U.S. TB Infections Drop to Record Low: CDC

By  Julie Steenhuysen

United States - U.S. cases of tuberculosis fell 6.4 percent in 2011 to an all-time low, but missed a national target of eliminating the disease as cases among foreign-born individuals persisted, health officials said on Thursday.

Unless factors change significantly, the United States will not be able to eliminate TB - meaning fewer than one case per one million people - until the year 2100, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Addressing the increasing difference between TB rates in foreign-born and U.S.-born persons is critical for TB elimination," the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease, which was released ahead of World TB Day on March 24.

Overall, U.S. TB rates last year fell to 10,521 reported cases, or 3.4 cases per 100,000 people, the lowest level since national reporting began in 1953, the CDC said.

Despite these gains, the airborne infection is proving difficult to tame in some populations, especially among foreign-born individuals, blacks, Asians and people infected with HIV.

TB rates were 12 times higher among people born outside the United States. Of these infected individuals, more than half of the cases originated in just five countries: Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, and China, the CDC said.

Compared with whites, TB rates were seven times higher for Hispanics, eight times higher for blacks and 25 times higher for Asians last year.

Four states - California, Texas, New York and Florida - account for nearly half of all TB cases in the United States, according to the report.

TB is caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. It can be cured with antibiotics but they must be taken daily for months to be effective. Because people do not always take the drugs as directed, multiple drug-resistant strains have emerged.

Cases of TB that are resistant to at least two common treatments, known as multidrug-resistant TB, accounted for 109 of all U.S. TB cases in 2010, the most recent year for which there are data. Foreign-born individuals accounted for 90 of these cases.

There were 4 cases of extensively drug-resistant TB - an infection that resists the most highly effective drugs - reported in the United States in 2010, all among foreign-born people.

The World Health Organization estimates that a third of the world's population is infected with the bacteria that cause TB. Last year, TB made nearly 9 million people sick and killed some 1.45 million people, according to WHO.

Special U.S. Military Unit Hunts Mexico Border Drug Flights

By Curt Prendergast

United States/Mexico - A highly specialized U.S. military task force is using battlefield technology to help federal police hunt elusive drug traffickers slipping over the Mexico border in hard-to-detect ultralight aircraft, officials said on Thursday.

Joint Task Force North, a cadre of highly specialized Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen, is using the military's cutting edge radar and optical technologies to help the U.S. Border Patrol nab the drug flights in southern Arizona and New Mexico.

Wily traffickers attach bundles of up to a few hundred pounds of marijuana to the small, lightweight aircraft, which are difficult to spot and often fly in areas not covered by the Federal Aviation Administration, officials said.

"We take great pride in being able to say, 'We own the night,'" task force spokesman Armando Carrasco told a news conference near Douglas, a remote ranching town on the Mexico border in Arizona, where the flights are a headache for law enforcement.

"We can deploy radars to where there's no FAA coverage ... Our purpose is to identify all aircraft crossing the border illegally. If it flies, we can identify it," he added.

U.S. authorities have recorded hundreds of ultralight incursions along the porous, nearly 2,000 mile border with Mexico in recent years. The smugglers often dump the drugs and head back south to Mexico without landing. At least two have crashed.

In January, President Barack Obama signed a law sponsored by former Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords levying new penalties on people who use the aircraft to smuggle drugs over the U.S. border.

Operation Nimbus II involves around 500 highly specialized personnel. They will use the military's Sentinel battlefield radar system, and the Avenger Air Defense System, which uses infrared heat-sensing technology to help detect intruders.

The systems are able to track unscheduled incursions both during the day and at night in remote mountain and desert terrain in southern Arizona and western New Mexico, among the areas most frequently probed by the clandestine drug flights.

The partnership is of mutual benefit to both the Border Patrol and the military task force, officials said. "We get additional eyes and they get training," said Steven Passement, a spokesman for Border Patrol's Tucson sector

"It's good training in a real-world environment," said Sergeant Mark Stark, who is trained on the Sentinel system.

