surgery.

Employees at the Walmart in Abbeville not only knew a wild animal was at large in the store, but had given it a pet name and negligently failed to warn people about it, Rebecca T. White and her husband, Randal, allege in a state court lawsuit.

Nutria are rodents with bright orange buck teeth. Weighing up to 18 pounds, they look like small beavers with rat-like tails. Would-be fur farmers in 22 states imported large numbers in the 1930s and ’40s, then let them go when they proved unprofitable. They proliferated in south Louisiana, where many residents call them nutria-rats or neutral-rats.........

Allston-Brighton - One woman said a rat sat up to look at her while she was walking in front of her house in broad daylight. Another said she walks in the middle of the street when taking her terrier out at night to avoid rats scurrying past her legs like they do when she stays on the sidewalk. One family has spent $30 a week on rat poison, only to have the rodents come back two weeks later.

Allston-Brighton residents voiced their frustrations with the area’s rat population at a community meeting Wednesday, with the hope to catalyze neighborhood-wide efforts to combat infestations of the big, beady-eyed rodents.

John Meaney, the city’s principal inspector and rodent control authority, explained that overflowing trashcans and careless littering perpetuate the rat problem and can bring them into new areas, he said.

“We’re not ever going to get rid of rats, but we can try to control it,” he said.

The rat problem in Allston-Brighton exists mostly at the surface due to garbage and abandoned buildings, rather than underground in the sewer system, Meaney said. Unoccupied buildings and properties create a haven for rats to nest and breed........

    URUMQI, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Experts from Beijing have joined other Chinese scientists in trying to identify the mystery caterpillars that are destroying pastures in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

    "We are waiting for the caterpillars to change into chrysalides, and will be able to identify them only after moths are produced," said Gao Song, a researcher with the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

    Gao arrived in Xinjiang on Monday to observe samples of the 2-cm thorny green caterpillar with black stripes at a laboratory of Xinjiang Agricultural University. He and his colleagues were expecting to identify them from the size, color, wings and genitalia of the moths.

    "The mystery may remain unsolved for months if the caterpillars choose to estivate in the hot, arid summer and postpone their metamorphosis until the fall," he said Thursday.

    Su Hongtian, an expert with Ministry of Agriculture, has taken samples of the caterpillars to Beijing, where he hopes to use DNA technologies to identify their species.

    "If their DNA data is not in the existing databank, we, too, need to wait until moths are produced," said Su.

    The caterpillars have damaged 8,000 hectares of grassland in Usu and forced nearly 20,000 head of livestock and 50 herding families to leave.

    It was the worst plague of caterpillars in three decades in the city about 280 km west of the regional capital of Urumqi........

U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield has introduced legislation that would shift millions of federal dollars to identify, combat and eliminate bed bugs.

The parasite has grown from cliche to certifiable pest the past few years, and Butterfield says the federal government must take action to exterminate the problem before it gets worse.

Bed bug infestations have risen considerably throughout the nation and in North Carolina the past few years after the insect was nearly eliminated during the last half of the 20th century. Butterfield’s bill – dubbed the “Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act” – would use $50 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s budget to help states inspect for and terminate bed bugs in multi-family housing and hotels.

Wayne Cross, an exterminator with Dodson Bros Exterminating Co. in Rocky Mount, said he has seen a spike in bed bug activity in Eastern North Carolina in recent years.

Cross said treating a bed bug infestation is both difficult and expensive. He called the insects “the biggest problem” facing the hotel and apartment and extermination industries.......

LANHAM, Md. – For years, scientists have associated growing asthma rates among children with exposure to cockroach allergens, especially among inner-city children. A new study in the May issue of Journal of Medical Entomology entitled “German Cockroach Allergen Levels in North Carolina Schools: Comparison of Integrated Pest Management and Conventional Cockroach Control” shows that using integrated pest management (IPM) to control cockroaches is more effective at reducing cockroaches and their allergens than conventional methods which do not use IPM.

