Hurricane Paul nears Category 3 status

MEXICO CITY - Hurricane Paul neared Category 3 status Monday with winds as high as 110 mph as it began curving toward the Baja California peninsula.

Paul was moving northwest at about 5 mph. Forecasters predicted it would strengthen further and could hit Mexico's Pacific coast in the next few days.

A hurricane watch was issued for the southern tip of Baja California, a resort area that has been battered by two other hurricanes this season.

The storm was on a course that would bring it just south of the peninsula late Tuesday before plowing into Mexico's Pacific coast near the resort of Mazatlan.

At 11 a.m. EDT, the storm was about 455 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas, known for deep-sea fishing and upscale hotels popular with Hollywood's elite. It had maximum sustained winds of 110 mph, just one short of becoming a Category 3 storm.

Mexico was struck by two Pacific hurricanes last month. Hurricane John battered Baja California, killing five people and destroying 160 homes, while Hurricane Lane hit the resort town of Mazatlan, causing relatively minor damage.

Dozens flooded out of homes in Texas

VIDOR, Texas - Floodwater surrounded dozens of homes and FEMA trailers in Southeast Texas on Monday after heavy rain sent the Neches River spilling over its banks.

The river was about 8 feet above flood stage Monday and was expected to remain at that level through Thursday, said Jeff Kelley, Orange County emergency management coordinator.

Kelley estimated about 40 homes had been destroyed.

The damage varied home to home because some had been built on stilts while others sit at ground level. In some cases, water was up to the roof lines.

The area had been hit hard by Hurricane Rita last year, and Kelley said a number of Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers were still in the area. The flooding, from water flowing down stream after last week's heavy rain, damaged homes in the communities of Lakeview, Connely Road and Four Oaks Ranch Road north of Vidor, about 90 miles east of Houston.

All Interstate 10 ramps between Beaumont and Vidor were closed, he said.

Utilities restore power; more wind and rain on the way

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Maine utility companies worked Sunday to complete power restoration for the last of thousands of customers who lost electricity earlier in the weekend.
High winds that buffeted the state Friday and persisted into Saturday caused damage to power lines that left many in the dark.

Central Maine Power Co. and Bangor Hydro Electric Co. warned that some outages would probably last into Sunday as repair crews were out in force.

The National Weather Service in Gray said a small but intense low-pressure system produced up to 3 inches of rain before moving off to the Maritimes, according to the National Weather Service in Gray.

The weather service said leftover wind gusts exceeding 30 miles per hour were common.

Skies cleared in the state capital and elsewhere Saturday after a blustery night with thunder rumbling amid heavy rain.

CMP said 18,500 customer accounts were affected by midday Saturday.

The company said restoration crews had been working since late Friday afternoon to keep up with outages, which were attributed to falling trees and limbs.

Hard-hit areas included Farmington, Brunswick, Lewiston and Bridgton, CMP said.

Bangor Hydro estimated that its total of affected meters — customers without power — was 3,277, with a big share in the Milo-Brownville area.

Thickening clouds Sunday night were expected to bring showers — most as rain, but possibly as snow in the north and mountains.

Wintry storm brings heavy snow, road closures

DENVER (AP) — Search and rescue crews in Moffat County using a Sno-Cat have rescued nearly a dozen hunters caught off-guard by a powerful storm that brought up to two feet of snow to some parts of northern Colorado.
There was less snow along the Front Range and in southern Colorado, but still enough to prompt authorities to close Independence Pass and urge caution for travelers elsewhere.

Several accidents on Interstate 25 near Castle Rock, including one in which a truck crashed into a state snowplow, forced authorities to close the highway's northbound lanes for about an hour Saturday morning. Truck driver Jancle Walters, 43, of Centennial was seriously injured and taken to Swedish Hospital.

Interstate 70 over Vail Pass was also closed for a few hours late Friday due to accidents, authorities said.

"When they close the road, it's really bad," said Colorado State Patrol dispatcher Verlaine Harris.

Virus may affect memory decades later, study finds

WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Forget where you left your glasses? Did those keys go missing again? Now you do not have to blame your spouse -- a virus may be to blame.

A family of viruses that cause a range of ills from the common cold to polio may be able to infect the brain and cause steady damage, a team at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota reported on Monday.

"Our study suggests that virus-induced memory loss could accumulate over the lifetime of an individual and eventually lead to clinical cognitive memory deficits," said Charles Howe, who reported the findings in the journal Neurobiology of Disease.

The viruses are called picornaviruses and infect more than 1 billion people worldwide each year. They include the virus that causes polio, as well as colds and diarrhea. People contract two or three such infections a year on average.

"We think picornavirus family members cross into the brain and cause a variety of brain injuries. For example, the polio virus can cause paralysis," Howe said.

"It can injure the spinal cord and different parts of the brain responsible for motor function. In the murine (mouse) virus we studied, it did the same thing and also injured parts of the brain responsible for memory."

The Mayo Clinic infected mice with a virus called Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus, which is similar to human poliovirus.

Infected mice later had difficulty learning to navigate a maze. Some were barely affected, while others were completely unable to manage, and when the mice were killed and their brains examined, a correlating amount of damage was seen in the hippocampus region, related to learning and memory.

One virus particularly likely to cause brain damage is enterovirus 71, which is common in Asia, the researchers said. It can cross over into the brain and cause encephalitis, a brain inflammation that can lead to coma and death.

"Our findings suggest that picornavirus infections throughout the lifetime of an individual may chip away at the cognitive reserve, increasing the likelihood of detectable cognitive impairment as the individual ages," the researchers wrote in their report.

"We hypothesize that mild memory and cognitive impairments of unknown etiology may, in fact, be due to accumulative loss of hippocampus function caused by repeated infection with common and widespread neurovirulent picornaviruses."

Other viruses are known to kill brain cells, including the herpes virus and human immunodeficiency virus or HIV.

Rabies tops "most infectious" diseases in China

BEIJING, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Rabies has killed more people in China than either tuberculosis or AIDS in each of the last five months, state media reported on Monday, prompting a crackdown in the capital to control unregistered dogs.

Pet dogs were shunned in the days of Mao Zedong as a symbol of bourgeois decadence but have become increasingly popular in the last decade with improved living standards.

But steep registration fees and poor education levels have fuelled an explosion in unregistered and wild dogs in Chinese cities.

Rabies killed 318 people in China in September alone, up 36.9 percent on a year earlier, the Shanghai Daily said, citing Health Ministry figures.

In the first nine months of 2006, the ministry recorded 2,254 rabies infections, up 26.69 percent on the same period last year, the paper said.

It said rabies had become the biggest killer among 23 of the most infectious diseases including TB, AIDS and hepatitis B, but the report did say when it had become the biggest killer. The list did not include the common flu.

Beijing, where only half of its estimated one million dogs are registered, kicked off a two-month campaign on Saturday to "reinforce regulations on dog ownership", after reporting 70,000 "pet-related injuries" in the first half of 2006, the paper said.

Some 2,660 people died of rabies in China in 2004, according to Health Ministry figures.