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The skinny: 13 jailed in Italy after cheaper cow milk used in prized mozzarella

 
Tampa Bay Times
Published May 13, 2014

Quality control

Cheap cow milk in prized cheese sends 13 to jail

Police in Italy have shut down a mozzarella factory and arrested 13 people after finding that prized local buffalo milk was being cut with cheaper imported cow milk. Authorities also found that the cheese, produced near the southern town of Caserta, contained as much as 20 times permissible levels of bacteria, said Carabinieri police Maj. Alfonso Pannone. Police on Monday also shut down seven stores selling the cheese in the Campania region, which includes Naples. Milky white buffalo mozzarella is prized by Italians and tourists. It carries a special label supposed to guarantee quality and protect its reputation.

Special delivery

Police: Man drives drunk to file report

Police say a 31-year-old man has been arrested after he drove to a Louisiana state police headquarters while drunk to file an accident report. Trooper Jared Sandifer says Patrick Ruffner of Gonzales called state police Saturday, saying his vehicle was struck by a hit-and-run driver on Interstate 10 in Baton Rouge. He was told to go to Troop A's offices to fill out a crash report. Sandifer says when Ruffner got out of his SUV, a trooper smelled alcohol and gave him field sobriety and breath tests. Ruffner was charged with driving on a suspended license and with first-offense driving while intoxicated. He was in the East Baton Rouge Parish jail Monday with bail set at $1,000.

Helping hands

Boy Scouts come to Ann Curry's aid

When NBC News correspondent Ann Curry broke her leg during a hike, a troop of New Jersey Boy Scouts came to her rescue. Members of Troop 368 from Berkeley Heights found her sitting along a trail in New York's Harriman State Park in April after her family tried unsuccessfully to carry her down the rugged mountain path, according to Scouting Magazine. They fashioned a splint for her injured ankle and crafted a stretcher from logs and a tarp to carry her down the mountain. Her husband and son drove her to a hospital. "Your skill and professionalism were a great comfort to me," Curry wrote in a thank-you to the Scouts. Troop leader Rick Jurgens said many of the 14- to 16-year-old Scouts were just following their training, and didn't realize they had rescued someone famous.

Creative writing

Memoir faker must return $22.5M

In her book Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, Misha Defonseca wrote of her experience of being a young Jewish girl on her own during World War II, fleeing into the woods where she was adopted by wolves, and killing a Nazi soldier. None of it was true. Defonseca isn't Jewish. And she was in school in Belgium. A Massachusetts judge has ordered Defonseca to return $22.5 million to independent publisher Mt. Ivy Press and its proprietor.

Compiled from wire services and other sources.