IN BRIEF
FLOODS THREATEN PARTS OF ARKANSAS, MISSOURI
After floodwaters punched through levees in parts of Missouri and Arkansas, the National Weather Service warned Thursday of more high water in northwest Arkansas, where some 100 members of the National Guard are assisting in the flood-fighting effort.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said 25 guard vehicles are prepared for high-water rescues as needed in an area where at least nine levee breaches have been reported.
Many rivers have swollen to record levels in Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Five deaths have been blamed on flooding in Missouri, while hundreds of people have been forced out of their homes and thousands more potentially are in harm’s way. An 18-month-old Arkansas girl swept away by floodwater is missing and presumed dead.
IRAQIS PREPARE FOR FINAL ASSAULT INTO MOSUL
U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces on Thursday opened a new front in the battle for Mosul in preparation for a final assault to liberate the city from Islamic State control.
“This new advance from the 9th Iraqi Army Division is intended to break the enemy,” said Air Force Col. John Dorrian, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
Driving the militants from Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, would be a major victory for Iraqi forces. More than two years ago Islamic State militants swept into Iraq and seized the city along with a other parts of the country. The collapse of Iraq’s U.S.-trained armed forces and the loss of Mosul was a major blow to Iraq, giving the militants an important foothold in the region. DEADLY ‘SUPERBUG’ FUNGUS EMERGING IN HOSPITALS
A deadly “superbug ” fungus that is hard to spot and harder to kill is slowly infiltrating U.S. hospitals, health experts say.
Candida auris enters the bloodstream, spreads throughout the body and causes a variety of infections, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns. More than 60 cases have been identified in the U.S., all but a few of them in New York and New Jersey. The CDC has alerted hospitals and other health care facilities across the nation to watch out for the relatively new fungus.
The fungus can be passed between people or through the environment from such things as hospital equipment, says Tom Chiller, chief of the CDC’s Mycotic (fungal) Diseases Branch.