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http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/19/georgia.dog.attack/index.html?_s=PM:USLEXINGTON, Georgia (CNN) -- A pack of dogs brought down and killed an animal-loving couple last weekend in rural northeastern Georgia, and a similar tragedy could occur anywhere dogs roam freely, authorities say.Two dogs from the pack that killed two people await euthanasia Tuesday at a shelter in northeast Georgia.1 of 3Sheriff's deputies, code enforcement officers and other officials spent most of Monday and Tuesday rounding up 11 adult dogs and five puppies, Oglethorpe County Sheriff's Capt. Shalon Huff said. One more was trapped Wednesday morning, leaving one still to be captured, she said."We're just lucky this hasn't happened before," said Susan Fornash, director of the Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter in Danielsville, where the captured dogs were held before being euthanized Tuesday under orders from a local judge."We've had people bring in a dog because it killed a goat or chased their horses or something like that. And to me, that was just the forerunner of something like this."Investigators say they believe that University of Georgia librarian Sherry Schweder, 65, went for her usual morning walk Saturday down Howard Thaxton Road, the narrow dirt lane that runs alongside the couple's property.The dogs were familiar in the area, investigators say, having been left behind when the person who had been caring for some of them moved out of a home at the end of the lane.Authorities theorize that halfway down the lane, about a quarter-mile from her home, Sherry Schweder was confronted by the dogs, which knocked her down and killed her.Don't MissNo charges for man who barbecued pet dogHer husband, retired UGA language professor Lothar Schweder, became concerned when she didn't return and went out in their Honda CRX to look for her. When he found her lying in the lane and got out to shoo away the dogs, they attacked and killed him too, investigators believe.Although no blood was seen on the dogs, other evidence and autopsy results convince authorities that the pack killed the Schweders, said Jim Fullington, special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's office in nearby Athens

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http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/19/georgia.dog.attack/index.html?_s=PM:USLEXINGTON, Georgia (CNN) -- A pack of dogs brought down and killed an animal-loving couple last weekend in rural northeastern Georgia, and a similar tragedy could occur anywhere dogs roam freely, authorities say.Two dogs from the pack that killed two people await euthanasia Tuesday at a shelter in northeast Georgia.1 of 3Sheriff's deputies, code enforcement officers and other officials spent most of Monday and Tuesday rounding up 11 adult dogs and five puppies, Oglethorpe County Sheriff's Capt. Shalon Huff said. One more was trapped Wednesday morning, leaving one still to be captured, she said."We're just lucky this hasn't happened before," said Susan Fornash, director of the Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter in Danielsville, where the captured dogs were held before being euthanized Tuesday under orders from a local judge."We've had people bring in a dog because it killed a goat or chased their horses or something like that. And to me, that was just the forerunner of something like this."Investigators say they believe that University of Georgia librarian Sherry Schweder, 65, went for her usual morning walk Saturday down Howard Thaxton Road, the narrow dirt lane that runs alongside the couple's property.The dogs were familiar in the area, investigators say, having been left behind when the person who had been caring for some of them moved out of a home at the end of the lane.Authorities theorize that halfway down the lane, about a quarter-mile from her home, Sherry Schweder was confronted by the dogs, which knocked her down and killed her.Don't MissNo charges for man who barbecued pet dogHer husband, retired UGA language professor Lothar Schweder, became concerned when she didn't return and went out in their Honda CRX to look for her. When he found her lying in the lane and got out to shoo away the dogs, they attacked and killed him too, investigators believe.Although no blood was seen on the dogs, other evidence and autopsy results convince authorities that the pack killed the Schweders, said Jim Fullington, special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's office in nearby Athens

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JUSTIN

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E-mails with questions, comments or corrections are welcome.
Richard Kebabjian

Copyright ©1997-2023 PlaneCrashInfo.com

I will attempt to look up information on old aviation accidents for you. Please supply as much information as you can and email me at
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Aviation accidents from 1908 through the present

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I DONT LIKe kKk JUSTIN

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The Ku Klux Klan was originally organized in the winter of 1865-66 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a social club by six Confederate veterans. In the beginning, the Klan was a secret fraternity club rather than a terrorist organization. (Ku Klux was derived from the Greek "kuklos," meaning circle, and the English word clan.) The costume adopted by its members (disguises were quite common) was a mask and white robe and high conical pointed hat.

According to the founders of the Klan, it had no malicious intent in the beginning. The Klan grew quickly and became a terrorist organization. It attracted former Civil War generals such as Nathan Bedford Forrest, the famed cavalry commander whose soldiers murdered captured black troops at Fort Pillow.

The Klan spread beyond Tennessee to every state in the South and included mayors, judges, and sheriffs as well as common criminals. The Klan systematically murdered black politicians and political leaders. It beat, whipped, and murdered thousands, and intimidated tens of thousands of others from voting. Blacks often tried to fight back, but they were outnumbered and out gunned. While the main targets of Klan wrath were the political and social leaders of the black community, blacks could be murdered for almost any reason. Men, women, children, aged and crippled, were victims. A 103-year-old woman was whipped, as was a completely paralyzed man. In Georgia, Abraham Colby, an organizer and leader in the black community, was whipped for hours in front of his wife and children. His little daughter begged the Klansman, "Don't take my daddy away." She never recovered from the sight and died soon after. In Mississippi, Jack Dupree's throat was cut and he was disemboweled in front of his wife, who had just given birth to twins. Klansman burned churches and schools, lynching teachers and educated blacks. Black landowners were driven off their property and murdered if they refused to leave. Blacks were whipped for refusing to work for whites, for having intimate relations with whites, for arguing with whites, for having jobs whites wanted, for reading a newspaper or having a book in their homes.. Or simply for being black. Klan violence led one black man to write: "We have very dark days here. The colored people are in despair. The rebels boast that the Negroes shall not have as much liberty now as they had under slavery. If things go on thus, our doom is sealed. God knows it is worse than slavery."

A few state governments fought back. In Tennessee and Arkansas, Republicans organized a police force that arrested Klansmen and carried out executions. In Texas, Governor Edmund Davis organized a crack state police unit, 40 percent of whose officers were black. The police made over 6,000 arrests and stopped the Klan. Armed groups of black and whites fought or threatened Klansman in North and South Carolina. The federal government also exerted its influence, empowering federal authorities with the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871. Klan activity ended by 1872 and disappeared until it was revived again in 1915.

