Suicide
Mistaken for
Halloween Decoration
(AP)
The
apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported
for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween
decoration, authorities said.
The 42-year-old woman
used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a
moderately busy road late Tuesday or early Wednesday, state police said.
The body, suspended
about 15 feet above the ground, could be easily seen from passing
vehicles.
State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff
Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body at
breakfast time Wednesday but dismissed it as a holiday prank.
Authorities were called to the scene more than three hours later.
"They thought it was a Halloween
decoration," Fay Glanden, wife of Mayor William Glanden, told The
(Wilmington) News Journal.
"It looked like something
somebody would have rigged up," she said.
CBSNews.com 10/27/05
Court:
'Pre-Embryo' Not A
Person
(AP) A
days-old human embryo preserved outside the womb isn't a person under
the Arizona law that allows lawsuits for wrongful deaths, the
Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled.
The ruling stemmed from a
lawsuit filed by a Phoenix-area couple against the Mayo Clinic,
accusing it of losing or destroying some of their fertilized eggs. The
couple had asked the Court of Appeals to expand the definition of
"person" under the wrongful-death statute to include embryos with the
potential to be viable, but the court declined, saying it's a matter
for the Legislature to decide.
A 20-year-old Arizona Supreme
Court ruling on the wrongful-death law found that a fetus had to be
viable—able to survive outside the womb—to support
a lawsuit, and the Court of Appeals said Thursday there is still
considerable debate surrounding start-of-life issues despite medical
advances since 1985.
Because the
terminology surrounding such issues is highly charged, the Court of
Appeals said it tried to be neutral by using the term "pre-embryo" to
describe the days-old, lab-preserved fertilized eggs involved in the
case. Calling such eggs "embryos" could imply the egg is a
"person," the ruling by a three-judge panel said.
While the Court of Appeals said
the couple cannot sue the Mayo Clinic under the wrongful-death law, it
reversed a Maricopa County judge's pretrial ruling dismissing the
couple's lawsuit and reinstated it on other grounds.
Daniel McAuliffe, an attorney
for Mayo, said he didn't know whether the clinic would appeal the
ruling to the state Supreme Court, but he said the appeals court was
reasonable in its decision to leave the definition of "person" to
legislators. Attorney John Jacubczyk, president of Arizona Right to
Life, said he hadn't reviewed the ruling in detail but he disagreed
with the use of the "pre-embryo" term. Life begins at fertilization, he
said.
CBSNews.com 10/29/05
Chinese
Mystery Illness
Linked To Pigs
BEIJING—A
mystery disease that has killed 17 farmers who handled sick pigs or
sheep in Chinas southwest is unrelated to bird flu or SARS
and is probably caused by bacteria carried by pigs,
state media reported Monday.
An additional 41 people
were hospitalized in Sichuan province with symptoms that include high
fever, fatigue, nausea and vomiting, and "become comatose later with
bruises under the skin," the official Xinhua News Agency
said. It said 12 were in critical condition.
The illness likely stems from
streptococcus suis, a bacteria that is usually spread among pigs,
provincial health official Zeng Huajin was quoted as saying by the
China Daily newspaper.
A spokesman for the World Health
Organization said the symptoms reported "seemed consistent" with
streptococcus suis.
"We don't think weve seen numbers
of this scale before, but it might be because of a heightened
surveillance system," said Bob Dietz, a spokesman for the World Heath
Organization in Manila. Hina is sensitive to such public health threats
after criticism of its handling of severe acute respiratory syndrome,
which emerged in 2002. The government was widely criticized for its
slow response to release information about the disease, which killed
nearly 800 people worldwide before subsiding in July 2003.
China also is trying to contain
an outbreak of avian flue in its west, where thousands of migratory
birds have died in recent weeks.
The last major pig-borne epidemic
occurred in Malaysia, where 264 people were infected with the Nipah
virus between 1998 and 1999. Some 105 people died and nearly
a million hogs were slaughtered before the outbreak was controlled. The
virus is capable of infecting a variety of animals and is lethal to
about 50 percent of human patients, causing encephalitis.
The Chinese ministries of health
and agriculture sent a team to Sichuan last week to help investigate,
treat and control of the outbreak," the China Daily said.
Xinhua said medical experts
believe the illness in Sichuan "is not spreading further among humans,"
and that there were "no obvious signs of (an) epidemic.
