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NewsAugust 17, 2003

Zoo closes petting areas because of E. coli PHILADELPHIA -- The Philadelphia Zoo closed two petting areas as a precaution Saturday after two children who visited the zoo last month came down with E. coli infections. Zoo officials do not think its Children's Zoo or African farmyard is the source of the infections...

Zoo closes petting areas because of E. coli

PHILADELPHIA -- The Philadelphia Zoo closed two petting areas as a precaution Saturday after two children who visited the zoo last month came down with E. coli infections.

Zoo officials do not think its Children's Zoo or African farmyard is the source of the infections.

The zoo tests all animals in public contact areas for E. coli twice a year, and plans to test the animals again for the strain that sickened the girls.

The girls visited the zoo in late July, and had no other risk factor in common, city health officials said.

Both recovered from the illness, which in extreme cases can cause serious kidney damage and death.

Hospital sued over claims of unnecessary surgeries

REDDING, Calif. -- A lawsuit against Tenet Healthcare Corp. claims doctors at a California hospital performed unnecessary heart surgery on hundreds of patients, including country music star Merle Haggard.

The suit, filed Friday against Tenet and eight doctors, is the latest in a series of probes and lawsuits involving the nation's second-largest for-profit hospital chain.

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Fifty-one of the 366 patients in the suit have died. The suit contends some died from procedures performed at Redding Medical Center in Northern California.

Haggard, 66, received two hMore than 100 other lawsuits have been filed since last fall, when federal investigators accused two Redding doctors of performing unnecessary operations on healthy patients.

Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Tenet owns and operates 114 hospitals in 16 states.

Microsoft: Internet attack causing no problems

SEATTLE -- The second wave of an Internet attack by the "blaster" worm barely caused a ripple Saturday.

Microsoft Corp. said it had no major problems from the worm's attempt to turn thousands of infected computers into instruments targeting the software company's Web site and network.

The Redmond-based company had not noticed any extraordinary network congestion, spokesman Sean Sundwall said. There were also no reports of customers having major problems accessing the targeted Web site, which houses a software patch that fixes the flaw exploited by the worm.

The virus-like infection, also dubbed "LovSan" or "MSBlast," exploits a flaw in most current versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system for personal computers, laptops and server computers.

As of Saturday afternoon, the worm had infected more than 423,000 computers around the world since Monday, according to security firm Symantec Corp.

-- From wire reports

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