-- Richard Wormser

Read the accounts
of two African-
American men in
Georgia on being
terrorized by the
Ku Klux Klan.

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The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow . Jim Crow Stories . The Ku Klux Klan | PBS

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The Ku Klux Klan was originally organized in the winter of 1865-66 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a social club by six Confederate veterans. In the beginning, the Klan was a secret fraternity club rather than a terrorist organization. (Ku Klux was derived from the Greek "kuklos," meaning circle, and the English word clan.)

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OAKLAND (CBS SF) — A 46-year-old woman who was fatally shot in East Oakland on Tuesday evening was the aunt of Oscar Grant III, an unarmed 22-year-old Hayward man who was killed by a BART police officer in 2009, according to an attorney for Grant’s father.

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OAKLAND (CBS SF) - A 46-year-old woman who was fatally shot in East Oakland on Tuesday evening was the aunt of Oscar Grant III, an unarmed 22-year-old Hayward man who was killed by a BART police officer in 2009, according to an attorney for Grant's father.

A woman police said was killed in the 600 block of Douglas Avenue at about 6:45 p.m. Tuesday is Lanedria Grant, according to attorney Waukeen McCoy, who is representing Oscar Grant Jr. in a civil rights lawsuit against former BART officer Johannes Mehserle in federal court in San Francisco.

McCoy said Lanedria was the sister of Oscar Grant Jr. and the aunt of Oscar Grant III, who was shot and killed by Mehserle on the platform of the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland shortly after 2 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2009.

Mehserle has said he intended to fire his Taser stun gun to subdue Grant while he and other officers were responding to reports of a fight on a BART train, but accidentally drew and fired his service revolver instead.

Oscar Grant Jr., who has been in prison since before his son was born because he's serving a life sentence for a first-degree murder conviction, is seeking unspecified damages from Mehserle for the wrongful death of his son and denying their familial relationship.

Lanedria Grant was one of two people who were shot in the incident on Tuesday, according to Oakland police.

Grant was found lying on the ground and was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

A male victim took himself to a hospital with gunshot wounds that weren't life-threatening, according to police.

McCoy said Lanedria Grant was one of three sisters of Oscar Grant Jr and was the mother of five children and the grandmother of nine.

McCoy said Grant had planned to come to the civil rights trial on Wednesday, which would have been her first time attending the trial.

McCoy said Oscar Grant Jr. is taking his sister's death "really hard."

"It's a tragedy. The family's been going through a lot lately. It's been hard for him to concentrate now knowing that his sister has been killed," McCoy said.

But McCoy said Grant Jr. will not be asking for a postponement of the civil trial, which is nearing its conclusion.

The final testimony is expected Friday morning and closing arguments are expected either Friday afternoon or Monday morning.

More From CBS San Francisco

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Oscar Grant III's Aunt Killed, 2nd Person Injured In Oakland Shooting

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A 46-year-old woman who was fatally shot in East Oakland on Tuesday evening was the aunt of Oscar Grant III, an unarmed 22-year-old Hayward man who was killed by a BART police officer in 2009, according to an attorney for Grant's father.

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jedah

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"Auto Reviewers Prove YouTube Comments Are A Cesspool Of Garbage People," thunders Jalopnik. " 12 Reasons The 12 Days Of Christmas Is Garbage," heaves BuzzFeed, the copula conjugated in such a way that I'm pretty sure they're talking about the song. (Though Christmas is celebrated I suppose for its historically atypical copulation.) The Daily Dot has even suggested garbage should be the word of the year.

And just yesterday, the Medium-hosted comics blog The Nib summarized 2014's "Year In Garbage." The whole year was garbage, it concluded, as it elaborated on the trope: "2014 was simply a trashpile of world events and sewer people."

Which, first of all: I guess? Like, if you read the news all day-which, let's recall, is distinguished among U.S. attentional diversions for its ceaseless focus on global maladies-the year will seemto be a parade of sewer people? (Though not a literal one-that would be kinda cool.)

Surely this year was full of human suffering, injustice, and anguish. Innocents died. Infrastructure failed. Systemic ailments continued unabated and even flourished.

But... a garbage year? A year not even worth paying attention to? A year to be discarded, and nothing more?

No. Garbage is a crutch. Very specifically, garbage the noun adjunct is a crutch: Garbage year, garbage government, garbage person. Garbage plays with a performative pessimism, and its every re-use occasions a fresh round of competitive despair. It dumps minor irritations and systemic oppressions into one giant Tupperware of antipathy, where they clump together in the warmed-over microwave light of online odium.

That hints at what's worse about garbage, the idea behind it. Garbage gets thrown out and then ignored, left to rot and break down. (This is why I find garbage person especially cruel.) But our lovely and burning world deserves more attention, more striving, more thoughtful time, not less.

I know. I know. Not every Internet utterance can be perfected. (I'm a journalist.) And garbage is fun to say.

That's why I reserve special judgment for garb, the Twitter-friendly abbreviation. I adore abbrevs, in text and speech, probs too much tbqh. But garb is already a word, with a strictly regulated use. Garb may only come in two varieties, ethnic and seasonal.

The blog posts were right: G arbage was general all over Twitter. But it needs not be so. And very soon, in '16 or soon after, we will have reserved garbage the noun-attributive for its sole proper, just, and fitting use: to name the steaming pile of hamburgers, sausage, steak, eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, taters tot, french fries, and macaroni salad-the great civilizational contribution of Rochester, New York- the garbage plate.
Julie Beck contributed thought leadership to this article.

Robinson Meyer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers climate change and technology.

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It's Too Easy to Call Everything 'Garbage'

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"Auto Reviewers Prove YouTube Comments Are A Cesspool Of Garbage People," thunders Jalopnik. " 12 Reasons The 12 Days Of Christmas Is Garbage ," heaves BuzzFeed, the copula conjugated in such a way that I'm pretty sure they're talking about the song. (Though Christmas is celebrated I suppose for its historically atypical copulation.)

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Sony' made a mistake

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President Barack Obama on Friday said that Sony Pictures made a mistake in canceling the release of a movie after a cyberattack from North Korean-backed hackers.

"I am sympathetic to the concerns that they face. Having said all that, yes, I think they made a mistake," Obama said at a news conference Friday. "Let's not get into that way of doing business."

