National Briefs: Study finds obesity is rampant in 4-year-olds

CHICAGO -- A striking new study says that almost one in five American 4-year-olds are obese, and the rate is alarmingly higher among American Indian children, with nearly a third of them obese.

Researchers were surprised to see differences by race at so early an age.

Overall, more than half a million 4-year-olds are obese, the study suggests. Obesity is more common in Hispanic and black youngsters, too, but the disparity is most startling in American Indians, whose rate is almost double that of whites.

The lead author said that rate is worrisome among children so young, even in a population at higher risk for obesity because of other health problems and economic disadvantages.

Sarah Anderson, an Ohio State University public health researcher, conducted the research with Temple University's Dr. Robert Whitaker.

Wind power could replace coal, Interior secretary says

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- If wind power were fully developed off the East Coast, windmills could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, the coal-fired power plants in the United States, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said yesterday.

But those numbers were challenged as "overly optimistic" by a coal-industry group, which noted that half the nation's electricity now comes from coal-fired power plants.

Salazar spoke at a public hearing in Atlantic City on how the nation's offshore areas can be tapped to meet America's energy needs.

A spokesman for Salazar said later that Salazar does not expect wind power to be fully developed, but was speaking of its total potential if it were.

Letter thought to gunman's claims harassment by police

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- The man who killed 13 people in an immigrant center thought that police had harassed him for years, even spreading rumors about him and touching him in his sleep, and apparently was intent on killing people before returning "to the dust of the earth," according to a rambling letter in broken English mailed to a Syracuse TV station the day of the massacre.

The letter's authenticity could not immediately be verified, but the city of Binghamton said it was reviewing the material as "evidence in the investigation." The letter was postmarked Friday, the day Vietnamese immigrant Jiverly Wong stormed into the American Civic Association and went on a rampage before killing himself.

VA investigating after patient tests positive for HIV

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- A Veterans Affairs patient who was among thousands treated with unsterilized equipment has tested positive for HIV, the first such case reported since the VA warned veterans they could have been exposed to infectious diseases.

The VA previously reported that hepatitis had been found in 16 patients, but the agency cautioned that there was no way to prove that the patients contracted the illnesses because of treatment at their facilities.

In an e-mail late Friday, the agency said it was investigating "the possibility of such a relationship."

The VA earlier this year warned more than 10,000 veterans to get blood tests because they could have been exposed to contamination while getting colonoscopies in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Miami.

Mourners pay their respects to slain Pittsburgh officers

PITTSBURGH -- Police, friends and family paid their respects yesterday to one of three officers allegedly killed by a gunman whose postings on a white supremacist Web site have come under scrutiny.

Mourners lined up outside a Pittsburgh funeral home for the first of the viewings for the officers, who will lie in state at a municipal building Wednesday and then be remembered at a community memorial service Thursday at a university arena.

Paul Sciullo II, 37, Eric Kelly, 41, and Stephen Mayhle, 29, were killed Saturday responding to a domestic disturbance at the home that Richard Poplawski shared with his mother. The woman had called police to their house after threatening to evict him.

Ice in Arctic is thinner, more vulnerable, researchers say

WASHINGTON -- The Arctic is treading on thinner ice than ever before.

Researchers say that as spring begins, more than 90 percent of the sea ice in the Arctic is only 1 or 2 years old. That makes it thinner and more vulnerable than at any time in the past 30 years, according to researchers with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.

In normal winters, thick sea ice -- often about 10 feet thick or more -- extends from the northern boundaries of Greenland and Canada almost to Russia. This year, the thick ice cap barely penetrates the bull's-eye of the Arctic Circle.

The problems of ice melting caused by global warming is being seen at the other pole, too.

The U.S. Geological Survey last week released a detailed map of the Antarctic coastline and found dwindling and even disappearing ice shelves.