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Four people were killed and another was hospitalized in a chemical leak at a DuPont facility near Houston Saturday morning, authorities said. The hospitalized worker is expected to recover, plant manager Randall Clements said. The accident occurred when the chemical methyl mercaptan, which in low concentrations is used to odorize natural gas, was released in an area of a facility in La Porte at around 4 a.m. Saturday, Jeff Suggs, emergency management coordinator for the city, told NBC station KPRC. "We will continue to cooperate with all the local authorities and make sure that we investigate this fully and we...

Malian authorities on Wednesday reported three deaths believed to be linked to a new Ebola cluster, an alarming setback as Mali tries to limit the epidemic ravaging other West African countries. Health officials began monitoring dozens of hospital employees and family members, and also searched this capital city of about 2 million for those who helped prepare the body of one of the victims for burial before it was known that the corpse might be highly contagious. SNIP-- A nurse working at a clinic in the capital died Tuesday, and tests later showed she had Ebola, Communications Minister Mahamadou Camara...

The WHO is coming under increasing scrutiny over its response to the the deadly epidemic. As The BBC reports, after stating that the death toll has hit 4,555 worldwide, a leaked internal document shows "nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall." There are a few tidbits of good news this weekend: the Spanish patient's test returned negative, 48 "at-risk" people in Dallas have been cleared, and Nigeria has been declared "ebola-free"

The West African nation where the Ebola outbreak has taken the most devastating toll needs nearly 80,000 more body bags over the next six months as it battles the deadly virus. An inventory of supplies from the Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare shows the massive gap between the resources the government has and the key supplies it desperately needs to crush the epidemic. Liberia projects a gap of 79,490 body bags and 989,985 protective suits. The ministry's report, dated Oct. 10, also says 2,425 Liberians have died of the viral hemorrhagic fever since the start of the outbreak,...

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — International aid organization Doctors Without Borders said that 16 of its staff members have been infected with Ebola and nine of them have died. Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg Tuesday, the head of Doctors Without Borders in South Africa Sharon Ekambaram said medical workers have received inadequate assistance from the international community. "Where is WHO Africa? Where is the African Union?" said Ekambaram who worked in Sierra Leone from August to September. "We've all heard their promises in the media but have seen very little on the ground." Four of the organization's medical workers who...

Link to Illegal Immigrant Children? Enteroviruses commonly circulate in the U.S. during summer and fall. EV-D68 was first identified in California in 1962. Over the past thirty years, only small numbers were reported in the U.S. The CDC hasn’t suggested reasons for the current uptick or its origin. Without that answer, some question whether the disease is being spread by the presence of tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children from Central America admitted to the U.S. in the past year. The origin could be entirely unrelated. However, a study published in Virology Journal, found EV-D68 among some of the...

Iranian sites claim large explosion heard 'several kilometers away', shattered windows as far as 15 kilometers from blast. An explosion at Iran's Parchin nuclear plant has killed at least two people, according to Iranian media reports. The plant is located close to the Iranian capital Tehran, and the explosion has triggering speculation over a possible sabotage or assassination. The semi-official Isna news agency claimed the explosion took place after a fire erupted in an "explosive materials production unit".

At least two Colorado adults have died from complications from what may be enterovirus-68, the same strain that has afflicted hundreds, mostly children, across the country. Dr. Phil Emrie, a critical care pulmonologist at Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge, says he treated adult patients who suffered from conditions similar to the virus. “We don’t know for sure that it’s the enterovirus-68, but we do know that it’s consistent with the illness that they’re seeing in children,” Emrie said. That specific virus has been diagnosed primarily in children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported approximately 500 cases...

A stampede at a popular religious festival in eastern India on Friday left 32 people dead and several dozen injured, an official said. Thousands of people had gathered to celebrate the Dussehra festival at a ground in the city of Patna in Bihar state, when panic erupted, officials said. It was unclear what triggered the stampede, which occurred as crowds were leaving the venue after watching giant effigies of the Hindu demon king Ravana set ablaze for Dussehra, which celebrates the victory of good over evil. "We have information that 32 people including women and children died due to a...

An outbreak of a mysterious hemorrhagic fever syndrome in the Venezuelan state of Aragua and the country’s capital Caracas has left ten people dead in the last three weeks. Reports indicate that nine people have so far succumbed to the disease in the northern state and a tenth person has died in the capital. It is unclear whether the cause of the syndrome is viral or bacterial – a distinction with implications for treatment – although autopsies have indicated that those who died were suffering from other complications, such as Chikungunya. One doctor, who wishes to remain anonymous, attended a...

