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BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Hurricane Dolly slammed ashore and then loitered over deep south Texas as a tropical storm, dumping as much as a foot of rain in places and ripping roofs off buildings with 100 mph winds.
Emergency managers waited for Dolly to move on late into the night Wednesday and hoped to begin assessing the storm’s damage Thursday even as they began to rescue people from flooded or damaged homes.
Dolly had weakened to a tropical storm by 10 p.m. CDT Wednesday after hitting South Padre Island around midday as a Category 2 hurricane. But the storm drenched south Texas as it crept westward at an excruciating 7 mph into the evening. The National Weather Service expected Dolly to weaken to a tropical depression, turn to the northwest and accelerate slightly Thursday.
By 4 a.m. Thursday, the tropical storm was centered about 95 miles northwest of Brownsville with maximum sustained winds that had dropped to about 60 mph.
Still the danger had not passed as power lines hung across streets and water surrounded neighborhoods.
“Unless it’s life or death,” Tony Pena, Hidalgo County emergency management coordinator, urged residents to stay at home.
While the rain set records in Brownsville’s Cameron County — ranging from six to 12 inches with another three to seven expected overnight — they did not appear to pose the threat to the Rio Grande’s levees that had been feared.
The river rose steadily through the day in Brownsville, but did not reach flood stage.
“We’re not experiencing any issues with the levees right now,” Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the International Boundary and Water Commission, said late Wednesday. “The water is just not high enough.”
But the torrential rains and fierce winds that lasted much of the day in south Texas still caught some by surprise.
By Wednesday afternoon, the community of Laureles north of Los Fresnos had been reduced to a chain of sunken islands, separated from the main roads by floodwaters of two feet or more in places.
Mailboxes barely peaked above murky, wind-swept waters where neighborhood loops met county roads.
Pedro Zuniga, his wife and their six children fled their mobile home for the comparative safety of a relative’s wood-frame house next door. That home’s owner had already left to take shelter in another relative’s brick house.
Peering out the back door at the trailer he deemed to wobbly for his family, Zuniga said the water crossing his yard toward a canal behind was not as high as he had seen it a few years ago when it reached the base of his elevated trailer.
“We were going to go to a shelter, but they said there was only one so we decided to stay,” said Zuniga’s wife, Aleida Cardenas, 29. “But we didn’t know it would be this bad.”
But others did head to shelters. More than 5,000 people moved to public shelters in the three hardest-hit counties and the numbers were expected to grow Thursday as more people became stranded by floodwaters.
In Hidalgo County, Pena said there were several incidents late Wednesday requiring emergency personnel to rescue people from homes.
One family was left huddling in their topless house after winds blew the roof off in the northeast part of the county until rescuers arrived, Pena said. In Cameron County, sheriff’s deputies rescued a family of eight from Los Fresnos after floodwaters surrounded their home.
The only serious injury reported Wednesday occurred when the wind knocked a 17-year-old boy from a seventh-story balcony on South Padre Island. The boy suffered a broken hip, leg and a head injury but could not be transported off the island until about 5 p.m. The causeway linking the island to the mainland reopened to the public at 8:30 p.m., said Melissa Zamora, an emergency management spokeswoman on the island.
The island sustained some of the storm’s heaviest damage and was still without power Wednesday night. Roofs were torn off hotels and homes, there was significant flooding that had begun to subside and debris was everywhere. A curfew was imposed for 8 p.m., Zamora said.
No deaths were immediately reported in Mexico, but Tamaulipas state Gov. Eugenio Hernandez said 50 neighborhoods were still in danger from flooding. About 13,000 people had taken refuge in 21 shelters, he said.
“Strong winds are no longer the problem. Now we have to worry about intense rain in the next 24 hours,” Hernandez said.
Earlier in the day, Mexican soldiers made a last-minute attempt to rescue people at the mouth of the Rio Grande, using an inflatable raft to retrieve at least one family trapped in their home. Many people farther inland refused to go to government shelters.
Many Texans heading north were stopped at inland Border Patrol checkpoints, where agents opened extra lanes to ease traffic flow while still checking documentation and arresting illegal immigrants, said sector spokesman Dan Doty. At one checkpoint on U.S. 77, smugglers were caught with nearly 10,000 pounds of marijuana.