Obama's statement came hours after the FBI announced North Korea is officially responsible for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures, an attack law enforcement officials called a "game changer."

"We cannot have a society in which some dictators someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States because if somebody is able to intimidate us out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing once they see a documentary that they don't like or news reports that they don't like," Obama said. "That's not who we are. That's not what America is about."

U.S. government agencies have presented the White House a list of options to respond to the North Korean hack, according to U.S. officials briefed on the matter. The range of options includes economic and banking sanctions -- but, the officials said, the list does not include adding North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The United States will respond "proportionally" to the attack, Obama said, though he would not say how the U.S. would specifically retaliate. He did note that the U.S. has beefed up its cybersecurity infrastructure, but that "occasionally there are going to be breaches like this."

An FBI investigation linked the malware, infrastructure and techniques a group of hackers called "Guardians of Peace" used in the Sony attack to previous North Korean cyberattacks. The North Korean-backed hackers broke into Sony's servers, published private emails and information and threatened to attack movie theaters screening "The Interview," a comedy film about an assassination plot on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton rebuffed Obama's criticism in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, saying his company did not make a mistake.

Instead, Lynton said Obama, the press and the public "are mistaken as to what actually happened." Lynton pinned the decision to pull back from the planned Dec. 25 release on the major movie theater companies that told Sony they would not screen the film.

"We have not caved, we have not given in, we have persevered, and we haven to backed down. We have always had the desire to have the American public see this movie," Lynton said.

So far, no major video on demand distributors or streaming services have offered to carry "The Interview" to Americans, Lynton explained, despite a wave of suggestions that Sony distribute the film outside of movie theaters.

And despite enduring what he called "the worst cyberattack in American history," Lynton said his studios would make the movie again, but may have "done some things slightly differently."

Obama added that the U.S. has "no indication" that any other country was involved in the North Korean attack.

Secretary of State John Kerry also sounded off on what he called a "brazen," "provocative and unprecedented" attack.

"We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this state sponsored cyber-attack," Kerry said in a statement. "These lawless acts of intimidation demonstrate North Korea's flagrant disregard for international norms."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said that the onus is on the government and the international community to act in the face of this cyberattack -- the latest in a string of attacks on major corporations in recent years that have also included J.P. Morgan Chase and Target.

Stressing the "monumental size" and the "extortion" aspect of the cyberattack on Sony, Feinstein called for an "international agreement" to confront cyber threats and said the U.S. government needs to take action to better protect companies from those types of threats.

"We are going for bloodshed, I believe, if we don't stop it," she said on CNN. "I would hope that we can convince the North Koreans that this carries a very heavy price."

And the idea of a foreign government launching a destructive attack on an American company over an ideological matter elevated this hack to "one of the highest priority investigations we've worked on," one law enforcement official told CNN.

U.S. officials also tell CNN the hackers routed the attack through servers in countries from Asia, Europe and Latin America, even some in the U.S.

​The hackers used common DNS masking techniques to make it look like it was coming from those places, but the National Security Agency and FBI were able to track it back to North Korea.

North Korean internet traffic is routed through China, which is one way they are able to hide their activity, but the FBI was still able to trace it back to the origin, sources tell CNN.

And Obama also addressed North Korea's motives, noting that attacks came after a comedic, satirical movie.

"The notion that that was a threat to them I think gives you some sense of kind of what regime we're talking about," Obama said.

The FBI called North Korea's actions "outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior" in a statement released Friday and called cyberthreats "one of the gravest national security dangers." The FBI did not use the words "terror" in their statement.

The investigation linked the "tools" of the Sony hack to North Korean cyberattacks in March 2013 against South Korean banks and media outlets.

Former Sen. Chris Dodd, the Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, released a statement Friday after the FBI announcement slamming the North Korean attacks by "cyber terrorists, bent on wreaking havoc" as a "despicable, criminal act."

"This situation is larger than a movie's release or the contents of someone's private emails," Dodd said. "This is about the fact that criminals were able to hack in and steal what has now been identified as many times the volume of all of the printed material in the Library of Congress and threaten the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who work in the film and television industry, as well as the millions who simply choose to go to the movies."

Bruce Bennett, a North Korean expert at the RAND Corporation told CNN that he consulted informally on the field as a favor to Lynton, who sits on the RAND Board of Trustees.

"He asked RAND's president if he had a Korean expert to speak to in order to help sort out how to handle the picture and RAND's president asked me to do that. We had a couple of brief conversations, viewed the movie and sent some comments," he said, adding "this was not a paid consultency."

Bennett said he suggested Sony let the State Department know about the film and the potential political issues involved and offered to call Robert King, the State Department's envoy for North Korean human rights. He said "I simply notified him of what was going on."

King told Bennett the film "was an American business decision and the State Department doesn't get involved in things like that."

Bennett said he did not show King or anyone at the State Department the film and said he was skeptical that anyone at the State Department saw it.

Referring to the State Department, Bennett said "their attitude was that they were glad to know about it, but it was not their role to intercede."

In addition to King's discussion with Bennett, the State Department has acknowledged that Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs Danny Russell spoke with Lynton about the film, but denied he had any involvement in its script or creative direction.

State Department spokeswoman said she did not know of anyone at State that screened the movie, though it is not clear still if State officials knew how the movie ended.

"I did not come across anyone who saw the movie in advance," Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an interview Thursday on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper.

Sen. John McCain on Friday said the cyberattack amounted to "an act of war" on Friday and said the U.S. should retaliate in kind with cyberwarfare.

"This is the greatest blow to free speech that I've seen in my lifetime probably," McCain said Friday on Arizona radio station KFYI 550's "The Mike Broomhead Show." "We have to respond in kind. We have lots of capability in cyber and we ought to start cranking that up."

McCain plans to hold a cybersecurity hearing into the Sony hack in the first two weeks of the next Congress, when he takes over as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

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obama: sony 'made a mistake' - cnnpolitics

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By Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto and Jeremy Diamond, CNN

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President Barack Obama on Friday said that Sony Pictures made a mistake in canceling the release of a movie after a cyberattack from North Korean-backed hackers. "I am sympathetic to the concerns that they face. Having said all that, yes, I think they made a mistake," Obama said at a news conference Friday.

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children vaccinations in africa

by jedah

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A rigorous vaccination campaign has nearly eliminated the crippling infectious disease from Nigeria and the continent at large, according to a new CDC report.

