200 Students to Undergo TB Testing
Health officials will start testing about 200 students today in the Westmoreland County town of Colonial Beach for tuberculosis after someone in the "school community" was diagnosed with the infectious disease.
Health and school officials aren't identifying the person, who they say is in good condition and is expected to be cured, said Ted Tweel, acting director of the state Health Department for the region, which is along Virginia's coast.
About 75 people came to a meeting Wednesday night, including some who questioned why it took five days for health officials to notify parents of the TB case. Tweel said it took time to get letters organized and the mechanism in place to test hundreds of students who are considered at risk.
Catching TB requires prolonged contact with someone who has the disease, which can impact anywhere in the body but is considered curable if diagnosed and treated. There were 250 cases of TB reported in Virginia this year through Nov. 1 and 332 in all of 2003, according to the state Health Department.
MARYLAND
Malpractice Talks End Without Agreement
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and the two Democratic leaders of the General Assembly emerged without consensus from a closed-door meeting yesterday on how to address the escalating cost of medical malpractice insurance.
Ehrlich characterized discussions as "tense" but said he now believes "it is possible and maybe even likely" that the legislature will convene in December for a special session on the matter.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said only "incremental progress" was made during the hour-long session, and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) said the primary sticking points remain unresolved.
The Democratic leaders would like to pay for a proposed state reinsurance fund by assessing a 2 percent premium tax on HMOs, an approach Ehrlich opposes. Ehrlich and Miller also diverge over the scope of legal changes that should be adopted.
Most Maryland doctors are facing a 33 percent rate increase on bills that are due Dec. 1.
Judge Won't Reinstate Police Leader
Comparing a complaint by Baltimore's fired police commissioner Kevin Clark to "reading a dime novel," a city judge yesterday rejected Clark's request to be reinstated.
Clark sought a temporary restraining order to get his job back while a $60 million lawsuit he filed this week against Mayor Martin O'Malley goes forward. He alleges that O'Malley fired him in part because police were investigating a mayoral ally, officials said.
But Circuit Court Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan said Clark's "leadership is so tainted at this point, and he's said so many adverse things about the mayor and the city [in the complaint] that" his reinstatement "would be totally disruptive."
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"It wasn't so much what he remembered about age 3 but some other things about his past that he shared with us."
-- Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey, on Richard Coffman's implication of his mother in the death of his brother 32 years ago. -- Page A1
Compiled from reports by staff writers Jacqueline L. Salmon, Lori Montgomery, Manny Fernandez, Michelle Boorstein and John Wagner and the Associated Press.
