National Digest: U.S. pledges $8 million to global effort to fight Ebola

HEALTH

U.S. pledges $8 million to Ebola response

The United States has pledged to provide $8 million to support the global response to the growing Ebola outbreak in Congo, officials said Tuesday. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced a $7 million commitment Tuesday at the World Health Assembly in Geneva that added to an initial $1 million pledge last week.

The outbreak is the most serious since the 2014 West Africa epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people.

At the World Health Assembly in Geneva on Tuesday, WHO officials said that there are 51 confirmed or probable cases of Ebola in the outbreak and that 27 of those people have died. Hundreds of people have been in contact with infected people and are being monitored, and they are candidates for the first round of an experimental vaccination campaign that began Monday.

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WHO officials estimate that outbreak-control efforts will cost $26 million over the next three months. As of Friday, the WHO had received commitments for about $9 million.

— Lena H. Sun

MAINE

Man gets 25 years

for mailing cyanide

A federal judge in Maine sentenced a man to 25 years in prison on Tuesday for mailing a fatal dose of cyanide to a suicidal Englishman. Judge John Woodcock’s ruling in U.S. District Court in Portland came four years after Sidney Kilmartin was arrested for mailing the poison to Andrew Denton of Hull, England. The case raised questions about Kilmartin’s history of mental illness and whether the act of mailing a fatal substance to a suicidal person was tantamount to murder.

Kilmartin, 56, of Windham, Maine, was found guilty in 2016 of mailing injurious articles resulting in death and witness tampering in a case that frequently was delayed in court.

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Investigators charged Kilmartin with advertising and mailing a substance he said was cyanide to several suicidal people. It was really Epsom salt. But the investigators found Kilmartin sent the real thing to Denton after Denton had threatened to report the fraud, and the Englishman used it to kill himself. Woodcock expressed sympathy for Kilmartin, who has attempted suicide in the past. But the judge added that his fraud and role in Denton’s death represented an “appalling moral vacuum” worthy of stiff punishment.

— Associated Press

UTAH

Sentence in child rape and abuse case

A self-styled Utah prophet accused of secretly marrying young girls because of his beliefs in polygamy and doomsday was sentenced Tuesday to at least 26 years and up to life in prison after pleading guilty to child rape and abuse charges.

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Samuel W. Shaffer was charged after police raided a remote desert compound built to house an upstart group called Knights of the Crystal Blade, the Spectrum newspaper in St. George reported. Shaffer and a friend, John Coltharp, both 34, formed the group based on arcane Mormon ideas long abandoned by the mainstream church and each believed himself to be married to two young girls, prosecutors said.

The four girls were found in December hidden in 50-gallon plastic water barrels and an abandoned trailer near the makeshift compound made of shipping containers about 275 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Coltharp is also facing child bigamy and other charges.

— Associated Press

Judge orders 30-year-old to move out of parents' home: An Upstate New York judge Tuesday ordered a 30-year-old man to move out of his parents' house after they went to court to have him ejected. Michael Rotondo told the judge that he knows his parents want him out of the home. But he argued that as a family member, he's entitled to six months' more time. State Supreme Court Justice Donald Greenwood rejected that as outrageous, the Post-Standard of Syracuse reported. Mark and Christina Rotondo brought the court case after several eviction letters offering money and other help were ignored.

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CDC employee's death ruled suicide: The death of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employee whose body was found in a river in Atlanta has been ruled a suicide by drowning. Fulton County chief medical examiner Jan Gorniak said Tuesday that there was evidence that Timothy Cunningham, 35, had used marijuana but that that was not a contributing factor in his death. Cunningham, who worked at the Atlanta-based CDC as an epidemiologist, disappeared Feb. 12. Authorities said fishermen found his body April 3 on the west bank of the Chattahoochee River.

Man sentenced in supplying infected body parts for research: A Michigan man who supplied cadavers and body parts for medical training was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison for failing to disclose that they were infected with hepatitis or HIV. Arthur Rathburn, 64, of Grosse Pointe Park blamed any problems on groups that provided him with bodies.

— From news services

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