The swine flu epidemic crossed new borders Tuesday with the first cases confirmed in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, as world health officials said they suspect American patients may have transmitted the virus to others in the U.S.

Most people confirmed with the new swine flu were infected in Mexico, where the number of deaths blamed on the virus has surpassed 150.

But confirmation that people have been infecting others in locations outside Mexico would indicate that the disease was spreading beyond travelers returning from Mexico, World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl told reporters on Tuesday in Geneva.

Hartl said the source of some infections in the United States, Canada was unclear.

The swine flu has already spread to at least six countries besides Mexico, prompting WHO to raise its alert level on Monday but not call for travel bans or border closings. On Tuesday, countries, including Canada, Israel and France, warned their citizens to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico. On Tuesday, the WHO said the number of swine flu cases confirmed by tests in a laboratory has increased to 79 around the world.

“Border controls do not work. Travel restrictions do not work,” Hartl said, recalling the 2003 SARS epidemic that killed 774 people, mostly in Asia, and slowed the global economy. “There was much more economic disruption caused by these measures than there was public health benefit.”

Hartl said WHO is advising countries to provide sick people with treatments such as Tamiflu, and make sure national plans are in place to ease the impact of a larger outbreak.

No natural immunity
Hartl said WHO is advising countries to provide sick people with treatments such as Tamiflu, and make sure national plans are in place to ease the impact of a larger outbreak.

“Governments will need to start thinking about larger-scale care for a specific disease in accident and emergency wards,” he said. “Do they have the infrastructure? Do they have the equipment? Do they have the medicines? This is the time, now, to prepare.”

WHO raised the alert level to Phase 4, meaning there is sustained human-to-human transmission causing outbreaks in at least one country. WHO’s pandemic alert system was revised after bird flu in Asia began to spread in 2004. Monday was the first time it has ever been raised above Phase 3.

Flu deaths are nothing new in the United States or elsewhere. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 36,000 people died of flu-related causes each year, on average, during the 1990s in the United States.

But the new flu strain is a combination of pig, bird and human viruses that humans may have no natural immunity to.

Tuesday, Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard ordered gyms, sports clubs, swimming pools and pool halls closed — extending a growing shutdown that already included schools, state-run theaters and other public places.

The city was evaluating whether to keep open a subway system that provides 5 million trips a day.

New Zealand reported Tuesday that 11 people who recently returned from Mexico contracted the virus. Tests conducted at a WHO laboratory in Australia had confirmed three cases of swine flu among 11 members of the group who were showing symptoms, New Zealand Health Minister Tony Ryall said.

Officials decided that was evidence enough to assume the whole group was infected, he said.

Israel’s Health Ministry confirmed Tuesday the region’s first swine flu case in the city of Netanya. The patient, 26, recently returned from Mexico and had contracted it. A hospital official said the patient had recovered, but will remain hospitalized until the health ministry approves his release.

Meanwhile, a second case was confirmed Tuesday in Spain, Health Minister Trinidad Jimenez said, a day after the country reported its first case. The 23-year-old student, one of 26 patients under observation, was not in serious condition, Jimenez said.

With the virus spreading, the U.S. stepped up checks of people entering the country and warned Americans to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico.

“We anticipate that there will be confirmed cases in more states as we go through the coming days,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday.

The Food and Drug Administration late Monday issued emergency guidance that allows certain antiviral drugs to be used in a broader range of the population in case mass dosing is needed to deal with an outbreak.

Mexico, where the number of deaths believed caused by swine flu rose by 50 percent on Monday to 152, is suspected to be the center of the outbreak. But Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova late Monday said no one knows where the outbreak began, and implied it may have started in the U.S.

I think it is very risky to say, or want to say, what the point of origin or dissemination of it is, given that there had already been cases reported in southern California and Texas,” Cordova told a press conference.

Mexico City Health Secretary Armando Ahued said three people died in the capital Monday, but it was unclear if they were included in the national toll. He said 6,610 people went to city hospitals Monday with flu symptoms, but only 29 were remained hospitalized.

Dr. Nancy Cox of the CDC has said she believes the earliest onset of swine flu in the U.S. was on March 28. Cordova said a sample taken from a 4-year-old boy in Mexico’s Veracruz state in early April tested positive for swine flu. However, it is not known when the boy, who later recovered, became infected.

A decision by WHO to put an alert at Phases 4 or 5 signals that the virus is becoming increasingly adept at spreading among humans. Phase 6 is for a full-blown pandemic, characterized by outbreaks in at least two regions of the world.

Cases declining in Mexico
Sixty-eight cases — none fatal and most of them mild — were confirmed in the United States.

Amid the alarm, there was a spot of good news. The number of new cases reported by Mexico’s largest government hospitals has been declining the past three days, Cordova said, from 141 on Saturday to 119 on Sunday and 110 Monday.

Symptoms include a fever of more than 100, coughing, joint aches, severe headache and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhea. Many victims have been in their 30s and 40s — not the very old or young who typically succumb to the flu.

So far, no deaths from the new virus have been reported outside Mexico.

It could take four to six months before the first batch of vaccines are available, WHO said. Some antiflu drugs do work once someone is sick.