Unlike conventional pest-control methods, which often involve periodic spraying of insecticides on a predetermined schedule, IPM involves close monitoring for signs of specific pests, combined with baits and traps to control them. The authors of this study compared two school districts using the conventional method with one school district using IPM, and found that the one using IPM had much lower concentrations of cockroach allergens and zero cockroaches caught in pre-set traps.

“North Carolina schools are mandated to convert to IPM by 2011, so these findings give credibility that IPM has superior and longer-lasting results than pesticide use alone,” said Dr. Godfrey Nalyanya, one of the authors. “In fact, the study was so convincing that the two school districts using conventional pest control quickly made the switch to IPM.”

The authors also state that besides being more effective and ecologically superior to conventional pest control methods, IPM has long-term economic benefit as well.

“The monetary costs for IPM might be higher initially, but it pays for itself down the road and provides a healthier school environment,” Nalyanya says........

Scores of eastern tarantulas, which are known as “bird-eating spiders” and can grow larger than the palm of a man’s hand, have begun crawling out from gardens and venturing into public spaces in Bowen, a coastal town about 700 miles northwest of Brisbane.

Earlier this week locals spotted an Australian tarantula wandering towards a public garden in the centre of town where people often sit for lunch. They called in a pest controller, but not before using a can of insect spray to paralyse the spider. The spiders have been pushed out of their natural habitat over the past month by heavy, unseasonal rain.......

Investigators from Mayor Daley's Dumpster Task Force closed a North Side bar and grill late Friday afternoon after finding what they called an active rat infestation that put customers at risk and required immediate closure.

The Task Force received a complaint about uncontained garbage at the Mad River Bar & Grill, 2909-2911 N. Sheffield Ave., but found the unchecked presence of rats that presented the bigger problem, according to a release from the Department of Streets and Sanitation.

More than 300 rat droppings were found over two floors including in the kitchen area, the DJ and bar areas, and in storage areas. Inspectors also saw numerous holes and openings that would have given the rats numerous sites in which to nest, according to the city. ........

Residents in Tower Hill and Moyhall, St James, are fearing a leptospirosis outbreak as rats and other rodents have begun to overrun their communities.

Owen Parnell, a pastor at a local church in Moyhall, said the rat infestation is as a result of a garbage-clogged gully that runs adjacent to both communities.

"There is no designated area to dump garbage in the respective communities and the garbage truck does not come in the area, so persons have resorted to dumping the waste in the gully and this is now creating a health hazard. We are literally living in fear of getting leptospirosis because of what is happening," the concerned pastor said..........

HARRISBURG, PA. -- Tenants of a Harrisburg hotel have been forced out because of a bed bug infestation.

"They're just forcing us out. I don't think they should force you out," said tenant Donald Walborn.

Tenants in the hotel above Tara Station restaurant and bar on Fourth Street had to be decontaminated in a hazmat mobile shower unit.

City code inspectors visited the hotel Wednesday and discovered the bugs.

About a dozen people live in the hotel and some thought the city's response was an overreaction.

"They're just forcing us out. I don't think they should force you out," said tenant Donald Walborn. "If you feel comfortable in a place and they force you out, I think it's wrong."

Officials closed a Harrisburg hotel and restaurant after investigators discovered an infestation of bed bugs.

The American Red Cross is helping the displaced tenants find a place to stay.

The hotel must now be fumigated, which may take weeks. Officials also closed the restaurant on the first floor of the building as a precaution.

Police Chief Charles Kellar said the inspectors themselves were infested with the bugs during their investigation. They were sent to Harrisburg Hospital for decontamination.

"This is absolutely a circus," said Wali Mohmand, owner of the hotel. He believes the city crossed the line in its response.

"One had a cuff, and she undid the cuff of her pants, and a lot came out of there. One guy said it looked like the walls were moving," said Kellar.

The hotel's owner, Wali Mohmand, was on the scene Wednesday, and he said authorities are overreacting.

"I don't see the reason having gone to the hospital and making a big deal of it," said Mohmand. "The building has updated sprinkler system, electric, plumbing. Everything is up to code."