AJ Williams, CDC

"The goal is to vaccinate every child in every community that these campaigns hit," said John Vertefeuille, an epidemiologist and head of the CDC's polio eradication team for Nigeria. "Every child in that house gets vaccinated, even if they've had [the vaccine] 10 times before." He notes that revaccinating children during each campaign helps ensure that no one is missed. Vertefeuille said that under the revamped campaign, local government officials are held accountable for vaccinating children, a notion he said has helped improve the management and resources allocated to these projects.

Nigeria is one of only three endemic bastions left for the virus, the other two being Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since 2003, outbreaks in the West African country may have transmitted the virus to 26 previously polio-free nations, according to the CDC. Transnational transmissions sparked the WHO to declare in May that the resurgence of vaccine-preventable polio an international emergency. The final step to removing Nigeria as a reservoir for polio transmission, according to the CDC, is to expand vaccine coverage using drops and injections to the country's hard-to-reach areas.

"We are on the brink of seeing the interruption of transmission in Nigeria," said Vertefeuille. "If we achieve that we pave the way to eradicating it on the continent and then globally."

After health officials vanquish polio from Nigeria, the CDC said that the country will use the lessons it learned to deal with its other emerging and present health threats, such as the HIV epidemic, high maternal and child mortality, and low routine-immunization rates.

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A rigorous vaccination campaign has nearly eliminated the crippling infectious disease from Nigeria and the continent at large, according to a new CDC report. "The goal is to vaccinate every child in every community that these campaigns hit," said John Vertefeuille, an epidemiologist and head of the CDC's polio eradication team for Nigeria.

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Just five miles down the road from Normandy lies Clayton, the wealthy county seat where a grand jury recently deliberated the fate of Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Mr. Brown. Success there looks very different. The Clayton public schools are predominantly white, with almost no poverty to speak of. The district is regularly ranked in the top 10 percent in the state. More than 96 percent of its students graduate. Eighty-four percent head to four-year universities.

Decades of public and private housing discrimination made St. Louis one of the most racially segregated metropolitan areas in the country. A network of school district boundaries has, to this day, divided students in racially separate schools as effectively as any Jim Crow law.

Michael Brown's education was not exceptional, then, but all too typical, and it illustrates the vast disparity in resources and expectations for black children in America's segregated school systems.

As hundreds of school districts across the nation have been released from court-enforced integration over the past 15 years, the number of what researchers call "apartheid schools" - in which the white population is 1 percent or less - has shot up. The achievement gap, narrowed during the height of school integration, has widened.

According to data compiled by the Department of Education, black and Latino children nationwide are the least likely to be taught by a qualified, experienced teacher; to be offered courses such as chemistry and calculus; or to have access to technology.

"American schools are disturbingly racially segregated - period," Catherine Lhamon, head of the Education Department 's civil rights office, said in a speech in October.

Since Aug. 9, the day Mr. Brown's lifeless body lay for hours under a hot summer sun, St. Louis County has come to illustrate the country's racial fault lines in police conduct and the criminalization of black youth. But most black youth will not die at the hands of the police.

They share the fate that was already Michael Brown's.

IN 1954, when the United States Supreme Court rejected the notion of separate but equal schools in its Brown v. Board of Education decision, St. Louis ran the second-largest segregated school district in the country.

After the ruling, school officials promised to integrate voluntarily. But the acceleration of white flight and the redrawing of school district lines around black and white neighborhoods allowed metropolitan St. Louis to preserve its racial divide. Nearly 30 years later, 90 percent of black children in St. Louis still attended predominantly black schools.

In 1983, a federal judge ordered a desegregation plan for the entire metropolitan area. At its peak, some 15,000 St. Louis public school students a year attended 16 heavily white suburban districts. Another 1,300 white students headed in the opposite direction to 27 new magnet schools in St. Louis.

The program left another 15,000 of St. Louis's black students in segregated, inferior schools. But for the transfer students who rode buses out of the city, the plan successfully broke the deeply entrenched connection between race, ZIP code and opportunity. Test scores for eighth- and 10th-grade transfer students rose. The transfer students were more likely to graduate and go on to college. In surveys, white students overwhelmingly said they had benefited from the opportunity to be educated alongside black students. The St. Louis model was heralded as the nation's most successful metropolitan desegregation program.

But from the moment it started, the St. Louis desegregation plan was under assault. The cost would eventually reach $1.7 billion. In 1999 the program was made entirely voluntary. Today, about 5,000 students get to escape the troubles of the St. Louis public schools - a small fraction of the number who apply for the privilege of doing so.

Incorporated in 1945, Normandy became a destination for St. Louis's fleeing white working class.

Nedra Martin's family was among the black strivers who began to make their way to Normandy in the 1970s. Ms. Martin, who still lives in Normandy and works in human resources at Walmart, said her parents settled in the town in 1975. They both worked in government jobs - her dad was a welder for the city, her mom an aide in a state group home. But as black families like the Martins moved in, "For Sale" signs went up and whites fled to new exurbs.

After 1970, black enrollment in the Normandy schools exploded, more than doubling within eight years to 6,200. By 1978, only St. Louis itself enrolled more black students than Normandy.

For years, Normandy's schools struggled to meet minimum state requirements for student achievement. Then, in 2009, the state decided that the Normandy school district would absorb the ailing Wellston school district.

Wellston was also high-poverty, and Missouri's only 100 percent black school system. State officials had called conditions in Wellston's schools "deplorable" and "academically abusive."

But its students were not sent to the high-performing, mostly white districts nearby. Michael Jones, a state board of education official, was blunt about the reason: "You'd have had a civil war."

BY the time Michael Brown was a high school junior, he had spent most of his educational career in racially segregated and financially disadvantaged schools. Behind in credits, he entered Normandy High in the spring of 2013.

The state's most recent assessment of Normandy's schools was spectacularly bleak: Out of Missouri's 520 school districts, Normandy, among the state's poorest and 98 percent black, was marooned at the very bottom.

But last year, the Normandy district was thrown an unlikely lifeline. Its schools had failed so badly that the state had formally stripped it of its accreditation. And the Missouri State Supreme Court had just upheld a state law allowing students in unaccredited districts to transfer to accredited ones.

Nedra Martin, had a daughter stuck in Normandy's failing schools. Just like that, the state's decision erased the invisible, impenetrable lines of segregation that had trapped her child. "I was elated," Ms. Martin said. "Just elated."

