Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 29, 2020

New US coronavirus case may be 1st from unknown origin

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) A new coronavirus case in California could be the first in the U.S. that has no known connection to travel abroad or another known case, a possible sign the virus is spreading in a U.S. community, health officials said.

California officials said the person is a resident of Solano County, northeast of San Francisco, and is getting medical care in Sacramento County. They said they have begun the process of tracking down people who the patient has been in contact with, a process known as contact tracing.

The patient was brought to UC Davis Medical Center from another Northern California hospital on Feb. 19 but it was four days before the CDC heeded a request to test the patient for COVID-19, according to an email sent to employees Wednesday by the hospitals interim CEO, Brad Simmons, and David Lubarsky, CEO of UC Davis Health.

The patient arrived on a ventilator and special protection orders were issued because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition, according to the email sent to employees.

The hospital asked the CDC to test for the coronavirus but testing was delayed until Sunday since the patient did not fit the existing CDC criteria for COVID-19, the email said.

Solano County health officials said in a statement Thursday they are working with local, state and federal officials to identify people who may have been exposed to person infected in the county.

NEW YORK (AP) About 4 in 10 American adults are obese, and nearly 1 in 10 is severely so, government researchers said Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention findings come from a 2017-18 health survey that measures height and weight. More than 5,000 U.S. adults took part.

The survey found that the obesity rate was 42% higher than the 40% found in a similar 2015-16 study. The severe obesity rate was more than 9% in the new survey, up from the 8% figure in the previous one.

Those increases arent considered statistically significant: The survey numbers are small enough that theres a mathematical chance the rates didnt truly rise.

But its clear that adult obesity rates are trending up, said the CDCs Cynthia Ogden, one of the reports authors.

A half-century ago, about 1 in 100 American adults were severely obese. Now its 10 times more common.

The obesity rate has risen about 40% in the last two decades.

The findings suggest that more Americans will get diabetes, heart disease and cancer, said Dr. William Dietz, a George Washington University obesity expert.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) Wisconsins latest mass shooting, which left six people dead at one of the worlds largest breweries, appears to have done little in the politically polarized state to budge Republicans who expanded access to guns over the past decade.

Milwaukee police say a 51-year-old employee of Molson Coors Brewing Co., which for decades operated as Miller Brewing, opened fire on his co-workers on Wednesday afternoon, killing five before he turned the gun on himself. It was the nations fourth mass killing of the year.

The shooting took place less than 3 miles from the venue that will host the Democratic National Convention in five months. Democratic presidential candidates weighed in on the shooting, with several reiterating their calls for tougher gun laws. President Donald Trump called the shooting a terrible thing, but he and other Republicans, including in Wisconsin, did not advocate for any changes to the law.

Trump narrowly won Wisconsin in 2016 and defeating him in the key swing state in November is a priority for Democrats. They see gun control as a winning issue, with numerous polls showing broad public support for the bills that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has unsuccessfully touted to the GOP-controlled Legislature.

Evers told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that hes pessimistic the latest shooting will cause Republicans to reconsider their position against stricter gun laws.

BALTIMORE (AP) The disgraced former mayor of Baltimore was sentenced to three years in federal prison Thursday for arranging fraudulent sales of her self-published childrens books to nonprofits and foundations to promote her political career and fund her run for the citys highest office.

Catherine Pugh spoke through tears for about 10 minutes before her sentencing in federal court in Baltimore. The 69-year-old veteran Democratic politician apologized and said that no one is more disappointed than me.

The scandal has shaken Marylands largest city, which for years has struggled with grinding poverty, political mismanagement, record crime rates and police abuses that led to massive riots. And it made a mockery of Pughs inaugural promise to restore trust in Baltimores leaders.

Pugh was elected mayor in 2016 and resigned under pressure in May as authorities investigated bulk sales of her Healthy Holly paperbacks, which netted her hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Federal authorities accused Pugh, 69, of double selling the books, keeping many for self-promotion purposes and failing to deliver them to institutions they were purchased for, including the Baltimore City Public Schools. Pugh used the proceeds to fund straw donations to her mayoral campaign and buy a new house.

White supremacists and other far-right extremists killed at least 38 people in the U.S. in 2019, the sixth deadliest year for violence by all domestic extremists since 1970, according to a report issued Wednesday by a group that fights anti-semitism.

The Anti-Defamation League counted a total of 42 domestic extremism-related slayings last year. The gunman who shot and killed 22 people in August 2019 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, accounted for more than half of them. Patrick Crusius, the suspect in that shooting rampage, is accused of targeting Mexicans at the store and faces federal hate crime charges.

Only the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in 1995 and the Pulse nightclub shooting by Omar Mateen in 2016 were deadlier attacks by domestic extremists in the past 50 years, according to the New York City-based ADL.

The ADLs annual Murder and Extremism report says domestic extremists of all kinds killed 42 people in a total of 17 separate incidents last year, down from 53 killings in 2018 but higher than the 41 in 2017.

This is part of a general trend of increasingly lethal attacks by domestic extremists in the United States, the report says. Four of the deadliest years for extremist-related violence have occurred in the past five years, according to the ADL.

Right-wing extremists killed at least 330 people over the past decade, accounting for 76% of all domestic extremist-related killings.

Link:
Nation briefs - Daily Herald

Category: Anti-Defamation League
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