Plague

Bubonic plague-carrying fleas have been found on ground squirrels at two camping sites in the Angeles National Forest, authorities said. Camp Barley Flats and the Manzanita Loop portion of the Chilao campground have been closed to the public to allow workers to treat the grounds and burrows with flea sprays and powders, Los Angeles County health officials said. The camping sites are about 30 miles north of Los Angeles.

Africa's worst locust plague in 30 years is almost over, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said Thursday. An FAO statement said the population of desert locusts that ravaged crops in North and Central Africa last year has been virtually wiped out by pesticide spraying and lack of rain. Millions of locusts also perished in an unprecedented flight over the Atlantic last October. Only Niger and Mali have been infested in the last 10 days and only small numbers of locusts persist in West and North Africa.

The epidemic of plague that terrified Indians, generated scary headlines and stampeded some nations into weaving a cordon sanitaire around this country last month was, in fact, a "limited outbreak," U.S. and Russian public health experts reported Tuesday.

Los Angeles County health officials are conducting investigations of sylvatic plague in animals found in four hilly areas. Evidence of exposure was found in a ground squirrel and coyote in Griffith Park, in two stray dogs in Topanga and Santa Clarita and in a domestic cat in Rancho Palos Verdes. The disease, which in humans usually occurs as bubonic plague, can be transmitted by bites from infected fleas.

Tests done by federal health officials have confirmed that a wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park died of the plague. Eric York, 37, died Nov. 2 in his home at the Grand Canyon. He had done a necropsy on a mountain lion a few days earlier, and tests on the big cat show it too had died of the plague. After suspecting plague in York's death, National Park Service officials began precautionary antibiotic treatment of nearly 50 people. None became ill.

A rare form of plague has killed at least 61 people at a diamond mine in remote northeastern Congo, and authorities fear that hundreds more who fled into the forest to escape contagion are already infected and dying, the World Health Organization said. The agency's Dr. Eric Bertherat said the outbreak had been building since December around a mine near Zobia, 170 miles north of Kisangani. Nearly all the 7,000 miners have abandoned the affected area.

Plague cases multiplied across India on Wednesday as the scourge spread into the region surrounding Bombay, to the heart of the capital, New Delhi, and across the country to the teeming city of Calcutta. Nearly 1,000 people have been stricken by the disease, which kills if not treated, authorities in New Delhi said.

A man who said he was a white supremacist was arrested for allegedly obtaining bubonic plague bacteria through the mail, and investigators say they are trying to learn what he planned to do with it. Larry W. Harris had "rather radical views" and told colleagues at a food testing lab where he worked that he was a white supremacist and sympathetic to the militia movement, Superior Labs spokesman Brad Starrett said Tuesday.

Four or five days a week throughout the spring, summer and fall, Ted L. Brown laces up his steel-toed Red Wing boots, plants a wide-brimmed canvas hat on his head and hits the road. He roams the rugged mountains and mesas of rural northern New Mexico, interviewing residents and looking for fleas. It's hot, dirty and potentially dangerous, but he loves his job. In late 20th-Century America, Brown tracks plague for a living.

Plague has been found in the squirrel population at a popular camping site on Palomar Mountain in northern San Diego County, health officials said Wednesday. Though plague is not uncommon among the squirrels there, this year's discovery is earlier than most years. Vector control officials take yearly blood samples from squirrels at the Doane Valley Campground and other spots on the mountain. Plague is a bacterial disease in wild rodents that can be transmitted to humans through the bite of infected fleas.