A public health nurse gives an immunization injection.

When the school year began last September, large numbers of Pennsylvania school children lacked immunizations or the proof that they had received those immunizations. The Pennsylvania Department of Health notified families that they would have eight months to obtain immunizations, file the correct paperwork or provide the paperwork giving their student an exemption for medical, religious or philosophical reasons. The deadline passed and was extended for two weeks. Yesterday was it.
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An annual Mother’s Day event at a Buddhist monastery in rural Putnam County, NY, was interrupted yesterday afternoon as participants began suffering gastrointestinal symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea. The event drew hundreds to the Chuang Yen Monastery, and delawareonline.com states that about 500 arrived by bus from New York City’s Chinatown. Food for the event was provided by volunteers, similar to a pot luck supper.

Illness
Susan Hoffner, a spokesperson for the Putnam County Health Department, states that approximately 150 people were taken ill. Symptoms of the illness include vomiting, diarrhea, nausea and dehydration. Many became ill after they left the event. By evening, the Times Herald-Record states that local emergency services had received reports of dozens of cases of illness in travelers between the monastery and New York City. The outbreak is believed to be caused by some form of food poisoning.

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Enrique Ruiz was very sick when he went to the emergency room at New York City’s Lincoln Hospital in April. He was diagnosed with pneumonia and bronchitis. Less than a week later, he was being treated for second degree burns on his neck and chest.

Sunday’s New York Post reported on the ordeal by fire that Enrique Ruiz suffered at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. As doctors were trying to insert a breathing tube, Ruiz caught fire. The pain was severe enough that he woke up from sedation. An electronic scalpel being used to cut an opening in his neck combined with the oxygen he was being given causing a flash fire around the surgical site.
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An aerial view of debris from an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck northern Japan. The debris was inspected by a helicopter-based search and rescue team from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Alexander Tidd

Debris from the March 2011 Japanese tsunami are beginning to arrive on the Pacific Coast. The debris is a collection of items that both float and have a high enough profile off the water to catch the wind. The wind-driven debris, as predicted, is arriving before the current-driven debris.
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UPDATE 5/8/2012 5:14 pm:  Let’s look at the arguments against Warren’s heritage.

1. The son gained no advantage by claiming his mother was Indian.
2. The area where O.C. Sarah Neoma Smith was born was Indian land.
3. The census records are only a valid proof if the census taker had the option to put Indian down for race. One of the comments states that assimilated Indians were listed as white at the time.
4. The Jonathan that is claimed to be the militia member is not Warren’s ancestor but a distant  cousin. There are two Jonathans in the family tree. The report linked below only covers her direct ancestry.

Everyone is forgetting that the Cherokee were one of the “civilized” tribes. They had adopted the English way of life to a great extent, including keeping slaves. They were as civilized as any white settler in the area at that time and cannot be differentiated based on occupation or residence.

UPDATE 5/1/2012 10:19 pm: Child is correct in his research. Neoma or Sarah Smith, born 1794 in North Carolina, seems to be Warren’s Cherokee ancestor. Two caveats. The family is not enrolled with the tribe. The sole reason to believe that she was Cherokee was her son, William’s statement upon his marriage. Clearly it would seem that Warren can claim to be 1/32 Cherokee.

I can find no support for the story that Warren told to the Boston Globe about her pioneering grandmother. While she was the oldest child at the time of the Oklahoma land rush, research appears to show that her mother was still alive.
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