US doctor with Ebola arrives in Atlanta

ATLANTA — An American doctor infected with the Ebola virus in Africa arrived in Atlanta for treatment Saturday, landing at a military base, then being whisked away to one of the most sophisticated hospital isolation units in the country, officials say.

A private plane outfitted with a special, portable tent designed for transporting patients with highly infectious diseases arrived at Dobbins Air Reserve Base, spokesman Lt. Col. James Wilson confirmed. Samaritan's Purse missionary group tells The Associated Press that Dr. Kent Brantly is the patient.

An ambulance from Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital left the base shortly after the jet landed and drove the 15 miles or so toward Emory University Hospital where Brantly and another aid worker will be treated.

Later, one person in white protective clothing from head to toe climbed down from the back of the ambulance and a second person in the same type of hazmat-looking suit appeared to take his gloved hands and guide him toward a building at Emory.

U.S. officials are confident the patients can be treated without putting the public in any danger.

The ambulance with red markings was flanked by a few SUVs and police car for the short trip to the hospital along a wide-open Interstate with no traffic.

The second patient, Nancy Writebol, will follow a few days later, the hospital has said.

Dr. Jay Varkey, an infectious disease specialist at Emory who will be involved in Brantly's care, said the hospital's isolation unit is well-equipped to handle patients with diseases that are even more infectious than Ebola.

The unit was used for treating at least one SARS patient in 2005. Unlike Ebola, SARS — like the flu — is an airborne virus and can spread easily when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Health experts say a specialized isolation unit is not needed for treating an Ebola patient. Standard rigorous infection control measures should work at any hospital.

"Ebola is only transmitted through blood and bodily fluids," he said. "Unlike the flu, like influenza, which we deal with every winter, Ebola cannot be spread thorugh the air."

There is no known cure for Ebola, which begins with fever, headache and weakness and can escalate to vomiting, diarrhea and kidney and liver problems. In some cases, patients bleed both internally and externally.

The two seriously Americans worked at a hospital in Liberia, one of the three West Africa countries hit by the largest Ebola outbreak in history.

The Emory hospital unit is located just down a hill from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is one of about four such units around the country for testing and treating people infected with dangerous, infectious germs.

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Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee, National Security Writer Robert Burns in Washington and video journalist Johnny Clark and writer Ray Henry in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Obama: Congress left town with unfinished business

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama says he's taking action on his own because Congress is doing so little for working families.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says the economy is improving. He says decisions made now can ensure things keep improving.

Obama says he's been pushing policies addressing jobs, student loans and wages. He says all of the policies would help families feel more stable, but all have been blocked by Republicans.

Obama says Congress left town for their August vacation with unfinished business. He says he hopes when lawmakers get back, Washington can join together in common purpose.

In the Republican address, Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon says Obama is disengaged when he should be leading. He says the midterm elections are a chance to deliver accountability.

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Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: www.nrcc.org

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Car parts plant blast in China kills 65, hurts 100

BEIJING — At least 65 people were killed Saturday by an explosion at an eastern Chinese automotive parts factory that supplies General Motors, state media reported.

The blast at the factory in the city of Kunshan in Jiangsu province also left more than 100 people injured, with many suffering severe burns, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Kunshan is about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) southeast of Beijing.

State broadcaster CCTV showed footage shot by residents of large plumes of thick, black smoke rising from the plant. News websites posted photos showing survivors or victims being lifted onto the back of large trucks, their bodies black presumably from burns or being covered in soot.

Some survivors were seen sitting on wooden cargo platforms on the road outside the factory, their clothes apparently burned off and skin exposed or being carried into ambulances.

The factory is operated by the Zhongrong Metal Products Company, a Taiwanese enterprise that according to its website was set up in 1998 and has a registered capital of $8.8 million. Its core business is electroplating aluminum alloy wheel hubs, the website says, while it supplies GM and other companies.

There were more than 200 workers at the site when the blast occurred, Xinhua cited the city government as saying. More than 120 people who were injured have been sent to hospitals in Kunshan and the nearby city of Suzhou.

