By DUANE SHERRILL / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard A short circuit led to the evacuation of West Elementary School on Tuesday morning in what ended up being a false alarm.“We erred on the side of safety,” said West principal Marsha Newman of the evacuation of the school which came when the alarm sounded…

By CHARLES W. JOHNSON / News Editor for the Southern Standard Board-certified physiatrist Dr. Suneetha Nuthalapaty, left, with the help of medical assistant Dianne Swann, demonstrates the operation of her office’s electromyography (EMG) and nerve conduction study (NCV) machine. Warren County now has its first board-certified physiatrist, Dr. Suneetha Nuthalapaty. Nuthalapaty is based at River…

By AMY FOSTER / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard Multi-County Cancer Support Network representative Kathleen Shelton, left, and Jill Palmer of Tennessee Oncology show a recent fundraising T-shirt. A lasagna, bread and dessert cook-off will be held Sept. 19 in the River Park Hospital lobby. If living with cancer isn’t hard enough, patients and…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hurricane Katrina has booted at least 372,000 students from classrooms in Louisiana and Mississippi, and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Monday there are no clear answers about who will pay to educate them. In an interview with The Associated Press, Spellings gave the most sweeping assessment of how the hurricane has affected…

BILOXI, Miss. (AP) — As the pace of finding corpses slows, Mississippi is turning its attention to securing temporary housing for families left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. With more than 115,000 evacuees in shelters or temporary locations arranged by the Red Cross, and many more in hotels and private homes, Gov. Haley Barbour said the…

WASHINGTON (AP) — One oncologist evacuated flooded New Orleans clutching a laptop computer with some patients’ records, another threw some paper charts in her truck on the way out. But for most of the 80 children with cancer in Dr. Joseph Mirro’s evacuee clinic, their parents’ memory of last treatments proved key to resuming therapy.…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Federal Communications Commission has asked agency staff to draft orders approving two big phone company mergers — SBC Communications Inc. with AT&T, and Verizon Communications Inc. with MCI Inc. FCC chairman Kevin Martin wants the commission to take a final vote on the deals next month, two people…

CHICAGO (AP) — Everywhere she turns, Angella Day sees people carrying portable music players, often with the ear buds stuffed firmly in place. “They’re very widespread,” says Day, a senior at Chicago’s DePaul University who regularly listens to music on her own iPod while studying or working out. “So addicting.” What she and others may…

WAKEMAN, Ohio (AP) — Sheriff’s deputies removed 11 children from a home where they were locked in cages less than 3 1/2 feet high, authorities said. The children’s adoptive and foster parents, Mike and Sharen Gravelle, denied that they’d abused or neglected the children during a custody hearing Monday in Huron County. No charges had…

HOUSTON (AP) — Sixteen-year-old Reshad Batiste was separated from his grandmother during the chaotic evacuation of the Louisiana Superdome. He ended up in Texas; she was taken to Kentucky. For nearly a week, Batiste lived in a Houston shelter not knowing what happened to her. That changed Monday, when he boarded a plane for Lexington,…