Saturday, October 24, 2009 KENNEBUNKPORT: Shiloh Pepin, a girl born with a rare condition often called "mermaid syndrome," has died. She was 10.Maine Medical Center spokesman John Lamb said Shiloh died at the hospital Friday afternoon. She had been hospitalized in critical condition since last week.Shiloh was born with sirenomelia, meaning her legs were fused from the waist down. She had no lower colon or genital organs and only one partially working kidney. Doctors told her parents that she would likely survive for only hours, maybe days.Some children who have survived sirenomelia have had surgery to separate their legs, but Shiloh's circulatory system made that challenging because crisscrossing blood vessels would have been severed.Her story has been featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and other national TV programs.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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