Bubonic Plague

Last month, a trapper near Worland, Wyo., was taken ill. His lymph nodes became swollen. Fever, chills, nausea and extreme exhaustion followed. The diagnosis: bubonic plague. While the case was rare, it was neither unique nor extraordinary, for the bubonic plague is alive in the American West. "The plague is well-established in 17 Western states," said David Dennis, an official with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year, 10 to 20 people in the West contract the disease - once known as the Black Death, but now treatable with antibiotics.

MIAMI HURRICANE TROOPS BEGIN TO LEAVE The first major exodus of federal troops who responded to cries of help from south Florida in the wake of Hurricane Andrew began yesterday, their jobs completed. Almost 2,800 soldiers, Seabees and military engineers will depart by tomorrow, said Lt. Col. Bill Reynolds, an Army spokesman. That will leave 17,000 federal troops on duty in south Florida, in addition to 5,600 from the National Guard. "Their job is done, their mission's been accomplished," Reynolds said.

SILENT HERPES. Many women may carry the herpes virus without knowing it, suffering from what researchers call silent herpes. University of Pittsburgh researchers say 71 percent of 4,500 women they studied tested positive for herpes antibodies - signs of infections that may result from either cold sores or genital herpes - and 29 percent tested positive for the strain that only can be acquired genitally. The researchers said that these were "mild cases" and might or might not be a threat to sex partners or fetuses.

Visitors to one of the largest picnic areas in the Angeles National Forest were turned away Saturday after ground squirrels were discovered carrying the plague, officials said. The squirrels, which carry fleas that transmit the plague, were found in the Charlton Flats area, a favorite location for picnickers in the forest north of Los Angeles. "We have been contacted by the Los Angeles County Health Department and they notified us that one third of the squirrels trapped at Charlton Flats were infected with sylvatic plague," said Gerry Repone, the visitor's center manager at Chilao.

Scientists believe it's highly unlikely that an outbreak of deadly and fast-moving plague in India will spread into the United States. Nonetheless, federal officials yesterday began taking steps to prevent a widening of the epidemic that has caused 54 deaths in the Indian city of Surat since August. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began handing out "plague alert notices" to airline passengers arriving directly from India at airports in New York, Miami, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington.

A story Thursday about students protesting Dickinson College's handling of sexual assaults incorrectly attributed a study. The finding that one in five women who attends college will become the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates came from a U.S. Department of Justice study cited by the Center for Public Integrity. A series of investigative reports by the center about sexual assaults on campuses was not funded by the department. A story Thursday about an experimental HIV therapy being studied at the University of Pennsylvania incorrectly identified the cause of bubonic plague, which is the bacterium Yersinia pestis . A story Monday on the decision by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office to charge Msgr.

Monty Williams has had more gruesome things happen to him than getting his knee drained before a game, which he did Sunday night before the 76ers hosted Cleveland. Williams told the story yesterday. Several summers ago, just before a combined Sixers-San Antonio Spurs summer league started, Williams was bass fishing in Texas with his wife when he stepped on a stick, which punctured his sandal and entered his right foot. Williams' wife, Ingrid, then four months pregnant, extracted the wood from his foot.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Health officials have confirmed that an Oregon man has the plague after he was bitten while trying to take a dead rodent from the mouth of a stray cat. The unidentified Prineville, Ore., man was in critical condition on Friday. He is suffering from a blood-borne version of the disease that wiped out at least one-third of Europe in the 14th century - that one, the bubonic plague, affects lymph nodes. There is an average of seven human plague cases in the United States each year.

If ships flying our flag are in danger of hitting mines, we've got to protect them, right? And those clumsy old minesweepers need air support, right? And one thing leads to another, right? Damn right it does. Now before we sink deeper and deeper into a Persian Gulf war we have no business in, let's get a few things straight: It's the Persian Gulf, not the American gulf, and the war we're deliberately and insanely intruding into is between Iran (Persia) and its neighbor, Iraq.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Health officials have confirmed that an Oregon man has the plague after he was bitten while trying to take a dead rodent from the mouth of a stray cat. The unidentified Prineville, Ore., man was in critical condition on Friday. He is suffering from a blood-borne version of the disease that wiped out at least one-third of Europe in the 14th century - that one, the bubonic plague, affects lymph nodes. There is an average of seven human plague cases in the United States each year.

