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Wendy's pulls sandwich lettuce amid E.coli outbreak concerns
COLUMBUS (AP) -- The fast-food chain Wendy's says it is pulling lettuce from sandwiches in its restaurants in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania after people eating them there reported falling ill.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday it is trying to determine whether romaine lettuce is the source of an E. coli outbreak that has sickened at least 37 people and whether romaine used at Wendy's was also served or sold at other businesses.
The CDC said one person was also sickened in Indiana. A message was left with Wendy's about lettuce on sandwiches in that state.
The CDC said there is no evidence that romaine sold in grocery stores is linked to the E. coli outbreak. The agency also said it is not advising people to stop eating at Wendy's or not to eat romaine lettuce.
Wendy's says lettuce used in its salads is different and not affected by its decision to pull the lettuce from sandwiches. The company said it is cooperating with the CDC.
"As a company, we are committed to upholding our high standards of food safety and quality," Wendy's said in a statement.
Actor Gary Busey charged with sex offenses at convention
CHERRY HILL, N.J. (AP) -- Actor Gary Busey has been charged with sexual offenses at a New Jersey fan convention this month.
Busey, 78, was charged Friday with two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual contact, one count of attempted criminal sexual contact and one count of harassment, Cherry Hill police said Saturday.
The charges stem from offenses at the annual Monster Mania Convention at the Doubletree Hotel on Aug. 12-14 in Cherry Hill, a Philadelphia suburb, police said.
Busey, who lives in Malibu, California, was scheduled as a featured guest for all three days of the event.
Police did not immediately respond to a message seeking details. It also wasn't clear whether Busey has an attorney to comment on the charges, and a representative didn't immediately return a message seeking comment Saturday.
Busey is widely known as a character actor, largely in supporting roles, though he came to attention and was nominated for an Oscar for best actor for playing the title role in the 1978 film "The Buddy Holly Story."
Police: Customer kills security guard at Texas restaurant
DeSOTO, Texas (AP) -- A customer at a restaurant and entertainment venue in suburban Dallas fatally shot a security guard after arguing over the business' rules, police said.
Derek Phillips, 47, of Arlington, died after being shot multiple times about 10 p.m. Friday at Brickhouse Lounge in DeSoto, police Lt. Chris Huerta said Saturday.
Phillips, who was not armed, was shot with a handgun, Huerta said. Huerta said police were still trying to determine the nature of the argument.
The suspected gunman, Toussel Kuhn, 48, of Savannah, was arrested on a murder warrant after fleeing the scene, then crashing his vehicle in neighboring Glenn Heights, according to Huerta.
Kuhn was shot and wounded by a bystander as he fled, Huerta said. The bystander, whose name was not immediately released, was not arrested.
Kuhn was treated at a hospital, then arrested and taken to the Dallas County jail where he was being held without bond. Jail records did not list an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Metal-detecting stranger finds woman's ring lost at sea
HAMPTON, N.H. (AP) -- A Massachusetts woman's diamond wedding ring, a family heirloom, is back on her finger after a man with a metal detector responded to her social media plea for help and found it at the bottom of the ocean.
Francesca Teal told The Boston Globe that she was tossing a football with her husband this month at North Beach in Hampton, New Hampshire, when the ring that once belonged to her great-grandmother slipped off her finger.
They couldn't find the ring in the water after hours of searching, the 29-year-old from Groveland said.
Teal posted about the ordeal on Facebook and asked anyone who might frequent the beach with a metal detector to be on the lookout. Her post was shared thousands of times and got the attention of a man named Lou Asci.
Asci, 60 of Marshfield, put on a wetsuit and headlamp and went into the water searching for the ring with his metal detector. The first two days he went looking, he had no luck.
"I don't take failure all too well," Asci told the newspaper. "I wanted to go back and give it one last shot."
That's when he found the ring buried beneath the sandy ocean floor, he said. He sent Teal a picture, writing in a message: "Please tell me this is the ring so I can finally get off this beach."
Asci returned the ring to Teal's home, and her husband got on one knee to place it back on her finger.
Jill Biden tests negative for COVID-19, will go to Delaware
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) -- First lady Jill Biden has tested negative for COVID-19 and will leave South Carolina, where she had isolated since vacationing with President Joe Biden, and rejoin him at their Delaware beach home, her office said Sunday.
The White House announced on Tuesday that the 71-year-old first lady, who like her husband has been twice-vaccinated and twice-boosted with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, had tested positive for the coronavirus. She first had symptoms on Monday.
The 79-year-old president recovered from a rebound case of the virus on Aug. 7.
Jill Biden was prescribed the antiviral drug Paxlovid and isolated at the Kiawah Island vacation home for five days before receiving negative results from two consecutive COVID-19 tests, spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander said. Jill Biden planned to travel to Delaware later Sunday.
Dorli Rainey, symbol of Occupy Movement, dies at 95
SEATTLE (AP) -- Dorli Rainey, a self-described "old lady in combat boots" who became a symbol of the Occupy protest movement when she was photographed after being pepper-sprayed by Seattle police, has died. She was 95.
