Washington, D.C.

Nader picks activist as running mate

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader named Green Party activist Peter Camejo on Monday as his running mate, which could gain Nader the support of the Greens and enable him to compete more strongly in the November election.

Camejo, 64, represented the Greens in California’s gubernatorial recall election last year. A stockbroker who advocates socially responsible investment, the longtime civil rights and environmental activist ran for president in 1976 representing the Socialist Workers Party.

Camejo’s nomination came two days before the Green Party national convention in Milwaukee, from which Nader hopes to win an endorsement. The Greens’ backing would give Nader access to ballots in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Earlier this year Nader was endorsed by the Reform Party, giving him access to ballots in seven states.

Florida

Mad cow victim dies

Charlene Liana Singh, 25, the only person in the United States diagnosed with the human variant of mad cow disease, died in her sleep Sunday at home in Miramar.

Singh, who was born May 10, 1979, in London, apparently was exposed to the disease by eating beef during an outbreak of mad cow disease first discovered in Britain in 1986. She moved to South Florida with her family in 1992, and remained healthy for several years.

It was after she earned a degree in business management from University of Miami in 2001 that her symptoms began — memory impairment, irritability and uncharacteristic outbursts of anger. Doctors here diagnosed it as depression, but on a trip back to England in March 2002, the symptoms worsened and a tonsil biopsy at a hospital there found evidence of the disease.

Worldwide, fewer than 150 cases of the variant form have been reported in humans.

Washington, D.C.

Panda numbers stabilize

In a result that cheered conservationists, experts have counted 1,600 giant pandas living in the forests of east central China, nearly 50 percent more than previously known to exist, the World Wildlife Fund reported last week.

Karen Baragona, head of the fund’s panda program, said the census, compiled over four years beginning in 2000, suggested that a decades-long decline in the endangered panda’s population appeared to have been halted, if not reversed.

Baragona credited the Chinese government’s 1998 ban on logging the temperate upland forests around the headwaters of the Yangtze River as the critical event in arresting the pandas’ decline.

New York City

GOP ketchup billed as counter to Heinz

A Manhattan banker and his pals want to cash in on Teresa Heinz Kerry’s unpopularity with conservatives by marketing “W Ketchup,” billed as a GOP alternative to the Heinz family’s famous condiment.

“About 6 weeks ago, I was sitting around at a barbecue with my friends and we realized that every time we bought the ketchup, we were sending a little bit over to her,” said company founder Bill Zachary, who leads a small investment group of 30-something Republicans.

Their ketchup — which retails at $12 per four-pack — features the likeness of George Washington, not President Bush.

Zachary says he used the different “W” to avoid accusations his ketchup was an “overt campaign ad.” It’s available at www.wketchup.com.