Seven months ago, Preston Edward Bostick was one of the smallest and sickest preemies in Philadelphia. Today, he's the chunkiest, spunkiest baby on Hegerman Street, the sparkling center of attention in a warm rowhouse where unpaid bills and unemployment cast a grim shadow. Preston owes his survival to 29 nurses, one surgeon, countless specialists and prayerful strangers. And, thanks to perhaps the only instance in which joblessness offers an upside, to his out-of-work mother and grandmother, who spent 12 hours a day in intensive care at the infant's side.

A story Thursday about students protesting Dickinson College's handling of sexual assaults incorrectly attributed a study. The finding that one in five women who attends college will become the victim of a rape or an attempted rape by the time she graduates came from a U.S. Department of Justice study cited by the Center for Public Integrity. A series of investigative reports by the center about sexual assaults on campuses was not funded by the department. A story Thursday about an experimental HIV therapy being studied at the University of Pennsylvania incorrectly identified the cause of bubonic plague, which is the bacterium Yersinia pestis . A story Monday on the decision by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office to charge Msgr.

Frida Ghitis writes on international affairs If nature were a politician, would it get trounced at the polls, or would we lavish it with support, awed by its power? Consider some of its accomplishments during the last 12 months: one quarter of a million people washed away to their deaths in December's Asian tsunami; a major American city flooded by a hurricane; entire villages in Central America declared mass graves after mudslides; and more than 30,000 people buried in an earthquake along the Pakistan-India border.

Something tells me that the board of directors at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey is easy to please. At a board meeting two weeks ago, member Frederic Sterritt opined, "We're running a billion-dollar business here, and it's going great. " It certainly is going great for top administrators at UMDNJ (school slogan: "We'd like to buy a vowel"), who recently received more than $3 million in bonuses from the board. I think the board ought to revoke those bonuses and donate the money instead to hurricane relief.

Monty Williams has had more gruesome things happen to him than getting his knee drained before a game, which he did Sunday night before the 76ers hosted Cleveland. Williams told the story yesterday. Several summers ago, just before a combined Sixers-San Antonio Spurs summer league started, Williams was bass fishing in Texas with his wife when he stepped on a stick, which punctured his sandal and entered his right foot. Williams' wife, Ingrid, then four months pregnant, extracted the wood from his foot.

Even if you've never watched a good friend waste away and die from AIDS, you have to be alarmed by the damage this cureless disease is wreaking across the world. Even if you've never seen an AIDS-diagnosed acquaintance responding to newest antiviral "cocktail," you have to hope the treatments will become cheaper, more widespread and more effective. The alternative is just too ghastly to contemplate. Fortunately, the world seems to be coming to grips with this pandemic. "Over the past 18 months there has been a change of sentiment about the shared, global responsibility for a situation of this kind," Gro Harlem Brundtland, the top health official of the United Nations said.

Last month, a trapper near Worland, Wyo., was taken ill. His lymph nodes became swollen. Fever, chills, nausea and extreme exhaustion followed. The diagnosis: bubonic plague. While the case was rare, it was neither unique nor extraordinary, for the bubonic plague is alive in the American West. "The plague is well-established in 17 Western states," said David Dennis, an official with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year, 10 to 20 people in the West contract the disease - once known as the Black Death, but now treatable with antibiotics.

If a report had been published last weekend forecasting a war that would kill 10 to 15 percent of the people of all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the next five years (as the Second World War did), you would be hearing a lot about it. Even less extravangant predictions of disaster - say, of an influenza epidemic that would kill 1 or 2 percent of the world's population over the next year (like the influenza epidemic of 1918-19) - would be the number one news topic around the world this week.

OTTAWA Argument: No law gives Quebec right to secede Opening a historic, high-risk court case, the federal government argued yesterday before the Supreme Court that neither Canadian nor international law gives Quebec the right to secede unilaterally. Quebec's separatist government is boycotting the case, contending that secession is a matter to be decided by voters - not judges. "It's for Quebec to decide," a banner trailing an airplane flown over the courthouse declared.