10 People in Dallas in Grave Danger of Contracting Ebola

ATLANTA – Ten people in Dallas, who have been in contact with the first patient diagnosed with the Ebola virus in the United States, are in grave danger of contracting the disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

In a press teleconference together with Dallas health authorities, the CDC’s Dr. Beth Bell said that, despite the serious risk, none of those people have shown symptoms of the illness, which can be fever, muscle pain, vomiting or bleeding.

She said that besides the 100 people originally indicated as being at risk for their contact with the patient Thomas Eric Duncan after his return from Liberia, authorities have determined that only 50 of them will remain under observation and evaluation over the next 21 days.

Both federal and local authorities have been criticized for their handling of the situation, and for keeping the patient’s family in the same conditions they were living in before he was admitted to hospital last Sunday.

“I am concerned for this family. I want to see this family treated the way I would want to see my own family treated,” Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins, director of emergency management for Dallas County, said during the teleconference.

As of Friday morning, the family’s apartment had not yet been disinfected due to a lack of the necessary permits to move contaminated material, the judge said, adding that a prompt response to the situation would be made.

Meanwhile, in what could be another possible case of the disease, the prison in Cobb County, Georgia, confirmed Friday that an inmate, who had traveled recently to West Africa and who has flu-like symptoms, has been tested for the Ebola virus.

Howard University Hospital in Washington also confirmed Friday that a patient who was recently in Nigeria and who had symptoms “that could be associated with Ebola” was admitted.

Bell said the U.S. government is making every effort to speed up development of an anti-Ebola vaccine, but stressed the need to guarantee the safety of the immunization in order to fight this infirmity, which up to now has infected 7,178 people and has left 3,338 dead in West Africa, according to the latest World Health Organization figure

Four Russian Police Killed in Chechnya Suicide Attack

MOSCOW – At least four police officers died and four others were wounded Sunday in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, in Russia’s North Caucasus region, when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives as the officers were trying to determine his identity.

“Beside the metal detectors located at the entrance to the concert hall, the ... police noticed a suspicious young man. When they decided to detain and identify him the man detonated (his bomb),” according to a Russian Interior Ministry communique.

Russian authorities emphasized that the officers were able to prevent a large-scale terrorist attack, given that the suicide bomber was evidently intending to attend a popular concert on Grozny Day.

The Interior Ministry identified the terrorist as a young man from Grozny, “who left his home two months ago and about whom his relatives had known nothing since that time.”

Chechnya, where Russian security forces fought local terrorist groups from 1999-2009, is – along with Dagestan and Ingushetia – one of Russia’s most unstable regions.

However, Russian human rights activists accuse Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov of establishing a police state in the territory.

The conflict-ridden North Caucasus, comprised of seven republics within the Russian Federation, is the scene of frequent attacks and armed clashes between Russian forces and Islamist groups

Eight Bodies Found, May Be Missing Students in Mexico

UPDATE ( POLICE KILLED STUDENTS )

IGUALA, Mexico – At least eight bodies were found in clandestine graves discovered on the weekend in the southern Mexican city of Iguala, officials with the Guerrero state government confirmed to Efe on Sunday.

A state government spokesman said that eight bodies had been found by Saturday evening, “but we don’t know if they belong to (some of) the 43 young (teacher trainees)” who disappeared last weekend after attacks on students that killed six and wounded 25.

Regarding the versions broadcast by media outlets that the bodies were burned, the official said that he did not know the condition of the remains adding that the investigation will continue near a hill in the village of Pueblo Viejo, where the graves were found thanks to information provided by several people under arrest.

Federal prosecutors have taken over the investigation of the disappearance of the 43 teacher trainees in Iguala, the Attorney General’s Office said in an announcement made on Saturday just hours after initial reports came out that clandestine graves had been found.

Forensic experts are in Guerrero to examine the remains found in the mass graves, Criminal Investigations Agency director Tomas Zeron said.

