Murkowski Widens Lead in Alaska - Wall Street Journal

Sen. Lisa Murkowski appeared to hold enough of a lead over Joe Miller Tuesday evening to win the Alaska Senate race, with a 2,247-vote lead even without counting misspelled votes that could be challenged in court.

Getty Images Sen. Lisa Murkowski talks to reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday.

Ms. Murkowski launched a write-in campaign to keep her Senate seat after tea-party favorite Mr. Miller—endorsed by former Gov. Sarah Palin—beat her in the Republican primary.

With nearly all the names on write-in ballots tallied, officials had counted 100,868 votes in Ms. Murkowski's favor, compared with 90,468 votes for Mr. Miller from the Nov. 2 election, according to Alaska elections officials.

Of those 100,868 votes for Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Miller's camp has challenged 8,153 because of misspellings and other imperfections. Not counting the challenged votes, Ms. Murkowski would be left with 92,715 votes.

Mr. Miller has said in recent weeks he would move ahead with a federal lawsuit to throw out those contested ballots if doing so might give him a lead over Ms. Murkowski.

Even if a judge were to throw out the contested ballots— fewer than 1,000 ballots remain to be counted—Ms. Murkowski seems poised to win.

Election officials counted in Ms. Murkowski's favor most misspellings and other irregularities, as long as the voter's intentions seemed clear—a decision based on past Alaska elections in which voter intent was considered even if ballots were marked imperfectly.

Associated Press Observer Joe Geldhof, left, for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and observer Ivy Frye, for GOP nominee Joe Miller, closely watch the last of the write-in ballots during counting on Monday.

Mr. Miller has questioned the legality of that method, because state law says a write-in vote must include the candidate's name or last name as written on his or her paperwork, with "no exceptions." The candidate could also request a ballot recount at his own expense.

Mr. Miller's spokesman and his lawyer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Throughout the past several days, Joe Miller has said that he will not continue to contest the election if the votes don't add up," said Ms. Murkowski's campaign manager, Kevin Sweeney, in a statement. "By the end of the day tomorrow after every Alaskan vote will have been counted, we expect Mr. Miller to keep his word."

Write to Vauhini Vara at vauhini.vara@wsj.com

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Uncovered: Images From Full-Body Scanners Hit the Web - Fox News

A new revelation could make the angry debate about the use of full-body scanners at airports even angrier: Some government agencies have improperly stored images from those scanners -- and those pictures have been made public. 

Gizmodo, notorious for leaking the first photos of the newest generation Apple iPhone, has revealed the images of 100 people taken from a U.S. Marshal in a Florida Federal courthouse who had stored more than 35,000 images from a full body scanner. 

The images don't come from the z-backscatter scanners in airports, which privacy advocates say take nearly naked photos of people. Rather, they come from a millimeter wave scanner, and the images are hardly high-resolution pictures of naked bodies. 

But they are images of public servants and private citizens that the Transportation Security Administration says are impossible to make public. 

"We understand that it will be controversial to release these photographs," Gizmodo wrote on its website. "But identifying features have been eliminated. And, fortunately for those who walked through the scanner in Florida last year, this mismanaged machine used the less embarrassing imaging technique."

The pictures come from a Brijot Imaging Systems machine and were obtained by a freedom of information request after it was recently revealed that U.S. Marshals operating the machine in an Orlando courthouse had improperly saved images of the scans of public servants and private citizens.

The leaked photos demonstrate the security limitations of not just this particular machine, but millimeter wave and X-ray backscatter body scanners operated by federal employees in our courthouses and by TSA officers in airports across the country. And they seem to run counter to the officially stated policy of the TSA.

The TSA's website states that "advanced imaging technology cannot store, print, transmit or save the image, and the image is automatically deleted from the system after it is cleared by the remotely located security officer." 

Whatever the stated policy, Gizmodo wrote, it's clear that it is trivial for operators to save images and remove them for distribution if they choose not to follow guidelines.

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Cholera outbreak likely to grip Haiti for months - USA Today

A cholera outbreak in earthquake-ravaged Haiti that has killed more than 900 people will continue for at least six months, possibly years, experts say.The outbreak has spread quickly, reaching at least six of Haiti's 10 provinces since it was confirmed Oct. 22, says Donna Eberwine-Villagrán of the Pan American Health Organization. So far, 16,800 people have been hospitalized, but she says the number affected is most likely higher because those who have not gone to a health facility have not been counted.

Her group estimates at least 200,000 people will become ill.

Now that the disease has a foothold, it will be nearly impossible to eradicate without permanent access to clean water, says Jeffrey Withey, a microbiologist with the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.

A massive earthquake in January left 1.3 million people homeless, many crowded in tent camps without plumbing.

"The outbreak will continue for the foreseeable future," Withey says.

A permanent solution in Haiti is far off, especially since government and relief agencies are overwhelmed trying to save people with the disease, says Sophie Delaunay, executive director of Doctors Without Borders USA.

The bacteria are spread through contaminated food or water. Relief agencies and the government have launched a campaign to teach people to drink only clean water, wash their hands with soap and clean water and dispose of feces properly. Cholera is lethal if untreated. It is relatively easy to treat with rehydration packs of salt or sugar water and antibiotics; even so, Delaunay says, relief agencies do not have enough supplies.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has started a $164 million fundraising effort that includes a proposed $90 million to build permanent distribution systems for clean water.

Complicating the response: riots in several cities Monday by protesters responding to rumors that U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal were to blame for the outbreak. The riots left at least one protester dead and six peacekeepers wounded.

The U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti said the protests were linked to the Nov. 28 presidential election.

Robert Quick, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who is in Haiti, says it is likely that the cause of the outbreak will never be known. Global travel and trade make it easy for the bacteria to spread, he says.

The CDC concluded in March that cholera was unlikely to occur in Haiti because the country had not seen an outbreak in at least 50 years.

Afsar Ali, a University of Florida microbiologist who studies cholera in developing countries, was not surprised by the outbreak.

Ali says he went to Haiti in August and saw too many people in crowded, squalid conditions with no access to clean water. He says more surveillance of water sources, particularly in areas outside Port-au-Prince, could have alerted authorities to cholera in the water and an education campaign could have taught people how not to spread the bacteria.

Because the focus was on disaster relief after the quake, he says, "nobody paid attention. Everyone was busy doing other things."

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