The son of one victim
told Hong Kong's Cable TV that his father fell ill after slaughtering a
pig and eating some of the meat. The names of the son and
victim were not given.
Also Monday, two
supermarket chains in Hong Kong stopped the sale of frozen pork from
Sichuan as officials sought to assure the public the disease
did not pose a threat to the territory.
7/25/05 The Associated Press
Male
Circumcision Equal
to Vaccine in Preventing HIV Infection
JOHANNESBURG,
South Africa, Oct.
24 - Male circumcision protects as well against HIV infection
as does a high-efficacy vaccine and could become a key strategy for
reducing the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, according
to researchers here.
Circumcision reduced the rate of
HIV infection in sexually active heterosexual African men by 60%,
according to Adrian Puren, M.D., of the National Institute for
Communicable Diseases here and colleagues. The study, which is the
first experimental evidence to demonstrate that surgery can prevent
infectious disease, will be published in the November issue of PloS
Medicine. Scientists from the French research institute
INSERM also participated.
The study included 3,274
uncircumcised men, ages 18 to 24, from the Johannesburg region. Half
of these were randomized to a control group and half to an intervention
group. The intervention group was advised to abstain from sexual
activity for six weeks after the surgery, because risk of acquiring
infection is higher during this time. Follow-up visits were planned for
three months, one year, and 21 months, but an interim analysis of the
data at 18 months showed such a clear benefit for circumcision that the
trial was halted and circumcision offered to the control group.
There were 20 HIV infections in
the intervention group compared with 49 in the control group. This
corresponded to a relative risk for circumcision of 0.40 (95%
confidence interval=0.24-0.68). The result held when adjusting for
sexual behavior, including condom use, that might have affected the
outcome.
"The first and obvious
consequence of this study is that male circumcision should be
recognized as an important means to reduce the risk of males becoming
infected by HIV," the authors wrote.
They said that male
circumcision "provides a degree of protection against acquiring HIV
infection equivalent to what a vaccine of high efficacy would have
achieved." They added that "male circumcision should be regarded as an
important public health intervention for preventing the spread of HIV.
Male circumcision could be
incorporated rapidly into the national plans of countries where most
males are not circumcised and where the spread of HIV is mainly
heterosexual." Although the study did not explore factors underlying
the protective effect of circumcision, they may include reducing the
life expectancy of HIV on the penis after sexual contact, reducing the
total surface area of the penis, and reducing available target cells,
which are numerous on the foreskin, the researchers said.
When preliminary results of this
study were presented at the Third Annual AIDS Society Conference in Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, in July, UNAIDS published a statement saying that
it was premature to recommend circumcision as part of HIV prevention
programs.
Two ongoing trials in Uganda and
Kenya, supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, will help
clarify the relationship between male circumcision and HIV in differing
social and cultural contexts, UNAIDS officials noted.
MedPage.com 10/25/05
FDA
Warns Against Cherry
Claims
TRAVERSE
CITY, Mich—(AP) The U.S. Food and
Drug Administration has warned the cherry industry not to overstate the
health benefits of its products.
The agency sent a letter last
week to 29 companies, including 11 in northern Michigan, that
manufacture, market or distribute products such as fruit juice
concentrates and dried fruits.
It directed the
businesses to stop making "unproven claims" on Web sites and labels
that their products treat or prevent diseases like cancer, heart
disease and arthritis.
Otherwise, it said, they could
have their products seized or be charged with violating the federal
Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which defines articles intended to cure,
treat or prevent disease.
FDA spokeswoman Kimberly
Rawlings said the warning was issued after employees in the agency's
Detroit office noticed some of the products on the market.
The cherry industry has promoted
the fruit as a health food in recent years. The marketing institute's
Web site carries information on university studies of the fruit's
possible health benefits, describing cherries as "a natural pain
killer."
"Recent research has shown that
tart cherries contain powerful antioxidants that may help relieve the
pain of arthritis and gout and also protect the body against
cardiovascular disease and inhibit cancer tumors," says one statement
posted on the site. Another describes Montmorency tart cherries as "the
healing fruit."
Producers tend to couch their
health labels in conditional terms, using words such as "may."
Nick Roster, co-owner of The
Cherry Stop in Traverse City, said he stopped putting health claims in
writing after receiving the FDA letter.
"I was very surprised,
especially since most of the language is using `may,"' he said. "We're
just wondering what prompted this."
Roster said he removed the
language the FDA cited from The Cherry Stop's Web site. He said his
business is fortunate because most of its product packaging doesn't
contain the questioned claims.
