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Can’t take the heat Small ice figures are seen on the stairs of Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, Germany on Wednesday, as part of an art project by World Wide Fund for Nature. One thousand ice figures by Brasilian artist Nele Azevedo were melting within 30 minutes, symbolizing the effect of global warming.
AP PHOTO
BEIJING
Swine vaccine watched
The answer may be near to a crucial question about vaccine for the advancing swine flu — one shot or two?
Chinese officials say they are about to approve vaccines that prevent the new flu in a single dose.
If they’re right, it would be good news. Many health researchers fear it will take two shots to protect people, vastly complicating efforts to stem the spread of the illness.
The World Health Organization says it is encouraged after reviewing the test details from one of the two Chinese vaccines. However, experts said more results are needed from other vaccine makers to determine if one dose would be potent enough.
Australia-based CSL should know within days whether one dose of its vaccine, administered to volunteers in that country in late July, was enough.
SAN BRUNO, Calif.
Student shot on campus
A campus shooting has a Northern California college on lockdown as police search for a suspect who wounded a student.
The bleeding student came into the learning center at Skyline Community College in San Bruno about 1 p.m., said Leslie Shelton, director of the center.
“We were alerted there was an active shooter,” Shelton said.
The student had been shot in the buttocks, said Barbara Christensen, San Mateo Community College District director of community and government relations.
SWAT officers were searching buildings as the campus was evacuated, the school newspaper said on its Web site.
LOS CABOS, Mexico
Jimena plows into Baja
Hurricane Jimena plowed over Baja California on Wednesday, tearing off roofs, knocking down power poles and bringing welcome rainfall to a drought-stricken state.
The storm made landfall Wednesday afternoon between Puerto San Andresito and San Jaunico, sparsely populated area of fishing villages on the Pacific coast of the peninsula.
Wind gusts and heavy rains blew down dozens of trees and lamp posts in Loreto, the nearest significant resort town to the area where Jimena main landfall, according to Humberto Carmona, a city official manning an emergency response center.
WASHINGTON
Madoff probes mishandled
The watchdog of the Securities and Exchange Commission has found the agency consistently mishandled its five investigations of Bernard Madoff’s business, despite ample complaints over 16 years about the multibillion-dollar fraud.
But SEC inspector general David Kotz’s report found no evidence of any improper ties between officials and Madoff. Despite speculation that senior SEC officials may have tried to influence the probes, a summary of Kotz’s 450-page report released Wednesday also found no evidence of that.
The SEC enforcement staff, conducting investigations of Madoff’s business, “almost immediately caught (him) in lies and misrepresentations, but failed to follow up on inconsistencies” and rejected whistleblowers’ offers for additional evidence, the report says.