Hurricane Stan slams into Mexico

By: Associated Press | Tuesday, October 4, 2005 6:15 PM PDT ∞

A man uses a bucket to get water out of his home in one of the neighborhoods of the port city of Veracruz, Mexico on Tuesday. Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico's Gulf coast before quickly weakening to a tropical storm Tuesday, forcing authorities to close one of the nation's busiest ports and thousands of residents abandoned their homes and stayed in some of the 2,000 shelters set up all along the coastline.
Associated Press

VERACRUZ, Mexico -- Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico's Gulf coast Tuesday, forcing authorities to close one of the nation's busiest ports and spawning related storms across the region that left at least 59 people dead, most from landslides in El Salvador.

The storm, which whipped up 80-mph (130-kph) winds before being downgraded to a tropical storm, came ashore along a sparsely populated stretch of coastline south of Veracruz, a busy port 185 miles (295 kilometers) east of Mexico City.

The storm's outer bands swiped the city, knocking down trees and flooding low-lying neighborhoods, and closing some highways, authorities said. State officials said four people were injured, including a child, but gave no details.

All three of Mexico's Gulf coast crude-oil loading ports were closed Tuesday as a precaution, but the shutdowns weren't expected to affect oil prices.

Forecasters said the hurricane spawned separate storms across Central America and southern Mexico, provoking flooding and landslides. At least 41 people were killed in El Salvador, the majority in landslides on Tuesday. Nine others died in Nicaragua, including six migrants believed to be Ecuadoreans killed in a boat wreck, Civil Defense official Maj. Porfirio Castrillo said.

Three other people died in the Nicaraguan provinces of Leon, Granada, Matagalpa and Managua, which have experienced severe flooding. Authorities said some bridges and highways were damaged.

Four deaths were reported in Honduras and three in Guatemala. In Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, a river overflowed its banks and roared through the city of Tapachula, carrying some ramshackle homes of wood and metal with it. One man was killed and dozens of people were missing Tuesday, the Televisa television network reported.

A state civil protection official said he could not confirm the reports because communication with Tapachula had been cut off.

In Costa Rica, a 36-year-old woman was asleep early Tuesday when her home was buried by a landslide, killing her.

Rain was still falling Tuesday in much of Central America, forcing thousands from their homes. Among those evacuated were residents of San Salvador's Santa Tecla neighborhood, where a strong earthquake caused a massive landslide in January 2001.

Officials have worried the mountain running alongside the neighborhood might collapse again with heavy rains or another quake.

Mexico has offered to send aid to El Salvador, if needed.

"We are keeping an eye on the situation in El Salvador," presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Tuesday.

In Veracruz, schools canceled classes and officials at a nearby nuclear power plant had readied the facility for the category one hurricane's strong winds and rains.

Some 12,000 people abandoned their homes and stayed in some of the 2,000 shelters set up all along the coastline.

At Chachalacas beach, 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of Veracruz, restaurant owner Celestino Criollo struggled amid rising winds and intermittent rains to clear equipment from his beach-side, thatched-roof seafood restaurant.

Criollo said the storm's rapid approach had caught many beach dwellers by surprise.

"We knew it would be strong and the tide high, but we didn't think it would come this quick," he said. "They advised us, but they could have done it sooner."

In the neighboring state of Oaxaca, which was also affected by heavy rains and wind, officials opened 950 shelters as a preventive measure and were keeping an eye on 80 communities considered to be vulnerable.

The closed crude-oil loading ports -- Coatzacoalcos, Dos Bocas and Cayo Arcas -- handle most of the 1.8 million barrels a day of crude oil exported by state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex.

Five exploratory oil platforms also were evacuated Monday, but so far the storm hadn't affected the company's production of 3.4 million barrels a day of crude oil, Mexico's Communications and Transportation Department said.

Pemex is the world's third-largest oil producer, and most of its exports are sent to the United States.

