Ten U.S. aid workers in Sierra Leone being sent home, monitored for Ebola

Health

U.S. aid workers to be monitored for Ebola

A group of American aid workers in Sierra Leone possibly exposed to the Ebola virus will be transported back to the United States for monitoring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
While none of the people have tested positive for Ebola, according to the CDC, they represent the largest number of Americans sent home out of concern they may have been exposed to the disease.
CDC spokeswoman Kathryn Harben said 10 Americans were being transported to the United States. Some may have come in contact with an American volunteer health-care worker now being treated for Ebola at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., or had similar exposure as that patient, the CDC said in a statement.
Four of the Americans will be sent to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, where they will be under quarantine, the hospital said. The others will go to locations near Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and to NIH, where they will be monitored and observe “as appropriate, voluntary self- isolation during the 21-day incubation period,” the CDC said.
— Bloomberg News

Texas

Ice cream-linked deaths prompt recall

The deaths of three people who developed an illness linked to Blue Bell ice cream products have prompted thefirst product recall in the company’s 108-year history.
Five people developed listeriosis in Kansas after eating products from one production line at the Blue Bell creamery in Brenham, Tex., according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA says listeria bacteria were found in samples of Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Country Cookies, Great Divide Bars, Sour Pop Green Apple Bars, Cotton Candy Bars, Scoops, Vanilla Stick Slices, Almond Bars and No Sugar Added Moo Bars.
According to a statement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all the people sickened were being treated for unrelated health issues at the same Kansas hospital before developing listeriosis, “a finding that strongly suggests their infections were acquired in the hospital.”
All products now on shelves are safe, said Paul Kruse, chief executive of the creamery. However, the CDC statement said, “Contaminated ice cream products may still be in the freezers of consumers, institutions, and retailers, given that these products can have a shelf life of up to 2 years.”
— Associated Press

New York

Court revives lawsuit over stolen art at OU

A federal appeals court has given new life to a Holocaust survivor’s claim that the University of Oklahoma is unjustly holding a Camille Pissarro painting the Nazis stole from her father during World War II.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan directed a lower-court judge to consider whether the lawsuit she threw out should be transferred to Oklahoma.
The school and its president, David Boren, are defendants in the suit brought in 2013 by Holocaust survivor Leone Meyer, 75, who lives in Paris. She says she’s entitled to Pissarro’s 1886 “Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep” because it belonged to her father when it was taken by the Nazis as Germany moved across France.
Swiss records show Meyer’s father had owned the painting. But a Swiss court ruled that the painting’s postwar owners had properly established ownership and rejected her claim.
Oil tycoon Aaron Weitzenhoffer and his wife, Clara, bought the painting from a New York gallery in 1956. When Clara Weitzenhoffer died in 2000, she donated more than 30 works, including the Pissarro, to OU.
— Associated Press

Sections of military helicopter recovered: The largest sections of a Black Hawk helicopter that crashed during a night training mission have been pulled from the waters off Florida’s Panhandle as salvage operations continue to recover the remains of the seven Marines and four soldiers who were killed. Eglin Air Force Base spokesman Andy Bourland says recovery operations were expected to finish late Saturday. The debris pulled from the Santa Rosa Sound off Navarre will be moved to the Air Force’s Hurlburt Field to be examined by investigators.The commander of Marine Corps Special Operations forces has said those aboard had tried to abort their mission early Tuesday when they decided it was too risky.

Tugboat sinks off Long Island: A tugboat sank off New York’s Fire Island on Saturday, and one crew member died and three were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. The vessel, the Sea Bear, notified a vessel service it was taking on water, said Coast Guard duty officer Mark Averill. Rescuers found three crew members in the icy water. The body of a fourth crew member was pulled from the water, Averill said. The sinking is under investigation.

— From wire reports