H1N1 hardest on the young

H1N1 hardest on the young

ATLANTA — The H1N1 virus continues to be most dangerous to children and younger adults and is largely bypassing the elderly, according to the latest and most solid government health information.

Health officials on Tuesday released figures for swine-flu hospitalizations and deaths for the seven weeks since the beginning of September. The information comes from 28 states.

It showed more than half of all hospitalizations were people 24 and younger; more than a quarter were children age 5 to 18 years.

Swine-flu deaths were concentrated in young and middle-aged adults. A third of all deaths were people age 25 through 49; another third were 50 to 64. Only 12 percent of deaths occurred in the elderly.

Biden arrives in Poland

WARSAW, Poland — U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Poland late Tuesday on the highest-level visit yet by the Obama administration to the country — a gesture Poles view as Washington’s attempt to repair damage done by its handling of missile-defense plans.

President Barack Obama is deeply admired in Western Europe, but his administration is less popular in Poland and other former Soviet satellites because of Washington’s drive to mend ties with Russia — still deeply feared in the region — and plans to reconfigure Bush-era missile defense plans.

Biden’s two-day visit to Poland will be followed by stops in Romania and the Czech Republic. He landed Tuesday night in Warsaw in a steady rain.

Officials apologize for remarks disparaging Jews

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Two Republican county officials in South Carolina have apologized after they disparaged Jews in a newspaper op-ed in support of a fiscally conservative U.S. senator.

The chairmen, Edwin Merwin Jr. and Jim Ulmer, wrote the newspaper in backing Republican Sen. Jim DeMint’s opposition to congressional earmarks.

“There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves,” according to the piece published Sunday in The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg.

DeMint called the comment thoughtless and hurtful Tuesday, and one of South Carolina’s two Jewish legislators, Democratic state Sen. Joel Lourie, said he was outraged.

He initially called for the chairmen to be removed but later said it was time to move past the issue.

Barnes & Noble introduces ‘Nook’ e-book reader

NEW YORK — Barnes & Noble Inc. unveiled a new electronic- book reader Tuesday that will compete with Amazon.com’s Kindle in a still-small arena where some see bookselling’s future.

Closer to a printed book than its precursors in some respects, the “Nook” allows users to lend their copies of electronic books to any friend who has installed Barnes & Noble’s e-reader application on a mobile device or personal computer.

The reader is available on Barnes & Noble’s Web site for $259 — same as the recently reduced Kindle — and is to start shipping in November.

Man indicted in wildfire

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — A grand jury has indicted a man on five counts of murder in a 2003 wildfire in Southern California that destroyed about 1,000 homes and was linked to a half-dozen heart-attack deaths.

The San Bernardino County district attorney’s office announced the indictment Tuesday against 28-year-old Rickie Fowler. The indictment also includes one count of arson of an inhabited structure and one count of aggravated arson.

The so-called Old Fire erupted in the Waterman Canyon area of the San Bernardino Mountains in October 2003 and charred 90,000 acres of brush in the inland region east of Los Angeles.

On the following Christmas Day, 14 people were killed when several inches of rain sent a massive flow of debris-laden runoff rushing down Waterman Canyon, sweeping away a church camp.

Sleep-apnea tests urged

WASHINGTON — The government should start screening truck and bus drivers, commercial pilots, train engineers and merchant sailors for sleep apnea, a disorder that is cropping up in transportation accidents, federal safety investigators said Tuesday.

The National Transportation Safety Board sent letters to the federal agency that regulates bus and truck safety and the U.S. Coast Guard citing accidents in which sleep apnea was a factor. The disorder causes pauses in breathing, which can interrupt sleep and increase fatigue.

Associated Press