The U.S. Census Bureau said that based on Dolly’s projected path, about 1.5 million Texans could feel the storm’s effects. Texas Gov. Rick Perry declared 14 south Texas counties disaster areas and sought federal disaster declarations.
Perry was scheduled to fly over the region Thursday.
US vaccination plan puts health care workers first
Wed Jul 23, 2008 2:50pm EDT
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - Essential health care workers would be immunized first if a flu pandemic broke out in the United States, the government said on Wednesday.
The Department of Health and Human Services released long-awaited details on who would get vaccinated if and when a pandemic — serious global influenza epidemic — emerged.
The plan puts a million health care workers, such as emergency room staff and nurses, at the top. Next are military and “mission critical” personnel, public health workers and hospital and nursing home staff.
All of these play a “critical role in providing care for the sickest persons; highest risk of exposure and occupational infection,” the plan reads.
“This guidance is the result of a deliberative democratic process,” HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said in a statement. “This document represents the best of shared responsibility and decision-making.”
Mike Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota’s Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said the plan did not do enough to protect critical workers.
While it designates people involved in making vaccines and drugs for flu, it does not account for other drugs such as insulin and antibiotics, he said.
“It does nothing to help support the manufacturing and transportation system for moving these drugs from offshore to the United States,” Osterholm, who advised the government on the guidelines, said in a telephone interview.
Many public health experts agree some sort of influenza pandemic is inevitable, although no one can predict when it might come and how severe it may be.
It is also impossible to predict what strain of flu might cause it, although H5N1 avian influenza is the main suspect now. It has become entrenched in birds in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and possibly Africa.
While just 385 people have been infected since 2003 and 243 have died, experts fear H5N1 could acquire the ability to spread easily from human to human, setting off a pandemic that could kill hundreds of millions of people.
WAITING MONTHS
Making enough vaccine to protect everyone would take months and so experts agree a plan is needed to determine who gets the first doses to come out of the factory.
The HHS plan designates 700,000 “deployed and mission critical personnel” to follow the key health care workers. After that, 300,000 public health workers, 5.7 million inpatient and outpatient health care providers, and 1.6 million long-term care workers would be next to get the vaccine.
“It should be noted that during the 1918 pandemic, more American soldiers died of illness than in combat during the First World War,” the plan reads.
Emergency services, law enforcement, makers of pandemic vaccines and drugs, pregnant women and babies and toddlers are also in the first designated groups.
HHs said the plan, available here , can be modified to meet the characteristics of any real pandemic.
Healthy adults not in any other priority group come last.
chicagotribune.com
Study: Most nursing homes not ready for pandemics
By JACQUELYNE TAURIANEN
Associated Press Writer
6:08 PM CDT, July 22, 2008
OMAHA, Neb.
New research suggests more than half of nursing homes are not prepared to help overwhelmed hospitals in emergencies.
Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, released Tuesday, says nursing homes are not equipped to relieve hospitals and other health centers in the case of an influenza pandemic.
“While most facilities felt that nursing homes were being counted on to take hospital overflow patients in a pandemic, in reality few homes would be able to do so,” said the lead author, Philip Smith, professor and chief of infectious diseases, University of Nebraska Medical Center.
The research says 52 percent of nursing homes in Michigan and Nebraska do not have a plan for any pandemic, and of those that do have a plan, only 10 percent have practiced it, Smith said.
Out of the 400 nursing homes in the study, only 23 percent had a specific plan for influenza pandemics.
“In disaster planning, acute care centers are the first to aid local health centers, and nursing homes are among those,” said senior author Lona Mody, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System. “It is important that they’re ready, equipped and have planned for it.”
Specific areas of improvement for nursing homes include communication with nearby health departments and hospitals at the planning stage, Mody said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the possibility of a pandemic is not a matter of whether it will occur, it’s a matter of when.
Smith said he believes the greatest threat comes from avian flu, which has killed at least 216 people worldwide since it began infecting Asian poultry stocks in 2003.
“We are long overdue for some type of pandemic in the next few years,” Smith said.
A pandemic is an outbreak of a disease on a global scale for which people have little or no immunity. They are often lengthy and create a strain on traditional health care institutions, say experts in infectious diseases.
The researchers sent a questionnaire to all state health departments or centers for Medicare and Medicaid-registered nursing homes in Nebraska and Michigan to assess their preparedness.