Mohmand told News 8 that an exterminator sprayed the building Tuesday and it was fine.

Tenants Claim They Are 'Comfortable'

The city began debugging the hotel after the current tenants had left.

One former tenant said the order was a long time coming.

Current tenants, however, had a much different reaction.

Tenants were ushered through a mobile hazmat shower unit to be decontaminated.

They said they are comfortable in the hotel, even if there are bugs and even if the hotel's owner is also blaming them for attracting the bugs.

"I'm not their maid, they have to clean after themselves," said Mohmand.

Mohmand said the city overstepped its bounds with its response to the situation.

"Ask an average person what you do with bed bugs," said Mohmand. "Do you call a hazmat team? Seriously."

The tenants were taken to a nearby shelter and were given new clothes.

The hotel is due for two more exterminator sprayings.

The health department will decide on Thursday if the hotel will remain open...........

An 89-year-old war veteran has been found covered in blood after mice chewed his head at an Australian nursing home.

The man was discovered in a state of distress at the state government-run nursing home in south west Queensland.

Local MP Ray Hopper likened the situation to the Third World.

"I'm told by the elderly man's daughter that the poor old fellow had been trying to brush the mice away as they continued chewing his ears, head and neck," he said.

"He was so stressed that doctors put him on morphine to calm him down. He nearly died on Saturday night. He was being eaten alive."

The attack came to light when the man's daughter complained to the MP.

Queensland's Health Minister Paul Lucas has apologised to the victim and his family, and offered to relocate other residents of the facility.

The man's daughter said her father was unaware the mice attack took place.

"Because of his age, he's bed-ridden and he has limited communication ability," she said.

The woman told of her disbelief after seeing the injuries on Sunday. "It wasn't just a little nip. It wasn't nice at all," she said.

She added how her family still had complete faith in the nursing home staff, who have had a close relationship with the man during his two years there.

But Australia's Ageing Minister Justine Elliot has ordered an investigation into the procedures and processes at the home in Dalby, 130 miles west of Brisbane.

Karingal Nursing Home, an 80-bed facility with 22 residents over the age of 90, cannot operate without accreditation.

Extra staff and pest control contractors have been called in to deal with the vermin, a Queensland Health spokeswoman said...........

SYDNEY (AFP) — Australia ordered an investigation into a nursing home where elderly and bed-ridden residents were gnawed by a swarming plague of mice.

An 89-year-old war veteran was found bleeding from bites to his ears, neck, head and hands after being attacked by the mice as he lay in bed at the facility in the northeastern state of Queensland.

The old man was so distressed that doctors had to sedate him with morphine, said Ray Hopper, the local member of parliament.

"The top of his ears were severely chewed and he had bites to his head and neck," Hopper told the Australian Associated Press.

"His hands were covered in blood because he was trying to get the mice off him. We are talking about a health facility overrun by vermin. It's atrocious," he added.

Ageing Minister Justine Elliot said she understood there had been a second attack, and had asked accreditation authorities to investigate the staff response to the rodent plague.

"My immediate concern remains for the health, safety and well-being of residents living in the home," Elliot said in a statement.

"These reports are extremely disturbing and traumatic for residents and their families."

If health and safety standards at the 80-bed home were deemed inadequate, Elliot said she would make "no apologies" for shutting it down.

Queensland Health spokesman Stewart Gordon said authorities were doing everything in their power to get rid of the mice, including boosting nursing staff numbers and increasing cleaning staff.

The home, Karingal, is home to 70 high-dependency residents, including 22 who are over 90 years old.

Nurses at the home are horrified by the mouse infestation and believe the home should be shut down if authorities cannot contain the rodents, a nurses' union official said.

"The nurses certainly feel devastated," said Queensland Nurses Union secretary Gay Hawksworth, adding that additional staff had been rostered to ensure proper cleaning and protection of residents.

"If they can't contain the plague, then the next step would be to close the place down," she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation..........

PHILADELPHIA - In the past two decades, fear of viruses and strange illnesses spreading to pandemic proportions made headlines several times.

