Floridians evacuate as Tropical Storm Rita nears
KEY WEST, Fla. – Thousands of residents fled the Florida Keys as Tropical Storm Rita barreled toward land, poised to grow into a categroy 4 hurricane with a potential 9-foot storm surge and sparking fears it could eventually ravage the hobbled Gulf Coast.
“I’ve lived in Florida all my life,” said James Swindell, 37, who shopped along a cleared-out Miami Beach on Monday. “You always have to be worried about a storm, because they are too unpredictable and they can shift on you at the last minute. Nobody knows what they are going to do.”
In New Orleans, the mayor suspended his plan to start bringing residents back to the city after forecasters warned that Rita could follow Hurricane Katrina’s course into the Gulf of Mexico and shatter his city’s already weakened levees.
The storm topped sustained winds of 70 mph early Tuesday, and it is expected to strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane, with winds of at least 131 mph, as it approached the Keys.
“The main concern now is the Florida Keys,” said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. “It’s moving over very warm water and that’s extremely favorable for development.”
Asia scrambles to tackle mosquito menace as virus alerts go out
SINGAPORE (AP) – The Philippines is stocking up on blood supplies, and Thailand is urging people to sleep under mosquito nets. An unusually severe outbreak of dengue fever has caused alarm across Asia and baffled clean, orderly Singapore with a record 10,000 cases this year.
The U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention considers dengue the “most important mosquito-borne viral disease affecting humans” this year – ahead of malaria and encephalitis – with an estimated 2.5 billion people at risk worldwide.
Across Asia, governments are scrambling to curtail the spread, mainly by educating the public about the potentially fatal illness and controlling mosquito-breeding areas such as stagnant pools.
Dengue is sometimes called bone-breaker’s disease because it causes severe joint pain. Other symptoms include high fever, nausea, and a rash. In the worst cases it causes internal bleeding. There is no known cure or vaccine.
Officials have compared the crisis to the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak that killed 33 in the United States.
Two former Tyco execs sentenced to up to 25 years in prison
NEW YORK (AP) – L. Dennis Kozlowski, former chief executive officer of Tyco, was sentenced Monday to up to 25 years in prison for looting the company of hundreds of millions of dollars, the climax of a case of executive greed replete with tales of a $6,000 gold-threaded shower curtain and a $2 million Mediterranean birthday party.
Kozlowski, 58, was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs as his wife quietly sobbed from a bench three rows back. He will be eligible for parole after eight years and four months behind bars in a state prison in New York.
Tyco’s former finance chief Mark Swartz, 44, received the same sentence, and state Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus ordered the defendants to pay a total of $134 million in restitution to Tyco International Ltd. In addition, the judge fined Kozlowski $70 million, and Swartz $35 million.
Assistant District Attorney Owen Heimer asked the judge for the maximum sentence of 30 years, saying Kozlowski had “committed theft and fraud on an unprecedented, staggering scale.”