July 23, 2008 — The CDC today reported that about 5% of U.S. children aged 6-17 have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to their parents.
Data came from the parents of almost 23,000 children aged 6-17. The parents were asked, in telephone interviews conducted from 2004 to 2006, if a doctor or other health professional had ever diagnosed their child with ADHD or attention deficit disorder (ADD). The CDC didn’t check the children’s medical records to confirm the parents’ reports.
ADHD diagnoses were twice as common among boys as girls. ADHD was also more common among adolescents and teens than younger kids, among whites or African-American children than among Hispanic children, and among kids covered by Medicaid than uninsured or privately insured kids.
The CDC also reports a 3% average annual increase in childhood ADHD diagnoses from 1997 to 2006, and that children with ADHD diagnoses were more likely than other kids to have other chronic health conditions.
The CDC’s latest ADHD statistics only capture diagnosed cases of ADHD. The true number of children with ADHD may be much higher, researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine reported in September 2007.
 (07-23) 13:18 PDT ATLANTA (AP) More older children are being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder while the rate is holding steady for children under 12, according to a government report released Wednesday.
Some experts called the finding surprising, noting that most childhood diagnoses traditionally occur by age 11.
The study didn’t investigate why the increase in one age group was so much higher than the other. It found the percentage of older children diagnosed with ADHD has been rising by 4 percent each year.
Some experts say the increase may reflect that doctors are increasingly considering the possibility of ADHD in older kids who have concentration problems — a trend that coincides with the marketing of ADHD medications to teens and adults.
The finding may also reflect the misuse of Ritalin and other ADHD medications in that age group as study aides and recreational stimulants, some experts speculated.
“There are people out there being treated for ADHD that probably don’t meet the diagnostic criteria,” said Scott Kollins, director of Duke University Medical Center’s ADHD Program.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — characterized by impulsiveness, hyperactivity and inability to focus attention — is a behavioral and learning problem that usually appears in children by age 7.
The problem often is identified in school, and most children are diagnosed by age 11. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 4.4 million U.S. children have been diagnosed with ADHD by medical professionals.
The new study draws its results from an annual survey of 35,000 to 40,000 U.S. households, in which government researchers go door-to-door to conduct interviews. In households with children, parents are asked if a doctor or health professional had ever told them that their child had ADHD or attention deficit disorder (ADD).
The study’s findings cover 1997 through 2006.
In each of those years, nearly 50 million children fell into the 6-to-17 age range, the study estimates. Roughly 4 million of them were given an ADHD or ADD diagnosis, the study estimates.
For children ages 6 through 11, the proportion hovered around 7 percent during those years. But for children 12 through 17, it rose from just under 7 percent to nearly 10 percent. That increase wasn’t seen in previous government estimates, said Patricia Pastor, a CDC health statistician and the study’s lead author.
It may reflect a growing understanding that a child — especially an older kid — can have ADHD without being disruptively impulsive or hyperactive, said Jeff Epstein, director of the ADHD center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Another factor may be that ADHD is sometimes diagnosed when adolescents are being checked for other conditions, such as depression, said Dr. Mohammad Ghaziuddin, director of the University of Michigan’s ADHD and autism program.
Meanwhile, the use of ADHD medications has been increasing. According to the CDC, doctor’s visits for children under 15 where methylphenidate — also known as Ritalin — was prescribed or given went from 1.9 million in 1993 to 3.2 million in 2005.
COMMENT:Â Imagine how the numbers would change if adults were tested!
Hurricane Dolly Strengthens Near Texas-Mexico Border (Update2)
By Gregory Viscusi
July 23 (Bloomberg) — Hurricane Dolly strengthened as it approached the Texas-Mexico border and may grow into a Category 2 storm before making landfall today, U.S. forecasters said.
The system’s eye was about 55 miles (90 kilometers) east of Brownsville, Texas, the National Hurricane Center said on its Web site at 6 a.m. Brownsville time. Sustained winds were almost 85 miles per hour. Winds of tropical-storm force swept the coast as Dolly headed northwest at almost 8 mph. The hurricane probably will reach the coast around midday, the center said.
Dolly may dump 6 to 10 inches (15-25 centimeters) of rain on South Texas and northeastern Mexico during the next few days, probably causing widespread flooding, forecasters at the Miami center said. As much as 15 inches may fall in some areas. A coastal storm surge of 4 to 6 feet (1.2 to 1.8 meters) above normal is predicted near and north of the point of landfall.