Two people were killed and and at least 14 other people were wounded in weekend shootings across the city. The most recent fatal shooting happened Sunday afternoon in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side.

Ebola Toll Tops 2,000, Cases Near 4,000 2014-09-05 22:28 Geneva - More than 2 000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the World Health Organisation said on Friday, out of about 4 000 patients thought to have been infected in the three countries worst hit by the disease. The death toll in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone totalled 2 097 as at 5 Sept, out of 3 944 cases, a WHO document said. The data did not include patients in Nigeria or Senegal, which have also been affected, nor Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been...

GENEVA— The World Health Organization reports more than 800,000 people die by suicide every year. WHO, which is launching its first global report on suicide prevention, said more people die from suicide than from conflicts, wars and natural disasters combined. The World Health Organization reported every 40 seconds a person somewhere in the world commits suicide. Despite this shockingly high statistic, WHO said only a handful of countries have policies aimed at suicide prevention. WHO Director of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Shekhar Saxena said there also is much more that communities can do to provide support for vulnerable people....

Reports this past week identified two Americans – Douglas McCain from San Diego and Abdiraaman Muhumad from Minneapolis — who were killed by Syrian rebel groups last weekend as they were fighting with ISIS.A new claim was made on a Syrian rebel Twitter feed this morning saying that an additional three Americans have been killed fighting with ISIS near Ghouta. A video purporting to show the three dead Americans was posted on Youtube (WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO): Yet another American from Florida, Moner Mohammad Abusalha, conducted a suicide bombing for Jabhat al-Nusra — the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria —...

The number of dead in Syria’s civil war more than doubled in the past year to at least 191,000, the United Nations human rights office said Friday. The agency’s chief, Navi Pillay, bluntly criticized Western nations, saying their inaction in the face of the slaughter had “empowered and emboldened” the killers. In its third report on Syria commissioned by the United Nations, the Human Rights Data Analysis Group identified 191,369 deaths from the start of the conflict in March 2011 to April 2014, more than double the 92,901 deaths cited in the group’s last report, which covered the first two...

At least 70 people have died in northern Democratic Republic of Congo from an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday, denying that the illness was Ebola. "This is not Ebola," a WHO spokesman said in an email to Reuters on Thursday. A WHO report dated Thursday and seen by Reuters said that 592 people had contracted the disease, of whom 70 died

Cases in West Africa's Ebola outbreak this year have risen to 2,240, including 1,229 deaths, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday, reporting the toll in four countries, including Nigeria. While Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and No. 1 oil producer, appears to be containing its smaller outbreak, Liberia and Sierra Leone are struggling to halt the spread of the deadly Ebola virus among their populations. On Friday, these small two West African nations and a medical charity chided the WHO for its slow response, saying more action was needed to save victims threatened by the disease and hunger.

Two people were killed-- including a 16-year-old girl fatally shot on Chicago’s South Side and a 25-year-old man killed a block from the Chicago Police Department headquarters-- and at least eight others were wounded in overnight Chicago shootings. The teen girl was among two shot in a possible drive-by shooting in the city’s Englewood neighborhood early Saturday morning. Police said the girl was standing outside around 12:45 a.m. with a man when a car drove by and someone inside fired shots. She was shot in the head and was found unresponsive at the scene and a 20-year-old man was shot...

On board Iraqi army helicopter delivering aid to the trapped Yazidis, Jonathan Krohn sees a hellish sight Mount Sinjar stinks of death. The few Yazidis who have managed to escape its clutches can tell you why. “Dogs were eating the bodies of the dead,” said Haji Khedev Haydev, 65, who ran through the lines of Islamic State jihadists surrounding it. On Sunday night, I became the first western journalist to reach the mountains where tens of thousands of Yazidis, a previously obscure Middle Eastern sect, have been taking refuge from the Islamic State forces that seized their largest town, Sinjar....

Iraq general: 70% of Yazidis on Mount Sinjar are dead By Rick Moran An Iraqi general told a reporter for The Telegraph - the only western reporter who has flown over Mount Sinjar - that 70% of the Yahidis oin the rocky hill will die because of the lack of humanitarian aid. I was on board an Iraqi Army helicopter, and watched as hundreds of refugees ran towards it to receive one of the few deliveries of aid to make it to the mountain. The helicopter dropped water and food from its open gun bays to them as they waited...