Associated Press writers Marcos Aleman in San Salvador, El Salvador; Filadelfo Aleman in Managua, Nicaragua; Marianela Jimenez in San Jose, Costa Rica; Juan Carlos Llorca in Guatemala City; and Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; contributed to this report.

Extra weight may be factor in fatal boat crash; divers search lake

LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. (AP) -- Just days before a tour boat capsized in the Adirondack Mountains, killing 20 elderly people, the Coast Guard began rethinking its passenger-weight calculations to take into account Americans' expanding waistlines.

At the time it flipped over, the 38-foot Ethan Allen was just under its capacity of 48 passengers -- a figure that was arrived at by using a 1960 Coast Guard standard that assumes a 140-pound average for each man, woman and child, authorities said.

Investigators looking into the accident have said that too much weight may have been a factor and suggested the Coast Guard standard might have to be revised because Americans are getting heavier -- something the Coast Guard recognized well before the tragedy.

"We are looking at that and we know that if you look around at average people, you know this is not an accurate average to be using," said Coast Guard spokeswoman Angela McArdle.

The disclosure from the Coast Guard in Washington came as divers combed the bottom of Lake George for the belongings of the elderly passengers tossed into the water and experts examined the boat for clues to why it overturned on a calm, clear Sunday during a one-hour sightseeing tour.

Police said the boat's operator, Shoreline Cruises, could face a fine of $25 to $100 for failing to have a second crew member on board to aid the 74-year-old captain, Richard Paris. A state inspector determined in May the boat needed two crew members.

"You could imagine the things that could go wrong," said State Police Maj. Gerald Meyer. "There may be times when someone may need to attend to someone while the vessel was being operated."

The state on Monday night suspended the operating certificates for all five of Shoreline's boats.

Other government regulators also are changing standards to adapt to heavier Americans. Following a commuter plane crash that killed 21 people in 2003 in North Carolina, the Federal Aviation Administration raised its summertime weight average from 160 pounds per person to 174, including carry-on baggage.

McArdle said the Coast Guard awarded a contract just a few weeks ago to a research firm to determine how increasing the average weight per passenger would affect vessels around the United States.

McArdle said the Coast Guard knew the weight requirement has been outdated for some time, but did not move on the issue until the National Transportation Safety Board warned about the problem following the sinking of a water taxi in the Baltimore harbor that killed five people in 2004.

Asked why the Coast Guard did not move more quickly on the weight-per-person calculation, McArdle said: "It has such wide-ranging implications. You need to address the economic impact on the industry, looking at the scope. It's not something where we can just say, `Now passenger ferries must carry 20 fewer people."'

McArdle said it was too early to say when a new regulation would be drawn up or what the new weight standard might be.

Investigators believe a combination of factors could have contributed to the Ethan Allen tragedy, including a large wake created by another boat, a sudden shift of passengers' weight on the boat's bench-style seats, and the overall weight of the passengers.

The 47 passengers were senior citizens from Michigan and Ohio who had come East to see the changing fall colors.

The investigation continued Tuesday with a scheduled interview of the captain and the examination of the Ethan Allen in a nearby airplane hangar.

Rich Morin, a professional scuba diver who helped raise the boat Monday, said when he saw the boat underwater, "there didn't appear to be any damage at all."

Of the 27 people brought to Glens Falls Hospital after the capsizing, seven remained hospitalized Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, Shoreline owner James Quirk said he and his company were "shocked and saddened" by the sinking. He refused to answer questions beyond a statement in which said: "This company's been in the passenger boat business for 27 years and until this event we have had a perfect record."

Police also released tapes of 911 calls made minutes after the boat tipped over. One caller frantically told a dispatcher: "Oh my God! Oh, my God! A boat! A boat! A boat went over!" When asked how many people were on the boat, she answered: "Oh, a lot of people -- they're hanging on to the bottom where it went over! Oh, please hurry!"

Associated Press reporter Devlin Barrett contributed to this report from Washington.