A preliminary investigation has shown that the blast was likely a dust explosion, Xinhua said. Such an explosion is the fast combustion of particles suspended in air in an enclosed space. The particles could include dust or powdered metals such as aluminum. They would have to come into contact with a spark, such as fire, an overheated surface, or electrical discharge from machinery.

Calls to the city's government and police rang unanswered. A woman who answered the main phone line at the Zhongrong metal company refused to give any information and or the contact numbers of company staffers handling the case.

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Associated Press researcher Henry Hou contributed to this report.

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Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch may be on market soon

Word on the real estate street via the fine folk at Forbes is that "Neverland Ranch," the Los Olivos, CA, mega-estate where Michael Jackson lived in (in)famous, child-like splendor will soon be put on the market for an unrevealed price.

The crazy talented but terrifically troubled Mister Jackson decamped "Neverland" years before he died in 2009 but in its glory-days the 2,700-acre spread had a zoo with exotic animals and an full-blown amusement park where -- true story, children -- one of Your Mama's cuzzins used to drive the train.

There were rumors the estate's current owner, Colony Capital, considered subdividing and selling the property in order to recoup its investment as well as turning the property into tourism spot like Elvis's "Graceland" in Memphis (TN). However, the not easily accessed, semi-remote location not to mention the vehement local opposition nixed that notion before it really got off the ground.

(C) 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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Some critical of proposal for ads on school buses

WORCESTER, Mass. — A proposal to allow advertisements to be placed on school buses in Worcester is drawing mixed reviews.

John Monfredo, vice chairman of the city's school committee, asked the school department to explore a pilot program to place black-and-white ads on school buses as a way of raising new revenue for educational programs.

School Superintendent Melinda Boone said the administration has discussed the idea with the Worcester Education Development Foundation, but had concerns.

"We're concerned about safety as it relates to people potentially reading the ads and not paying attention to a (bus's) stop arm that's out," Boone said.

Monfredo joined two other school committee members in voting to refer the proposal to a subcommittee for more study, The Telegram and Gazette reported (http://bit.ly/1pvbg3L ).

"I'm really distressed to see this item on here," said Tracy O'Connell Novick, one of two members who voted against sending it to the subcommittee. "We have had a history of keeping commercial activity out of the Worcester Public Schools ... I'm really bothered by the notion we would think transporting our kids could become a commercial enterprise."

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Taiwan explosions probe focuses on petrochem firm

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Authorities in Taiwan's second-biggest city zeroed in on a petrochemical firm Saturday in their investigation into a series of gas pipeline explosions that killed 28 people and injured 286, as anger rose over the handling of the disaster.

The government is seeking to pinpoint the cause of five blasts that tore through streets in the city of Kaohsiung starting at around midnight Thursday, flinging cars into the air and blasting cement rubble at passers-by, many of whom were out late at a nearby night market.

The city's environmental officials said LCY Chemical Corp., a Taiwanese petrochemical firm, had failed to notify authorities of problems with a pipeline in the area despite being aware of irregularities in deliveries going through that pipeline that night. This caused delays in the government's response to the disaster, said the officials, who are facing growing public anger.

"If we were informed earlier by LCY, we could have evacuated everyone," Chen Chin-der, director of the Environmental Protection Bureau in Kaohsiung, an industrial port city of 2.8 million people, said at a televised news conference Saturday.

The pipeline was leaking nearly four tons of propene every hour as pressure dropped at around 8:45 p.m. Thursday, Chen said.

Propene, also known as propylene, is mainly used for making the plastic polypropylene, which is used in a wide variety of packaging, caps and films. It is a highly flammable, colorless gas with a mildly unpleasant smell.

Because the leak went on for so many hours as firefighters and environmental officials struggled to identify the nature of the gas and its source, it was able to rapidly accumulate in density and spread a greater distance, Chen said.

"The leak was at a different location from the explosions, because propene was leaking and spreading through the sewer system everywhere," Chen said in a telephone interview. "When the density of propene is very high, anything can trigger an explosion, anything as small as a cigarette, or starting the engine of a motor scooter."

