• Cockroach farms are not new in China, where the bugs have long been used in Chinese medicine, but a new facility near the eastern city of Jinan is gaining attention as a way to deal with food waste while producing organic protein supplements for animal feeds.
In four industrial-sized hangars, Australia's ABC News reported, rows of shelves are filled with food waste collected from restaurants through an elaborate system of pipes.
A moat filled with roach-eating fish surrounds each building to keep the roaches from escaping.
"In total there are 1 billion cockroaches," farm manager Yin Diansong said. "Every day they can eat 50 tonnes of kitchen waste."
Said project director Li Yanrong, "If we can farm cockroaches on a large scale, we can provide protein that benefits the entire ecological cycle." [ABC News, 9/19/2020]
• A Pineville (Louisiana) police officer who reported he'd been "ambushed" on Sept. 20 has been accused of shooting himself instead, according to authorities.
The Pineville Police Department said John Goulart Jr. originally claimed that he'd been shot once in the leg, and that a second shot had hit the rear door of his police car while he was at a shopping center.
But Police Chief Don Weatherford told KALB: "(E)vidence gives you some pretty clear direction and it led us to reinterviewing Officer Goulart Jr. and he admitted at that point that he had not been truthful with us during the investigation."
Goulart was charged with filing a false police report and malfeasance; he's also been placed on administrative leave. [KALB, 9/23/2020] s