We take a look back at the top five health scares.

At five, Hantavirus was first recognized in its current form in the early 90s in the southwestern United States.

Rodent control became the strategy for preventing it.

At four is Mad Cow Disease.

By earlier this year, it had killed 164 people in Britain and 42 elsewhere.

The number of cases is expected to rise because of the disease's long incubation period, but is no longer cause of widespread panic.

Number three is 'Avian' or bird flu.

Since it first infected humans in the 1990s, study of the virus has prompted changes in poultry farming, flu vaccination research, and pandemic planning.

Two is SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)

Within a matter of weeks in early 2003, SARS spread from China to 37 countries.

It caused nearly 800 deaths, but now is considered rare.

Number one is West Nile Virus.

In the past decade, we've come to expect hundred of cases a year in this country.

In 2007, there were 3600 cases reported and 124 deaths..........

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS – The bed bugs bit at Northern Kentucky University’s Callahan Hall – to the cost of $10,000 in fumigation and displacing 12 students for 48 hours.

“One of the common myths associated with bed bugs is that they only affect dirty or unkempt places,” said Peter Trentacoste, director of University Housing. “Bed bugs do not discriminate. They can affect a five-star hotel as easy as a one-star hotel. The tri-state is currently heavily burdened by this problem so it should come as no surprise that NKU Housing has handled a small number of cases this year.”

Trentacoste said the source of the bed bugs is unknown.

“It was difficult in this case to identify a source room since we had multiple rooms report the issue at the same time,” said Trentacoste. “As far as where the bugs originated, it’s likely that they were brought in by someone from a location off campus.

“Nationally, a primary source that seems to be named is spending the night in an infested hotel room.”

Two rooms were found to have bed bugs but the university followed their pest control company’s advice to treat the entire floor of Callahan Hall.  .........

It's not exactly the biblical plague of locusts, but this is termite swarming season in Southwest Florida, and by many accounts, it's a bad one.

Specifically, we're talking about subterranean termites, whose swarming season runs from February through May, with a peak in March and April.

"This has been the biggest year since I've been in business," said Conrad Burns, owner of Burns Pest Eliminators. "The swarms are bigger, more compact and more numerous. Frankly, I don't know why."

Three kinds of termite inhabit Southwest Florida, subterranean, dampwood and drywood, with subterranean being the biggest threat to homes (though when a house is tented for termites, it has been infested by drywood termites).

Dampwood and drywood termites swarm in the summer.

Southwest Florida has two kinds of subterranean termites, which cause more than $2 billion in damage a year nationwide: native Eastern subterraneans and nonnative Formosan subterraneans.

While there are more than 2,800 termite species worldwide, the Formosan subterranean termite is the most widely distributed.

Scientists first described it during the early 20th century in Taiwan.

By the 1960s, it had reached the United States, and in 1980, a colony was found at a condominium in Broward County.

A colony of native subterranean termites can have several hundred thousand individuals, while a colony of Formosan termites can contain several million.

"The Formosans tend to have larger colonies," said Mike Page, chief of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' Entomology Bureau. "Therefore, the damage has a high potential of being greater. It's not that they eat more - that's a false assumption - but their colonies are larger and can do more damage." .........

While students were away during Spring Break, Sentinel Pest Control paid UIS a visit in hopes of evicting some unwelcome guests in campus housing: bed bugs.  At the Student Government Association meeting on April 5, John Ringle, Director of Housing, addressed the “bed bug” problem in campus housing.  

“We have been dealing with this, off and on, since October 2007,” Ringle said.  The bed bugs have been found in mattresses and bed linens in apartments on campus.   The insects have especially targeted residents in Clover Court, though exterminators have also made visits to Larkspur and Sunflower courts.  .........

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. marshalls served a warrant on a New Jersey company that has refused to recall peanut products at the center of a major salmonella outbreak, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.

The FDA said Westco Fruit and Nuts Inc., an Irvington, New Jersey-based company, has refused to provide access to distribution documents and declined to recall products after an FDA request. The warrant seeks access to the records.

