Tainted

Not long ago, the global crisis in tainted and counterfeit drugs hit home for me. My cousin Laura - high-octane teacher, wife and mom - was rushed to her local emergency room. Six weeks earlier, she had had surgery for a broken tibia and fibula. Now a vein in her leg had clotted, and she needed immediate, high-dose anticoagulation. Physically and psychologically, Laura's first hospital stay had been bad enough. Unfortunately, after the surgery, no one had told her to stop taking her birth control pills because of the risk of clotting.

Good morning--Mike Cameron--You could lead a chorus of suspended players in singing "Tainted Love."

BERLIN -- A scandal of AIDS-tainted blood products that has panicked millions of Germans has awakened European health officials to even greater blood-supply hazards in Eastern Europe.Partly for that reason, and partly in response to the German panic, the 27-nation European Council is organizing a summit next month of national health ministers and AIDS experts in hopes of setting new standards for handling blood and blood products."We're working at this very moment to try and address this issue in order to avoid something like this happening again," said Dr. Jean Emmanuel, a blood-supply expert with the World Health Organization in Geneva.

In the wake of Friday's judicial ruling, Linda R. Tripp's defense lawyers said yesterday that they will likely seek to postpone their client's trial on state wiretapping charges until next year because they need more time to file motions. "This case has issues all over it," said Joseph Murtha, one of Tripp's lawyers. "It's only going to get more complicated." Those motions and his trial schedule make "it seem unrealistic that we will go to trial this year," Murtha added. State Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli said he would spend the coming days reviewing evidence to salvage the prosecution, after a ruling Friday by Howard Circuit Judge Diane O. Leasure that eliminated crucial testimony by a key witness.

DIGOS, Philippines -- As a presidential race tainted by violence and chicanery draws to a close, Vice President Joseph "Erap" Estrada is the man of the people to beat Monday.From a field of 10 1/2 candidates -- former first lady Imelda Marcos was in the race, dropped out and now is half-heartedly back in -- Filipino voters seem ready to elect a controversial former B-movie actor to navigate their country through the Asian financial turmoil and into the 21st century.Estrada's detractors scorn the 61-year-old, who has a seemingly insurmountable lead in the polls.

This latest entanglement for Miguel Tejada doesn't teach us anything new about baseball and performance-enhancing drugs. All it does is reinforce what we already knew, and the events of the past few days tell us that a lot of people needed reinforcing, or else they stay deluded about how bad this is. What Tejada's federal court appearance today - for allegedly lying to congressional investigators about his knowledge of teammates' use of performance-enhancing drugs...

In the wake of Friday's judicial ruling, Linda R. Tripp's defense lawyers said yesterday that they will likely seek to postpone their client's trial on state wiretapping charges until next year because they need more time to file motions. "This case has issues all over it," said Joseph Murtha, one of Tripp's lawyers. "It's only going to get more complicated." Those motions and his trial schedule make "it seem unrealistic that we will go to trial this year," Murtha added. State Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli said he would spend the coming days reviewing evidence to salvage the prosecution -- in light of a ruling Friday by Howard Circuit Judge Diane O. Leasure that eliminated crucial testimony by a key witness.

Thieves target auto GPS devices Thieves are breaking into autos in increasing numbers and grabbing popular Global Positioning System units. Campaign ad turns up the heat The latest television ad for Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. blames Baltimore's rising murder rate on Mayor Sheila Dixon, his chief rival in next month's primary election. Neglect at fire academy reported A new report details "unacceptable practices" that led to the death of recruit Racheal Wilson in a February training exercise.

NEW YORK - Sometime this week, after years of delays, a floating dredge is scheduled to begin scooping thousands of tons of accumulated mud from one of the main channels plied by the container ships that carry televisions, orange juice, furniture and almost every other imported or exported product into and out of New York Harbor.Within weeks other dredges will similarly attack mud that has clogged several other important channels and berths.Last week, a variety of federal officials and New Jersey politicians, including Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and Democratic Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, made much of the impending dredging, proclaiming an end to a four-year environmental battle over how to clear slightly contaminated mud from the dominant seaport on the East Coast without threatening public health or marine life.

The federal government is expected to announce today that it will for the first time require the seafood industry to keep detailed records of safety procedures and to label shellfish to show where it comes from.The new regulations are a major shift in the government's efforts to ensure the safety of seafood. They are aimed at preventing health problems from occurring rather than reacting to outbreaks of illness, said Dr. David A. Kessler, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.