SEATAC – A SeaTac company is voluntarily recalling its coconut-flavor frozen desert after state inspectors found one contaminated with a bacterium that can be especially dangerous to pregnant women.

No illnesses have been reported from the nondairy dessert, sold by Ca Rem #1. The dessert, similar to a Popsicle, is sold at 40 food markets and restaurants in Western Washington and western Oregon.

“We know that these desserts can stay in freezers for months, so families should take a second look at what they’ve been saving for a special treat,” said Claudia Coles, manager of the state Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Program.

Coles is encouraging people to throw away Ca Rem #1 coconut desserts they bought.

A Department of Agriculture inspector randomly selected the contaminated dessert Jan. 14 at Asian Planet Food Market in Kent as part of routine food testing, spokesman Jason Kelly said.

Test results returned eight days later showed it was contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a harmful bacterium.

The Department of Agriculture determined the product’s distribution area and initiated the recall Friday.

The dessert was made in Hillman City, where the retail and wholesale ice cream business was located until being licensed in SeaTac earlier this month, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Ca Rem #1 is owned by Jackie Bell, a Vietnam native who makes nondairy frozen desserts with coconut milk and fruit. She also owned Le Bambou, a now-defunct Vietnamese cafe in Hillman City.

“We don’t know what caused that,” she said of the contaminated product.

Food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes may not look or smell spoiled. Eating food with the bacterium may cause listeriosis, a food-borne illness that can cause high fever and severe headache, among other symptoms. The elderly and people with weakened immune systems are also particularly at risk.

Consumers with questions are encouraged to call Ca Rem #1 at 206-720-1887.

SOURCE:

• Seattle P-I

From seattle-tacoma craigslist > seattle > sporting goods:

We’re not sure what you’d do with this, other than start your own ski resort, or perhaps sit in it and reminisce about that “one really good run” you did, but what the heck…someone in SeaTac is selling this:

Own a piece of Crystal Mountain History.

This chair came from the old chair 3 Green Valley.

2 person chair.

We bought it for $200.

Moving and need find a good home for it.

- Jim

email: sale-548663185@craigslist.org

From Grundlepuck’s Flickr Photostream:

This is the subway that connects one part of SeaTac (the Seattle-Tacoma) airport to another part.

Six weeks after the collapse of civilization this will house a band of flesh-hungry mutants with a leader named Brick.

Brick probably never got his high school GED. Enjoy it now — that is what I am saying.  

SEATAC – For the first time ever, the Port of Seattle has taken stock of the greenhouse gas that is pumped into the atmosphere by activities associated with Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, from parking-lot and hotel shuttles to the vehicles on the tarmac — and, of course, the jets themselves.

The news is sobering.

“Airports are big polluters,” said John Creighton, president of the Port commission. “But we want to be part of the solution not the problem, and the first step is getting solid data, to reduce aviation-related emissions.”

Airport activities generated about 5 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions in 2006 — and 84 percent of that came from airplane emissions, according to the report. Emissions associated with airline travel were equivalent to each of Sea-Tac’s 31 million passengers that year driving for 300 miles in cars that get 23 miles per gallon, according to Russ Simonson, a senior environmental program manager at Sea-Tac.

Transportation to and from the airport was a distant second, at 11 percent of the problem. All the other activities on the ground came to 5 percent or less.

Sea-Tac is the nation’s 17th busiest airport, and last year was its busiest ever.

The Port already has identified steps it wants to take to reduce the emissions, including consolidating shuttle-bus trips and converting some ground-crew vehicles to natural gas. Other airports in the country, including Los Angeles, Dallas and Phoenix, already have taken similar steps.

Airport officials also say they want to build the infrastructure needed to provide electrical power and air to airplanes while they are parked at the gate, so pilots can switch off the jet engines. Some other airports already have taken those steps, too.

But the airport may also use the emissions inventory to break new ground.

Creighton said he sees a special role for Seattle, the home of Boeing and Alaska Airlines, to lead the way nationally. “We need a Northwest clean-air strategy for the airport,” Creighton said.

He said he may push the Port to support federal emissions reductions for aircraft and work with airlines to set voluntary targets to reduce aircraft emissions at the Port of Seattle.

It’s worked before on other environmental issues. In the 1980s, the Port negotiated with the airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration to phase out noisier planes.

