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California teacher dies after being bitten by a bat inside her classroom
A central California teacher died last month after she was bitten by a bat that presumably had rabies inside her classroom, officials and a friend of the woman, marking the third such fatality in North America in recent weeks.
In the wake of Leah Seneng’s death on Nov. 22, public health officials are warning the public about the dangers of bats, which are the most common source of human rabies in the U.S. Even though fewer than 10 people in the country die from rabies each year, it is almost always fatal if not treated quickly.
Seneng, 60, found a bat in her classroom in mid-October, her friend Laura Splotch told KFSN-TV. She tried to scoop it up and take it outside but it bit her, Splotch said.
Seneng did not immediately have symptoms of rabies but she fell ill weeks later and was taken to the hospital, where she was put into a medically-induced coma and died days later, Splotch told the TV station.
“It’s devastating to see her in that state, with all the machines hooked up and everything, it was pretty upsetting and scary,” Splotch told KFSN.
According to her Facebook profile, Seneng was an art teacher at Bryant Middle School in Dos Palos, California. The Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified School District, called Seneng “a dedicated and compassionate educator.”
“We were shocked to learn that Leah’s passing was related to contracting rabies, most likely from being bitten by a bat and we are cooperating with the Merced County Department of Public Health on their investigation,” the school district said in a statement. “We live and work in a community known to have bats and other wildlife around school grounds, and we will continue to help educate our community regarding the dangers associated with coming into direct contact with any wild animal, including bats.”
Merced County confirmed the rabies exposure but, due to privacy laws, did not release the deceased’s name. The California Department of Public Health confirmed that the victim died after contracting rabies.
“Bites from bats can be incredibly small and difficult to see or to detect. It is important to wash your hands and look for any open wounds after touching a wild animal, and to seek immediate medical care if bitten,” CDPH Director Dr. Tomás J. Aragón said in a statement. “It is always safest to leave wild animals alone. Do not approach, touch, or try to feed any animals that you don’t know.”
At least two other people in North America have died of rabies after encountering a bat in recent weeks. Last month, health officials in Canada announced that a child died from rabies after being exposed to a bat in their room. About a week before that, officials announced a U.S. citizen died from rabies after being exposed to a bat in western Minnesota in July.
How is rabies spread and what are the symptoms?
Rabies is a deadly viral infection that attacks the nervous system in humans and animals, causing brain and spinal cord inflammation. It is typically spread to humans through direct contact with the saliva of an infected animal through scratching or biting.
Rabies is commonly found in bats, raccoons, foxes, skunks and some household pets. Without proper and prompt treatment after symptoms appear, rabies is nearly 100 percent fatal in both animals and humans, according to Haldimand and Norfolk Health Services, where the child was admitted.
Treatment has proven to be nearly 100% effective at preventing the disease if someone is exposed, though it must start before symptoms appear.
Bats pose a unique risk because their scratches can be hard to notice due to their small teeth, and bats cannot be vaccinated through provincial programs, health officials said.
If bitten by an animal suspected of carrying the virus, health officials advise washing the wound thoroughly with soap and water for 15 minutes and immediately seeking medical attention.
According to the CDC, the incubation period of rabies may last from weeks to months, depending on the location of exposure, severity of exposure and age.
“The first symptoms of rabies, called prodrome, maybe like the flu, including weakness, discomfort, fever, or headache. There also may be discomfort, prickling, or an itching sensation at the site of the bite. These symptoms may last for several days,” the CDC says.
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Appeals court upholds TikTok ban, declining to block law that would force sale
Washington — A federal appeals court upheld a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S., dealing another setback to the widely popular video-sharing app as the federal government seeks to force a sale over its Chinese ties.
A panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the Justice Department in declining to review the petition for relief from TikTok and ByteDance, its Chinese parent company.
“We conclude the portions of the Act the petitioners have standing to challenge, that is the provisions concerning TikTok and its related entities, survive constitutional scrutiny,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion. “We therefore deny the petitions.”
“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” Ginsburg said. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
The decision likely tees up a fight at the Supreme Court over the law’s ultimate fate. The parties asked the court to make a decision by Friday so there is enough time for the Supreme Court to review the case before the law takes effect on Jan. 19. The justices could agree to hear the case or let the appeals court’s ruling stand as the final word on the matter.
President Biden signed a law in April that gave TikTok nine months to sever ties with ByteDance or lose access to app stores and web-hosting services in the U.S. The law quickly passed Congress.
Lawmakers and national security officials have long had suspicions about TikTok’s ties to China, repeatedly warning that it’s a national security threat because the Chinese government could use it to spy on and collect data from its roughly 170 million American users or covertly influence the U.S. public by amplifying or suppressing certain content. The concern is warranted, they have argued, because Chinese national security laws require organizations to cooperate with intelligence gathering.