The task force, which includes engineers, map makers, radar and intelligence specialists, currently aids the Border Patrol on the northern border with Canada, where it has used battlefield radar systems to target marijuana smugglers.

However, 70 percent of the more than 6,000 missions conducted by the task force since its creation in 1989 have been on the border with Mexico, Carrasco said.

Last year the group, which operates in an area between homeland security and defense known as "the seam," conducted 80 missions in support of federal police, with more than 50 of them on the southern border, he said.

These included using ground-penetrating radar systems to hunt for drug tunnels bored under the border to San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico, and road construction in various cities along the border, Carrasco said.

Both the Obama administration and the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon have in recent years stepped up cooperation to curb the smuggling of drugs and migrants north over the U.S. border and of cash and guns south to Mexico, where about 50,000 people have been killed in drug violence in the past five years.

Study Links Heavy Diesel Exhaust to Lung Cancer

Worldwide - There's new evidence that exposure to exhaust from diesel engines increases the risk of lung cancer.

Diesel exhaust has long been classified as a probable carcinogen. But the 20-year study from the National Cancer Institute took a closer look by tracking more than 12,000 workers in certain kinds of mines — facilities that mined for potash, lime and other nonmetals. They breathed varying levels of exhaust from diesel-powered equipment, levels higher than the general population encounters.

The most heavily exposed miners had three times the risk of death from lung cancer compared to workers with the lowest exposures, said the study released Friday by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

But even workers with lower exposures had a 50 percent increased risk, wrote lead author Debra Silverman, an NCI epidemiologist.

"Our findings are important not only for miners but also for the 1.4 million American workers and the 3 million European workers exposed to diesel exhaust, and for urban populations worldwide," Silverman wrote.

She pointed to some highly polluted cities in China, Mexico and Portugal that in past years have reported diesel exposure levels that over long periods could be comparable to those experienced by miners with lower exposures.

Litigation from some mining companies had delayed release of the study findings.

A separate industry group not involved in that litigation said Friday that the study looked back at mines using decades-old equipment, and there's far less pollution from diesel engines today.

"Diesel engine and equipment makers, fuel refiners and emissions control technology manufacturers have invested billions of dollars in research to develop and deploy technologies and strategies that reduce engine emissions, now ultimately to near zero levels to meet increasingly stringent clean air standards here in the United States and around the world," said Allen Schaeffer of the nonprofit Diesel Technology Forum.

Thousands Die of Mystery Illness; Work-Related Dehydration Suspected

By Noel Brinkerhoff

From AllGov

Thousands of workers in Central America are dying from kidney disease that has turned into an epidemic, according to health experts.

 

More than 24,000 people in El Salvador and Nicaragua have died since 2000 from kidney failure, which usually occurs in patients with diabetes and high-blood pressure. But the patients for the most part don’t suffer from these disorders.

 

Some people have blamed the problem on the agricultural chemicals used on sugar cane plantations, where many of the victims have worked. But many others have toiled in mines and other manual labor occupations, leading others to speculate that repeated bouts of extreme dehydration are causing the workers’ kidneys to shut down.

 

While the majority of the cases have been identified in Nicaragua and El Salvador, the condition has appeared as far south as Panama and as far north as Mexico.

Odd Stories: Go-Kart Used to Smuggle Pot in Arizona Desert

Arizona – Police confinscated a cache of pot that was being transported by someone using a go-kart.

Border Patrol agents noticed the go-kart and trailer as it traveled through the desert and chased it down but not after the driver bailed out the the vehicle and escaped to Mexico, eluding the agents.

When they approached the vehicle they found inside the trailer almost 220 lbs of marijuana. The total amount of the vehicle, trailer, and contents, mostly the contents, is estimated to be around $109,000.

About the find agent Spencer Tippets said :It's not something that we see very often. Smuggling organizations are always trying to adjust and change their tactics.”

Odd Stories: Bank Robber Used Skateboard for Transportation

Mexico City — Mexico City police say they have arrested a would-be bandit who rode his skateboard to bank robbery attempts.

