Month: May 2014

(Reuters) – The father of a 15-year-old Somali boy who survived a trip from California to Hawaii stowed away in the wheel well of a jet has been denied access to his son days after arriving in Honolulu in a bid to bring him home, a newspaper reported on Friday. The boy sneaked into the wheel compartment of a Boeing 767 that took off last month from San Jose International Airport. Hawaii's Department of Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the newspaper report on Saturday. A spokeswoman for the department has said the boy's father arrived in Honolulu, but on Friday said its child welfare agency would not release additional information.

By Keith Coffman DENVER (Reuters) – Colorado lawmakers on Friday passed a bill that if enacted would lead to the first marijuana financial system in the United States, potentially granting legal cannabis businesses access to the Federal Reserve’s money transaction system. Traditional banks have been wary to knowingly serve legal and medicinal marijuana businesses because the drug remains illegal under federal law, said the bill’s sponsor, Representative Jonathan Singer. “This sets up a new type of financial structure to the gap we’re seeing between banking and the marijuana industry,” said Singer, a Democrat. The proposal calls for new “cannabis credit co-ops” – similar to credit unions without deposit insurance – to be governed by the state’s financial services commissioner.

A healthcare worker who had traveled to Saudi Arabia was confirmed as the first U.S. case of Middle East Respiratory Virus (MERS), an often fatal illness, raising new concerns about the rapid spread of such diseases, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. The male patient traveled via a British Airways flight on April 24 from Riyadh to London, where he changed flights at Heathrow airport to fly to the United States. He landed in Chicago and took a bus to an undisclosed city in Indiana. According to the Indiana State Department of Health, the man visited the emergency department at Community Hospital in Munster, Indiana, on April 28 and was admitted that same day.