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Hospital Tech Pleads Guilty For Role In Hepatitis Outbreak

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A traveling hospital technician accused of causing a multistate outbreak of hepatitis C last year has pleaded guilty to federal drug charges.

David Kwiatkowski was accused of stealing painkiller syringes from Exeter Hospital in New Hamphire and replacing them with saline-filled syringes tainted with his own blood.

He worked at 18 hospitals in seven states before being hired at Exeter in 2011. Forty-six people in four states have been diagnosed with the same strain of hepatitis C he carries. In Maryland, seven people were infected.

The 34-year-old Kwiatkowski pleaded guilty to 14 charges of drug theft and tampering under a plea agreement calling for him to serve 30 to 40 years in prison and avoid charges in other states.

NPR

George R.R. Martin, Author And ... Movie-Theater Guy?

The author of the wildly successful Game of Thrones books has been spending his days working on reopening an old movie theater in Santa Fe — much to the displeasure of fans who think he should be writing the next book.
NPR

Sandwich Monday: The Limited Edition Candy Corn Oreo

For this week's Sandwich Monday, we try a new take on the classic sandwich cookie: the Limited Edition Candy Corn Oreo.
NPR

Congressional Leaders Debate Votes Needed To End Shutdown

House Speaker John Boehner has explained often why his Republican caucus is standing firm on the spending bill: because of the dangers he thinks are posed by the president's health care law. But on Sunday, Boehner went further, and said the votes are not there to pass a "clean" spending bill that would fund the government without making changes to the Affordable Care Act. That statement goes against many other observers, both Republican and Democrat, who believe the opposite.
NPR

Funding For Software To Cloak Web Activity Provokes Concern

A service called Tor makes it possible to communicate and surf the web anonymously. It sounds like a plot by privacy-minded rebels, but in fact the service receives most of its funding from the government and was started by the Pentagon. Despite recent revelations of government email snooping, the U.S. government supports anonymous communication so foreign dissidents can work undetected, and so government agents can pursue bad guys without giving away their identities. But now the service faces new accusations that it might be serving NSA surveillance efforts.

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