State
UNM student dies after vehicle veers into median
SOCORRO, N.M. (AP) - A University of New Mexico student was killed and two Socorro men were injured in a one-vehicle crash north of Socorro before dawn Thursday, according to state police.
State Police Lt. Jerry Anderson said the vehicle was headed south on Interstate 25 near mile marker 183 when it veered into the median. The driver overcorrected and the vehicle rolled, he said.
Collin Levin, 22, of Albuquerque was ejected and pronounced dead at the scene.
Another passenger, Desi Lopez, 22, of Socorro, was airlifted to University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque. He was in stable condition Thursday, Anderson said.
New Mexico receives $21 million in federal funding
SANTA FE (AP) - New Mexico has been awarded $21 million in federal funding for new equipment and increased training for the state's first responders.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., announced the funding as part of a $79 billion spending bill signed Wednesday by President Bush.
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While most of the money will go toward the war effort, the senator said some $4 billion has been earmarked for states' homeland security efforts.
National
Inspectors say that food poisoning cases declined
WASHINGTON (AP) - The prevalence of harmful salmonella has declined across the board for meat and poultry products over the past two years as government inspectors increased testing, the Agriculture Department says.
Of 58,085 samples of meat and poultry taken last year, 4.3 percent had the germ that can cause food poisoning, the department says. That compares with 5 percent of 45,941 samples of meat and poultry testing positive in 2001.
U.S. Property Committee upset with Iraqi looting
WASHINGTON (AP) - Three members of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee have resigned to protest the looting of Baghdad's National Museum of Antiquities. Martin E. Sullivan, Richard S. Lanier and Gary Vikan, each appointed by former President Clinton, said they were disappointed by the U.S. military's failure to protect Iraq's historical artifacts.
Lynch asks that people support military causes
WASHINGTON (AP) - Pfc. Jessica Lynch asked Thursday that people who have been sending her gifts in the hospital make donations to military charities instead.
"It has gotten to be overwhelming in the room," said Sgt. Maj. Kiki Bryant, an Army spokeswoman.
Lynch, through a statement issued by Walter Reed Army Medical Center, expressed appreciation for the support she's received since she was rescued from captivity in an Iraqi hospital. She was initially taken to the Landstuhl Military Hospital in Germany and then last Saturday was brought to Walter Reed in Washington.
International
Doctors claim 7 rescued prisoners in good health
LANDSTUHL, Germany (AP) - The seven U.S. prisoners of war rescued in Iraq phoned their families and were examined by doctors Thursday as they prepared for their return home. Doctors at the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center said the former POWs - including a soldier from Alamogordo, N.M. - were in good health. All but one are able to walk.
The five U.S. Army soldiers and two Apache helicopter pilots who arrived late Wednesday spent most of the day with doctors, psychologists and a chaplain, going over their experiences during the three weeks they spent in Iraqi captivity, said Marie Shaw, a spokeswoman at the facility.
Hospital patients raped, looters ransack building
GENEVA (AP) - Some patients in a Baghdad psychiatric hospital were raped as looters ransacked the building over a three-day spree, the Red Cross said Thursday, quoting the hospital's director.
The director of Al-Rashad Hospital in eastern Baghdad told representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross the rapes took place as looters made off with nearly everything in the hospital - burning what they could not take - between April 9 and 11.
All 1,050 patients fled the hospital, the Red Cross said.
U.N. pledges to stick to strict policies on drugs
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - More than 140 nations Thursday pledged to adhere to the strict policies established at a U.N. drug summit five years ago, despite critics' allegations the program is ineffective.
Participants in a U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting said in a statement they remained committed to the campaign to curb cultivation, trafficking and consumption by 2008.
A joint statement approved by 142 representatives also expressed deep concern for the "threats posed by continuing links between illicit drug trafficking and terrorism and other . . . criminal activities, such as trafficking in human beings."
SARS spreads through plumbing of apartments
HONG KONG (AP) - The biggest SARS outbreak in Hong Kong spread through the plumbing in an apartment complex after visits from a man sick with the disease, a health official said Thursday.
Water droplets contaminated with the SARS virus may have been sucked out of bathroom drains into apartments by ventilation fans, said the Hong Kong health secretary, Dr. Yeoh Eng-kiong.
The disease - severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, apparently also was spread through person-to-person contact and possibly by rats and cockroaches, Yeoh told a news conference.
