Friday, December 18, 2009
US official urges more people to get flu vaccine
WASHINGTON — A flu shot for the holidays?
Finally, the nation’s supply of swine flu vaccine will reach 100 million doses by week’s end, opening the way for everyone, not just those at highest risk, to get protected.
For people who’ve been at the back of the line, “Now it’s your turn,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Thursday.
Even though this new flu that scientists call the 2009 H1N1 strain is ebbing, specialists stressed that it’s too soon to say it’s over. There’s plenty of illness going around, and the 1957 flu pandemic ebbed in the fall only to bounce back in January and February.
“We have a wonderful window of opportunity to prevent or lessen a third wave,” Sebelius said.
Mexico: 5,000 migrants died on way to US since ’94
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says more than 5,000 Mexican migrants have died in deserts, rivers and mountains trying to reach the U.S. since 1994.
The commission says governments must do more to protect migrants from robbers, smugglers and others who seek to exploit them.
It said Thursday in a statement that on average, three migrants perished every two days in 2007 and 2008 in the U.S.-Mexico border region.
According to the National Statistics and Geography Institute, more than 280,000 Mexicans emigrated in the first six months of 2009 — a 25 percent drop over the same period last year.
The U.S. economic downturn and crackdowns on immigrants have contributed to the drop.
Police search home of missing Utah mother
PUYALLUP, Wash. — Police searched the home of a missing Utah mother Thursday as family members held a tearful news conference in which they expressed their sadness that the husband has been named a person of interest in the investigation.
Susan Powell, a 28-year-old mother of two young children, was reported missing Dec. 7 when she didn’t show up for her stockbroker job at a bank. She was last seen a day earlier.
Her husband, Josh Powell, said he went camping with the couple’s boys, age 2 and 4, in subfreezing temperatures in the middle of the night Dec. 7 and returned in the evening.
West Valley City Police Capt. Tom McLachlan on Thursday said the 4-year-old boy was interviewed within “a day or two” after his mother was reported missing. The son told police his family went camping — an event his father has said coincided with her disappearance.
Three lenders suspend evictions, foreclosures
WASHINGTON — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Citigroup Inc. announced Thursday that they will suspend foreclosures and evictions during the holidays.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae said they have ordered mortgage servicers and foreclosure attorneys to suspend foreclosure sales for occupied single-family homes owned by the government- controlled companies between Saturday and Jan. 3, 2010.
Tenants living in foreclosed properties backed by Fannie Mae mortgages will also not be subject to evictions during the holiday time frame, according to Fannie Mae.
Citigroup Inc. said Thursday it will suspend foreclosures and evictions for 30 days until Jan. 17 for roughly 4,000 borrowers.
Man exonerated after 35 years in prison
BARTOW, Fla. — James Bain used a cell phone for the first time Thursday, calling his elderly mother to tell her he had been freed after 35 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.
Mobile devices didn’t exist in 1974, the year he was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping a 9-year-old boy and raping him in a nearby field.
Neither did the sophisticated DNA testing that officials more recently used to determine he could not have been the rapist.
“Nothing can replace the years Jamie has lost,” said Seth Miller, a lawyer for the Florida Innocence Project, which helped Bain win freedom. “Today is a day of renewal.”
Combined dispatches