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Is swine flu ‘the big one’  

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Instilling Fear In People    

U.S. Steps Up Alert as More Swine Flu Is Found

Precaution Taken Despite Mildness Of Cases Detected Domestically

By David Brown

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 27, 2009

The United States declared a “public health emergency” yesterday as countries from New Zealand to Scotland investigated suspected cases of illness that they feared might be a strain of swine flu that has been identified in Mexico, the United States and Canada.

As of yesterday, however, no confirmed cases of the newly emerged flu strain had been found outside those three countries. Many of the people under observation around the world reported recent travel to Mexico.

With the U.S. announcement, civilian and military stockpiles of antiviral drugs were being readied for rapid distribution in the event that transmission of swine flu virus accelerates.

Swine flu death toll exceeds 100 as pandemic fears grow

• World Health Organisation urges global vigilance

• US declares national health emergency

Chris McGreal in Washington, Jo Tuckman in Mexico City and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 April 2009 07.26 BST

Governments around the world are on high alert for a swine flu pandemic today as the death toll from the virus in Mexico rose to more than 100 and possible cases were reported as far afield as Israel, New Zealand and Scotland.

A declaration at the weekend by the World Health Organisation of an international public health emergency was followed by a call for worldwide surveillance of the spread of the virus. The illness has rapidly claimed 103 lives, confined hundreds of people to hospital, and brought Mexico City, one of the world’s largest, to a near standstill.The United States last night separately declared its own emergency after officials said the virus was now so widespread it was unlikely it could be contained. However, White House officials urged people not to panic and pointed out that no case outside Mexico had proved fatal.

USA

Shortage of Doctors Proves Obstacle to Obama Goals



By ROBERT PEAR

Published: April 26, 2009

WASHINGTON – Obama administration officials, alarmed at doctor shortages, are looking for ways to increase the supply of physicians to meet the needs of an aging population and millions of uninsured people who would gain coverage under legislation championed by the president.

The officials said they were particularly concerned about shortages of primary care providers who are the main source of health care for most Americans.

One proposal – to increase Medicare payments to general practitioners, at the expense of high-paid specialists – has touched off a lobbying fight.

Family doctors and internists are pressing Congress for an increase in their Medicare payments.

U.S. toxic-asset plan stirs fears

The government will take on a mountain of risk while trying to create an artificial market for the loans and debt securities. Critics worry about possible fraud and further banking system damage.

By Ralph Vartabedian and Tom Hamburger

April 27, 2009

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles — The Obama administration’s impending effort to buy about $1 trillion in toxic assets in partnership with private investors — aimed at solving the most intractable part of the credit crisis — is now generating widespread fear that it is vulnerable to manipulation and carries sharp risks for taxpayers.

The program represents the biggest gamble yet in the federal bailout, but its still-hazy details have prompted bankers, economists, federal investigators and politicians to question whether it will solve the financial crisis. More than 400 written comments were recently submitted to the Treasury Department, many of them sharply negative.

The program is trying to create an artificial market for assets that have no known value, something that has never been done before on this scale. The only way to accomplish that is for the government to accept a mountain of risk.

In the process, critics fear that the banking system could be further damaged and the program subjected to a boom in fraud.

Asia

Sri Lanka rejects Tamil Tigers’ ceasefire

Government dismisses move as ‘gimmick’ and vows to continue fighting until rebels surrender

Gethin Chamberlain

guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 April 2009 00.40 BST

An international diplomatic team including foreign minister David Miliband and his French and Swedish counterparts is to travel to Sri Lanka on Wednesday in an effort to secure at least a lull in the fierce fighting between government forces and the cornered Tamil Tigers.

A ceasefire declaration by the Tigers was yesterday rejected by the Sri Lanka government. It said fighting would continue until the rebels surrendered.

Miliband, working with France’s Bernard Kouchner and Sweden’s Carl Bildt, will attempt to address the danger to civilians trapped inside the conflict zone. Miliband said yesterday that he had “noted” the rebels’ announcement of a unilateral ceasefire, adding: “I therefore urge the government of Sri Lanka to reinstate their own ceasefire, so that those civilians who remain trapped in the conflict zone can move to safety.”

