Metro Briefs

VIRGINIA

RICHMOND

Flu ’emergencies’ seen leveling off

The percentage of visits to emergency departments and urgent-care centers for influenza-related illness has plateaued and mirrors what’s going on in the rest of the country, state health officials said.

State health Commissioner Karen Remley said Thursday that patients reporting swine flu-related symptoms make up about 14 percent of emergency-room and urgent-care medical visits. Twelve people have died statewide from influenza-related problems.

Meantime, a vaccine shortage continues. Dr. Remley said 598,000 doses have been received or are on the way to the state. School-age children are being targeted for immunization in more than 300 clinics in private and public schools, but several clinics have had to be postponed because of the lack of vaccine.

Health officials are continuing to stress that healthy people allow children, pregnant women and those with underlying health conditions first crack at vaccines when they become available.

ROANOKE

Missing student’s parents seek leads

The parents of a Virginia Tech student missing since she went to a Metallica concert nearly two weeks ago are asking that people continue to share information with police.

Daniel and Gil Harrington of Roanoke said Thursday they’re doing everything in their power to bring their daughter home.

Morgan Dana Harrington, 20, disappeared Oct. 17 after she left a University of Virginia concert arena.

Police said witnesses saw someone matching her description in two nearby parking areas, and she was last seen on a bridge that leads to a commercial area of Charlottesville.

Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said authorities have received several leads since Wednesday, when they released a timeline of Miss Harrington’s movements.

MARYLAND

GAITHERSBURG

Housekeeper raped in motel

Montgomery County police are investigating the rape of a housekeeper at a Motel 6 near Gaithersburg.

Police said the 24-year-old woman was cleaning a room at the hotel about 12:05 p.m. Thursday. She left the room’s door open and police say she heard the door slam before seeing a man inside the room with her.

She told police the man sexually assaulted her in the room. After he fled, she saw him driving a green, four-door car.

GREENBELT

Man sentenced in drug plot

A former Silver Spring man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for conspiracy to distribute cocaine, federal prosecutors said.

Arnulfo Hernandez, 46, was sentenced on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.

According to his guilty plea, Hernandez plotted to distribute cocaine by arranging shipments from Mexico.

The cocaine was shipped through Illinois, California and Texas and unloaded in Maryland, including at a landscaping business in Potomac.

TOWSON

Four arrested in store killing

Baltimore County police have arrested four men in the fatal shooting of a liquor store owner and several liquor store robberies.

Gregory Horne, 23, Keith Johnson, 24, Abayomi McKenzie, 25, and Tavon Shuler, 30, are charged in Joon Kang’s death and the armed robberies.

Mr. Kang was fatally shot inside his liquor store on Bel Air Road near Overlea on July 16.

Fifteen other liquor store robberies or robbery attempts purportedly involving the same suspects took place between July 4 and July 30.

BALTIMORE

Paper sues police department

The Baltimore Sun is suing the city’s police department over access to public information.

The newspaper said in its lawsuit that the agency “routinely ignores” requests for public documents and demands excessive fees for records.

The lawsuit asks for a judgment and injunction. It does not seek monetary damages. It claims that the department ignored seven requests to see records, in some cases for longer than a year.

An attorney for the newspaper said Maryland’s Public Information Act requires prompt responses to requests for information and directs that a “reasonable” fee be charged for copies of documents.

Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told the Sun in a story for Thursday’s editions that he had not seen the lawsuit and couldn’t comment on the allegations.

FREDERICK

Jobs, services cut in public health

The Frederick County Health Department said it is ending its family planning and sexually transmitted disease treatment programs after state budget cuts.

The agency also will lay off 10 employees, including five nurses, four interpreters and an office clerk. Eight other workers will be reassigned to work on the swine flu program under a temporary grant.

Employees have been laid off at local health departments across Maryland since state aid to those departments was reduced by $20 million in August. Jim Johnson, deputy secretary for operations at the state health department, said 81 people have been laid off in 13 counties.

Mr. Johnson said it’s up to local health departments to identify services that aren’t critical to their core mission and cut from there.

HEREFORD

Undershorts costs team title

White thread that didn’t match a cross country runner’s black undershorts disqualified his fourth-place finish and cost his high school the county title.

Steve Smith, the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association official who disqualified the Hereford runner and seven others said the new rule does not affect how the race is run, but it is in the rule book.

The official said a number of other runners changed their uniforms before Monday’s Baltimore County cross country championships to comply with the rule.

Becky Oakes, assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Associations in Indianapolis, said the shorts were allowed last year but the association has since voted to bar runners from wearing visible multicolor undergarments.

DISTRICT

Answers sought on cell jamming

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said the Commerce Department and Federal Communications Commission are taking too long to respond to her request for a cell-phone jamming technology demonstration at a Maryland prison.

Ms. Mikulski and Gov. Martin O’Malley, both Democrats, asked in June for a demonstration of technology that could be used to keep inmates from using cell phones to commit crimes from behind bars.

Currently, the FCC does not allow cell-phone jamming of any kind. But a bill that passed the Senate earlier this month and awaits action by the House would allow states to petition the FCC to block the use of cell phones from prisons.

Ms. Mikulski said Mr. O’Malley recently received a letter from Commerce Secretary Gary Locke that said the National Telecommunications and Information Administration may consider a test at its Colorado facility.