The best way to keep the disease from spreading, the CDC’s acting director, Richard Besser, said, is by taking everyday precautions such as frequent handwashing, covering up coughs and sneezes, and staying away from work or school if not feeling well.

Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the virus.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (pictures): MSNBC

SAN FRANCISCO - George Francis, the nation’s oldest man, who lived through both world wars, man’s first walk on the moon and the election of the first black president, has died. He was 112.

Francis died Saturday of congestive heart failure at a nursing home in Sacramento, his son, Anthony Francis, said Sunday.

“He lived four years in the 19th century, 100 years in the 20th century, and 8 years in the 21st century. We call him the man of three centuries,” said the younger Francis, 81.

UCLA gerontologist Dr. Stephen Coles, who maintains a list of the world’s oldest people, said Francis lived 112 years and 204 days.

With Francis’ death, Walter Breuning of Montana, who is 112 years, 98 days old, becomes the country’s oldest living man. At 114, Gertrude Baines of Los Angeles is the nation’s oldest living person. The world’s oldest person is Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who is 115 years, 109 days old, and the oldest man is Tomoji Tanabe of Japan, who is 113 years, 101 days, Coles said.

Francis, who at his prime barely weighed more than 100 pounds, was born June 6, 1896, in New Orleans. As an African-American in the South, he felt the sting of the Jim Crow-era segregation laws in his early life.

His son said Francis tried to enlist in the U.S. Army during World War I but was turned down because of his stature.

“We always attributed his longevity to his mental and physical toughness,” Anthony Francis said.

George Francis quit school after the sixth grade, became an amateur boxer as a young man and later worked as a chauffeur, an auto mechanic and a barber.

He and his wife, Josephine Johnson Francis, had a son and three daughters. Josephine Francis died of cancer in 1964.

Even in his waning days, Francis never lost his passion for politics, his family said. He voted for Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and for Barack Obama in 2008.

In an interview with The Associated Press after Obama’s victory, Francis, who used a wheelchair, said he felt like jumping up and down.

“He is going to give black men a break in the world, and give them a better opportunity to live and make more money,” he said. “For people who say voting doesn’t matter, I think that’s crazy.”

Anthony Francis said his father was devoted to his family and that he attributed his longevity to them.

“He said, ‘My children and my friends, I live off of them,’” he said.

Besides his four children, Francis is survived by 18 grandchildren, 33 great-grandchildren and 16 great-great grandchildren.

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this day in 1991, Islamic militants in Lebanon release kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson after 2,454 days in captivity.

As chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, Anderson covered the long-running civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990). On March 16, 1985, he was kidnapped on a west Beirut street while leaving a tennis court. His captors took him to the southern suburbs of the city, where he was held prisoner in an underground dungeon for the next six-and-a-half years.

Anderson was one of 92 foreigners (including 17 Americans) abducted during Lebanon’s bitter civil war. The kidnappings were linked to Hezbollah, or the Party of God, a militant Shiite Muslim organization formed in 1982 in reaction to Israel’s military presence in Lebanon. They seized several Americans, including Anderson, soon after Kuwaiti courts jailed 17 Shiites found guilty of bombing the American and French embassies there in 1983. Hezbollah in Lebanon received financial and spiritual support from Iran, where prominent leaders praised the bombers and kidnappers for performing their duty to Islam.

U.S. relations with Iran–and with Syria, the other major foreign influence in Lebanon–showed signs of improving by 1990, when the civil war drew to a close, aided by Syria’s intervention on behalf of the Lebanese army. Eager to win favor from the U.S. in order to promote its own economic goals, Iran used its influence in Lebanon to engineer the release of nearly all the hostages over the course of 1991.

Anderson returned to the U.S. and was reunited with his family, including his daughter Suleme, born three months after his capture. In 1999, he sued the Iranian government for $100 million, accusing it of sponsoring his kidnappers; he received a multi-million dollar settlement.

HISTORY.COM
Date: 2008-12-04

The Story of Ann Nixon Cooper set to the late Great Bob Marley and his timeless classic Natural Mystic.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome.” Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves — if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

I was watching the news tonight and they made mention that local Costco stores were rationing rice? I Googled the topic and found that this is happening everywhere. Here is an interesting story:

Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World.

By JOSH GERSTEIN Staff Reporter of the Sun April 21, 2008

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing. Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks. At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy. “Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.” The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99. “You can’t eat this every day. It’s too heavy,” a health care executive from Palo Alto, Sharad Patel, grumbled as his son loaded two sacks of the Basmati into a shopping cart. “We only need one bag but I’m getting two in case a neighbor or a friend needs it,” the elder man said. The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap. “Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history,” a sign above the dwindling supply said. Shoppers said the limits had been in place for a few days, and that rice supplies had been spotty for a few weeks. A store manager referred questions to officials at Costco headquarters near Seattle, who did not return calls or e-mail messages yesterday. An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled. The curbs and shortages are being tracked with concern by survivalists who view the phenomenon as a harbinger of more serious trouble to come. “It’s sporadic. It’s not every store, but it’s becoming more commonplace,” the editor of SurvivalBlog.com, James Rawles, said. “The number of reports I’ve been getting from readers who have seen signs posted with limits has increased almost exponentially, I’d say in the last three to five weeks.”