San Diego
Swine-flu scare: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating two rare cases of swine flu in Southern California, which specialists worry could presage a pandemic of the deadly disease. The cases appeared almost simultaneously in a 10-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl, neither of whom had prior contact with farm animals, which can carry the illness. Local doctors examined nose and throat swabs from the children, and when they couldn’t identify the strain of influenza, they forwarded their findings to the CDCP in Atlanta, which identified them as a previously unknown variant of the swine-flu virus. The last swine-flu scare in the U.S. occurred in 1976, when the disease sickened 13 soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. One soldier died.
Atlanta
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King memorial controversy: The foundation that’s building a national memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. reported that it has paid $800,000 in licensing fees to the slain leader’s descendants, prompting anger from some veterans of the civil-rights movement. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation said that sum was paid to the family for the use of King’s image and words in fundraising solicitations for the memorial, which will be built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The family has a history of aggressively asserting ownership rights to King’s speeches. The foundation said the fees were not a burden, but King biographer David Garrow said the civil-rights leader would have been “absolutely scandalized by the profiteering behavior of his children.”
Chicago
Cougar in the city: A 150-pound cougar terrorized a Chicago neighborhood last week, before being felled by a volley of police gunfire. The 5-foot-long animal might have been the same cougar spotted earlier in the suburb of Wilmette, 15 miles from the site of the shooting. “I walked to the window and there it was,” said Romeo Dorazio, a resident of Chicago’s Roscoe Village neighborhood, where the cougar had been wandering for about six hours. “It was the freakiest thing I ever saw.” The incident was the latest in a string of cougar sightings in the Midwest. The cougar population there has surged recently as encroaching human populations have forced the animals out of their native Western habitats.
Wellington, Fla.
Polo pony mystery: As horrified spectators looked on, 21 polo ponies collapsed and died this week just 45 minutes before the start of the U.S. Open Polo Championship. The ponies, which cost up to $200,000 each, belonged to Lechuza Caracas, a Venezuelan team that had traveled to Florida for the match. The horses became ill shortly after being unloaded from their trailers at the International Polo Club, site of the championship. “It was heartbreaking to see that many horses get sick all at once,” said event organizer John Walsh. Investigators theorize that a toxin somehow found its way into the animals’ feed and are not ruling out foul play.
Boston
‘Craigslist killer’: Massachusetts police have charged a Boston University medical student with robbing and killing an erotic masseuse he solicited on Craigslist, the popular classified-ads website. The suspect, Philip Markoff, 22, was identified from hotel security video taken around the time of the murder last week. Police say Markoff previously used Craigslist to lure other women to hotel rooms, where he allegedly robbed them. He has pleaded innocent. Earlier this month, Michael Anderson, 20, of Savage, Minn., was sentenced to life in prison for killing a woman who’d replied to his Craigslist ad for a nanny. Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said the site is examining its policies “to further improve safety for our users and the general public.”
Washington, D.C.
Mortgage executive’s suicide: The acting chief financial officer of scandal-plagued mortgage financier Freddie Mac died this week in what police said was an apparent suicide. David Kellermann, 41, was found dead in his basement. A 16-year veteran of Freddie Mac, Kellermann was promoted to acting CFO last September, following the federal takeover of the firm, which owns or guarantees more than 13 million home loans. The government took over Freddie Mac after it racked up billions of dollars in losses and was harshly criticized for lavish spending. His death comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department have been investigating the company for possible accounting violations, although Kellermann has never been linked to any of the company’s earlier problems.