The legal arguments
TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge in May that called the legislation “an extraordinary and unconstitutional assertion of power” based on “speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation” that would suppress the speech of millions of Americans.
“In reality, there is no choice,” the petition said, adding that a forced sale “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.”
The Chinese government vowed to block the sale of TikTok’s algorithm which tailors content recommendations to each user. A new buyer would be forced to rebuild the algorithm that powers the app. Lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance said “such a fundamental rearchitecting is not remotely feasible” under the restrictions within the legislation.
“The platform consists of millions of lines of software code that have been painstakingly developed by thousands of engineers over multiple years,” the petition said.
During oral arguments in September, the court appeared skeptical of TikTok’s argument that free expression outweighs national security concerns, but the three judges were also critical of the government’s stance.
TikTok’s lawyer Andrew Pincus said the law “is unprecedented and its effect would be staggering.”
“This law imposes extraordinary speech prohibition based on indeterminate future risks,” Pincus said. “Notwithstanding the obvious less restrictive alternatives, the government has not come anywhere near satisfying strict scrutiny.”
Judge Sri Srinivasan said, under TikTok’s rationale, the U.S. would not be able to ban a foreign country from owning a major media company in the U.S. if the two are at war.
“Is your submission that Congress can’t bar the enemy’s ownership of a major media source in the U.S.?” Srinivasan, an Obama appointee, asked Pincus.
When Pincus noted that news outlets like Politico and Business Insider are owned by foreign entities, Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, quickly chimed in, “but not foreign adversaries.”
Rao also pushed back on Pincus’ argument that Congress did not include any evidence of its claims that TikTok poses a national security risk in the legislation.
“I know Congress doesn’t legislate all the time, but here they did,” she said. “They actually passed a law and many of your arguments want us to treat them as an agency. It’s strange. It’s a very strange framework for thinking about our first branch of government.”
Attorney Jeffrey Fisher, who represents TikTok creators, compared the restrictions on TikTok to the U.S. government hypothetically banning bookstores from selling books written by foreign authors in conjunction with a foreign government.
“We’re not talking about banning Tocqueville in the United States,” Rao countered. “We’re talking about a determination by the political branches that there’s a foreign adversary that is potentially exercising covert influence in the United States. Very different.”
Ginsburg, a Reagan appointee, expressed skepticism over the notion that the law singles out TikTok.
“It describes a category of companies, all of which are owned by or controlled by adversary powers and subjects one company to an immediate necessity,” he said, noting that the company and the government have been engaged in unsuccessful negotiations for years to try to find a solution to the national security concerns. “That’s the only company that sits in that situation.”
Justice Department lawyer Daniel Tenny said the data on Americans that could be collected through the app “would be quite valuable to a foreign adversary if it were trying to approach an American to try to have them be an intelligence asset.” Tenny also spoke about the risk of content manipulation by China.
“What is being targeted is a foreign company that controls this recommendation engine and many aspects of the algorithm that’s used to determine what content is shown to Americans on the app,” Tenny said.
But Srinivasan said it’s Americans’ choice to use the app, despite what content may appear.
“The fact that that’s being denied subjects this to serious First Amendment scrutiny,” he said.
He later added, “What gives arguable force to the other side’s First Amendment argument is that it’s not just that the government is targeting curation that occurs abroad. It’s the reason the curation occurring abroad is being targeted, and the reason is a concern about the content consequences of that curation in the U.S.”
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Colombian police arrest woman known as “The Doll,” a reported assassin for gang linked to multiple murders
Police in Colombia announced the arrest this week of a woman nicknamed “The Doll,” who local media reported to be a notorious hitwoman employed by a criminal gang linked to multiple murders in the country.
The Magdalena Medio region’s police force posted a video on social media this week showing the woman, identified by local news outlet Diario del Norte as 22-year-old Karen Juliet Ojeda Rodríguez, in custody along with a male suspect.
The police said the woman — identified as “La Muñeca” or “The Doll” — and the male suspect whom they identified by the alias “Leopoldo,” were taken into custody for possession of a 9mm handgun, which was being put through ballistic tests to determine whether it had been used in crimes in the city of Barrancabermeja.
Lieutenant Colonel Mauricio Herrera described the arrests as “important results in combating murder.”
Diario del Norte described the 22-year-old woman as the second-in-command of a gang called “Los de la M,” which battles with other criminal groups for the control of drug trafficking in the country’s northern region of Santander.
The newspaper reports that “La Muñeca” plunged into the criminal underworld at age 18, and was at the time of her arrest in charge of coordinating targeted assassinations, and even killed her ex-partner, a man known as “Orejas”, or “Ears.”
CBS News reached out to the Magdalena Medio’s press office for more information but received no immediate response.
According to El Espectador, more than 120 killings have taken place in the city of Barrancabermeja so far this year.
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Aftershocks still occurring after 7.0 earthquake off California coast
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