(10-05) 09:07 PDT Newark, N.J. (AP) —

Topps Meat Co. on Friday said it was closing its business, six days after it was forced to issue the second-largest beef recall in U.S. history and 67 years after it first opened its doors.

On Sept. 25 Topps began recalling frozen hamburger patties that may have been contaminated with the E. coli bacteria strain O157:H7. The recall eventually ballooned to 21.7 million pounds of ground beef.

Thirty people in eight states had E. coli infections matching the strain found in the Topps patties, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. None have died.

“This is tragic for all concerned,” said Topps chief operating officer Anthony D’Urso, a member of the family that founded the company in 1940.

The Topps recall raised questions about whether the U.S. Agriculture Department should have acted quicker to encourage a recall. On Thursday, top USDA officials said they would speed warnings in the future.

Topps conceded that much of the recalled meat had already been eaten, and on Friday expressed regret that its product had been linked to illnesses. “We hope and pray for the full recovery of those individuals,” D’Urso said in a statement.

The Elizabeth-based company had initially recalled 331,582 pounds of its frozen hamburgers on Sept. 25, acting only after the New York State Department of Health issued an alert linking Topps patties to illnesses.

Topps on Sept. 29 recalled 21.7 million pounds of its frozen hamburgers Д a year’s worth of production Д after further evidence from the New York State Department of Health indicated a wider problem.

DETECTIVES came close to catching hit-and-run killer Isaac Purcell several times during a six-month hunt that took police across the north of England and Ireland.

Purcell never spent more than two nights in the same place as he dragged his girlfriend and their baby from one bolthole to the next.

Police were often hot on his trail thanks to a code of honour among the travelling community which meant police were regularly tipped off about his whereabouts.

Time and again Lothian and Borders officers arrived at an empty house which he had just left or came upon an abandoned car he had been driving.

But Purcell, 26, a traveller who knew large parts of the country well having spent time on the road throughout his life, was always one step ahead.

The father-of-six - who has four other children with his estranged wife as well as a three-week-old baby with his girlfriend - was identified as the driver of the high-powered green Peugeot which killed Jack within two weeks of the fatal crash.

A painstaking trawl of CCTV footage from shops, buses and private homes produced clear pictures of Purcell.

During the first two months of the manhunt, officers took more than 500 statements, carried out several hundred door-to-door enquiries, received 430 calls from members of the public and completed 1300 inquiries connected to the murder.

And while Purcell was doing everything he could to keep his freedom, police arrested his brother Michael Purcell - who was a passenger in the car that killed Jack - just 19 days after Jack’s death, at Purcell’s father’s home in Cheshire.

But catching up with the elusive Isaac was far more difficult and would take a dramatic breakthrough before the police got their man.

Detectives started putting increasing pressure on family members and friends, convinced this was the key to catching their man.

Detective Superintendent Craig Naylor, who led the murder inquiry, said: “We put a lot of pressure on his family and made it very, very clear that we were desperate to get hold of him because he had unfinished business in Edinburgh.

“If we couldn’t lay our hands on him, we could make his life sufficiently difficult that he would want to contact us.”

The willingness of members of the travelling community to inform on Purcell was to give police continual encouragement as the hunt went on.

Posters appealing for help were put up at caravan sites across the UK, while travellers were pressed for information by police officers.

While at first they were tight-lipped about Purcell’s whereabouts, they quickly became more co-operative when they discovered he had killed a child.

Det Supt Naylor said police used the knowledge of the grief of the Anderson family to prick the conscience of the travelling community.

“My understanding is that there is a code within the travelling community and that is children and families are something you don’t mess with,” he said. “When we explained what had happened, there was a fair degree of support, particularly from the mothers.

“A grieving mother was a very powerful tool for us to use.”

On December 20, the hunt for Jack’s killer stepped up a gear when pictures of Purcell and Patrick Nolan - the other passenger in the car - were broadcast on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme on December 20.

Police received more than 100 calls into the TV studio and a further 60 to a dedicated incident room at the force’s Fettes headquarters following the appeal.

The net was finally closing on Purcell, with more and more tip-offs pouring in, telling police where they might find the hit-and-run driver.

After Nolan was arrested in London less than a month after the Crimewatch appeal, Purcell became the only one left on the run and yet to face up to his devastating crime.

Det Supt Naylor said: “A number of times we were very, very close.

“We went to addresses, and he had gone the previous day. Or we had information that he was driving a certain car, then we would find the car but he wouldn’t be in it.

“Particularly after Crimewatch, we would get information about where he was so we would turn up, and he had been and gone.