Parents in the school district that had to take Normandy's students - Francis Howell, an 85 percent white district 26 miles away - were not. Officials there held a public forum to address community concerns. More than 2,500 parents packed into the high school gym.

Would the district install metal detectors? What about the violence their children would be subjected to, an elementary school parent asked. Wouldn't test scores plummet? The issue wasn't about race, one parent said, "but trash."

Mah'Ria Pruitt-Martin, a rising eighth grader, was sitting in the audience that night with her mother. Hers was one of the few brown faces there, and the girl said she wiped away tears.

"It made me heartbroken because they were putting us in a box," Mah'Ria said. "I was sitting there thinking, 'Would you want some other parents talking about your kid that way?' "

In the fall of 2013, nearly 1,000 Normandy students - about a quarter of the district's enrollment - switched to schools in accredited districts. More than 400 headed to Francis Howell.

Mah'Ria said that she was, in fact, welcomed into her new middle school by students and teachers. Despite the fears, recently released state data show that with the exception of one district, test scores in the transfer schools did not drop.

But there was a cruel twist. The state required any failing district whose students were allowed to transfer to pay the costs of their education in the adjoining districts. The payments drained Normandy's finances. Normandy closed a school and laid off 40 percent of its staff.

"In order to save the district, they killed the district," said John Wright, who spent stints as superintendent in both St. Louis and Normandy.

The state then announced that it was taking over the Normandy Public Schools district and reconstituting it as the Normandy Schools Collaborative. As a new educational entity, the district got a clean slate. It no longer was unaccredited, but operated as a "state oversight district." The transfer law, the state claimed, no longer applied. One by one, transfer districts announced that Normandy children were no longer welcome.

Ms. Martin and other parents sued, asserting that the state had no legal authority to reconstitute the district to change its accreditation status. On Aug. 15, after the school year had begun in some districts, a state judge granted a temporary injunction allowing the plaintiffs to enroll their children in the transfer districts.

"Every day a student attends an unaccredited school," the judge wrote, the child "could suffer harm that cannot be repaired." The state is fighting the ruling, but most school districts have reopened their doors to the transfer students.

When asked whether black children in Missouri were receiving an equal education, Commissioner Chris Nicastro, the state's top education official, paused, then inhaled deeply. "Do I think black children in Missouri are getting in all cases the same education as their white counterparts?" Ms. Nicastro said. "I'd have to say no."

STUDENTS who spend their careers in segregated schools can look forward to a life on the margins, according to a 2014 study on the long-term impacts of school desegregation by Rucker C. Johnson, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. They are more likely to be poor. They are more likely to go to jail. They are less likely to graduate from high school, to go to college, or to finish if they go. They are more likely to live in segregated neighborhoods as adults. Their children are more likely to attend segregated schools, repeating the cycle.

"You know how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate?" Michael Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, cried on the August day he died. "You know how many black men graduate? Not many."

Michael Brown was buried in the old St. Peter's Cemetery.

It lies next to Normandy High School.

Correction: December 19, 2014

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How School Segregation Divides Ferguson - and the United States

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Just five miles down the road from Normandy lies Clayton, the wealthy county seat where a grand jury recently deliberated the fate of Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Mr. Brown. Success there looks very different. The Clayton public schools are predominantly white, with almost no poverty to speak of.

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ATLANTA -- When two nurses in Texas were diagnosed with Ebola after treating a patient in their care, Gov. Nathan Deal announced Georgia would have six hospitals specially equipped and trained to treat the illness.

"It is better to be overly cautious than it is to be not cautious at all," said Deal at an October 27 campaign event, where he announced the state's plan for dealing with increased screening checks at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

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Why you should put your child in Nls.

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Northern Light School | Educating the Whole Child | Oakland, CA 94605

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Northern Light School is a leading independent Oakland, CA non-profit, preschool through 8 organization that provides excellent education to children from across the Bay Area.

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THERE IS illegal street racing is going on in L.A. . miami is drowned

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Michael Brown Shooting - Ferguson Missouri News & Top Stories

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Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri.

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Rex Features

2. Get your head around new technology

British app developer and self-taught programmer Nick D'Aloisio launched his first app when he was only 12 years old. At 15 he developed an app called Trimit that condensed lengthy articles into short summaries. A cash injection from a Hong Kong billionaire allowed Nick to rework the app: Trimit became Summly, which he sold to Yahoo! for $30 million when he was only 17. He's now a full-time employee at the company.

AFP

3. Attempt lots of different businesses

When he was just 5 years old, American entrepreneur Cameron Johnson went door-to-door selling vegetables. At the age of 9 he had already started his own greeting card company called Cheers and Tears. When 12, he made thousands of dollars buying and selling soft toy Beanie Babies. Of the money made he used $50,000 to start My EZ Mail, a confidential e-mail forwarding service. He later started an internet advertising venture called SurfingPrizes.com and then another called CertificateSwap.com, which he later sold in a six-figure deal. His net worth surpassed $1 million before he'd finished high school.

4. Exploit your hobbies

Jordan Maron, aka Captain Sparklez, became a millionaire from his YouTube channel, which he launched when he was just 18. He is known for his Minecraft play videos and song parodies. He is one of the most profitable stars of YouTube, with millions of subscribers, billions of views and a worth of $8.2 million. He's now 22 years old.

This Minecraft parody of the song Gangnam Style by South Korean rapper Psy was posted on YouTube by Captain Sparklez in 2012

5. Make well-loved products that get on TV

Jonathan Koon made his first million before he was 16 by pooling personal savings with a friend and getting together enough to open Extreme Performance Motorsports, a company selling car accessories - such as custom body kits, aftermarket wheels and rims, floor mats, stereo systems - imported from Asia. Not everyone is lucky enough to have enough to have $10,000 at their disposal, but at least Koon was clever enough to know what to do with it.

The MTV program Pimp My Ride began using Koon's business as the exclusive parts provider; the store became a household name and Koon became a millionaire. He went on to become a billionaire before the age of 30, and has transferred his interests from cars to the fashion industry.

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Rex Features 2. Get your head around new technology British app developer and self-taught programmer Nick D'Aloisio launched his first app when he was only 12 years old. At 15 he developed an app called Trimit that condensed lengthy articles into short summaries.

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Tyree Tillis Jr.

