HARTFORD, Conn. — An industrial chemical blamed for sickening thousands of infants in China was found in candy in four Connecticut stores this week, a state official said Wednesday. Days after contaminated White Rabbit Creamy Candy was found in California, the Connecticut consumer protection commissioner said tests found melamine in bags of the candy sold at two New Haven stores, a West Hartford market and an East Haven store. Melamine contamination has been blamed for the deaths of four children in China and kidney ailments among 54,000 others.
North Carolina: Edwards is stable
Elizabeth Edwards said Wednesday her health is “no worse” than 18 months ago, when she and her husband made the sobering announcement that her cancer had returned in an incurable form. The wife of two-time Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said in Carrboro that medical scans this week showed no signs that her condition has worsened. She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, but declared cancer-free after treatment. She said in March of last year that the cancer had returned and spread to her bones.
California: Engineer’s text message
A Metrolink engineer sent a cell-phone text message 22 seconds before his commuter train crashed head-on into a freight train last month, killing 25 people, federal investigators said Wednesday. Cell-phone records of engineer Robert Sanchez, who was among the dead, show he sent a message after receiving one about a minute and 20 seconds before the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said. Investigators are looking into why Sanchez ran through a red signal and collided with a Union Pacific train Sept. 12 in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.
D.C.: 300 gang members arrested
Federal officials arrested more than 300 members of a previously lesser-known criminal gang during a summer crackdown, twice as many as last year, and arrested nearly 1,400 gang members nationwide, immigration authorities said Wednesday. The increase in arrests of alleged members of the gang Surenos 13 may represent the gang’s increasing reach, or it may result from better classification of those arrested, authorities and academics said. The gang is distinct from the larger and better-known MS-13, but police or federal agents may have lumped them together during previous roundups.
Puerto Rico: Tons of coke seized
U.S. officials say they seized almost two tons of cocaine from a Panama-flagged cargo ship in international waters off Puerto Rico. A U.S. attorney said Coast Guard officers boarded the vessel as part of a multi-agency investigation of South American drug traffickers operating in the Caribbean. They found about 4,255 pounds of cocaine hidden on the ship, which was loaded with coal and had launched from Colombia.
Louisiana: Bouncers not charged
Prosecutors dropped manslaughter charges Wednesday against the last two Bourbon Street bouncers accused of suffocating a visiting Georgia college student after a dispute about getting into a French Quarter karaoke bar on New Year’s Eve 2004. Levon Jones, 26, died on the sidewalk outside the Razzoo Bar and Patio in New Orleans with four bouncers pinning him down. Brandon Vicknair and Matthew Taylor, along with two other bouncers, had been accused of killing the student by pinning him to the ground and putting him in a choke hold.
China: New limit for cars on roads
The government began taking 30 percent of its cars in the capital off the roads Wednesday in an attempt to make permanent some of the traffic restrictions imposed during the Olympic Games, officials and media reports said. Beginning Oct. 11, Chinese motorists also will stop driving one workday a week, based on the final number on their license plates. The new rules should take 800,000 vehicles off the roads each day, according to reports quoting Beijing’s Municipal Traffic Committee. There are 3.5 million cars in Beijing, and more than 1,000 vehicles are added each day.
Belgium: Big Boeing jet purchase
In a NATO initiative, 12 nations signed a deal Wednesday to jointly buy and operate three giant Boeing transport planes to fill a shortfall that has dogged international missions from Afghanistan to Sudan. Under the agreement, reached after two years of negotiations, they will jointly acquire three C-17s and place them at a new operating base in Hungary early next year under the command of a U.S. officer, a NATO spokesman said.
Britain: Oxford tuition disputed
Oxford University must be allowed to increase tuition fees if it is to compete with its American counterparts, the institution’s chancellor said. He said it was “intolerable” the government barred Oxford and other universities from charging students more than about $5,300 a year for their schooling. The average annual tuition at a four-year American private college was $23,712 last year, according to the College Board.
From Herald news services
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