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Hungry cows keep food waste out of landfill

Francisco “Pancho” Martinez jerked the dump truck forward and out poured a whole bed’s worth of tomatoes, squash, melons and other past-prime produce mashed into a slop Friday morning.

While most humans would turn up their noses at the half-rotted and moldy produce, a herd of cows quickly swarmed the pile. Soon, on the ranch that operates on Martinez’s land off State Route 82, all that could be heard was the sound of contented bovine mastication.

“Right now, all that grass, it will keep an animal alive,” Martinez said, pointing to the dry stubble covering the hills. “But this stuff, they go for this stuff.”

Squash, he added later, is the cows’ favorite, and whatever isn’t eaten decomposes and helps improve soil health.

The herd is one of many in the area that benefits from close proximity to what has historically been the largest port of entry for imported fruit and vegetables from Mexico.

The free load of produce unfit for human consumption the cows enjoyed Friday came from the Borderlands Food Bank, which collects between 25 and 40 million pounds of mostly edible imported produce from local warehouses every year and distributes it to food banks and nonprofits around the country. But not all of it ends up on the tables of families in need, and last year nearly 2 percent of the total went to local ranches, like the one on Martinez’s land and more than 30 others in Santa Cruz County.

However, due to a now-enforced cap at the county landfill, the food bank has turned to composting and ranch donations much more heavily since then, according to director Yolanda Soto. While Borderlands Food Bank is where Martinez and others pick up much of the produce waste for cattle, the Nogales Community Food Bank and a number of local produce companies also give spoiled produce to ranchers.

Martinez said produce warehouses regularly call him looking to rid themselves of spoiling food. On a good day, he said, he can run six loads to his property, “depending on how fast they load me,” and he tries to put in three days a week during peak produce season, which can spell big savings.

“It helps him quite a bit because otherwise you’d have to buy hay,” Martinez said of the rancher who leases his land.

Landfill limits

The help goes both ways. For the produce companies that give spoiled food to Martinez and others, it saves them $45 a ton in landfill fees, as well as the cost of driving it there. But for the food bank, the help is even more critical.

Intoxicated Man leaves 1,4 and 6 yr old in car at Mcdonald's

A Rio Rico man was found in an apparently intoxicated state after leaving his three small children unattended in a car at a local fast food restaurant, authorities said.

Jose M. Aviles, 29, was arrested and jailed on three counts of child neglect, child abuse and endangerment, as well as resisting arrest.

According to the Nogales Police Department, a concerned citizen reported shortly before 7 p.m. Friday that the children had been alone in the vehicle at the McDonald’s on Crawford Street for approximately 30 minutes.

Officers arrived at the scene and found the children, ages 1, 4 and 6, in a vehicle littered with trash. A half-consumed beer can was also near the front seat, NPD said.

The officers learned that the children’s father, Aviles, was supposed to be caring for them at the time. He was later located at his residence and suspected of being under the influence of alcohol.

The children were not harmed, NPD said, and were turned over to a family member. The Arizona Department of Child Safety was also contacted about the incident.

Sheriff Antonio Estrada said Aviles was combative and uncooperative during his intake at the jail and detention officers had to physically subdue him, which resulted in Avila's rough appearance in his mug shot.

U.S. Warns of “Credible Threats” in 2 Turkish Cities

WASHINGTON – The United States Consulate in Istanbul said on Saturday that it has received reports of “credible threats” in Turkey’s tourist areas, particularly in public squares and docks in that city and in Antalya.

“The U.S. Mission in Turkey would like to inform U.S. citizens that there are credible threats to tourist areas, in particular to public squares and docks in Istanbul and Antalya,” the consulate said in a statement, without mentioning when the threat had been discovered.

The U.S. State Department published the warning three weeks after the March 19 suicide attack in downtown Istanbul that left five people dead and about 30 wounded, and which was perpetrated by a young jihadist with ties to the Islamic State in Turkey.

After that attack, the United States at the end of March authorized the families of American military personnel and diplomats in the southern part of the country to leave Turkey, considering the terrorist threat to the area where they were living.

That decision, taken in coordination with the Turkish government, affected more than 600 families of diplomatic and defense personnel in the city of Adana (including Incirlik Air Base), as well as in the towns of Izmir and Mugla.

“Please exercise extreme caution if you are in the vicinity of such areas. For your personal safety, we urge you to monitor local media,” said the statement of the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, distributed by the U.S. State Department.

Turkey is in a state of alert and security measures have been intensified to the maximum due to the four suicide attacks committed so far this year in Istanbul and Ankara, which killed more than 80 people.

Cuba Needs New Brewery to Meet Growing Demand for Beer

HAVANA – Beer production in Cuba is far from meeting the country’s growing demand in stores, inns and hotels, due to the large increase in tourism, a demand that can only be met by building a new brewery, the island’s producers said.

The current demand for beer is beyond the capacity of Cuba’s existing breweries, which have signed contracts for more than 33 million cases at the Business Fair being held this week in Havana, considerably more than their current production capability will allow, local media said Friday.

This year’s production plan for the mixed company Bucanero, which produces four local beer brands, is to turn out 19 million cases, while importing 3 million cases of the Dominican brew Presidente, according to marketing specialist Mayle Gonzalez of the Cuban state news agency ACN.

The boom in cafes and restaurants, mainly in the island’s growing private sector, and the increasing influx of tourists have sent requests for this product through the roof, which is why “we have to build a new brewery to cover these requirement of the economy,” Gonzalez said.

The mixed company Cerveceria Bucanero S.A., partly owned by the Ministry of the Food Industry, has had production problems due to delays in shipments to the country of the principal raw material, brewing malt from the Czech Republic, a factor, together with the increased demand, that has led to shortages on the market.

The Bucanero company produces four brands of Cuban beer – Cacique, Mayabe, Cristal, and, of course, Bucanero.

Cristal is the best-selling beer on the island, since it represents 47 percent of total production and, according to market surveys, is the brew Cubans prefer.

Woman on FBI’s Most Wanted List Caught in Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Agents of Mexico’s Criminal Investigation Agency have arrested Brenda Berenice Delgado Reynaga, wanted in the United States for homicide and recently included on the 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Mexican Attorney General’s Office, or PGR, said.

The PGR said in a bulletin that a provisional arrest warrant for international extradition was issued for Delgado last April 1 by the 6th District Federal Court for Criminal Cases.

The woman, 33, is wanted for homicide by the Dallas County District Court in Texas.

U.S. authorities accuse her of being the intellectual author of the homicide on Sept. 2, 2015, of Kendra Hatcher, a dentist who apparently had a love affair with Delgado’s previous partner, “which makes this murder a crime of passion,” the PGR said.

“According to the investigation, the suspect employed a 31-year-old man as a hired gun to commit the homicide, with the collaboration of a female friend,” it said.

The PGR said the FBI recently decided to classify the accused, a Mexican citizen, as one of the 10 Most Wanted Fugitives in the United States, offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to her capture.

According to the PGR, “upon receiving the request for a detention for the purpose of extradition, members of its Criminal Investigation Agency deployed search cells in places where the fugitive’s family members and friend could help find her, in the states of San Luis Potosi, Nuevo Leon, Mexico state and Mexico City.

Thanks to this collaboration with U.S. authorities, Delgado was nabbed at a home in the city of Torreon, Coahuila state, the agency said.

Agents of the Criminal Investigation Agency of the PGR, affiliated with Interpol Mexico, took her to Mexico City, where she will be held at Santa Marta Acatitla Prison while awaiting completion of the legal procedures for her extradition to the United States.