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"I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" Garner said repeatedly, his cries muffled into the pavement.

The video of the Thursday skirmish shows the Staten Island man lying on the ground motionless after the incident. An asthmatic, Garner was later declared dead at a nearby hospital, according to CNN affiliate WCBS. Police said he suffered a heart attack and died en route to the hospital.

"This is a terrible tragedy that occurred yesterday. A terrible tragedy that no family should have to experience," said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, calling the video of the incident "very troubling."

Police told WCBS that 43-year-old Garner, a father of six, had a lengthy criminal history and had been previously arrested for selling untaxed cigarettes in May.

Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who is seen on video choking Garner, was put on modified assignment and stripped of his shield and gun as the New York Police Department continues to investigate the incident, WCBS reported. The chokehold tactic is prohibited by the NYPD.

Two EMTs and two paramedics have been suspended without pay, Erika Hellstrom, vice president of development at Richmond University Medical Center, said in an e-mail.

In a statement, Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick J. Lynch called Pantaleo's reassignment "a completely unwarranted, kneejerk reaction for political reasons." He said the move "effectively pre-judges this case and denies the officer the very benefit of a doubt that has long been part of the social contract that allows police officers to face the risks of this difficult and complex job."

On Saturday, Garner's friends and family rallied alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton in Upper Manhattan, demanding a full investigation into Garner's death, according to WCBS.

Garner's wife was set to speak at the rally but found herself too emotional, WCBS reported.

New York photographer Joel Graham was at Saturday's demonstration, which lasted for two hours. He shared his photographs with CNN iReport, and says he captured them while walking alongside protesters who traveled from New Brighton Church to the store where the chokehold incident took place.

"This crowd was composed of good, well-meaning people who understood that peace was the only option and were adamant that things remain calm over Eric's death. I have been to protests that have been violent, but this crowd reflected who Eric was," he said.

Graham, an area resident, had a familiar relationship with Garner. "I am an urban art photographer, and I will talk to everyone on the streets of New York City," he said, explaining that he would occasionally chat with Garner while taking photos near the Staten Island Ferry.

"I had empathy for Eric and how he must have felt trying to catch his breath, and sympathy for the family. This was a heartfelt emotional protest because everyone loved Eric," he said.

CNN's Susan Candiotti and Elizabeth Landers contributed to this report.

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new york man dies after chokehold by police - cnn

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New York man dies after chokehold by police

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"I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" Garner said repeatedly, his cries muffled into the pavement. The video of the Thursday skirmish shows the Staten Island man lying on the ground motionless after the incident. An asthmatic, Garner was later declared dead at a nearby hospital, according to CNN affiliate WCBS.

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"How Exercise Changes Our DNA"

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We all know that exercise can make us fitter and reduce our risk for illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. But just how, from start to finish, a run or a bike ride might translate into a healthier life has remained baffling.

Now new research reports that the answer may lie, in part, in our DNA. Exercise, a new study finds, changes the shape and functioning of our genes, an important stop on the way to improved health and fitness.

The human genome is astonishingly complex and dynamic, with genes constantly turning on or off, depending on what biochemical signals they receive from the body. When genes are turned on, they express proteins that prompt physiological responses elsewhere in the body.

Scientists know that certain genes become active or quieter as a result of exercise. But they hadn't understood how those genes know how to respond to exercise.

Enter epigenetics, a process by which the operation of genes is changed, but not the DNA itself. Epigenetic changes occur on the outside of the gene, mainly through a process called methylation. In methylation, clusters of atoms, called methyl groups, attach to the outside of a gene like microscopic mollusks and make the gene more or less able to receive and respond to biochemical signals from the body.

Scientists know that methylation patterns change in response to lifestyle. Eating certain diets or being exposed to pollutants, for instance, can change methylation patterns on some of the genes in our DNA and affect what proteins those genes express. Depending on which genes are involved, it may also affect our health and risk for disease.

Far less has been known about exercise and methylation. A few small studies have found that a single bout of exercise leads to immediate changes in the methylation patterns of certain genes in muscle cells. But whether longer-term, regular physical training affects methylation, or how it does, has been unclear.

So for a study published this month in Epigenetics, scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm recruited 23 young and healthy men and women, brought them to the lab for a series of physical performance and medical tests, including a muscle biopsy, and then asked them to exercise half of their lower bodies for three months.

One of the obstacles in the past to precisely studying epigenetic changes has been that so many aspects of our lives affect our methylation patterns, making it difficult to isolate the effects of exercise from those of diet or other behaviors.

The Karolinska scientists overturned that obstacle by the simple expedient of having their volunteers bicycle using only one leg, leaving the other unexercised. In effect, each person became his or her own control group. Both legs would undergo methylation patterns influenced by his or her entire life; but only the pedaling leg would show changes related to exercise.

The volunteers pedaled one-legged at a moderate pace for 45 minutes, four times per week for three months. Then the scientists repeated the muscle biopsies and other tests with each volunteer.

Not surprisingly, the volunteers' exercised leg was more powerful now than the other, showing that the exercise had resulted in physical improvements.

But the changes within the muscle cells' DNA were more intriguing. Using sophisticated genomic analysis, the researchers determined that more than 5,000 sites on the genome of muscle cells from the exercised leg now featured new methylation patterns. Some showed more methyl groups; some fewer. But the changes were significant and not found in the unexercised leg.

Interestingly, many of the methylation changes were on portions of the genome known as enhancers that can amplify the expression of proteins by genes. And gene expression was noticeably increased or changed in thousands of the muscle-cell genes that the researchers studied.

Most of the genes in question are known to play a role in energy metabolism, insulin response and inflammation within muscles. In other words, they affect how healthy and fit our muscles - and bodies - become.

They were not changed in the unexercised leg.

The upshot is that scientists now better understand one more step in the complicated, multifaceted processes that make exercise so good for us.

Many mysteries still remain, though, said Malene Lindholm, a graduate student at the Karolinska Institute, who led the study. It's unknown, for example, whether the genetic changes she and her colleagues observed would linger if someone quits exercising and how different amounts or different types of exercise might affect methylation patterns and gene expression. She and her colleagues hope to examine those questions in future studies.

But the message of this study is unambiguous. "Through endurance training - a lifestyle change that is easily available for most people and doesn't cost much money," Ms. Lindholm said, "we can induce changes that affect how we use our genes and, through that, get healthier and more functional muscles that ultimately improve our quality of life."