“A group of investigators and federal Attorney General’s Office agents” will be overseeing the investigation, Zeron said.

Relatives of the 43 missing students called Saturday for a nationwide march to protest the slow pace of the investigation and demand that authorities locate their loved ones.

In a gathering with the media at the teacher training college in the rural community of Ayotzinapa, where the young people were studying, the families said they would march on Wednesday to demand that investigators determine what happened on the night of Sept. 26-27.

The students went missing after a night of violence in Iguala – a city in the crime-plagued state of Guerrero – in which six people were killed, including three students of the training college for future primary-school instructors, and 25 others were injured.

The murky series of events included an attack on a bus carrying members of a Third-Division soccer team.

Twenty-two municipal police officers suspected of firing at the students for reasons yet unknown have been arrested, although the involvement of organized crime elements has not been ruled out.

Some witnesses said the 43 missing students were shoved into police vans by the same officers who had attacked them. The students came under fire from the police while riding in private buses they had illegally taken to return to their homes after a fundraising drive.

Mob Kills 2 Men Who Tried to Rob Bus in Central Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Two men who allegedly tried to rob a bus were beaten to death this weekend by passengers and townspeople in central Mexico, media reports said.

The two men were caught and beaten by residents of Tablas del Pozo, a community outside the city of Ecatepec, the El Universal newspaper reported.

Ecatepec is in Mexico state, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area.

Police officers were finally able to pull the men away from the mob, but the two suspects died after more than 100 townspeople punched, kicked, stoned and clubbed them.

The incident occurred around 9:30 p.m. Friday when five men boarded a San Pedro-Santa Clara company bus in San Andres de la Cañada, drew firearms and ordered the passengers to hand over their belongings.

Townspeople spotted the men, realized what had happened and chased them.

Three of the suspects managed to get away, but the other two were cornered and beaten for several minutes.

Police eventually arrived on the scene and transported the two men to a hospital, where they died.

Residents often take the law into their own hands in Mexico, claiming that they do not trust police and are fed up with the high crime rate.

Eric Holder Video ( haha )

Iran ( Demonstrators rally to raise awareness for imprisoned student Omid Kokabee)

A group of demonstrators gathered Wednesday on the RLM bridge to raise awareness for Omid Kokabee, a former UT physics graduate student who has been imprisoned in Iran for almost four years.

The group gathered in the shade of the building Kokabee would have returned to for class after visiting his family in Iran. Physics professor Herbert Berk spoke at the demonstration about the circumstances of Kokabee’s incarceration.

“It’s hard to understand what it was, and there was no trial to really shed any light because, at the trial, the judge looked at him and declared him guilty and put him in jail for 10 years,” Berk said.

Berk serves as chairman for the Committee on International Freedom of Scientists, an organization that fights for imprisoned scientists. He said the reasons for Kokabee’s imprisonment are unusual.

“He was declared innocent of some of the [original] charges, but then they convicted him of conspiring with the United States government and getting illegal income, which is, as far as we can tell, the income from being a TA here,” Berk said.

Berk said Kokabee has lost weight and has come down with different medical afflictions while in the Iranian prison system.

U.S. Court Orders Closure of 13 Texas Abortion Clinics

AUSTIN, Texas – Thirteen abortion clinics in Texas have closed their doors after a legal battle with the state authorities who toughened sanitary standards a year ago for the centers, local press reported.

The clinics shut down on Thursday following the decision by a federal appellate court in New Orleans, which has jurisdiction in Texas, which cleared the way for the new abortion law to go into effect.

The law was annulled in late August by another court but Texas officials appealed to the federal chamber.

With the closings of the 13 clinics, the second most populous state in the country, with 76 million people, will have eight legal abortion centers in the four main cities, Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas.

The original law was to go into effect on Sept. 1 but federal Judge Lee Yeakel annulled it, ruling that it was unconstitutional for women of child-bearing age to be more than 240 kilometers (150 miles) from an abortion clinic.

But Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, a Republican running for governor, appealed the ruling.