The longtime political activist died on Aug. 12, the Seattle Times reported. Her daughter, Gabriele Rainey, told the newspaper her mom was "so active because she loved this country, and she wanted to make sure that the country was good to its people."
Rainey was a fixture in the local progressive movement for decades, demonstrating for racial justice, affordable housing and public transit, and against war, nuclear weapons and big banks.
In November 2011, in the early days of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Rainey, then 84, joined protesters in blocking downtown intersections. She was hit when Seattle police used pepper spray to clear the crowd.
Fellow protesters poured milk over her face to ease the sting, and a seattlepi.com photographer, Joshua Trujillo, captured a stunning image of her staring defiantly into the camera, her eyes red and milk dripping off her face.
The photo become a worldwide symbol for the protest movement. She was profiled by The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Associated Press and The Guardian.
"It's a gruesome picture," she told the AP. "I'm really not that bad looking."
Then-Mayor Mike McGinn apologized and ordered a review of the incident. Rainey was back out protesting a couple days later.
"Dorli is legendary, and deservedly so, for her activism," McGinn said Friday. "She was just omnipresent and a conscience and a voice for change, and I deeply, deeply, deeply respected her."
Rainey was born in Austria in 1926. She was a Red Cross nurse and then worked in Europe as a technical translator for the U.S. Army for 10 years. She married Max Rainey, a civil engineer who got a job with Boeing, and they moved to the Seattle area in 1956.
Car blast kills daughter of Russian know as 'Putin's brain'
MOSCOW (AP) -- The daughter of an influential Russian political theorist often referred to as "Putin's brain" was killed in a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow, authorities said Sunday.
The Moscow branch of the Russian Investigative Committee said preliminary information indicated 29-year-old TV commentator Daria Dugina was killed by an explosive planted in the SUV she was driving Saturday night.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But the bloodshed gave rise to suspicions that the intended target was her father, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist philosopher and writer.
Dugin is a prominent proponent of the "Russian world" concept, a spiritual and political ideology that emphasizes traditional values, restoration of Russia's power and the unity of all ethnic Russians throughout the world. He is also a vehement supporter of Russia's sending of troops into Ukraine.
The explosion took place as his daughter was returning from a cultural festival she had attended with him. Some Russian media reports cited witnesses as saying that the SUV belonged to Dugin and that he had decided at the last minute to travel in another vehicle.
The vivid act of violence, unusual for Moscow, is likely to aggravate tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
Polio in US,UK and Israel reveals the rare risk of oral vaccine
LONDON (AP) -- For years, global health officials have used billions of drops of an oral vaccine in a remarkably effective campaign aimed at wiping out polio in its last remaining strongholds -- typically, poor, politically unstable corners of the world.
Now, in a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there. The original source of the virus? The oral vaccine itself.
Scientists have long known about this extremely rare phenomenon. That is why some countries have switched to other polio vaccines. But these incidental infections from the oral formula are becoming more glaring as the world inches closer to eradication of the disease and the number of polio cases caused by the wild, or naturally circulating, virus plummets.
Since 2017, there have been 396 cases of polio caused by the wild virus, versus more than 2,600 linked to the oral vaccine, according to figures from the World Health Organization and its partners.
"We are basically replacing the wild virus with the virus in the vaccine, which is now leading to new outbreaks," said Scott Barrett, a Columbia University professor who has studied polio eradication. "I would assume that countries like the U.K. and the U.S. will be able to stop transmission quite quickly, but we also thought that about monkeypox."
The latest incidents represent the first time in several years that vaccine-connected polio virus has turned up in rich countries. Earlier this year, officials in Israel detected polio in an unvaccinated 3-year-old, who suffered paralysis. Several other children, nearly all of them unvaccinated, were found to have the virus but no symptoms.
In June, British authorities reported finding evidence in sewage that the virus was spreading, though no infections in people were identified. Last week, the government said all children in London ages 1 to 9 would be offered a booster shot.
In the U.S., an unvaccinated young adult suffered paralysis in his legs after being infected with polio, New York officials revealed last month. The virus has also shown up in New York sewers, suggesting it is spreading.
Lopez and Affleck celebrate marriage with friends, family
(AP) -- Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck said "I do" again this weekend.
But instead of in a late night Las Vegas drive through chapel, this time it was in front of friends and family in Georgia, a person close to the couple who was not authorized to speak publicly said Sunday.
According to People Magazine, the wedding was held at Affleck's home outside of Savannah, Georgia, with all of their kids present for the proceedings on Saturday.
The celebrity couple were officially married last month in Las Vegas, which Lopez shared with fans in her "On the J Lo" newsletter.
"Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient," Lopez wrote last month, signing off as Jennifer Lynn Affleck.
Lopez, 53, and Affleck, 50, famously dated in the early 2000s. They starred together in 2003's "Gigli" and 2004's "Jersey Girl" and became engaged but didn't wed at the time.
Paparazzi has feverishly trailed the couple since they rekindled their romance last year, from the earliest stages of the courtship, to their red carpet debut at last year's Venice International Film Festival and their recent honeymoon in Paris.
Representatives for the couple did not immediately respond to request for comment Sunday.