“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,'’ the center said.
Dolly is the season’s first hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, home to more than a quarter of U.S. oil production. A hurricane warning was in place from Corpus Christi, Texas, south to the San Fernando River in Mexico, the center said.
The system’s predicted path is far south of most Gulf oil rigs, which are along the East Texas and Louisiana coasts. Energy companies evacuated some rigs as a precaution and cut production in the Gulf by 4.7 percent, according to the U.S. Interior Department. Companies that carried out evacuations include BP Plc, Noble Corp., Chevron Corp., Devon Energy Corp., Citgo Petroleum Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
Texas Governor Rick Perry activated 1,200 National Guard personnel and a half-dozen Black Hawk helicopters, which can deliver emergency supplies.
SINGAPORE (AP) — Just hours before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to meet with North Korea’s top diplomat, Pyongyang insisted Wednesday it had met its commitments in nuclear negotiations and said Washington must completely abandon its “hostile policies” toward the regime.
Rice was meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun during six-nation talks in Singapore. The session is Washington’s highest-level contact with the Stalinist state in four years.
Amid promising developments in the international effort to get the North to abandon nuclear weapons, Rice is hoping to gauge the North’s commitment to the process when she sees North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun on the sidelines of an Asian security forum in Singapore.
North Korean spokesman Ri Tong Il told reporters that Pyongyang hoped the meeting would build momentum toward ending the declaration and verification stage.
“What is important in the next stage is that these measures should lead to a complete abandonment of (U.S.) hostile policies toward our republic,” he said. Pyongyang formally insists that Washington, which backed the South against the North in the 1950-53 Korean War, remains committed to North Korea’s destruction.
Pyongyang has been given a four-page draft document detailing what the United States says it must do to prove it has told the truth about its past atomic programs, a key element in the six-nation denuclearization initiative.
Diplomats expect Pak to provide at least an initial response to the proposal at the meeting with Rice and the foreign ministers of the other four nations involved: China, Japan, South Korea and Russia. Rice was seeing the ministers separately before the group meeting.
Chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill said late Tuesday that he believed the meeting would “give some indication of the amount of effort the North Koreans have put into completing this verification protocol.”
The draft calls for intrusive inspections of North Korean nuclear facilities, soil sampling, interviews with key scientists and a role for U.N. atomic experts. Hill travels on Friday to the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna to brief them on developments.
YASOUJ, Iran (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday said the United States’ participation in the latest round of nuclear talks is a step toward recognizing Tehran’s right to acquire nuclear technology.
A senior diplomat from the U.S. joined envoys from five other world powers in Switzerland at Saturday’s talks on Iran’s nuclear program. Ahmadinejad told thousands of supporters gathered in the southern Iranian town of Yasouj that Undersecretary of State William Burns “spoke politely and in a dignified manner.”
“It was a step toward recognizing the rights of the Iranian nation, toward justice, toward repairing your image in the world, toward cleaning 50 years of crimes you committed against the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad said, addressing the U.S.
The United States and other Western nations accuse Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and demand that it freeze its uranium enrichment program. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Ahmadinejad on Wednesday again vowed Iran will not “retreat one iota” from pursuing it.
The U.S. participation in the Geneva talks had raised expectations for a compromise under which Iran would agree to stop expanding its enrichment activities. In exchange, the six powers — the United States and five world powers — would hold off on adopting new U.N. sanctions against Iran.
But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday accused Iran of not being serious at the Geneva talks. She said Iran had given the run-around to the envoys, while all six nations were serious about a two-week deadline for Iran to agree to freeze suspect activities and start negotiations or else be hit with new penalties.
Iran already has defied three sets of U.N. sanctions over its uranium enrichment activity.
Osama Bin Laden’s former driver was so close to al-Qaeda’s leaders he knew the target of the fourth hijacked plane on 11 September, prosecutors have alleged.
They were speaking as the first war crimes trial got under way at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay.
Yemeni national Salim Hamdan is accused of conspiracy and supporting terrorism, and faces life in prison if convicted.
He has pleaded not guilty and his defence team say he worked for wages, not to wage war, on America.
Mr Hamdan, who was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, is the first prisoner to be tried by the US for war crimes since World War II.
