EU

After Navy Yard shooting, a family braces for awful news about a missing loved one

All day and into the night, they waited for news. Inside a three-bedroom home in Prince George’s County, Sylvia Frasier’s parents and siblings gathered, hoping to hear something about her fate.

The family had not been able to reach Sylvia, a 53-year-old network security administrator with the Naval Sea Systems Command, since they’d heard about the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday morning.

The Frasiers prayed and watched the live TV coverage. They clutched their iPhones and clasped one another’s hands every time a cellphone rang or beeped with a text message. Their minister came over, and everyone sat on the couches and sang from the Bible.

United States Ranks 11th in Plague Cases Worldwide

The United States now ranks 11th in the world in cases of plague, according to a new survey of the disease.

With 57 cases in a decade, it is far below the hardest-hit countries, Congo with 10,581 and Madagascar with 7,182. Still, it is the only wealthy country on the list; 97 percent of cases are in Africa.

The survey was published Monday by The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

The Black Death killed a third of Europe in the 14th century, but cases are no longer found there, probably because cities keep rat populations down, said the author, Dr. Thomas C. Butler, a plague expert at Ross University Medical School in the West Indies. By contrast, in the American Southwest, the bacteria have shifted into rural squirrels and prairie dogs.

Most cases come from flea bites, but in the United States a national parks biologist died after inhaling the bacteria while doing a necropsy of a mountain lion, and a 60-year-old geneticist in Chicago died, apparently after being careless with a research strain he believed was safe.

The biggest outbreaks were among gold and diamond miners in Congo.

Outbreaks were also traced to infected camel meat — one animal in Afghanistan infected 83 people. A 2009 outbreak among herdsmen in China was unusual because it was traced to infected dogs, who had been thought to be plague-resistant.

Diagnoses can now be done with a rapid dipstick test and a vaccine may be available within a decade, Dr. Butler said. DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.