A federal judge on Monday denied an attempt to lump together in a class-action suit thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims who were exposed to poisonous fumes in trailer homes issued by the government. U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt said that each person’s claim is unique and cannot be bundled with the claims of other alleged victims. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has acknowledged that the trailers had unsafe levels of the preservative formaldehyde, which can cause cancer and other ailments.

Children of Katrina families are sickest in U.S. The children of families displaced from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have serious health and mental ailments, a new study says. In fact, the report, released Monday by the New York-based Children’s Health Fund, are among some of the sickest children in the nation. One of the most alarming findings: 41 percent of children younger than 4 were diagnosed with iron-deficiency anemia, more than twice the rate of children living in New York City homeless shelters and more than twice the Centers for Disease Control’s rate for high-risk minority populations, Irwin Redlener, president of the group and the study’s author, told USA Today. These children are “the sickest I have ever seen in the U.S.,” Redlener told Newsweek. “As awful as the initial response to Katrina looked on television, it’s been dwarfed by the ineptitude and disorganization of the recovery.” More than half the kids had behavioral or learning problems. Also, 42 percent had respiratory infections and disorders that may be linked to formaldehyde and crowding in the trailers supplied by the government, but later declared unsafe. After Katrina, the Children’s Health Fund, a non-profit group that provides health care to children, set up mobile clinics throughout the Gulf Coast, including one outside Renaissance Village in Baton Rouge, then the largest Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer park in the region. Heath Fund researchers came to their conclusions after reviewing the medical records of 261 children who lived in a federally funded Baton Rouge trailer park until early summer, Redlener said.  The study made some immediate recommendations: FEMA must provide contact information for these children so their medical needs can be treated and funding needs to be extended so that the Katrina children can get further medical attention.

Two men are finally arrested in post-Katrina cop shooting. Two men who are suspected in the shooting of a New Orleans Police officer in the wake of Hurricane Katrina were finally caught – thanks to a Crimestoppers tip. U.S. marshals nabbed the two men late last week who had been released in 2006 in a post-Katrina mix up. Vincent Walker, 46, was arrested Thursday at an apartment complex in Birmingham, Ala., by members of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force, the agency said in a news release. Jamil Joyner, 25, was arrested Friday on a street corner in Philadelphia. New Orleans Police allege that Walker and Joyner were looting a convenience store in Algiers on Aug. 30, 2005, the day after Katrina hit the city, when officers confronted them. Police said the pair exchanged gunfire with officers and veteran officer Kevin Thomas was wounded. Walker and Joyner were arrested shortly afterward and booked with attempted first-degree murder. In the criminal-justice quagmire that followed the storm, the two men were first held at an out-of-town jail. But in an action that was never documented because of the storm, they were released in mid-2006, apparently because they had been held beyond the deadline for the District Attorney’s Office to present sufficient evidence to hold them. They were officially charged with attempted murder in February 2007, but by then authorities were unable to locate them.

They fear that stubborn squatters could face the same fate as Katrina victims.

“Stay and die” is the warning from weather officials who say that Hurricane Ike, which is steaming toward the Texas Gulf Coast, could be a deadly monster as sinister as his evil cousin, Katrina. “All neighborhoods … and possibly entire coastal communities … will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide,” the advisory from the National Weather Service said. Read more about the warning and how people are reacting here.

Look at the photos and post your comments.
It’s been three years since Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast. See the pictures and remember the worst storm in U.S. history. Do you think we’re prepared for a new wave of killer storms that could visit us this year? Here’s more.

Not all fat created equal. Fat in obese patients is “sick” when compared to fat in lean patients, Temple University scientists say.   The same the cells in diabetics’ fat tissue aren’t working properly and as a result, are sicker than cells found in lean patients’ fat tissue, a study published in the September issue of Diabetes finds. Lead author Guenther Boden, M.D. theorizes that “sick fat” could more fully explain the link between obesity and higher risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Researchers from the departments of endocrinology, biochemistry and surgery at the Temple University School of Medicine took fat biopsies from the upper thighs of six lean and six obese patients and found significant differences at the cellular level. Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is found in every cell and helps synthesize proteins and monitor how they’re folded. The stress that Boden describes causes the ER in fat cells to produce several proteins that ultimately lead to insulin resistance, which has been found to play a major role in the development and progression of obesity-related conditions.

Study: Almost 1,000 People Died In Louisiana From Katrina

On the three-year anniversary of Hrricane Katrina, a new study says the storm caused the deaths of some 986 deaths in Louisiana either directly or indirectly, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in 80 years. Find out more at Vital Signs.

Hurricane Katrina: three years later. As New Orleans braces for another potentially destructive storm, we look back to the impact and the progress made in the last three years after Hurricane Katrina here.

BET News Quiz: An HBCU gets millions; McCain gets a surprise endorsement; and Yung Berg was allegedly jumped. Test your knowledge here! 

