FDA to declare cold meds too risky for young kids

FDA to declare cold meds
too risky for young kids

WASHINGTON — Parents should not give sniffling babies and toddlers over-the-counter cough and cold medicines — they’re too risky for tots so small, the government will declare today.

The Food and Drug Administration still hasn’t decided if the remedies are appropriate for older children to continue using, officials told The Associated Press.

Expect a decision on that by spring, the deadline necessary to notify manufacturers before they begin production for next fall’s cold season.

For now, the FDA is issuing a public health advisory today to warn parents to avoid these drugs for children under age 2 “because serious and potentially life-threatening side effects can occur.”

It’s not the first warning about cold remedies and tots: Drug companies last October quit selling dozens of versions targeted specifically to babies and toddlers. That same month, the FDA’s own scientific advisers voted that the drugs don’t even work in small children and shouldn’t be used in preschoolers, either — anyone under age 6.

Today’s advisory marks the government’s first ruling on the issue: Don’t give the drugs to children under 2.

Ex-congressman charged

WASHINGTON — A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday on charges of being part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to a supporter of al-Qaida and the Taliban who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

Mark Deli Siljander, a Michigan Republican when he was in the House, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

The 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying — money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Siljander, who served in the House from 1981-87, was appointed by President Reagan to serve as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations for one year in 1987.

Simpson posts bail

LAS VEGAS — Hands cuffed at his waist and a defeated expression on his face, O.J. Simpson listened to a judge blister him Wednesday for “arrogance or ignorance or both” for breaking bail terms in a robbery case.

“I don’t know, Mr. Simpson, what the heck you were thinking, or maybe that’s the problem — you weren’t,” Clark County District Judge Jackie Glass lectured as she doubled his bail to $250,000.

Simpson’s attorney, Yale Galanter, told The Associated Press in an e-mail late Wednesday that bond had been posted and that Simpson was expected to be released from jail within hours.

Arrest in officers’ deaths

DECATUR, Ga. — Two off-duty police officers were killed early Wednesday in an apparent ambush at an apartment complex in what residents described as a high-crime neighborhood, police said.

Police arrested a 32-year-old man and charged him with murder, said Officer Jonathan Ware, a DeKalb County police spokesman. Authorities were still looking for other suspects, he said.

DeKalb County Officers Ricky Bryant Jr., 26, and Eric Barker, 33, were working as security guards at the complex and investigating a suspicious person there when shots rang out, DeKalb County Police Chief Terrell Bolton said.

Bolton told reporters that the dead officers were wearing their police uniforms and that the shooting appeared to be an ambush. “It just appeared that they were gunned down without a chance,” he said.

He did not say what led to the shooting.

Whale hunt suspended

TOKYO — Protesters scored a victory in a high-seas campaign to disrupt Japan’s whale hunt in the Antarctic, forcing the fleet to a standstill Wednesday while officials scrambled to unload two activists who used a rubber boat to get on board a harpoon vessel.

The faceoff was a rapid escalation of the annual contest between the fleet that carries out Japan’s controversial whale hunt in southern waters and the environmentalist groups that try to stop it.

The founder of the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group, Paul Watson, told The Associated Press by satellite phone that the Japanese are targeting vulnerable whale stocks and said his organization will keep harassing the fleet.

Associated Press