Space tourist says trip worth millions of dollars he paid

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A rich entrepreneur scientist who bought his own ticket to the international space station said from orbit Tuesday that the trip was worth the millions of dollars he paid, and his only fear on launch day was not going.

"I'm having a great time. I mean, this is a dream come true," Gregory Olsen said at a news conference broadcast from the space station.

"This is my fourth day and I'm really enjoying it," he added. "Just to look out and see the Earth from about 230 miles up is just great."

The best part, Olsen said, is "just being here." As for the reported $20 million he paid for the 10-day trip, "It's like the price and value argument. This is something I wanted to do, I love doing, so to me, yes, it's worth the money."

With his launch aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket on Saturday from Kazakhstan, Olsen became the world's third paying space tourist. He made his fortune with Sensors Unlimited Inc. of Princeton, N.J., a company that makes devices for fiber-optic communications and infrared imaging. He is chairman of the board of directors and a co-founder.

Olsen said he was not afraid during liftoff.

In fact, "as soon as that rocket launched, I was the most relaxed I've been in two years. I've had some ups and downs on this thing," the 60-year-old said, referring to his lengthy delay in flying for unspecified medical reasons.

"The only thing I was nervous about was maybe I wasn't going to go. And once I felt that rocket push off from the ground, I just felt that sense of relief and joy. The Russian Space Agency has a great safety record and they're great at space, and with a crew like this, how could you go wrong?"

He said he has not suffered any of the typical space motion sickness.

Olsen arrived at the space station Monday with NASA astronaut William McArthur and Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev, who will spend the next six months aboard the orbiting complex. The scientist, who holds a doctorate, will return to Earth early next week with astronaut John Phillips and cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who have been in orbit since April.

Phillips said he can't wait to devour "a hot steaming pizza and a big cold mug of beer," once he's back on Earth. Krikalev said a good cup of coffee, and fresh fruit and vegetables, sound good to him.

California money manager Dennis Tito visited the space station in 2001 and South African Internet entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth in 2002, in similar deals negotiated with Russian space officials.

On the Net:

NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov

China's death toll from typhoon rises to 50

BEIJING (AP) -- Emergency workers found 50 bodies and were searching for dozens of people missing after Typhoon Longwang slammed into southeastern China and unleashed raging floods, state media reported Tuesday.

Among the missing were 59 members of a paramilitary police brigade swept away in Fujian province Sunday night after the typhoon came ashore with 74 mph winds, state media said.

The missing paramilitary officers, members of China's armed force in charge of domestic security, were in a training school barracks when they were washed away, state media said.

President Hu Jintao ordered that no efforts be spared to search for them, state newspapers reported.

By late Tuesday, emergency workers had retrieved 50 bodies in Fujian, China Central Television reported.

The typhoon also killed at least one person on the island of Taiwan before hitting mainland China.

The typhoon, whose name means "Dragon King" in Chinese, was downgraded Monday to a tropical storm, but not before raining havoc on low-lying coastal areas. It was raining lightly in parts of Fujian on Tuesday, and top wind speeds had slowed to 45 mph, the local weather bureau said.

Authorities evacuated more than 500,000 people ahead of the storm, which also forced boats to return to harbor and closed tourist sites.

As the storm churned inland, it destroyed 5,400 homes in Fujian and wiped out 31,000 acres of crops, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

State TV showed trees bending under gusts of wind and cars driving slowly along flooded roads. It said some railway services had been suspended in hard-hit Fujian.

China has suffered several heavy storms this year. In September alone, typhoons Talim, Khanun and Damrey killed more than 130 people across the southern part of the country.

Appeals court grants new trial to Tennessee mother in baby's OxyContin death

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- An appeals court has ordered a new trial for a woman convicted of killing her 4-month-old son by giving him a pacifier coated with the powerful narcotic OxyContin.

