In brief: Hermine hits Mexico, headed toward Texas
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – Tropical Storm Hermine slammed into Mexico’s northern Gulf coast near the U.S. border late Monday with winds of 65 mph, threatening heavy rains that could cause flash flooding in Mexico and Texas.
Mexican authorities urged people to move to shelters while officials in Texas offered sandbags and warned of flash floods as Hermine neared. The storm was expected to cross the border in the coming hours after touching land about 40 miles south of Brownsville, Texas. It was expected to push northward up Texas and weaken into a weaken into a tropical depression on this afternoon or evening.
Hermine “will briefly be over Mexico, and then we’re expecting it to produce very heavy rainfall over south Texas,” said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the U.S. National Hurricane Center. “We’re expecting widespread rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches with isolated amounts of a foot possible.”
Ex-soldier takes hostages
SAVANNAH, Ga. – A former Army soldier seeking help for mental problems at a Georgia military hospital took three workers hostage at gunpoint Monday before authorities persuaded him to surrender.
No one was hurt and no shots were fired in the short standoff at Winn Army Community Hospital on Fort Stewart, said fort spokesman Kevin Larson.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Phillips, a senior Fort Stewart commander, said the former soldier was seeking help for mental problems that were “connected, I’m quite certain, to his past service.”
“He hadn’t gotten the care that he wanted and he wanted it now,” Phillips said, based on what one of the hostages had told him. “He’d had some experiences that could lead one to believe there were after-effects to his service.”
Plane crashes on street
HENDERSON, Nev. – A small plane crashed and burst into flames on a street in a southern Nevada residential neighborhood Monday, killing one person and badly injuring three others, authorities said.
Las Vegas Metropolitan police Sgt. John Sheahan said two males and two females were aboard the single-engine Piper Cherokee when it crashed in Henderson, just south of Las Vegas. He said it was a miracle no one on the ground was injured.
“I think we can attribute that to the pilot trying to put it down in a safe place,” he said. “You’re talking the plane crashed maybe 20 or 30 feet (from the nearest home).”
DENVER – A wind-driven wildfire in the rugged Colorado foothills spread across 5 1/2 square miles Monday, destroying an unknown number of homes and triggering the evacuation of 1,000 others, authorities said.
No injuries have been reported.
The fire started Monday morning in Four Mile Canyon northwest of Boulder, and erratic winds gusting to 45 mph spread the flames quickly.
About 100 firefighters were on the scene, and the winds calmed enough by late afternoon that three aerial tankers could start dropping fire retardant.
’Shrooms help cancer patients
LOS ANGELES – The psychedelic drug psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” can improve mood and reduce anxiety and depression in terminal cancer patients, Los Angeles researchers reported Monday.
A single modest dose of the hallucinogen, whose reputation was severely tarnished by widespread nonmedical use in the psychedelic ’60s and ethical lapses by researchers such as Timothy Leary, can improve patients’ functioning for as long as six months, allowing them to spend their last days with more peace, researchers said.
The research was a pilot study involving only 12 patients, but it is viewed as a first step in restoring the drug to respectability.
“This is a landmark study in many ways,” said Dr. Stephen Ross, clinical director of the Center of Excellence on Addiction at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, who was not involved in the research.