The city's fire department and environmental authorities first received reports of a gas leak from residents in the area several hours before the explosions. They summoned representatives of a few companies to the site of the leak to check their pipelines, but all of them, including LCY Chemical, said their operations were normal, according to Chen and other environmental officials.

Thinking at first that the leak was that of natural gas, firefighters poured water at the site in the hope of dissolving the gas. When it became clear it was not natural gas, environmental experts were called in to take samples, a city news release said.

The experts were only able to identify the gas as propene at around 11:55 p.m., Chen said. But by then it was too late. A few minutes later, the blasts started ripping the streets apart.

Chang Jui-hui, chief secretary of the Environmental Protection Bureau, said records and data collected later by investigators from LCY's plant and that of its supplier, China General Terminal & Distribution Corp., showed abnormalities in the delivery of propene that night, with significant changes in pressure in the pipeline. Yet the companies did not notify the authorities, Chang said.

The supplier said it had initially shut off the propene pump when it noticed irregularities several hours before the blasts, but had resumed delivery on LCY's request. "Our preliminary judgment is that it is that stretch of line that had the problem," the supplier's assistant manager, Lin Kuo-chung, told local television channel FTV News.

LCY Chemical Corp. said it would cooperate with the investigation. "Our priority is to figure out the truth and responsibility," company spokeswoman Pan Lee-lin told a news conference.

Some local residents questioned the way the authorities handled the leak and subsequent blasts that left a 2-square-kilometer (1-square-mile) trail of destruction. One resident told television channel TVBS that five minutes before the explosions, the authorities told them: "Everything is under control. You can go home and sleep."

The blasts also damaged rows of shops and low-rise apartments. Tens of thousands of people lost utilities in the disaster zone, but a deputy economic affairs minister said Saturday that water and power would be restored within five days.

Industrial-use pipelines run through Kaohsiung's residential neighborhoods because industry preceded the construction of houses, said city spokesman Ting Yun-kung. Kaohsiung contains much of Taiwan's heavy industry, especially petrochemicals, and the explosions were the city's worst in 16 years.

The disaster was Taiwan's second in just over a week, following the July 23 crash of a TransAsia Airways prop jet on the island of Penghu that killed 48 people and injured 10.

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Associated Press writer Gillian Wong in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Nuclear plant looks to end emergency planning role

MONTPELIER, Vt. — The soon-to-close Vermont Yankee nuclear plant wants to stop more than $2 million in annual payments for emergency planning in the region, but a watchdog group opposes that, saying nuclear waste on-site will create continuing risks.

Plant officials have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the radioactive spent fuel will have cooled enough by mid-2016 that they should then be able to stop paying to maintain the 10-mile emergency evacuation zone around the plant.

The plant is closing at the end of this year.

The zone extends out from the reactor in Vernon in Vermont's southeast corner to six Vermont towns and parts of neighboring New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

The plant maintains emergency sirens in each town, provides each household with a tone-alert radio, distributes an annual calendar with emergency information and supports regular drills by emergency personnel.

The risks of storing spent nuclear fuel in storage pools at plant sites have been hotly debated in recent years, with some state regulators and nuclear critics saying the fuel is safer in the concrete and steel storage casks that many plants have been using in recent decades because they've been running out of room in their pools.

Five U.S. senators wrote to the NRC in May to urge it to expedite movement of the spent fuel from fuel pools to dry casks. They said studies have concluded that "draining a spent nuclear fuel pool can lead to fires, large radioactive releases and widespread contamination" and that research has found spent fuel pools "could not be dismissed as potential targets for terrorist attacks."

Erica Bornemann, a Vermont Emergency Management official overseeing disaster planning around Vermont Yankee, said the next full-scale drill next year will focus on the potential for a catastrophe resulting from "a hostile act."

Short of that, Raymond Shadis of the nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition pointed to an NRC document describing the possibility of an accident during the process of unloading the spent fuel pool. The casks are brought into the pool as they are loaded. The NRC document raised the possibility that one of the 110-ton casks could be dropped.