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We all know that exercise can make us fitter and reduce our risk for illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. But just how, from start to finish, a run or a bike ride might translate into a healthier life has remained baffling. Now new research reports that the answer may lie, in part, in our DNA.

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"Thai police arrest three students for using banned 'Hunger Games' gesture"

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Police detained three students Thursday at the opening of the latest "Hunger Games" movie in Thailand, where opponents of May's military coup have adopted the film's three-finger salute as a sign of defiance.

The military-imposed government has banned the gesture, which symbolizes rebellion against totalitarian rule in the film series. One cinema chain in Thailand's capital canceled all screenings of the movie ahead of its Thursday opening after a student group planned an anti-coup protest outside one of its theaters. Activists say police pressured the chain to halt the showings.

Two of the people detained were student activists and the third was led away after raising a three-finger salute outside another Bangkok cinema, where "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1" was showing.

Ratthapol Supasopon, one of the student activists, denied he was organizing a protest.

"Even though our activities in the past have been politically driven, today we are just here to watch a movie," he told reporters, as police led him away.

Police Col. Visoot Chatchaidet told The Associated Press that the pair would not be charged. "We will just talk to them and let them go," he said.

In "The Hunger Games," the three-finger salute signifies thanks, admiration and good-bye to a loved one.

In the aftermath of Thailand's coup in May, some protesters adopted the three-finger salute as a form of silent opposition to the overthrow of an elected government.

Initial protests largely died out because of crackdowns on dissent by the army and police, but there has been a small upsurge in recent days.

"The Mockingjay movie reflects what's happening in our society. ... When people have been suppressed for some time, they would want to resist and fight for their rights," Nachacha Kongudom, 21, one of the detained students, told AP. "Going to the cinema is the basic rights of the people. I'm here today to call for and to protect my rights."

On Wednesday, five university students were arrested in northeastern Thailand after giving the three-fingered salute during a speech by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who led the coup as army commander.

The students were taken to a police station and then an army camp, where they were questioned by soldiers, human rights lawyer Sasinan Thamnithinan said. After being released later Wednesday, they were called back for more questioning with their parents on Thursday, said Sasinan.

The students, wearing T-shirts saying "Don't Want a Coup," stood in front of Prayuth as he spoke on a stage. Prayuth, who is usually prickly with critics, stopped his speech and smiled calmly when the students stood up. "Anyone else want to protest? Come quickly. Then I can continue with my speech," he said.

The photos of the students raising their fingers in the air were on the front pages of most Thai newspapers Thursday.

Lionsgate, "Mockingjay's" Hollywood production company, had no comment on the situation.

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Thai police arrest three students for using banned 'Hunger Games' gesture

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Police detained three students Thursday at the opening of the latest "Hunger Games" movie in Thailand, where opponents of May's military coup have adopted the film's three-finger salute as a sign of defiance. The military-imposed government has banned the gesture, which symbolizes rebellion against totalitarian rule in the film series.

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JUSTIN

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The U.S. government has taken the big step of publicly branding the North Korean regime as the driving force behind the massive cyber-attack on Sony Pictures that has paralyzed the film company and raised fears of terrorist attacks inside the United States.

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Add as an interest to stay up to date on the latest news, video, and analysis from ABC News.

In a rare, official statement issued today, the FBI said it "now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions."

" North Korea 's actions were intended to inflict significant harm on a U.S. business and suppress the right of American citizens to express themselves" and seek economic and social prosperity," according to the FBI statement. "Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior."

The statement lays out at least some of the evidence the U.S. government has uncovered tying North Korea to the attack.

The FBI says analysis of the malicious software used in the attack shows it is linked "to other malware that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed."

"The FBI also observed significant overlap between the infrastructure used in this attack and other malicious cyber activity the U.S. Government has previously linked directly to North Korea," the FBI statement continues. "Separately, the tools used in the [Sony] attack have similarities to a cyber attack in March of last year against South Korean banks and media outlets, which was carried out by North Korea."

This comes as a source close to Sony confirms that company executives received a new message laden with threats, saying, "Now we want you never let the movie released, distributed or leaked in any form of, for instance, DVD or piracy."

On Nov. 21, Sony executives received an email warning them not to release their new "movie of terror," referring to the comedy "The Interview," which depicts a fictional assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Soon thereafter, Sony was hit with the now-infamous cyber-attack, crippling its computer network and flooding the Internet with embarrassing internal emails and employees' personal information.

Earlier this month, a North Korean official denied allegations that the government was involved in the hacking, calling it "wild speculation." Still, the official described the attack as a "righteous deed," according to a North Korean state news agency.

Then, on Tuesday, a message posted online warned of a 9/11-style attack on theaters showing the film. Sony then decided not to release the movie at all.

Identifying exactly who executed the attack has been a challenging and painstaking task for federal investigators. Based on evidence collected so far, federal sources told ABC News, they believe an individual or small group stationed outside North Korea may have punched the computers keys that launched the attack, which was then likely routed through at least six countries overseas -- Singapore, Thailand, Italy, Bolivia, Poland and Cyprus -- before hitting its target in the United States.

A group calling itself "Guardians of Peace" has claimed responsibility.

Last week, the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, John Carlin, said the Sony hack "has our full attention." Two days later, FBI officials held a meeting in New York with executives from across the entertainment industry to brief them on cyber-related threats to their companies, sources told ABC News.

In addition, just hours before Sony's decision on Wednesday to pull the plug on its Christmas Day release of the movie, the FBI issued its first official message about the Sony hack to joint terrorism task forces across the country -- comprised of federal, state and local officials that the FBI describes as "our nation's front line on terrorism."

"The FBI's investigative team believes these [latest threats] increase the threat level" inside the United States, according to the message. But, FBI officials emphasized, the threat to movie theaters was not deemed credible, and the message distributed Wednesday by the FBI was simply precautionary and informational.

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The U.S. government has taken the big step of publicly branding the North Korean regime as the driving force behind the massive cyber-attack on Sony Pictures that has paralyzed the film company and raised fears of terrorist attacks inside the United States. In a rare, official statement issued...

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- newsela.com

- www.foxnew.com

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- www.thenewyorktimes.com

www.cnn.com

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JUSTIN

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The Antarctic Sun: News about Antarctica - Home Page

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News about the USAP, the Ice, and the People.