"We can still talk about it and
we hear from people that it works," he said. "Word of mouth is more
important than any Web site."
Glenn LaCross, president of
Leelanau Fruit Company, said his business will comply and is
considering changing wording on its Web site. But he said he'd like the
FDA to reconsider its stance.
"We're stating what our
customers are telling us," LaCross said. "It's hard not to
want to tell the rest of the world."
CBSNews.com 10/28/05
NY
Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban
A
New York appeals court has upheld a decision that bars a village mayor
from performing same-sex marriages.
The court says New Paltz mayor
Jason West acted beyond his authority when he presided over two dozen
same-sex marriages last year. The five judges unanimously agreed to
uphold the lower-court ruling.
The mayor's lawyer is promising
an appeal. West has maintained he was upholding the gay couples'
constitutional rights to equal protection, and thus his oath of office,
by allowing them to wed.
West's gesture came amid a
flurry of efforts in various states to enact gay weddings after San
Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed gay couples there to wed in
February 2004. Those efforts have largely been put on hold by the
courts.
On the other side of the
country, gay rights advocates claimed a major victory after the Alaska
State Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to deny benefits to
same-sex partners of public employees.
In overturning a lower
court ruling, the state high court said Friday that barring benefits
for state and city employees' same-sex partners violates the Alaska
constitution's equal protection clause.
CBSNews.com 10/29/05
Tetanus
Kills 22 In
Pakistan Quake Area
MUZAFFARABAD,
Pakistan, Oct. 27,
2005—(AP) Fears of
disease among South Asia's quake survivors grew Thursday after health
officials said 22 people had died from tetanus. Doctors were
also bracing for a spike in pneumonia, bronchitis and other diseases
with the coming Himalayan winter.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf
asked officials to use all their resources to provide relief goods and
shelter to victims in Kashmir and other parts of the country. He
said the hundreds of thousands of people without shelter must get tents
within two weeks.
The Oct. 8 quake is
believed to have killed nearly 80,000 people and left more than 3
million homeless. Many of the tens of thousands of injured had to wait
a week or more to get their first medical treatment, so infected wounds
have been rife.
Sacha Bootsma of the World
Health Organization said there had been 111 tetanus cases since the
temblor struck, of which 22 were fatal. She said the numbers were
normal for a disaster of this magnitude.
Bootsma said all hospitalized
patients were being inoculated against tetanus, which occurs when
bacteria enter the body through cuts or scratches and infect the
nervous system.
Donors, including Pakistan's
rival India, have pledged $580 million for quake victims, but the
United Nations said more resources were needed to save between 2
million and 3 million lives.
World Food Program spokesman
David Orr said the agency needed money and supplies to distribute more
than 500 tons of food aid a day. The agency has yet to reach a
half-million people in remote villages, although those communities were
believed to have some food stocks, he said.
"More people could die
in the aftermath from lack of shelter and food than in the earthquake
itself," he said.
In a positive sign, more
villagers were moving down from the mountains, said Urooj Saifee of the
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR has set up three new
tent sites in Kashmir's Jhelum Valley, with a capacity for 24,000
people, he said.
UNICEF will get 20 large tents
to set up schools for 75,000 children in the Muzaffarabad area, said
Zeba Tanwir Buqhari, UNICEF's chief of operations in the city. School
enrollment is expected to fall by about 20,000, with an estimated
11,000 children reportedly injured and 9,000 dead or missing.
Pakistan's government
raised the official death toll to 54,197 Wednesday. Central
government figures have consistently lagged behind those of local
officials, which put the death toll in Pakistan at about 78,000. A
further 1,350 people died in Indian-held Kashmir.
CBSNews.com 10/27/05
Ex-School
Trustee
'Misspoke' on Evolution
(AP) A
former school board member who denied saying creationism should be
taught alongside evolution in high school biology classes changed his
story Thursday after being confronted in court with TV news footage of
him making such comments.
William Buckingham explained
that he "misspoke" during the TV interview.
Buckingham's testimony came in the fifth week of
testimony in a lawsuit filed by eight families who are challenging the
Dover Area School District's policy that students hear a statement
about intelligent design in biology classes.
Intelligent design holds that
the universe is so complex it must have been created by some kind of
higher intelligence. Critics of intelligent design say it is a clever
repackaging of the biblical story of creation and thus violates the
constitutional separation of church and state.
