WEDNESDAY, JULY2, 2003
NEWS IN BRIEF
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN =17
HEALTH CARE
Kansas doctors seek delay on teen pregnancy reporting
The Associated Press
LAWRENCE — A group representing some Kansas doctors has asked Attorney General Phill Kline to delay enforcement of his recent legal opinion requiring them to report pregnancies of girls under age 16.
"Essentially, we asked that he consider not doing anything to enforce the opinion until after the Legislature has had a chance to meet and clarify the issues that have been raised," said Jerry Slaughter, executive director for the Kansas Medical Society.
Kline's opinion, issued June 18, said that doctors treating pregnant girls under 16 must report their pregnancies as evidence of suspected child abuse because sex with girls under 16 is illegal in Kansas.
Kline said Monday he would not respond to the medical society's request.
"They are free to lobby the Legislature. The Legislature can change the law, and the governor can propose a change in the law," Kline said. "But I can't change the law; that's not my job. All I can do, in this instance, is interpret the law, and that's what I've done."
But the attorney general said he had
no plans to "prosecute consensual acts between children" and doubted that many county attorneys would prosecute doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, counselors for not following his opinion.
"That's not what this is about," Kline said. "This is about going after predators."
Sen. John Vratil (R-Leawood) said he doubted Kline's opinion would generate much debate in next year's legislative session.
"The Legislature tends not to be inclined to take action on an issue that's not developed," said Vratil, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "And for this to develop into an issue, there would have to be a county attorney or a district attorney prosecute someone for failing to report. I don't think that's likely to occur."
Slaughter said doctors are afraid teenage girls will be reluctant to seek prenatal care or treatment for sexually transmitted diseases if they know their doctors are required to report them to authorities.
"We're concerned about the healthcare consequences of the opinion," Slaughter said. "For us, this isn't about abortion. We don't have anything to do with that. Our concern is health care."
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Dennehy's family reported the 6-foot-10,230-pound junior missing June 19. His sport utility vehicle was found last week in a mall parking lot in Virginia Beach, Va. According to the warrant, filed June 23 in 19th District Court in McLennan County, the informant said Dotson told the cousin that while he and Dennehy were shooting guns, they argued and Dennehy pointed a weapon at Dotson as if to shoot him, but Dotson instead shot Dennehy.
Dotson said he then drove home to Maryland and got rid of the guns along the way, the document said.
Salmonella cases increasing source of illness unknown
ST. LOUIS (AP) — At least 99 people contracted salmonella at St. Louis Children's Hospital. The source of the intestinal illness remains a mystery.
The number of cases could rise because several people were still being tested, a hospital spokeswoman said Monday. The most recent case of the bacterial infection was confirmed Friday.
The cafeteria at the hospital was closed June 6 after city health officials learned that three hospital employees were sick.
The hospital took samples from more than 400 people who visited the hospital or ate in the cafeteria since May 1. The cafeteria reopened June 15 after two days of cleaning.
Salmonella can be found on several kinds of food, but especially on raw meat, eggs, dairy products and seafood. It is blamed for 1,000 deaths every year in about 40,000 cases nationally. The illness causes diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps.
Police use credit card to find toddlers abducted by parents
mother's home in an audacious, late night raid, authorities issued a nationwide Amber Alert — 16 hours later police found the toddlers.
MIRAMAR, Fla. (AP) — When two toddlers were nabbed from their grand-
Investigators tracked the suspects, the children's parents, through the woman's credit card and found the 3-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy asleep and unharmed in a hotel room Monday.
Nora Sarria, the children's grandmother, was asleep early Monday in her suburban home south of Fort Lauderdale when she heard a loud crash at her back door. Police said her daughter and her daughter's ex-husband, who do not have custody of the children, drove a car through the sliding glass door and rushed into the house.
Nora Montano,32, was charged with kidnapping and robbery home invasion, said Bill Robertson, Miramar police officer. The father was booked on the same charges.
More than 450 miles away, police found the toddlers at a motel in a remote Florida Panhandle.
WORLD
SARS raises death toll kills heath care worker
TORONTO (AP) — A nurse at North York General Hospital became Ontario's first health care worker to die of SARS, raising the death toll from the flu-like illness in Toronto to 39.
Several more health care workers are in critical condition on ventilators, and some of them also could succumb health officials said Monday.
North York General Hospital was the epicenter of Toronto's second SARS outbreak, which festered for weeks unnoticed before health officials discovered it on May 23.
The nurse's death Sunday was announced in a brief statement by Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement that lacked details such as when infection occurred.
Toronto had the largest SARS outbreak outside of Asia, with 39 deaths and almost 250 cases. More than 27,000 people in and around Toronto were forced into quarantine during the two outbreaks, one in March and April and the second in May and June.
Indonesian police may deport photographer from Japan
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP] — Indonesian police may deport a Japanese photographer detained in war-torn Aceh province, but have no plans to release an American reporter linked to separatist rebels, said media reports Saturday.
Lt. Col. Sayed Husaini told the el-Shinta radio station that officers were meeting
with immigration officials for the possible deportation of Tadatomo Takagi, 25.
Takagi was arrested Thursday as he photographed refugees in north Aceh.
Takagi, who was in Aceh on a tourist visa, took photos for his university thesis and was not a journalist, an immigration official also told el-Shinta.
On Tuesday, police arrested American William Nessen.
Husaini said officers questioned Nessen, 46, over "his closeness to the Free Aceh Movement" and do not plan to release him. Nessen, who was traveling on a journalist visa, was charged with immigration offenses.
North Korea threatens to leave 1953 armistice if blockaded
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)—North Korea threatened on yesterday to abandon the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, and warned that it will take "merciless retaliatory measures" in response to any economic blockade.
U. S. efforts to pressure the communist state to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program have pushed Korea to "the crossroads of war or peace," said the North Korean military's representative at Panmunjom, a truce village where the U.N. Command and the North's military meet to oversee the armistice.
His statement was carried by the North's state-run KCNA news agency. KCNA did not give his name.
North Korea has often threatened to scrap the armistice, the key legal document that keeps an uneasy peace on the divided Korean Peninsula.
The 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not with a peace treaty.
Mice with transplanted wombs produce healthy young mice
MADRID, Spain (AP) — Swedish scientists have produced healthy offspring from mice with transplanted wombs—an experiment that raises hopes of successful uterus transplants for women.
Experts said the results, presented yesterday at a European fertility conference, were encouraging but major obstacles must be overcome before women can benefit.
Last year, Saudi scientists reported the first human womb transplant, which produced two menstrual periods before it failed and had to be removed.
Experiments led by Mats Brannstrom of Sahlgrenska University in Gothenburg, Sweden, involved genetically identical mice so there would be no problem of immune system rejection.
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