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- JUSTIN

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A TREE planted by Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron on the White House lawn last week - meant to symbolise the bond between the US and France - has been unceremoniously removed.

A COMEDIAN who drew gasps from the audience with her jokes at a prestigious dinner has refused to apologise.

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A TREE planted by Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron on the White House lawn last week - meant to symbolise the bond between the US and France - has been unceremoniously removed. A COMEDIAN who drew gasps from the audience with her jokes at a prestigious dinner has refused to apologise.

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- JUSTIN

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Asia news - breaking news, video, headlines and opinion - CNN

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View Asia news to get the latest headlines from India, Japan, China and other Asian countries on CNN.com.

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Tyree http://www.medicaldaily.com/53-ebola-fighting-compounds-found-new-research-treat-disease-314940

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The Ebola outbreak in West Africa was first reported in March 2014, and rapidly became the deadliest occurrence of the disease since its discovery in 1976.

In fact, the epidemic killed five times more than all other known Ebola outbreaks combined.

More than 21 months on from the first confirmed case recorded on 23 March 2014, 11,315 people have been reported as having died from the disease in six countries; Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the US and Mali.

The total number of reported cases is about 28,637.

But on 13 January, 2016, the World Health Organisation declared the last of the countries affected, Liberia, to be Ebola-free.

The World Health Organization (WHO) admits the figures are underestimates, given the difficulty collecting the data.

There needs to be 42 days without any new cases for a country to be declared Ebola-free.

The outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal were declared officially over by the WHO in October 2014. Sierra Leone and Guinea both had much larger outbreaks and it took a little longer. Sierra Leone was declared Ebola-free on 7 November 2015, Guinea followed in December.

Liberia has been the worst-hit, with more than 4,800 dead and 10,672 becoming infected. The WHO said that at the peak of transmission, during August and September 2014, Liberia was reporting between 300 and 400 new cases every week.

The epidemic seemed to abate and the outbreak in Liberia was declared over on 9 May 2015 - only to re-emerge seven weeks later when a 17-year-old man died from the disease and more cases were reported. The same happened in September, which is why the latest declaration of Liberia being Ebola-free, while welcome, should be treated with caution, say correspondents.

The WHO has warned that West Africa may see flare-ups of the virus.

How the virus spread

Researchers from the New England Journal of Medicine traced the outbreak to a two-year-old toddler, who died in December 2013 in Meliandou, a small village in south-eastern Guinea.

In March, hospital staff alerted Guinea's Ministry of Health and then medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). They reported a mysterious disease in the south-eastern regions of Gueckedou, Macenta, Nzerekore, and Kissidougou.

It caused fever, diarrhoea and vomiting. It also had a high death rate. Of the first 86 cases, 59 people died.

The WHO later confirmed the disease as Ebola.

Ebola death toll

Ebola outbreak: Key stories
"Biggest health challenge since Aids" How not to catch Ebola Why is Ebola so dangerous? Ebola diary Tracing the outbreak Full special report
Disease spreads

The Gueckedou prefecture in Guinea, where the outbreak started, is a major regional trading centre and, by the end of March, Ebola had crossed the border into Liberia. It was confirmed in Sierra Leone in May.

In June, MSF described the Ebola outbreak as out of control.

Nigeria had its first case of the disease in July and, in the same month, two leading doctors died from Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

In August, the United Nations health agency declared an "international public health emergency", saying that a co-ordinated response was essential to halt the spread of the virus.

Senegal reported its first case of Ebola on 29 August. A young man from Guinea had travelled to Senegal despite having been infected with the virus, officials said.

By September, WHO director general Margaret Chan said the number of patients was "moving far faster than the capacity to manage them".

Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US, Thomas Frieden, said in October that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was unlike anything since the emergence of HIV/Aids. But Senegal managed to halt transmissions by mid October.

Authorities in Mali confirmed the death of the country's first Ebola patient, a two-year-old girl, on 25 October. The girl had travelled hundreds of kilometres by bus from Guinea through Mali showing symptoms of the disease, the WHO said.

An infected Islamic preacher from Guinea, who was initially diagnosed with a kidney problem, was treated at a clinic in Bamako. The preacher died a few days after entering the country.

Two health workers who cared for the preacher also died after contracting the virus. In total, Mali recorded six deaths from Ebola. By January 2015 however, the country was declared ebola-free.

Ebola outside West Africa

*In all but three cases the patient was infected with Ebola while in West Africa. Infection outside Africa has been restricted to health workers in Madrid and in Dallas. DR Congo also reported a separate outbreak of an unrelated strain of Ebola.

The first case of the deadly virus diagnosed on US soil was announced on 1 October. Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, who contracted the virus in Liberia before travelling to the US, died on 8 October.

He had not displayed symptoms of the disease until 24 September, five days after his arrival. Other people with whom he came into contact are being monitored for symptoms.

Two medical workers in Dallas, Texas, who treated Duncan tested positive for Ebola since his death but have both recovered. The second death on US soil was surgeon Martin Salia, from Sierra Leone. He was flown back to the United States in November and treated for Ebola at a hospital in Nebraska. But Dr Salia, who had US residency and was married to an American, died a short time later.

Spanish nurse Teresa Romero was the first person to contract the virus outside West Africa. She was part of a team of about 30 staff at the Carlos II hospital in Madrid looking after two missionaries who returned from Liberia and Sierra Leone after becoming infected.

Germany, Norway, France, Italy, Switzerland and the UK have all treated patients who contracted the virus in West Africa.

2014 outbreak in context

Ebola was first identified in 1976 and occurs in regions of sub-Saharan Africa. There are normally fewer than 500 cases reported each year, and no cases were reported at all between 1979 and 1994.

In August 2014, the WHO confirmed a separate outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By the beginning of October there had been 70 cases reported and 43 deaths.

However, the outbreak in DR Congo was a different strain of the virus and unrelated to the epidemic in West Africa, which now dwarfs all previous outbreaks.

Past epidemics

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The Ebola outbreak in West Africa was first reported in March 2014, and rapidly became the deadliest occurrence of the disease since its discovery in 1976. In fact, the epidemic killed five times more than all other known Ebola outbreaks combined.

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JUSTIN

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Justin Bieber to Serve No Jail Time for Miami Drag Racing Charges: Report

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Justin Bieber will plead guilty to lesser charges stemming from his arrest in South Florida in what police initially described...