Prosecutors told the six-member jury at the military tribunal in Guantanamo that Mr Hamdan was aware of the impending attacks on the US in September 2001.
Navy Lt Cdr Timothy Stone said Mr Hamdan had heard Bin Laden say that the fourth plane was aiming for “the dome”, an apparent reference to the Capitol building in Washington DC.
“Virtually no-one knew the intended target but the accused knew,” he said.
The plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field as passengers overpowered the hijackers.
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He had a job because he had to earn a living, not because he had a jihad against America
Harry Schneider
Defence lawyer
“You will not see evidence from the government that the accused ever fired a shot,” Lt Cdr Stone told the tribunal.
“But what you will see is testimony regarding the accused’s role in al-Qaeda, how he came to be a member of al-Qaeda and how he helped, facilitated and provided material support for that organisation.”
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The first prosecution witness, a US military officer who was present when Mr Hamdan was captured at a roadblock, said the accused was driving a car that contained two surface-to-air missiles and a piece of paper signed by the leader of the Taleban.
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On cross-examination, the officer, identified as Sgt Maj “A” , said he could not be sure Mr Hamdan was the driver of the vehicle.
Legal ‘black hole’
Mr Hamdan’s lawyers, who unsuccessfully challenged the right of the military tribunal to try him, argued that he was a worker for Bin Laden and did not share the al-Qaeda leader’s extremist views.
“He worked for wages - he didn’t wage attacks on America,” said Harry Schneider, one of the civilian defence lawyers. “He had a job because he had to earn a living, not because he had a jihad against America.”
Mr Hamdan has acknowledged working for Bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1997 to 2001 for $200 (£99) a month, but denies being part of al-Qaeda or taking part in any attacks.
The trial judge, Navy Captain Keith Allred, ruled on Monday that some of the statements obtained by interrogators while Mr Hamdan was still in Afghanistan could not be used as evidence.
Mr Hamdan’s defence lawyers have argued that the statements were tainted by what have been called “coercive techniques”, and he was not advised of his right against self-incrimination.
About 270 suspects remain in detention in Guantanamo Bay.
Among the dozens of other inmates due to be tried there in the coming months are men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks.
Human rights campaigners have accused the court of operating in a legal black hole and they and the other accused will be watching the proceedings closely, correspondents say.
The verdict will require a two-thirds majority.
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COMMENT:Â Everyone who lost a loved one on 9/11 should have the chance to inflict some sort of punishment on this guy…..whether he shared “extremist views” or not, he was a conspirator!Â
Atlanta, GA (AHN) - Foreign-born immigrants account for more than half of new tuberculosis cases in the U.S. in recent years, according to a study in a major medical journal.
Researchers suggest that immigrants to the U.S. from Africa and Southeast Asia should be tested and treated for tuberculosis before they arrive to prevent importing the disease.
More than 53 percent of all TB cases in the U.S. among foreign-born persons occurred in the 22 percent of the population born in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Kevin P. Cain of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed data of foreign-born persons in the United States diagnosed with TB from 2001 through 2006. The study examined which populations of foreign-born persons in the U.S. are at higher risk of TB and drug-resistant TB.
A total of 46,970 cases were reported among foreign-born persons in the U.S. from 2001 through 2006, of which 12,928 (28 percent) were among immigrants who had entered the country within the previous two years.
The study also found that TB case rates declined over time among the foreign-born population overall, but remained higher than among U.S.-born persons, even more than 20 years after arrival. The figure was more than four times higher in 2006.
The drug-resistant TB was found the highest in countries including Vietnam, Peru, the Philippines and China. Researchers believe that screening immigrants and refugees from the Philippines and Vietnam would have detected almost half the average 250 TB cases brought into the U.S. each year between 2001 and 2006
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommend that all children be vaccinated against the flu.Â
The agency accepted the recommendations of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and has said that flu shots should be made available to 5- to 18-year-olds as soon as possible but no later than the 2009-10 flu season.
The CDC also recommends that the primary focus be on children 6 months to 5 years old because they are at highest risk of serious complications from the virus. Health officials already recommended vaccination for that group.
People 50 or older and those at highest risk of complications from flu also should be vaccinated.
The recommendation for extending vaccinations to all children was welcomed earlier this year by public-health and medical leaders.
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