Africans face long wait for unproven Ebola drug; Liberia deploys troops to protect capital

MONROVIA, Liberia — Africans seeking a drug to help contain the Ebola virus will have to wait months before a potentially life-saving experimental treatment used on two infected Americans is produced even in small amounts, officials said.

And there are no guarantees that the medication known as ZMapp would help curb the spread of the dreaded disease, which starts with a fever and body aches and sometimes progresses to serious bleeding. Supplies of the drug are limited. It has never been tested for safety or effectiveness in humans.

The health minister of Nigeria, one of the four countries where Ebola has broken out, told a news conference in his country that he had asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about access to the drug. A CDC spokesman said Wednesday “there are virtually no doses available.”

Some people in other affected countries questioned why the medicine has not been offered to infected Africans.

Anthony Kamara, a 27-year-old man riding a bicycle in Freetown, Sierra Leone, said “Americans are very selfish. They only care about the lives of themselves and no one else.”

Detroit-area homeowner convicted of 2nd-degree murder for killing unarmed woman on his porch

DETROIT — A jury convicted a suburban Detroit homeowner of second-degree murder and manslaughter Thursday in the killing of an unarmed woman on his porch last year, rejecting his claim that he was afraid for his life when he heard the woman pounding on his door in the middle of the night and had acted in self-defense.

Theodore Wafer, 55, shot Renisha McBride through a screen door on Nov. 2, hours after she crashed into a parked car a half-mile from his house. No one knows why she ended up at the Dearborn Heights home, although prosecutors speculated that the 19-year-old woman may have been seeking help.

The jury convicted Wafer of second-degree murder, manslaughter and a gun-related charge after deliberating for about eight hours over two days.

Wayne County Judge Dana Hathaway warned that she would lock people up for any outbursts, and the courtroom was silent after the verdict was read.

McBride’s mother, Monica McBride, cried and clasped her hands as if praying when the jury’s decision was announced. She gave long hugs to prosecutors as the courtroom emptied.

3 decades after shocking mass suicide-murder, remains of 9 Jonestown bodies found in Delaware

DOVER, Del. — More than 35 years after the infamous suicide-murder of some 900 people — many forced to drink a cyanide-laced grape punch — in Jonestown, Guyana, the cremated remains of nine of the victims were found in a dilapidated former funeral home in Delaware, officials said Thursday.

The grisly discovery brought back memories of a tragedy that killed hundreds of children and a U.S. congressman and horrified Americans.

The remains were clearly marked, with the names of the deceased included on death certificates, authorities said. But Kimberly Chandler, spokeswoman for the Delaware Division of Forensic Science, declined to release the names of the nine people to The Associated Press. Chandler said officials were working to notify relatives.

She said the agency found the remains last week on a site visit prompted by a call from the property’s current owner — a bank, according to Dover police. Officials found 38 containers of remains, 33 of which were marked and identified. Chandler said the containers spanned a period from about 1970 to the 1990s and included remains from Jonestown, established by Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones.

“It’s simply a case of unclaimed cremains at a closed funeral home,” Chandler said, adding that there is no reason to believe the five unmarked containers contain remains of more Jonestown victims.

By wire sources