Rat Poison

Stores in Italy pulled two popular brands of Christmas cakes from their shelves Friday because an animal rights group said it injected some of them with rat poison. The news agency ANSA said the Animal Liberation Front sent cakes to its offices in Bologna and Florence on Thursday along with messages saying it was protesting genetic engineering. Both cakes tested positive Friday for enough rat poison to make someone seriously ill, ANSA said.

The mayor of Recife made good on a campaign promise to clean up huge piles of rubbish, but now residents are complaining that the millions of rats that once fed on the garbage are gnawing on people. After his election, Jarbas Vasconcelos, mayor of this impoverished city in northeastern Brazil, sent sanitation crews into the city's miserable shantytowns to haul away mountains of rotting garbage, on which millions of rats fed.

Borden Inc., the world's largest dairy company, said it pulled its products from the shelves in Mississippi and northern Louisiana after finding milk with traces of a toxic substance from contaminated feed. Chris Tilton, a Borden spokeswoman in Columbus, Ohio, said it is not known if any of the contaminated products had been purchased, but a Mississippi health official said the substance is present in amounts too small to be dangerous. Borden pulled milk, ice cream and other liquid dairy items from stores in the two states, where 32 dairies that apparently used feed tainted with barium carbonate had supplied milk, Tilton said.

Traffic backed up about two miles in both directions on the Golden State Freeway in Valencia on Friday because a pickup truck overturned, spilling potentially hazardous pesticide and rat poison on the road. The 3 a.m. accident initially closed six of the eight lanes of the freeway just south of Magic Mountain Parkway, when a tire apparently blew out on a northbound pickup driven by Anthony Roy Canton, 24, of Hollywood, the California Highway Patrol reported. Canton suffered minor injuries.

A railroad tank car carrying a chemical used in rat poison derailed and caught fire Tuesday, releasing a 1,000-foot-high cloud that injured dozens and forced the evacuation of 10,000 to 15,000 people, officials said. Most of the injured reporting to hospitals complained of shortness of breath and burning eyes from inhaling the white phosphorus fumes. There were no reports of serious injuries.

Rat poison was discovered in Contac cold capsules, Teldrin allergy medicine and Dietac appetite suppressant capsules Friday, forcing the manufacturer to withdraw the products from the market. Dr. Frank E. Young, head of the Food and Drug Administration, condemned the tampering as "terrorism" committed by a "copycat" inspired by the Extra-Strength Tylenol poisonings that killed seven in 1982 and one earlier this year.

Two sixth-grade girls were in custody Tuesday after spiking their teacher's Gatorade with rat poison--motivated, perhaps, by one of the student's bad grades, authorities said. Two boys also were arrested after allegedly hiding the emptied box of rat poison. The tainted drink was sitting on the teacher's desk when a student in the class warned her not to drink it, said Deputy Cheryl Huff, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

A former Russian spy poisoned in Britain and now hospitalized under armed guard may have been targeted because of his criticism of former colleagues and his investigation of the killing of a prominent anti-Kremlin journalist, friends and fellow dissidents said Sunday. Col. Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, said last week that he fell ill Nov. 1 after a meal with a contact who claimed to have details about the slaying of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist gunned down Oct.

A 12-year-old girl pleaded guilty Tuesday to spiking her teacher's Gatorade with rat poison, a prosecutor said. The unidentified sixth-grader entered her plea in San Bernardino Juvenile Court. If she were an adult, she would face a maximum sentence of five years, but in this case, the Probation Department will examine her background and recommend a punishment.