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The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has found another person suspected of having rabies. Doctors found symptoms of rabies in a 50-year-old woman, just two days after a confirmed rabies case was found in Britain.

The woman is reported to have contracted the deadly disease after she was bitten by a puppy in India, according to a report in The Sun.

When she returned to London she sought medical treatment, but doctors at the Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford failed to detect the disease and she was sent back twice. The HPA and the hospital have launched an investigation into why doctors failed to detect the case earlier.

The woman is being treated in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London. Hospital officials said the patient poses no risk to the general public.

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"We would like to reassure our patients, visitors and staff that there is no risk to them as a result of this case," a hospital spokesperson told the Guardian.

HPA officials have taken several precautions, including requesting that family members and healthcare staff who had close contact with the patient be assessed and vaccinated against rabies.

Rabies is a viral disease that affects the central nervous system. The rabies virus travels to the brain by following theperipheral nerves. Once the virus reaches the central nervous system, a patient will begin to show initial symptoms, such as headaches and fever, before the disease intensifies and becomes fatal.

Rabies is usually transmitted through saliva from the bite of infected dogs. Every year more than 55,000 people across the world are affected by rabies and almost all of them die from it. The death rates are high in most developing countries, particularly South and Southeast Asia.

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Rabies: Fear Second Briton Bitten by Puppy Contracted Killer Disease in India

Raleigh, N.C. The man facing a potential death sentence in the fatal attack of North Carolina state school board member Kathy Taft comes from a family with a history of depression, alcoholism and other mental disorders, his mother told jurors in his first-degree murder trial Wednesday.

Jason Williford trial (Day 6)

Testifying for nearly three hours, Pam Williford recounted years of her son Jason Williford's struggles with addiction, anger issues, sexual deviancy and his never-ending cycle of failing to succeed in life.

Williford, who has sat stoic with his head down for most of his trial, became emotional twice during the testimony.

Once was when his mother detailed a family mental health history that included bipolar disorder, electroshock therapy, drug overdoses and suicide.

Full coverage: Kathy Taft murder case

He wiped tears from his eyes a second time as she talked about how, despite all the problems she had with him, there were still times that he brought joy to her life.

"He's my son," Pam Williford said. "I brought him into this world, and I do love him."

Prosecutors, meanwhile, wrapped up their case earlier Wednesday after calling 23 witnesses to testify about how, they say, Williford intentionally broke into the Raleigh home where Taft had been sleeping on the morning of March 6, 2010, beat her in the head multiple times and raped her.

She died from her injuries three days later.

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Defense portrays Taft's accused killer as mentally damaged

Article posted: 5/23/2012 6:29 PM

With only three Kane County deaths from West Nile in the past decade, the virus has slipped into the realm of being a seldom and mostly silent summer killer. Public health officials would like to keep it that way as monitoring infected mosquitoes is under way.

The year 2010 was the last time a human resident of Kane County died from West Nile. Last year, there was only one confirmed human case of the virus in Kane County. That person survived, and only three other Illinois residents outside of Kane County died from West Nile. Indeed, only 20 percent of people infected with the virus will even show symptoms, health officials said. Symptoms include high fever, headache, stiff neck, stupor, tremors, vision loss and numbness. If these symptoms last several weeks they can cause permanent impacts to a persons nerve system or lead to death.

The Culex mosquito spreads the virus to humans through its bite. Unlike the more common mosquito, the smaller Culex needs long periods of dry, hot weather to breed, officials said.

Despite a relatively wet month, the Kane County Health Departments Environmental Health staff established 10 mosquito trap sites throughout the county to begin monitoring for West Nile. The traps are located in Burlington, Campton Hills, Carpentersville, the west sides of Sleepy Hollow and Elgin, Big Rock, Elburn, Montgomery and the east sides of Batavia and Aurora.

The traps contain a substance that acts almost like a catnip for mosquitoes. Health department staff members collect the traps twice a week to test the batches for West Nile. Four mosquito batches tested positive for West Nile in Kane County last year. Thats a significant drop from the 26 batches that tested positive in 2010.

Some birds, such as crows, blue jays and robins are also potential West Nile victims. No birds were found to have West Nile in Kane County last year.

Residents should still report dead birds to the health department for possible West Nile testing. Department staff members are also available to answer any West Nile questions residents may have at (630) 444-3040.

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West Nile season begins in Kane County

As the potential grows for a euro-quake that could well send a financial tidal wave racing toward America, and the U.S. heads toward a "fiscal cliff" of its own, created by Congress, you'd think political leaders here would be uniting urgently to preserve the fragile economic recovery taking place.

But that of course would assume rational politics, grounded in reality, and a determination to protect the nation from another financial nightmare.

And that is just about the opposite of how Washington works these days. Which is why the public holds Congress in about the same regard as ambulance-chasing shysters.

Consider the so-called fiscal cliff.

Last summer, Tea Party Republicans made it clear and it turned out they were serious that they would force the nation into default, with all the disastrous consequences that would entail, rather than raise the national debt limit to accommodate more borrowing to pay for government programs mandated by Congress itself. (Raising the limit was routine in the past.)

As the brinkmanship tore away at the economy, both parties eventually agreed to strike a committee to examine how the colossal deficit can be reduced.

But they also built in a sort of dead-man's switch: automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would be triggered at the end of this year if committee members could not agree on what to do.

Naturally, they could not agree.

The Democrats were willing to compromise, and accept Republican-sponsored spending cuts if tax increases on the wealthiest Americans were also implemented.

Republicans insisted on spending cuts as the entire solution. They refused to even consider forcing the rich to pay more.

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Neil Macdonald: How compromise became a dirty word in Washington

The Senate has swiftly and unanimously approved legislation to remove the word lunatic from federal law, proving the chamber is not entirely stuck in partisan gridlock.

The bill was introduced in late April by Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, moved quickly through the chambers banking committee, then was passed Wednesday without a single amendment.

Conrad told The Hill newspaper that he decided to sponsor the bill after a constituent contacted his office to encourage legislation to remove such "outdated and inappropriate language from federal law.

"Sen. Crapo and I agree that federal law should reflect the 21st century understanding of mental illness and disease, and that the continued use of this pejorative term has no place in the U.S. Code," he told the newspaper.

The House has not introduced companion legislation.

The word "lunatic" appears in the U.S. Code in Title 1, Chapter 1, which covers rules of construction. Language in the chapter states that when determining the meaning of a law "the words 'insane' and 'insane person' and 'lunatic' shall include every idiot, lunatic, insane person, and person non compos mentis."

Conrad's bill states such language also appears in banking laws that deal with the authority to take receivership of estates.

The legislation has the support of a coalition of 38 groups related to mental health, including the American Psychiatric Association.

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Senate votes to strike word 'lunatic' from federal law