The state Court of Criminal Appeals said Friday that the trial judge improperly allowed testimony about three days of partying and drug use by Debra Elaine Kirk and her estranged husband before the 2002 death of her baby, Lacie.

"To say that (Kirk's) lifestyle was `unwholesome' or her parenting skills questionable would be excessively charitable," Appeals Judge Thomas Woodall wrote. "However, a jury cannot be allowed to convict a defendant for bad character."

Authorities said Kirk, 24, put the wet pacifier in some crushed OxyContin and stuck it in the baby's mouth to make him go back to sleep.

She was convicted of aggravated child abuse and criminally negligent homicide and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Blind octogenarian moves from contaminated house boat

STOCKTON (AP) -- A blind octogenarian living on a barge at one of the nation's most-contaminated sites has agreed to move after a three-year battle with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA asked Herman Miller to move his floating home so cleanup could begin in Old Mormon Slough, which was declared a Superfund site in 1992.

Miller will finally leave the barge in the downtown slough where he's lived for more than a decade. A relocation agreement between Miller and the EPA will include a taxpayer-bought home for the semiretired engineer.

"I'm not happy, but what can you say?" Miller told The Record newspaper of Stockton. He plans to leave later this month.

Years of wood-preserving chemicals from a now-defunct company contaminated the slough's dirt and groundwater. Pollutants have been blamed for fish kills in the area and signs along the Stockton Deep Water Channel warn anglers not to eat what they catch.

U.S. surgeon: Indian conjoined twin sisters could likely be separated

NEW DELHI (AP) -- An American neurosurgeon said Tuesday he believes 10-year-old Indian twins joined at the skull could survive surgery to separate them, but that he will wait for more test results before deciding to perform the complex operation.

Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore, made the announcement as doctors waited for the parents of sisters Saba and Farah to give the go-ahead.

"If everything goes the way we plan, I expect they will both be alive" after the surgery, Carson, an international authority on conjoined twins, told reporters.

With help from teams in Denver and at New Delhi's Indraprastha Apollo hospital, where the sisters are staying, Carson plans to conduct the operation in India -- a first for South Asia.

In their hospital ward, Saba and Farah sat on a bed, their eyes painted with traditional Indian decoration. Their father, Mohammed Shakeel, says the twins are very different.

"Saba loves rice -- Farah likes bread. If one sleeps, the other is awake. One falls sick, the other doesn't," he said.

Shakeel said he would make up his mind about the surgery after talking with his mother and wife when he returns home to Patna, capital of the impoverished eastern state of Bihar.

The surgery would be financed by Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who offered to pay after he read about the twins in a newspaper.

The twins share a blood drainage vessel in the brain. This is a major concern for doctors, who say they may need to graft blood vessels from other parts of their bodies to give the girls individual drainage systems.

An added complication is that Farah has two kidneys while Saba has none.

If left conjoined, the twins would risk death within a decade since Farah has heart problems that could eventually kill them both, said Anupam Sibal, the hospital's medical director.

Sibal and Carson said the proposed surgery involves cutting into parts of the girls' brains and transplanting one of Saba's kidneys into Farah.

"This particular type of sequence and planning has never been done before," Carson said.

"I think it (the surgery) would be an opportunity, not only for India but the world, to see what kind of things can be done," he said. "Eventually I want to reach a point where all separations like this will become routine."

He has taken part in four operations to separate conjoined twins -- two of which were successful, Sibal said.

Most conjoined twins are stillborn. Of those born alive, about 60 percent die within hours or days of birth.

The total number of twins joined at the skull worldwide is believed to be between 10 and 20.

A smile for a nickel: Cheerful Jefferson on new coin

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After nearly 100 years of depicting presidents in somber profiles on the nation's coins, the Mint is trying something different: The new nickel features Thomas Jefferson, facing forward, with the hint of a smile.

"It isn't a silly smile or a smirk, but a sense of optimism that I was trying to convey with the expression," says Jamie Franki, an associate professor of art at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. His drawing was chosen out of 147 entries.