Police say Sergio Ledesma and his skateboard have been turned over to prosecutors after he allegedly attempted to rob two banks by whispering threats to tellers.

Police say the teller at the first bank simply acted as if he hadn't heard Ledesma, who then skated off to a second bank.

The second teller told police Ledesma appeared to whisper a threat. So the teller set off a silent alarm, and counted out the money while the would-be robber waited patiently.

Police said Friday Ledesma was still waiting when they arrived and arrested him.

Israel Announces Hackers Are Terrorists

Israel - Following the humiliating cyber-attack launched against Israel and the scandal around it comes a response from the country: You will be treated as a terrorist.

Much like what the United States announced late last year, the country – prey to a massive hack which leaked more than 400-thousand credit cards with the supposed intention of disrupting the banking system – seems to leave no options off the table.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said whatever actions Israel takes is “It is necessary to send a message to everyone who attacks or tries to attack Israel, including in cyberspace. [Hackers] are putting themselves in danger and that they will not benefit from any immunity against reprisal actions from Israel.”

A blogger claims to have discerned the person who is responsible for the banking hack, a Saudi going by the name of 0x0mar. In response the supposed hacker released a statement saying he is not Omar Habib and to “Come and get me”.  Here is a report from Israeli National News.

So what do you think this means? Do you think this will just provoke future hackers to try their luck? What about the group Anonymous? How can you possibly hit a target that has no one set nation, age, sex, or background?

TV Producer Won't Fight Extradition to Mexico

LOS ANGELES — A reality show producer charged with murdering his wife during a Mexican vacation is dropping his extradition fight and will stand trial in Cancun, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Bruce Beresford-Redman's attorney said the onetime "Survivor" producer has decided not to appeal a Los Angeles federal court ruling upholding his extradition to Mexico.

"He feels he is not going to prevail on appeal and he'd like to get moving on proving his innocence," said attorney Richard Hirsch.

He said the producer could be sent to Mexico within 60 days following review of the extradition request by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Beresford-Redman, 40, is being held in a Los Angeles federal prison.

Monica Beresford-Redman, 42, disappeared from a Cancun resort where the couple was vacationing with their two children last year. Her body was found stuffed in a sewer cistern.

"He is innocent and it is his hope that the court in Mexico will assure that he receives a fair trial in which, he is confident, he will be exonerated," Hirsch said.

The family of Monica Beresford-Redman has said the couple went to Cancun to try to save their marriage. They claim Bruce Beresford-Redman, who is also the co-creator of the series "Pimp My Ride," was having a long-term affair with another woman. His wife, originally from Brazil, owned and operated a restaurant in Los Angeles.

U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez upheld an extradition order earlier this month, saying that there are many pages of competent evidence supporting prosecution claims that the producer killed his wife.

"All of this evidence points to homicide committed by the fugitive," said the judge's ruling.

Prosecutors presented statements from hotel guests who said they heard loud arguing and cries of distress coming from the couple's room on the night Monica Beresford-Redman went missing.

The producer's attorneys have claimed the noises came from Beresford-Redman and his children playing loud games throughout the night. They introduced statements from the couple's 6-year-old daughter to corroborate the claim, but judges who have reviewed the case were not swayed.

Beresford-Redman had been ordered to stay in Mexico after his wife's body was found but he left and returned to his home in Los Angeles. He voluntarily surrendered to U.S. authorities after a warrant was issued in Mexico for his arrest.

Hirsch said that Beresford-Redman's family has been in contact with a Mexican lawyer who will represent him at trial. Mexican courts do not have juries, and the producer will be tried by the same judge who issued the warrant for his arrest, Hirsch said.

If he is convicted of aggravated homicide in Mexico, he faces 12 years to 30 years in a Mexican prison.

His two small children have been placed in the custody of Beresford-Redman's parents with visitation by their mother's sisters.

Mexico Faces Worst Drought in 70 Years (Video)