Earlier in Thursday's court
session, Buckingham claimed he had been misquoted in stories from two
newspapers that reported he advocated the teaching of creationism to
counterbalance the biology textbook's material on evolution.
But the plaintiffs' lawyers
confronted Buckingham with a 2004 interview he gave to WPMT-TV in York.
"It's OK to teach Darwin," he
said in the interview, "but you have to balance it with something else,
such as creationism."
A federal judge is hearing the
case without a jury. The trial began Sept. 26 and could last through
early November.
CBSNews.com 10/28/05
Hospital
ends life
support of baby
1st U.S. case of
its
kind is against mom's wish, in accordance with law
HOUSTON
_ In what
medical ethicists say is a first in the United States, a hospital
acting under state law, with the concurrence of a judge, disconnected a
critically ill baby from life support Tuesday over his mother's
objections.
The baby, Sun Hudson, who'd been
on a mechanical ventilator since his birth Sept. 25, died quickly
afterward, his mother said.
The death ended a court battle
that began in mid-November when Ms. Hudson, a 33-year-old unemployed
dental assistant, opposed doctors when they decided continuing life
support was futile, unethical and medically inappropriate. Probate
Judge William McCulloch cleared the way for removal of mechanical
ventilation from the baby Monday.
The Dallas Morning News 3/15/05
New
Israeli-Palestinian
Violence Puts Truce in Doubt
JERUSALEM—Israel
launched new airstrikes on Friday evening on northern Gaza, killing a
Palestinian militant in his white Subaru and wounding another just
after they had fired a rocket toward Israel, according to the Israeli
Army, citing visual evidence from a helicopter and a drone.
The strikes came as
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz expressed doubt that Israel could make
peace "with the present leadership of the Palestinians,"
given their reluctance to crack down on terrorist groups. He added, "I
don't think a Palestinian state will see the light of day in the coming
years."
The Israelis continued
their attacks in the Gaza Strip and sweeps of West Bank towns in
response to a suicide bombing on Wednesday, claimed by the
militant faction Islamic Jihad, that killed five civilians and wounded
20 more in the Israeli town of Hadera.
On Thursday, Israel killed a
local Islamic Jihad leader, Shadi Muhana, 25, by firing rockets at his
car outside the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City. His aide
and six other Palestinians also died, among them at least one other
Islamic Jihad member and passers-by including a 15-year-old, Rami Asef.
Tens of thousands of people
turned out Friday for the eight funerals in Gaza, with armed members of
Islamic Jihad and two other militant groups, Hamas and Al Aksa Martyrs
Brigades, marching, shouting their defiance and shooting automatic
weapons into the air. The display was a violation of their
agreement with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, not
to carry or fire their weapons in public.
Militants also fired a few
mortars and rockets from Gaza toward the Erez crossing and Israel,
doing little damage. But Israel wants to stop all firing from
Gaza and has said it will reoccupy the launching areas if necessary.
Mr. Abbas, who condemned the
Hadera bombing as counterproductive and as an invitation to Israel to
retaliate against Palestinians and make ordinary life harder, was
himself condemned by spokesmen for Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Mushir
alMasri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said that by condemning "the heroic
martyrdom attack" in Hadera, "the Palestinian Authority put a knife in
the back of the Palestinian resistance."
Mr. Masri's comments, along with
the continuing Israeli airstrikes, arrests and attacks, suggest that the
period of cease-fire preceding and during Israel's pullout from Gaza
may be over. While there have been periods of violence, the
cease-fire is supposed to last through the Palestinian legislative
elections scheduled for Jan. 25.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has
said he will not meet with Mr. Abbas until the Palestinian Authority
takes "serious and tangible action against terrorism."
Mr. Abbas also has internal
political trouble, with the Palestinian legislature calling for the
resignation of his prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, and his cabinet for
their failure to rein in the armed chaos in the streets.
Saeb Erekat, a
Palestinian negotiator, said Israel did not want a Palestinian partner
for peace. "Israel's problem is not with a specific person, or with
this generation, but with all Palestinians," he said. "Israel has in
Abu Mazen a Palestinian partner who wants a real peace to end the
occupation."
October 29, 2005 nytimes.com
Astronomers
Have Found A New
Planet In The Outer Reaches Of The Solar
System
"It's
definitely bigger than
Pluto. "So says Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of
Technology who announced today the discovery of a new planet
in the outer solar system. The planet, which hasn't been
officially named yet, was found by Brown and colleagues using the
Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego. It is
currently about 97 times father from the sun than Earth, or 97
Astronomical Units (AU). For comparison, Pluto is 40 AU from the sun.
