In brief: ‘Pink slime’ maker suspends operations

LUBBOCK, Texas – The maker of “pink slime” suspended operations Monday at all but one plant where the beef ingredient is made, acknowledging recent public uproar over the product has cost the company business.

Craig Letch, director of food quality and assurance for Beef Products Inc., declined to discuss financial details but said business has taken a “substantial” hit since social media exploded with worry over the ammonia-treated filler and an online petition seeking its ouster from schools drew hundreds of thousands of supporters. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided school districts may stop using it, and some retail chains have pulled products containing it from their shelves.

Federal regulators say the product meets food safety standards.

Beef Products will suspend operations at plants in Amarillo, Texas; Garden City, Kan.; and Waterloo, Iowa, Letch said. About 200 employees at each of the three plants will get full salary and benefits for 60 days during the suspension. The company’s plant at its Dakota Dunes, S.D., headquarters will continue operations.

The company, meanwhile, will develop a strategy for rebuilding business and addressing what Letch called misconceptions about the beef the company makes.

“We feel like when people can start to understand the truth and reality then our business will come back,” he said. “It’s 100 percent beef.”

EPA to limit pollution at new power plants

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is pressing ahead with the first-ever limits on heat-trapping pollution from new power plants.

Administration officials told the Associated Press that the long-delayed proposal will be released today.

The proposed rule will not apply to existing power plants or new ones built in the next year. It will also give future coal-fired power plants years to meet the standard, which will eventually require carbon pollution to be captured and stored underground.

One found dead in Colorado wildfire

CONIFER, Colo. – One person has been found dead in a Colorado wildfire that burned more than 41/2 square miles and destroyed at least five homes in the mountains southwest of Denver, authorities said Monday.

The victim’s name wasn’t immediately released and investigators haven’t said how the person died.

The fast-moving wildfire was reported at midday Monday and spread quickly amid dry, windy weather.

Authorities ordered residents of more than 900 homes to evacuate.

Agency mulls fines for air passengers

NEWARK, N.J. – The agency that operates the New York City area’s three major airports has a message for passengers who don’t turn off their cellphones or tablets before takeoff: Pay up, or see you in court.

The executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Pat Foye, said it’s considering levying fines up to tens of thousands of dollars for behavior that causes flight delays.

Foye said he hopes the initiative will persuade fliers to change their behavior. He says police answered about 400 calls last year at Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports to deal with unruly passengers.

Otsuka wins PEN/Faulkner fiction prize

NEW YORK – Julie Otsuka’s “The Buddha in the Attic,” a brief, poetic novel about young Japanese women who immigrate to the U.S. and marry men they have never met, has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced Monday that Otsuka will receive $15,000 for the prize.