South Carolina News and Sports
If the number of swine flu cases grows epidemically in South Carolina, state officials say they’re as ready as they can be. They’re prepared with anti-viral medication, and a lot of it–$6.7 million worth. That’s how much state lawmakers voted to spend on the medicine a few years ago.
Department of Health and Environmental Control spokesman Jim Beasley says the state is warehousing 435,000 courses of the medication, thanks to a federal program that created a reduced price. [Read more...]
Mexican officials loweured their flu alert level in Mexico City Monday and are allowing restaurants, other businesses and public facilities like museums to reopen. At the same time, officials with the World Health Organization say the threat for the rest of the world is still very real and they’re considering raising the pandemic alert level, asserting that a pandemic is imminent, where the disease would reach every country.
Epidemiologist Dr. Robert Ball with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control says the spread of the disease would worsten economies around the world, at the height of a severe recession. “This is far more than a health crisis. This is a crisis of the entire society and economic infrastructure.”
Argentina, Peru and Cuba have banned flights to Mexico. Argentina is sending a plane to Mexico to pick up Argentines who want to leave Mexico. In Hong Kong, 350 Mexicans have been isolated in a hotel after a Mexican traveler there was determined to have swine flu. The President of Mexico is complaining of the backlash against Mexicans abroad. A chartered plane left Monday to pick up Mexicans in China and will make stops in several cities to pick up any Mexican citizen wanting to return home.
Ball says the swine flu has already hurt tourism in a number of countries and would have a major economic impact if a pandemic occurs, affecting world economies for years to come. “When you’re talking about anticipating significant absenteeism rates, in a falling economy. Tourism is already suffering dramatically and this will further weaken economies.”
Mexico has 727 reported cases of swine flu and 26 deaths from the virus. The U.S. has 245 cases in 35 states. Some U.S. officials have said that they suspect the number of cases in Mexico has been severely under-reported.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is holding two 6PM open house sessions in the state this week, Monday in Rock Hill for the Catawba nuclear power plant and Thursday in Seneca for the Oconee nuclear power plant. The sessions give citizens in both communities the opportunity to ask questions about the agency’s assessment of the safety performance at each plant over the previous year.
Several staff experts including managers and resident inspectors at the individual plants are on hand for the annual assessment meetings. NRC spokesman Roger Hanna says it the past the meetings were semi-formal with plant staff members making presentations and ending the sessions with questions from people who live near the respective facilities. [Read more...]
Domestic violence is at the top of the list when it comes to crime in South Carolina. Recently, a Verizon Wireless employee, Katrina Johnson, was killed after a domestic dispute. Monday, local leaders, including State Attorney General Henry McMaster, gathered at the North Charleston Verizon Call Center for a dedication to Johnson’s family. Johnson’s mother was presented with a $10,000 scholarship fund for Johnson’s children. McMaster explains that the problem of domestic violence is no stranger to the state.
“Still our number one crime problem in South Carolina, especially because it’s cyclical, that is children growing up in that kind of place where violence is resulted to like that, and drugs and alcohol and kicking a screaming and cutting are a way of life. They grow up and carry that with them and think that is the way they are supposed to behave themselves,” says McMaster.
McMaster says many times victims will not report the problem, so he encourages anyone who knows of a domestic violence dispute to report it.
“Statewide law enforcement gets about 36,000 domestic violence calls a year and most women won’t call the police for domestic violence until they’ve been beaten about 12 to 15 times,” says McMaster.
Verizon Wireless has a hopeline that allows anyone with a Verizon cell phone to dial # hope to report a domestic violence problem.
A disease growing in citrus trees has state environmentalists knocking on doors in the Lowcountry to track down the culprit.
Citrus trees may not survive in all of South Carolina, but they can be found quite numerous in the Lowcountry and surronding areas on the coast, specifically in someone’s backyard. Christel Harden with Clemson University’s Plant Industry Department says residents in Charleston, Beaufort, and Colleton counties may have inspectors knocking on their doors starting today (Tuesday) looking for those citrus trees with a disease called citrus greening.
“The disease will eventually kill the plant and before it kills the plant it causes the fruit to be very bad tasting, very bitter and sour, although it doesn’t cause any risk to human health, you can eat the fruit and it won’t hurt you, it just doesn’t taste good,” says Harden.
Citrus greening is a bacterial disease in trees that reduces production and destroys the economic value of the fruit it bears. Once a tree is infected, there is no cure. Harden says there have been two recent sightings of the citrus greening disease in Charleston, and the whole purpose of the inspectors surveying the coastal land is to determine the extent of the disease in the state so it doesn’t spread further. Although Harden doesn’t expect to find many more diseased trees in the state, she says they need to be sure.
“We don’t want the citrus greening disease to move out of Charleston County and into any of the citrus producing states, like California, Arizona and Texas, that don’t have that disease. So, that’s the reason there is a quarantine in Charleston County for the movement of citrus plants,” says Harden.
It will take 2 to 4 weeks for the inspectors to complete the surveys. Harden says every surveyor will have a photo identification and credentials from their agencies.
