FDA finds salmonella strain at second Mexican farm - Yahoo! News

FDA finds salmonella strain at second Mexican farm - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - The salmonella strain linked to a nationwide outbreak has been found in irrigation water and a serrano pepper at a Mexican farm, federal health officials said Wednesday.
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Dr. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's food safety chief, called the finding a key breakthrough in the case, as did another health official.

'We have a smoking gun, it appears,' said Dr. Lonnie King who directs the center for foodborne illnesses at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Acheson said the farm is in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Previously, the FDA had traced a contaminated jalapeno pepper to a farm in another part of Mexico.

Acheson and other officials were grilled at a congressional hearing about why the investigation originally focused on tomatoes.

The officials insisted that tomatoes still cannot be ruled out and that it is quite possible that the outbreak was caused by several different kinds of contaminated produce.

The outbreak has sickened more than 1,300 people since April.

Tomatoes had been the prime suspect in the nationwide outbreak for weeks. But last week, the FDA said only jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico were implicated in the nationwide salmonella outbreak. The FDA said then it had found the same strain of salmonell"

Widow Wants San Francisco Sanctuary Law Changed After Illegal Charged With Murder - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

FOXNews.com - Widow Wants San Francisco Sanctuary Law Changed After Illegal Charged With Murder - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News:
"A San Francisco woman whose husband and two sons were gunned down last month — allegedly by an illegal immigrant who remained in the city despite previous crimes — is demanding the city do something about its sanctuary law.

Danielle Bologna was widowed on June 22 when Edwin Ramos, 21, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, allegedly gunned down her husband, Anthony, and two sons, Matthew and Michael, in a road rage incident when her family was returning from a picnic.

Ramos has been charged with three counts of murder in the case, according to the San Francisco Chronicle."

Rising health care costs put focus on illegal immigrants - USATODAY.com

Rising health care costs put focus on illegal immigrants - USATODAY.com:
"Data on health care costs for illegal immigrants are sketchy because hospitals and community health centers don't ask about patients' legal status. In California, a 2004 study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform put the state's annual cost at $1.4 billion.

But while they account for less than 2% of national medical spending, their growing presence is a problem in places such as eastern North Carolina, one of the nation's poorest areas.

Statewide, illegal immigrants accounted for one in four new residents from 1990 to 2004, according to a University of North Carolina study. The state ranks ninth in the nation for illegal immigrants with more than 300,000, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

For hospitals, "the burden of the uninsured immigrant is huge," says Jeff Spade, vice president of the North Carolina Hospital Association. "It's exploded the amount of work that they have to do."

Steven Camarota of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies says offering non-emergency Medicaid to illegal immigrants would be more expensive than leaving them uninsured and in need of occasional hospital care. In those cases, hospitals lose money, and taxpayers pick up the tab.

"Either you enforce the law and don't have so many illegals, or you shut up about the cost," he says."

San Francisco goes further, adding adults at local expense. Some cities, including New York, encourage illegal immigrants to use public services such as health clinics without risking deportation.

At Duplin General Hospital, the challenge is staying afloat. Because so many patients are seniors on Medicare, low-income residents on Medicaid or uninsured people who can't pay their bills, it's difficult to turn a profit. "We're living off reserves," CEO Harvey Case says.

Border Patrol Agents Fire Tear Gas Over Border at Mexican Attackers

FOXNews.com - Border Patrol Agents Fire Tear Gas Over Border at Mexican Attackers :
"The Border Patrol says its agents have been attacked nearly 1,000 times during a one-year period."

SC Has a Clue

The State | 12/17/2007 | S.C. bill would enforce English:
"The head of South Carolina’s Senate has a message he wants to send to non-English speaking immigrants looking to use government services here: No hablamos espanol.

"Sen. Glenn McConnell’s proposal, among dozens of bills filed in anticipation of the coming legislative session, would require that all government paperwork and videos use only English."

Proposal to Let Noncitizens Join Md. Police Under Review - washingtonpost.com

Proposal to Let Noncitizens Join Md. Police Under Review - washingtonpost.com:

It never made sense to Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger: Immigrants who have green cards can join the U.S. military and fight America's wars but, like other noncitizens, are ineligible to work as police officers in Maryland and most other states.

Since 2004, Manger has championed the concept of lifting the citizenship requirement under certain circumstances. At his urging, the Maryland Police Training Commission, which oversees training and hiring standards for law enforcement agencies across the state, began studying the issue this year. A vote could come next month.

Illegal Immigrants in Md. and Va. Out-Earn U.S. Peers, Study Says - washingtonpost.com

Illegal Immigrants in Md. and Va. Out-Earn U.S. Peers, Study Says - washingtonpost.com:

Illegal immigrants in Maryland and Virginia make more money than illegal immigrants nationwide, but their incomes are substantially lower than those of native residents of those states, and they are much less likely to have health insurance, a report says.

The study, released today by the Center for Immigration Studies, estimates that there are 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the country. In Maryland, the 268,000 illegal immigrants are 5 percent of the state's population; in Virginia, they account for 3 percent of residents, with 259,000. The study used U.S. Census Bureau data from this year."

Here in MD we just had an insane tax increase, one which included $600M in expenditures to supply health insurance those who have none.

I'll be keeping watch to note whether or not the illegals will be getting any of that. My sense is that they will, MD politics being what it is.