In unveiling the design Tuesday, Mint officials said they believed the new image of Jefferson was an appropriate way to commemorate his support for expanding the country through the Louisiana Purchase and sending Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the territory in 1804-05.

"The image of a forward-looking Jefferson is a fitting tribute to that vision," said David Lebryk, the acting director of the Mint.

For the past two years, the Mint has changed the design of the nickel every six months to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition, both of which occurred during Jefferson's administration.

The new five-cent coin, which will go into circulation early next year, is the last scheduled change in the nickel's appearance. It will feature Jefferson's Monticello home on the reverse side of the coin but in an updated image from the Monticello that first began appearing on the nickel in 1938.

The image of Jefferson will be accompanied by the word "Liberty" in Jefferson's own handwriting, a detail that was introduced last year in the Westward Journey series of nickels.

Since Abraham Lincoln became the first president to be depicted on a circulating coin, in 1909, presidents have always been shown in profile, in part because profile designs remain recognizable even after extensive wear on the coin. The Mint, however, believes it has produced an image of Jefferson for the new nickel that can stand up to heavy use.

For next year, between 1.4 billion and 1.8 billion of the new nickels are expected to go into circulation. The coins will be called the Jefferson 1800 because Franki's image of Jefferson is based on a Rembrandt Peale portrait of Jefferson done in 1800, the year Jefferson was first elected president.

Jefferson will be the first but perhaps not the last president to go from profile to frontal view on U.S. coins. Congress is considering whether to direct the Mint to redesign the penny for 2009, the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.

On the Net:

U.S. Mint: www.usmint.gov

Son, embalmed mother he lived with for 21 years buried together in Indian village

HYDERABAD, India (AP) -- A man who kept the embalmed body of his mother at home in a glass casket for 21 years was buried along with her after his death, a relative said Tuesday.

Hundreds of residents on Sunday attended the burials of Syed Abdul Ghafoor, 69, and his mother at a mosque in Siddavata, a town 300 miles south of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh state.

"I fulfilled the last wish of my uncle. He had told us that his mother's body should be buried only after his death," said his nephew, Syed Noor.

Ghafoor, who taught English literature at a college in the Thanjavur district of southern Tamil Nadu in the 1980s, divorced his wife after six months of marriage because she had a fight with his mother, Noor said.

When the mother died, he brought the embalmed body to his home in Siddavata and kept it in a glass casket.

"He was so eccentric that he would not allow anybody else even to look at the glass casket," Noor said.

Ghafoor consulted his mother even after her death.

Before doing anything important, Ghafoor would write "yes" and "no" on two pieces of paper. Then, sitting at the feet of the mother's body, he would select one piece of paper without looking at what it said and act accordingly, Noor said.

Local official M. Prabhakar Reddy said residents and relatives complained about him keeping the embalmed body at home, but Ghafoor "was adamant not to let it go."

Autopsy finds Indiana nurse missing since 1999 was strangled

RENSSELAER, Ind. (AP) -- A nurse who disappeared in 1999 was strangled during a struggle with her attacker, an autopsy found after her killer confessed and her body was unearthed.

The body of Lorraine Kirkley, 34, was found on a northern Indiana farm and identified through dental records, Jasper County Coroner Dr. Gordon Klockow said Monday.

"She suffered a lot of defensive wounds, a lot of contusions," Klockow said. "It was very obvious there was a struggle."

David Malinski was convicted in 2000 of her abduction, torture and murder, though he stoutly denied killing her. Then, last month, he told police that he buried her body on property owned at the time by his father. He had finally confessed because he wanted to join a prison church, officials said.

Malinski and Kirkley both worked at Porter Memorial Hospital before she disappeared in July 1999, the same day her Valparaiso home was burglarized. Malinski was charged with burglarizing the home once before, and investigators suspect she walked in on him the second time.

Investigators said he took Kirkley to his home, sexually tortured her and killed her.