Police are thankful for saggy pants … this time. Instead of enforcing laws against saggy pants, police departments around the country might want to start issuing pairs of the below-the-butt slacks to hoodlums. In Atlanta Wednesday, police shot and wounded a fleeing 21-year-old suspect as he allegedly turned toward officers and aimed his gun but stumbled while struggling to keep his pants up. Police said that Emmanuel Uzowihe was sprinting down one of Atlanta’s busiest streets when he was felled by officers, stopping traffic. His injuries were not life-threatening, and he was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital for treatment, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Officers with the department’s Auto Theft Task Force pulled over Uzowihe for an undisclosed traffic violation, Sgt. Lisa Keyes told the Constitution-Journal. Uzowihe jumped from the car and ran down the sidewalk, she said. Police pursued, ordering the suspect several times to stop, she said. A witness, Trevious Grier, said she saw Uzowihe’s weapon as he ran past. “He had a long black handgun he was holding in front of him,” Grier said. “I’ve never seen a gun that big before.” But as soon as he pointed the weapon, an officer shot him twice, police said. But according to witness Darrell Jackson, Uzowihe’s baggy pants is what landed him in the hospital. “He was running pretty fast,” Jackson said. “The only thing that messed him up is he was trying to pull his pants up.” Kelly agreed, saying, “I bet he won’t wear baggy paints again.”

Obama bills are “racist,” some say. A Republican Party leader in Washington state apologized Thursday for phony $3 bill with a picture of Sen. Barack Obama wearing Muslim headgear and sporting a camel that was sold at a booth at a county fair. “I want to apologize to anyone upset or offended by seeing it,” Snohomish County Republican Party Chairwoman Geri Modrell told The Herald newspaper. Underneath the likeness of a smiling Obama is the tag “Da Man,” and there are signatures from purportedly from “Teddy Kennedy, Chief Socialism Advisor” and “Al Sharpton, New Spiritual Advisor.” Modrell said that she asked volunteers to remove them when she discovered them on Tuesday. Some visitors to the fair called the bills “racist” and “offensive.”

Almost 1,000 People Died From Katrina: Study. Hurricane Katrina caused the deaths of some 986 deaths in Louisiana either directly or indirectly, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in 80 years, new research timed to the storm’s third anniversary finds. Study authors – who were from the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – said in a news release that the leading cause of death was drowning (40 percent), followed by injury and trauma, then heart conditions. Almost half of the victims were 75 or older. Eighty percent of the deaths occurred on the day of the storm — Aug. 29, 2005. “What we learned from Hurricane Katrina is that disaster preparedness efforts must focus on evacuating and caring for vulnerable populations — particularly the elderly — including those in hospitals, nursing homes and private residences,” said lead study author Joan Brunkard of the CDC. The study was published on the Web site of the Ameirican Medical Association.

Obama, McCain take different approaches to health care reform.  
Vital Signs: Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have laid out very different plans for how they’d fix the health care system, according to the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution’s estimates. Which one covers the most people, and when will the candidates actually provide details? Read more at Vital Signs.

Salmonella outbreak over, FDA says. U.S. health officials declared Thursday that the nationwide salmonella outbreak has ended and lifted a consumer advisory against eating raw jalapeno and serrano peppers grown in Mexico, reports HealthDay news. “Based on the available information and reports, it appears that this outbreak is over,” Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of foodborne, bacterial and mycotic diseases, said during a teleconference. The CDC’s announcement was based on the falling number of new cases since early July, Tauxe said. “By early August, the number of cases was down to the number of cases we would expect to see anyway in the absence of a major outbreak. There are some cases of this infection that occur every year,” he added.

Remembering Hurricane Katrina: Three years later

It’s been three years since Katrina battered New Orleans. Get a quiz, photos and more surrounding the tragic event at BET.com News.

Gov. Crist says that what happened in New Orleans won’t happen in his state.

Residents and vacationers in the Florida Keys are bracing for a powerful storm brewing in the Atlantic that could swell to hurricane strength and pummel the string of tiny islands and Cuba before it’s through. As Tropical Storm Fay began picking up some serious steam early Sunday morning, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) urged folks to pack up and head out. But he assured the world that what happened in the Gulf Coast three years ago would not occur in Florida, saying that emergency workers, including 9,000 National Guard troops, are on standby. In 2005, the Gulf Coast was completely unprepared for hurricane Katrina as it tore the region taking lives and destroying homes and property. Officials at Miami’s National Hurricane Center say that by late Monday or early Tuesday, the storm’s winds and pelting rain could wreak havoc. “My main message today is to remind our fellow Floridians to remain calm,” Crist said Sunday afternoon at state emergency headquarters in Tallahassee. “Florida is prepared. And we are ready. And we’ll be vigilant,” he said.