Washington state euthanises 300 birds
Washington state authorities have euthanised scores of steroid-filled roosters after raiding a farm and arresting a man on suspicion of raising the birds for cockfighting, prosecutors said on Tuesday.Victor Hugo Gallegos Chavez, 35, the lone defendant in the case, was arrested at his home in Rochester, about 70 miles southwest of Seattle by authorities acting on a search warrant on Monday.
Court documents filed by prosecutors cite Chavez and others as saying he sold the roosters to fight in Mexico, Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere. Cockfighting is outlawed in all 50 US states but remains legal in Mexico, among other countries.
(Reuters)
Cow-milking robots make farmers, animals happier
A new trend in farm-based robotics has dramatically changed the way cows are cared for and milked at farms in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New York, according to a report from the New York Times.Robotic milking systems, like the one in the Times story, have been popular in Europe for years, but are only just gaining traction in the US
The benefits are many. The robots work around the clock, improving efficiency. Because the cows are able to be milked more often, they’re in less pain. And the farmers get to sleep just a tiny bit more or concentrate on the millions of other things that have to be done.
(Yahoo News)
Racist Easter Eggs On lawn
Parents in Henrico County, Va., were outraged Easter Sunday when they discovered Easter eggs with racist messages had been left on neighborhood lawns.Jackie Smith said she and her husband, Brandon, were doing a traditional egg hunt in their front yard when they found an egg slightly different from the ones they hid for their 3-year-old son.“My husband noticed the last Easter egg and I knew it wasn’t the one that I put out. We opened it and it’s got the white supremacist stuff in it,” she told WRIC-TV.
There wasn’t any candy in the egg, just a chilling message that read: “Diversity = white genocide” and “Mass immigration and forced assimilation of non-whites into our lands is genocide.”
(Huffington Post)
fourth Grader Sells Pot In Northern Colorado
School officials in northern Colorado are asking parents to take care with their newly legal recreational marijuana, after fourth graders were caught dealing the drug on an elementary school campus.John Gates, director of safety for Weld County School District 6, said that the students involved, three 10-year-old boys and a 10-year-old girl at Greeley’s Monfort Elementary School, faced tough discipline but not suspension or expulsion.
Only one student admitted to trying any of the drug, a small bite of an edible marijuana item, and a subsequent medical exam did not indicate any harmful effect had been caused, Gates said.Gates said a student who was not involved alerted school officials that a student sold marijuana to other students on Monday, and that on Tuesday a student tried to trade edible marijuana for some of the student seller’s marijuana.
“This could not have happened had they secured their marijuana,” Gates said of the grandparents, urging adults to take care with the drug. “Nothing good's going to come from having 10-year-olds find it, use it or take it to school.”
(AP)
Man ‘Armed' With Potato Robs Businesses
Police say a man used a potato to pretend he had a gun while trying to rob a Rhode Island business.The man entered a convenience store Monday with a potato and shouted: “Give me the money.” A police report says the store manager chased him off with a baseball bat. Police provided a description of the suspect. They say officers later went to a laundromat where an employee told them a man fitting the description came in carrying a potato and yelled: “I need the money.”
The TV station reports that the employee gave the man a $20 bill from a decoy cash register, and he left.
(AP)