While the FAA would prefer a national approach, there’s nothing standing in the way of Sea-Tac again negotiating voluntary agreements, this time on air pollution, said Carl Burleson, director of the office of environment and energy for the FAA.

The FAA is helping airports reduce emissions through operational changes, including implementing more efficient routes, new navigational equipment and switching to electrical power for gate operations, Burleson said.

Any local emission-reduction targets would have to be significant but realistic, Creighton said, taking into consideration current technology, public-safety issues and airlines’ need to remain competitive.

“We don’t want to impose standards that aren’t reachable,” Creighton said. “But I think the Port of Seattle has a role to play and needs to step up and lead.”

SOURCE:

• The Seattle Times

SEATTLE – Bail was set at $250,000 Friday for a Seattle man suspected of raping a 12-year-old runaway and forcing her into prostitution while her family tried to find her.

Known as “Smoke Bone” on the streets, the suspect was observed following a juvenile prostitute two years ago in SeaTac, and may have persuaded two teenage girls working for him to rob a man at knifepoint in 2006, according to a law enforcement source.

On Jan. 9, he befriended the runaway on a sidewalk in Seattle and persuaded her to stay with him. They rode a bus to White Center, where he had sex with her for the first of several times. Within days, he had persuaded her to become a prostitute for him, even instructing how much to charge for sex acts, court documents say.

One night they rode a bus to Federal Way, where she performed oral sex for money. She handed most of the money to the suspect, but was allowed to keep a small portion for food, according to court documents.

The suspect, who has numerous convictions and 10 warrants for his arrest, was arrested Thursday after an officer found him near an apartment where he’d been staying with another girl in West Seattle. He faces charges of first-degree child rape and promoting prostitution.

“I think the detectives were a little shocked at her age,” Seattle police spokesman Mark Jamieson said. “You just think about what if she hadn’t been found.”

The Seattle P-I is not naming the suspect because he has not yet been charged.

The girl’s family had reported her missing when she didn’t return home on Jan. 9. Police had no luck finding her until another woman who knew the suspect called the girl’s legal guardian, after finding her number in a backpack that contained schoolbooks, notebooks and a pair of jeans, according to court documents.

The victim and the suspect had been staying with the woman at a Seattle address, court documents say.

The woman later told police she knew of other young girls the suspect had pimped out for profit, according to court documents.

Once the girl’s family was told of the girl’s whereabouts, her uncle went looking for her Sunday and found her downtown with the suspect.

The uncle confronted the suspect and he ran, court documents say.

The girl reluctantly went with her uncle, but later told police that she “would not stay with him or her guardian and would leave at the first opportunity,” according to a police report.

The victim was taken to Children’s Hospital and Regional Medial Center, where she underwent a rape examination.

In 2005, the P-I detailed how police and social workers were alarmed by a growing number of young girls, some as young as 11, who had been caught in street prostitution. Seattle is one of several hub cities on a network.

The P-I’s report detailed how predatory men often charm and befriend young girls by buying them clothes, showering them with attention, and offering them places to stay. Some were foster children; others ran away from middle-class or upper-class homes.

They soon find themselves emotionally attached and asked to repay their debt by selling themselves. Others are coerced with promises that the money will buy the girl and her pimp a better life.

Researchers estimate that nationally, one of every three kids on the streets will be solicited for sex.

“It does lend a good argument to why we do enforce these laws and have a vice unit, because it’s not a victimless crime. You have somebody who was being raped and forced into prostitution,” Jamieson, the police spokesman, said.

Three years ago, the King County Sheriff’s Office investigated the suspect after two girls, ages 17 and 15, robbed a man at knifepoint outside a Walgreens store on Aurora Avenue North in Shoreline. The girls forced the man to withdraw $40 from an ATM and were seen giving the money to the suspect, a law enforcement source said.

The case was referred to the Prosecutor’s Office, which declined to file charges because of a lack of evidence.

The following year, a deputy patrolling state Route 99 in SeaTac observed a 17-year-old prostitute roaming the street and stopped her.

The deputy noted that the suspect was walking close behind her. Both were interviewed, but police lacked evidence to arrest either one.

The deputy reported that the two were staying at a nearby motel.

SOURCE:

• Seattle P-I