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ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Contaminated fresh ground beef caused a possible E. coli outbreak that killed two people and sent 16 others to hospitals, federal health officials said Monday.
Twenty-eight people may have become ill after eating beef produced by Fairbank Farms of Ashville, N.Y., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. All but three of the suspected infections are in the northeastern U.S. and 18 are in New England, CDC spokeswoman Lola Scott Russell said.
Fairbank Farms recalled almost 546,000 pounds of fresh ground beef that had been distributed in September to stores from North Carolina to Maine. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recall notice, dated Saturday, said the possibly tainted meat had been sold in numerous ways, including meatloaf, meatball mix and hamburger patties.
The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Obama as a price tag for his plan.
While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.
Many of the additions are designed to improve benefits or ease access to coverage in government programs. The officials who provided overall cost estimates did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has referred repeatedly to the bill’s net cost of $894 billion over a decade.
Federal researchers studying antibiotics in pregnancy have found a surprising link between common drugs used to treat urinary infections and birth defects. Reassuringly, the most-used antibiotics in early pregnancy – penicillins – appear to be the safest.
Bacterial infections themselves can cause problems for the fetus if left unchecked, experts said, so pregnant women shouldn’t avoid antibiotics entirely. Instead, women should discuss antibiotics choices with their doctors.
The new study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that mothers of babies with birth defects were more likely than mothers with healthy babies to report taking two types of antibiotics during pregnancy: sulfa drugs (brand names include Thiosulfil Forte and Bactrim) and urinary germicides called nitrofurantoins (brand names include Furadantin and Macrobid).
It was the first time an association had been seen between urinary tract treatments and birth defects, said lead author Krista Crider, a geneticist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which funded the research.
Online auction house eBay has removed items that were posted for sale by anti-abortion activists trying to raise money for defense of a man accused of killing a Kansas abortion provider, the company said Monday.
Supporters of Scott Roeder – one in Kansas City, Mo., and the other in Des Moines, Iowa – posted various items late Sunday in separate eBay auctions including an Army of God manual, an underground publication for anti-abortion militants that describes ways to shut down clinics.
After about five hours, eBay removed 10 items, activists said. The final two items were removed by late Monday afternoon.
San Jose, Calif.-based eBay said the anti-abortion memorabilia violated its listing policies.
The new Navy assault ship USS New York, built with World Trade Center steel, arrived in its namesake city Monday with a rifle volley salute near the site of the 2001 terrorist attack.
First responders, families of Sept. 11 victims and the public gathered Monday at a waterfront viewing area, where they could see the crew standing at attention along the deck of the vessel.
The bow of the $1 billion ship, built in Louisiana, contains about 7.5 tons of steel from the fallen towers.
Of the 361 sailors serving aboard the ship, about 13 percent are from New York state.
An attorney for a man who lost out on a $1 million jackpot said the Texas Lottery Commission still considers the store clerk who allegedly stole the ticket to be the winner.
Willis Willis lost out on the jackpot when the clerk allegedly cashed in his winning lottery ticket and disappeared. Willis’ lawyer, Sean E. Brown, said commission attorneys told the 67-year-old unemployed man Monday that the clerk is considered the winner because he signed the back of the lottery ticket.
Commission spokesman Bobby Heith declined to comment.
Authorities are still trying to find the former clerk, who is charged with claiming a lottery prize by fraud.
Students in the southwest Iranian city of Ahvaz in recent days launched an impromptu protest in a campus auditorium. In Kashan on Monday, they took over the campus cafeteria, singing anti-government songs.
The protest movement that erupted after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed June 12 re-election has continued to smolder, mostly on college campuses.
On Wednesday, defying warnings by security officials, protesters plan to stage their first large public gatherings in six weeks. This time they plan to turn an annual nationwide march commemorating the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy, held on the 13th day of the Persian calendar month of Aban, into an anti-government rally.
“The 13th of Aban is another appointment for us,” opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said in a statement.
Trying to mute Arab criticism that the Obama administration had retreated from its tough stance on Israeli settlements, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday softened her praise for Israel’s offer to restrain new housing in Palestinian areas.
While Israel was moving in the right direction in its offer to restrict but not stop the settlements, Clinton said in Morocco, its offer “falls far short” of U.S. expectations.
Clinton said her earlier praise of Israel’s offer, during a stop in Jerusalem, had been intended as “positive reinforcement.” Her comment drew widespread criticism from Persian Gulf ministers who interpreted it as a U.S. drawback on settlements, the main obstacle to a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Planes and ships searching a remote patch of the Indian Ocean found no signs today of additional survivors from the sinking of a suspected asylum-seeker boat. Eleven people were believed missing, while 27 were rescued.