The FDA said the company, which produces and distributes peanuts and peanut products, received shipments from the Peanut Corporation of America, a Georgia company that went into bankruptcy and closed two plants in Georgia and Texas after inspectors traced the salmonella outbreaks to them.

"FDA's enforcement action against Westco Fruit and Nuts is an appropriate step toward removing potentially harmful products from the marketplace, especially when, as in this case, a company is unwilling to share information FDA needs to ensure food safety," the FDA's Michael Chappell said in a statement.........

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- The shuttered Texas plant owned by a peanut company blamed in a national salmonella outbreak that sickened nearly 700 people was fined a record $14.6 million on Thursday.

The state fined Plainview Peanut Corp. LLC over violations that include unsanitary conditions, product contamination, illnesses linked to peanuts from the plant and operating for almost four years without a food manufacturer's license, the Texas Department of State Health Services said.

Spokesman Doug McBride said the fine was the largest ever levied by the department.

"We felt the assessment of the administrative fines needed to be done regardless of financial situations," he said, referring to bankruptcy filings by the plant's owner, Peanut Corp. of America. "If there is a violation, the penalties need to be assessed, period."........

"Progress has plateaued," said Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases. "This indicates to us that further measures are needed to prevent more food-borne illness."

The CDC data come as Congress considers legislation that would reshape the food safety system and require more preventive action. The issue has gained President Obama's attention and driven proposals to create an agency dedicated solely to food safety outside the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Food poisoning strikes 76 million Americans every year, with 300,000 ending up in the hospital and 5,000 dying, the CDC says. Salmonella infections can be fatal in the young and elderly.

Officials last month recalled 1 million pounds of pistachios suspected of salmonella contamination. A peanut-linked salmonella outbreak has sickened hundreds and killed nine since late 2008. As of Wednesday, 3,900 peanut-linked products had been voluntarily recalled by their producers.........

WASHINGTON — As the nation’s second-largest processor of pistachios agreed Monday to recall its entire 2008 crop despite no confirmed illnesses, the Obama administration issued a tough warning to all food makers that sloppy manufacturing practices would no longer be tolerated.

With the warning, the administration signaled that it was substantially changing the way the government oversees food safety. Food-handling practices that in the past would have resulted in mild warnings may now lead to wide-ranging and expensive recalls, even before anyone becomes ill from contaminated food.

“The food industry needs to be on notice that F.D.A. is going to be much more proactive and move things far faster,” said Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration. “We’re going to try to stop people from getting sick in the first place, as opposed to waiting until we have illness and death before we take action.”........

Gwyneth Paltrow had to call for pest control because of a rat infestation at her L.A. home, according to Contact Music.

The Hollywood star and hubby Chris Martin of Coldplay are renting an apartment near her mother Blythe Danner as she’s working on Iron Man 2. However, the apartment was infested by rodents, according to the Daily Mirror. How gross!

Paltrow’s friend dished:

“Gwyneth wanted everything to be perfect. She was so excited about moving to L.A. with the family and to be closer to her actress mum. It will be the first time in ages that she, Chris and the children will be living together as a family.

But her stomach turned at the thought of rats running around. She didn’t want her homecoming ruined by those horrible creatures. Being an animal lover, Gwyneth didn’t want the vermin harmed, just removed.”........

Gwyneth Paltrow had to call for pest control because of a rat infestation at her L.A. home, according to Contact Music.

The Hollywood star and hubby Chris Martin of Coldplay are renting an apartment near her mother Blythe Danner as she’s working on Iron Man 2. However, the apartment was infested by rodents, according to the Daily Mirror. How gross!

Paltrow’s friend dished:

“Gwyneth wanted everything to be perfect. She was so excited about moving to L.A. with the family and to be closer to her actress mum. It will be the first time in ages that she, Chris and the children will be living together as a family.

But her stomach turned at the thought of rats running around. She didn’t want her homecoming ruined by those horrible creatures. Being an animal lover, Gwyneth didn’t want the vermin harmed, just removed.”........

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