■ UNITED STATES
Disney ride catches fire
A ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida has closed after a small fire broke out, sending one woman to the hospital with minor injuries. Disney spokeswoman Andrea Finger says a truck engine at the Kilimanjaro Safari ride caught on fire Sunday when an engine hose failed. The blaze was mostly out by the time fire officials arrived. The unidentified woman was taken to hospital after complaining of a knee injury when she jumped from a truck. Finger said three other guests have been treated on the scene for minor injuries.
■ UNITED STATES
Unit heads for Philippines
A unit of the National Guard was scheduled to leave yesterday for a training exercise in the Philippines, the first time New Mexico guard troops will visit the Pacific islands since World War II. Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 200th Infantry, based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, will participate in the Balikatan 2008 Training Exercise later this month. The unit is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Marc Arellano. New Mexico has a special connection to the Philippines because of the infamous Bataan Death March at the hands of the Japanese during World War II, which included captured troops from the New Mexico National Guard's 200th Coast Artillery.
■ UNITED STATES
Ski resorts hit by reforms
The standoff in Congress over immigration reform is hitting home in ski country this winter. Vermont's Stowe Mountain Resort, for example, usually relies on about two dozen seasonal foreign workers as instructors. Not this year. Stowe had to do "heavy duty recruiting" for its ski school, including a first-ever hiring clinic in last month, human resources director Julie Frailey said. "We need to find some folks," Frailey said. "We do whatever we can without dropping our standards at all." Ski resorts are among the first of seasonal businesses to feel the pinch from a change in federal law that cut back the number of visas for foreign workers.
■ UNITED STATES
Cancer Web sites have errors
Five percent of breast cancer Web sites have mistakes, with those involving alternative or comple-mentary medicine the most likely to be misleading, US researchers reported yesterday. But breast cancer information available on the Internet is more accurate than others carrying health information, the team at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in the University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston found. "Our current recommenda-tion to patients is to be skeptical, make sure what patients read is applicable to their specific medical well-being and not to take action without consulting a clinician," said Funda Meric-Bernstam, who led the study.
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