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Prairie dogs may be cause of rare pox

MADISON, Wis. - A virus related to smallpox that has never been detected in the Western Hemisphere may be the cause of a mysterious disease spreading from pet prairie dogs to people across the upper Midwest, health officials said Saturday.

Dr. James Hughes, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) said a group of prairie dogs sold from a suburban Chicago pet distributor appears to be infected with the monkeypox virus, a member of the same viral family that causes smallpox but is not nearly as deadly.

Monkeypox has typically been found in West African rain forests, Hughes said. The death rate among infected humans has ranged from 1 percent to 10 percent.

Since early May, 17 possible cases have been reported in Wisconsin in people as young as 4 and as old as 48. Two possible cases have been reported in Illinois and one has been reported in Indiana, health officials from all three states said.

They appeared to have been exposed to prairie dogs - rodents whose popularity as pets has grown in recent years. They reported fever, coughs, rashes and swollen lymph nodes.

Investigators have traced the origin of the outbreak to a pet distributor in Villa Park, Ill. That distributor had a giant Gambian rat, indigenous to African countries, that may have infected batches of prairie dogs, Hughes said.

FAYETTE, Ala. - A teenager being booked at a small-town police station grabbed an officer's gun and opened fire early Saturday, killing two officers and a dispatcher before fleeing in a police car, authorities said.

The cruiser was spotted about 31/2 hours later, about 10 miles beyond the state line in Mississippi, and the driver was arrested, said Lowndes County, Miss., Sheriff's Deputy Tony Mulligan.

The suspect, identified in Mississippi jail records as Devan Darnel Moore, 18, will be charged with capital murder, said Chris McCool, district attorney for Fayette County.

The shootings stunned this quiet community of 5,000, an old textile town where many people work in small manufacturing plants near Alabama's hilly coal country.

Moore, who grew up in Fayette but graduated from high school in neighboring Walker County two weeks ago, was well known in town because his older brother, Michael Moore, played football at the University of Alabama and is now with the Frankfurt Galaxy of NFL Europe.

Officials said Moore was being booked on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle when gunfire erupted.

LOS ANGELES - University of California, Los Angeles doctors discharged on Saturday one of the Guatemalan twins born joined at the head and separated last August in a 23-hour operation at the hospital.

Both girls continue to improve after being readmitted to the hospital last month, doctors said.

Maria de Jesus Quiej Alvarez smiled shyly for reporters and television cameras in a courtyard of UCLA's Mattel Children's Hospital as medical personnel prepared to take her to a private home in the area.

Her sister, Maria Teresa Quiej Alvarez, is still hospitalized, recovering from surgery to implant a fluid-draining shunt in her head.

The girls, 23 months old, returned home to Belen, Guatemala, in January but were flown back to Los Angeles on May 22 after both had medical problems.