Up to 10,000 at risk of Yosemite virus

Up to 10,000 at risk of Yosemite virus

FRESNO, Calif.

Up to 10,000 people who were guests in certain lodging cabins at Yosemite National Park might have been exposed to a deadly mouse-borne virus, park officials confirmed Friday as rangers handled a slew of calls from frightened visitors.

Park concessionaire Delaware North Co. sent letters and emails this week to nearly 3,000 people who reserved the insulated “Signature” cabins between June and August, warning them that they might have been exposed.

The cabins hold up to four people, and park spokesman Scott Gediman said Friday that means up to 7,000 more visitors might have been exposed to the virus that so far has killed two people and sickened four others.

Harvard: 125 may have cheated on test

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

Harvard University will consider instituting an honor code as it investigates whether at least 125 undergraduates cheated by working together on a take-home exam in the spring.

Officials said they intend to start broad conversations about academic honesty, including why it is vital to intellectual inquiry, in the wake of what is believed to be the largest such episode in recent school history.

School officials said Thursday they discovered roughly half of the students in a class of at least 250 people may have shared answers or plagiarized on a final. They declined to release the name of the class or the students’ names.

Winner declared in Mexico election

MEXICO CITY

Mexico’s highest electoral authority declared Friday that Enrique Pena Nieto was the legitimate winner of the July 1 presidential election, formally opening the transition to a new government despite continuing claims of fraud by the left’s second-place finisher.

The Federal Electoral Tribunal said leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador failed to prove claims that vote-buying had affected the results of the vote that returns the former autocratic ruling party to Mexico’s highest office after a 12-year absence.

Pena Nieto insists his Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, has changed. In the final decades of the 20th century, its rule was marked corruption, vote fraud and periodic economic crises.

Agency blames sitter for baby death

PORTLAND, Maine

Maine’s child-welfare agency is placing blame for a baby’s death on the mother of a 10-year-old accused of killing her, saying the mother shouldn’t have left the infant with the girl and the baby’s death was “a result of your neglect.”

A case worker faulted the sitter for leaving the baby in her 10-year-old daughter’s bedroom in the central Maine town of Fairfield. In a letter, the case worker said the girl had a behavior disorder that made her unsuitable for caring for the infant.

The 10-year-old girl was charged this week with manslaughter in the death of 3-month-old Brooklyn Foss-Greenaway of Clinton in a case that shocked the state because of the homicide suspect’s tender age.

Syrian rebels launch major offensive

BEIRUT

A rebel unit of army defectors launched a major offensive against security facilities in Syria’s largest city of Aleppo, and anti-regime forces targeted air bases to try to reduce the military threat from the skies, activists said Friday.

The coordinated attacks by the Brigade of Free Syrians pointed to a higher-than-usual degree of planning by the rebels, suggesting that President Bashar Assad’s opponents are becoming more brazen as the civil war deepens.

Associated Press