Today's Globe: Emerson misstatements, disabled suit settlement, TB decline, AIDS vaccine queries, childhood vaccine skeptics

Two senior executives of Emerson Hospital in Concord created documents that misstated the hospital's financial condition over parts of its last three fiscal years, the hospital found after an investigation and audit that concluded last week. The audit completes an inquiry that began last August when a midlevel manager noticed billing irregularities and told a supervisor, said chief executive Christine Schuster (center).

More than 600 mentally retarded or developmentally disabled individuals will leave nursing homes in the next four years, to live more independently in an apartment, family home, or group setting, state officials announced yesterday.

Tuberculosis is appearing in the United States at the lowest rate ever recorded, with foreign-born people accounting for a majority of the cases, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday.

The two-decade search for an AIDS vaccine is in crisis after two field tests of the most promising contender not only did not protect people from the virus, but also may actually have put them at increased risk of becoming infected.

In a highly unusual outbreak of measles in San Diego last month, 12 children fell ill. Nine of them had not been inoculated against the virus because their parents objected, placing them among a small but growing number of vaccine skeptics in California and other states who take advantage of exemptions to laws requiring vaccinations for school-age children.