Vermont Yankee has said it expects there to be some fuel remaining in the pool until 2021, when the last of it will have been moved into dry casks.

Bornemann argued that until the spent fuel pool is emptied, there should be some level of enhanced emergency response capability around the nuclear plant.

Just weeks after the senators wrote their letter, the NRC rejected calls for speeding up the transfer of spent fuel from pools to dry casks, saying too little was to be gained from a safety perspective to warrant such a ruling.

Christopher Recchia, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service, said Vermont and neighboring states are pressing the NRC not to let Vermont Yankee drop the emergency response efforts. But he acknowledged that, given the NRC's position that spent fuel pools provide safe storage for the nuclear waste, the states' chances of prevailing may be slim.

On Friday, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the agency was reviewing Vermont Yankee's request to end its support for emergency planning. He said the agency had never rejected such a request from a plant undergoing decommissioning.

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5 things to know about Ebola outbreak in W. Africa

Two Americans who had been working to treat Ebola patients in Africa have been stricken by the disease. Officials say they will be taken to Atlanta's Emory University Hospital in a tightly sealed isolation unit. The first is expected to arrive Saturday, and the other a few days later, according to hospital officials.

Here are five things to know about Ebola and how it is spread:

1. THE WEST AFRICA EBOLA OUTBREAK IS NOW THE LARGEST IN HISTORY. The current outbreak in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone has sickened more than 1,300 people and killed more than 700 this year.

2. BUT SOME PEOPLE HAVE SURVIVED EBOLA. While the fatality rate for Ebola can be as high as 90 percent, health officials in the three countries say people have recovered from the virus and the current death rate is about 70 percent. Those who fared best sought immediate medical attention and got supportive care to prevent dehydration even though there is no specific treatment for Ebola itself.

3. EBOLA CAN LOOK A LOT LIKE OTHER DISEASES. The early symptoms of an Ebola infection include fever, headache, muscle aches and sore throat, according to the World Health Organization. It can be difficult to distinguish between Ebola and the symptoms of malaria, typhoid fever or cholera. Only in later stages do people with Ebola begin bleeding both internally and externally, often through the nose and ears.

4. EBOLA IS ONLY SPREAD THROUGH BODILY FLUIDS. The Ebola virus is not airborne, so people would have to come into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. These include blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen — making transmission through casual contact in a public setting unlikely.

5. FEAR AND MISINFORMATION THOUGH IS MAKING THINGS WORSE. In each of the affected countries, health workers and clinics have come under attack from panicked residents who mistakenly blame foreign doctors and nurses for bringing the virus to remote communities. Family members also have removed sick Ebola patients from hospitals, including one woman in Sierra Leone's capital who later died. Police had to use tear gas to disperse others who attacked a hospital in the country.

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Online:

http://www.who.int

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Larry King and Piers Morgan trade jabs

NEW YORK — Clearly, former CNN prime-time stars Larry King and Piers Morgan aren't big fans of each other.

After King derided Morgan's interview skills and called him pompous, Morgan responded on Twitter on Friday that King was a "graceless, petty little man." Morgan's 9 p.m. CNN show was canceled this year. He had replaced King in that time slot in 2011.

King, in an interview with WGRF in Buffalo, says he had trouble watching his successor because the interviews were all about him.

Morgan, in turn, criticized King's ratings, posting a clip where King famously misidentified addressed Ringo Starr as "George," and writing, "Get over it, you daft old goat."

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Mass. group pushing nuclear power ballot question

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — A group of local residents say they've collected enough signatures to place a public policy question on the November ballot in the Cape and Islands senate district related to the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.

The group Cape Downwinders says they plan to deliver more than the required 1,200 certified voter signatures to state Secretary William Galvin's office on Monday.

The question would ask local voters if the state senator from the district should be instructed to vote to expand the radiological Plume Exposure Emergency Planning Zone around the station located in Plymouth to include all of Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket counties.

The group said legislation to expand the emergency planning zone has been introduced at the Statehouse since 1988 but has never passed both the House and the Senate in the same legislative session.

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