This places the new planet more
or less in the Kuiper Belt, a dark realm beyond Neptune where thousands
of small icy bodies orbit the sun. The planet appears to be typical of
Kuiper belt objects—only much bigger. Its sheer size
in relation to the nine known planets means that it can only be
classified as a planet itself, Brown says.
Backyard astronomers with large
telescopes can see the new planet. But don't expect to be impressed: It
looks like a dim speck of light, visual magnitude 19, moving very
slowly against the starry background.
"We are 100 percent confident
that this is the first object bigger than Pluto ever found in
the outer solar system," Brown adds.
Telescopes have not yet revealed
the planet's disk. To estimate how big it is, the astronomers must rely
on measurements of the planet's brightness.
The size of the planet is further
limited by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has already proved its
mettle in studying the heat of dim, faint, faraway objects such as the
Kuiper-belt bodies. Because Spitzer has been unable to detect the new
planet, the overall diameter must be less than about 2000 miles (3200
km), says Brown.
The planet's temporary name is
2003 UB313. A permanent name has been proposed by the discoverers to
the International Astronomical Union, and they are awaiting the
decision of this body before announcing the name.
7-29-05 The Associated Press
Iran's Leader Joins Large Anti-Israel March Tehran Protesters Back Hate Speech
TEHRAN,
Oct. 28 — A
day after drawing international condemnation for declaring that "Israel
should be wiped off the map," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
joined an estimated several hundred thousand demonstrators in an annual
anti-Israel march that made clear his words are a time-honored slogan
in Iran.
"This is our duty, to
condemn Zionism and punch the U.S. in the mouth," said Maysam
Hosseinpour, 14, as he marched with fellow students on what
is known here as Jerusalem Day. It was designated a quarter-century ago
by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution that
made Iran a theocracy, as an annual show of rejection of a Jewish state
on land claimed by Arabs.
As the marchers' signs and
banners emphasized on Friday, Khomeini had also declared that Israel
must be "wiped off the map." The phrase became a staple of hard-line
Iranian rhetoric, and it served as the headline on the state
broadcasting Web site's account of Ahmadinejad's speech to a student
conference in Tehran on Wednesday.
But when it also made headlines
outside Iran, the ensuing outrage caught Tehran off guard.
On Thursday, Russia
joined the European Union, the United States and many other countries
in condemning the remark. Ahmadinejad's call was also
rejected by Palestinian Authority officials, who noted that they
accepted the existence of Israel while taking issue with much of its
conduct. On Friday, the U.N. Security Council condemned the statement,
and the Vatican expressed "great concern."
A foreign policy novice,
Ahmadinejad made a strident speech at the United Nations last month
that was widely criticized. As happened this week, Western governments
seized on his words in support of their concerns that the country might
be developing its formerly secret nuclear program to produce weapons.
The Tehran government denies pursuing such a goal.
Ali Larijani, Iran's chief
nuclear negotiator, called the uproar "bogus noises made by arrogant
world powers to achieve certain aims."
"The Zionist regime and the
criminal U.S. desecrated the Islamic Republic of Iran on many occasions
in the past," Larijani said, according to the state-run IRNA news
agency.
The nationwide demonstrations,
which routinely occur on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of
Ramadan, were cast as a show of support for Ahmadinejad. Among the
marchers who turned out in the capital were the president and his
mild-mannered predecessor, the reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami.
U.S. and Israeli flags
were burned in the street in front of Tehran University, where Friday
prayers are held. Crowds alternated chants of "Death to America!"
"Death to Israel!" "Death to England!" and "Nuclear energy is our
indubitable right!"
The protests appeared to be more
intensely felt than in recent years and the crowds slightly larger.
State television and radio had encouraged turnout as a demonstration of
defiance. "What our president said in his speech is what our people are
saying," said Rahim Savafi, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps, a hard-line group in which Ahmadinejad once served.
"The U.S. and the Israelis are
trying to make propaganda to cover their defeats in Gaza and Iraq,"
Savafi said, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency. "The
Americans and the Zionists have repeatedly talked about regime change
in Iran and ousting the Islamic Republic, so they cannot tolerate our
president repeating what our late Imam said and what our people say
now."
washingtonpost.com 10/28/05