“We were continuing to visit his family and his girlfriend’s family and put a lot of pressure on them.

“We knew he had an awful lot of emotional pressure from what he had done so as such we were very intent on increasing that pressure on him.”

In February, the breakthrough detectives had been waiting for finally arrived.

Purcell wrote to Michael and Yvonne Anderson, apologising for what he had done and saying that he was going to hand himself in.

He sent the letter, marked for the attention of Jack Anderson’s family, to a local Post Office.

Suspicious staff immediately called in police, who took the letter to Mr and Mrs Anderson. Jack’s devastated parents read the words of their son’s killer, who was asking for forgiveness in the same breath as blaming the police for the fatal accident.

Police knew this letter could be the way to catch Purcell, and with agreement from the Andersons, they helped construct a letter back to their son’s killer, urging him to hand himself in.

Det Supt Naylor said: “This was a man who had upset them immensely, not only by killing their son, but also by writing them a letter saying it wasn’t his fault.

“They were devastated by it. This was five months after the death of their son so it was still very fresh and raw in their mind.

“It was very much a decision in the team that we would use it to put pressure on Isaac Purcell to force his hand.

“I have a huge amount of respect for Michael Anderson. It was an incredibly difficult thing for him to do.”

On March 7 - six months after Jack was killed - Purcell handed himself in to St Leonard’s Police Station. Purcell laughing on bus 10 minutes after killing boy

CRASH DRIVER: Isaac Purcell

JACK ANDERSON’S killer was caught on CCTV laughing and joking with his accomplices as he made his getaway from the scene of the crime.

The crucial video footage showed Isaac Purcell, along with his younger brother Michael and friend Patrick Nolan, on a bus from Gorgie Road to Sighthill.

The trio were clearly sharing a joke - just minutes after Purcell had killed the ten-year-old by mowing him down on a pedestrian crossing.

Police said he has never shown any remorse for the crime - despite the letter he sent to Jack’s parents, Michael and Yvonne - and pointed out that he sped off without slowing for a second to see how the child was.

Det Supt Craig Naylor, who led the murder inquiry, said: “I suppose a cynic might say he was looking to prepare for the court case.

“This is someone who showed no remorse in his interaction with the police into the death of Jack Anderson.

“He was upset, but I think he was more upset at the situation he found himself in.

“He knew we were looking for him and he knew he had been involved in the death of a child.”

Purcell’s father Michael contacted the Evening News in the run up to the trial, offering to provide a copy of the letter his son had written, in an effort to gain an element of public sympathy for him.

Purcell had a criminal record, mostly comprised crimes of dishonesty and road traffic offences, before his conviction for culpable homicide today.

He comes from a family of travellers, and had spent most of his life flitting from one place to the next, living in caravans and sleeping on people’s floors.

Police said he had always gone “where the moment took him”, having a large extended family with whom he could stay around the country.

In the days before he killed Jack, he had been staying on a caravan site in the Stirling area. Police believe he travelled through to Edinburgh specifically “to commit crime”.

He had a number of aliases - including Michael Whitehead. He was born in Newry, in Northern Ireland, and had four of his children with his ex-wife, as well as a toddler and new baby with his current girlfriend.

He travelled across the UK with his family during his childhood and adult years, and had also spent “extensive periods” in the US and in Australia - something which worried police when they were hunting for Jack’s killer.

Recently, he had spent time living in a caravan in the driveway of his father’s home in Cheshire.

His dad, called Michael Purcell like his brother, had become more settled in recent years and had been living in a house instead of travelling.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 10 (UPI) — Greentech Media, an online, analyst-driven U.S. media firm in the renewable energies industry, will host a “webinar” called “The Future of Thin Film Solar.”

Greentech will host the one-hour webinar July 19 on its latest research report co-authored by the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development.

Greentech officials say the report provides a comprehensive economic analysis of the thin-film solar market to date and reveals how thin-film technology will underpin years of competitive, profitable growth for those successful players within the market and threaten existing solar manufacturers who rely solely on polysilicon.

“While thin films will for many years be less efficient than crystalline photovoltaic technology, their ability to create electricity at a substantially lower cost and in a much wider range of products and form factors will allow thin films to gain critical market share,” Travis Bradford, president of the Prometheus Institute, said in a statement.

“The ability to deliver electricity cheaply and ubiquitously will put thin film solar in a position to challenge the preeminence of polysilicon, and upset the status of established players in the industry,” Bradford said.

The free webinar will include a 15-minute question-and-answer period. Scott Clavenna, president of Greentech Media, will host and Bradford will present and take questions from the audience.