Eideard

A Swedish man was dug out alive after being snowed in to his car on a forest track for two months with no food, police and local media have reported.

The 45-year-old from southern Sweden was found on Friday, emaciated and too weak to utter more than a few words. He was found not far from the city of Umea in the north of Sweden by snowmobilers who thought they had come across a car wreck until they dug their way to a window and saw movement inside.

The man, who was laying in the back seat in a sleeping bag, said he had been in the car since December 19.

“Just incredible that he’s alive considering that he had no food, but also since it’s been really cold for some time after Christmas,” a rescue team member told regional daily Vasterbottens-Kuriren, which broke the news…

Umea University Hospital, where the man is recovering after being rescued by police and a rescue team, said in a statement he was doing well considering the circumstances.

Doctors at the hospital said humans would normally be able to survive for about four weeks without food. Besides eating snow, the man probably survived by going into a dormant-like state, physician Stefan Branth told Vasterbottens-Kuriren.

“A bit like a bear that hibernates. Humans can do that,” he said. “He probably had a body temperature of around 31 degrees (Celsius) which the body adjusted to. Due to the low temperature, not much energy was used up.”

The police hope that sooner or later he’ll be able to tell folks what he was doing out there.

Medical examiners have identified a mummified corpse that was left in a car’s passenger seat for 10 months in Southern California…

Authorities had said earlier it could take weeks to identify the homeless woman, but the Orange County coroner’s office was able to rehydrate the desiccated body’s fingertips to obtain a usable fingerprint, said Costa Mesa police Detective Sgt. Paul Beckman. The office will not release the name until next-of-kin are notified, he said.

The woman’s remains, discovered Monday in a car parked illegally in Costa Mesa, are little more than skin and bones and weigh 30 pounds, said police Sgt. Ed Everett.

The car’s driver befriended the homeless woman in a park in nearby Fountain Valley and told her she could sleep in the car. When she found the woman dead in the passenger seat, she was afraid to tell police, Everett said.

The driver is a 57-year-old former real estate agent from Corona del Mar, an upscale beach community, who herself had fallen on hard times and was living with friends, he said.

Authorities have not determined if the driver, whose name has been withheld, will face any charges in the case…

The driver had placed a box of baking soda in the car to mask the smell and covered the body with a blanket and some clothes, he said.

Officers found it Monday when they noticed a stench while responding to a call about an illegally parked vehicle.

Sometimes you need the really large economy size box of baking soda.

Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. has recalled about 8,500 pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced.

The move came after three people, two in Maine and one in New York, were identified as becoming ill from a strain of E. coli, the government said.

The USDA says it believes certain BJ’s Wholesale Club stores in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Virginia received the products.

The recalled ground beef was shipped June 11 to distribution centers, where it was repackaged into consumer-size packages and sold under different retail brand names. The USDA did not identify the brands.

The recalled beef bears the USDA establishment number “EST. 9400,” a product code of “W69032″ and a “use/freeze by” date of July 1.

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Services, which said it became aware of the problem on August 5, “determined that there is an association between the ground beef products subject to recall and the cluster of illnesses in the states of Maine and New York…”

The government lists the recall as Class 1, meaning “there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death…”

Mike Martin, Cargill spokesman, said Cargill is working with the USDA to learn what happened. “We decided to take swift action to do the right thing,” he said of the recall.

Let’s see – this crap has been out in the wild since June 11. The USDA – in lightning fashion discovered there was a problem – by August 5. And Cargill decided to take “swift action” – and issued a recall Saturday. August 28.

I wonder what a not-so-swift response would have been?