Many reported dead as Pakistani army attacks Taleban near Swat

 From The Times

April 27, 2009

Zahid Hussain in Islamabad

Pakistani troops backed by helicopter gunships fought Taleban militants yesterday after strong US pressure on the Government to confront the insurgents’ advance towards the capital.

The battle was raging in the Dir district, next to the Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan, where the Government signed a controversial accord with the Taleban allowing the imposition of Sharia courts. The Government threatened to revoke the agreement.

Government forces shelled Taleban hideouts in Dir, killing 30 insurgents, including a commander. A soldier was killed and four others were wounded when an army convoy came under attack.

“Helicopter gunships are pounding militants’ positions in the hills,” said Ali Shah, a grocer in Timergara, the main town of Lower Dir district. “There has been intense fighting. A curfew has been imposed. We are now confined to our houses.”

Middle East

Saudi women face gyms ban

Action taken to shut down unlicensed, all-women fitness clubs, condemned as ‘shameless’ by Saudi Arabia’s clerics

Ian Black,

Middle East editor

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 April 2009 16.55 BST

Saudi women could see their private sports clubs and gyms closed down because the government seems likely to agree licensing of the clubs for men only.

But news of the likely shutdown of dozens of female-only gyms came as a government official suggested that women might be allowed to vote in municipal elections, although they would still be barred from running for office.

With the sexes strictly separated in public in the conservative kingdom, the two reports illustrate the slow and fitful nature of the progress made since the octogenarian King Abdullah instigated reforms three years ago.

This year the government appointed its first woman as deputy minister to run a department for female students. But women are still banned from driving and they face many other restrictions. They are required to have compulsory guardianship by a male.

Israel’s secret plan for West Bank expansion

Palestinians condemn ‘extremely dangerous’ scheme to grow settlement

By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem

Monday, 27 April 2009

Israel has taken a step towards expanding the largest settlement in the West Bank, a move Palestinians warn will leave their future state unviable and further isolate its future capital, East Jerusalem

The Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors settlement growth, said it had obtained plans drawn up by experts that the interior ministry had commissioned which call for expanding the sprawling Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem southward by 1200 hectares, placing what is now the separate smaller settlement of Kedar within Maale Adumim’s boundaries.

The expansion is on a highly sensitive piece of real estate that both sides see as holding the key to whether the Palestinians will have a viable state with their own corridor between the north and south parts of the West Bank.

Europe

Chirac to be charged in cash for cronies case

Poll ratings soar for France’s ex-president despite claims of embezzlement

By John Lichfield in Paris

Monday, 27 April 2009

France’s most popular politician is facing the prospect of legal humiliation by the end of the summer. His new-found place in public affections is unlikely to be damaged. His name is Jacques Chirac.

The retired former president has soared to stratospheric levels of popularity in recent months – well beyond any support that he enjoyed in his four decades in French politics. However, M. Chirac’s doubtful past is also catching up with him.

One of two criminal investigations into M. Chirac’s alleged embezzlement of public funds to finance his rise to the presidency has been completed, according to judicial sources. Defence lawyers have until early July to ask for further inquiries. Once that period expires, the investigating magistrate, Xavière Simeoni, is expected to recommend that M. Chirac, 76, should be sent for trial.

The case involves the allegedly illegal hiring of political allies and friends as “special staff” of the Paris town hall when M. Chirac was mayor of the capital. Judicial sources say that, under questioning, President Chirac has accepted that he, not his senior advisers, should bear the blame for any illegal hiring. Publicly, he continues to deny any wrong-doing.

Moscow police chief kills three in gun rampage

From Times Online

April 27, 2009

Jenny Booth

A Moscow police chief opened fire on the street and in a supermarket today, killing three people and wounding seven others, four of them critically, Russian investigators said.

Police Major Denis Yevsyukov, who heads a southern Moscow police department, killed a driver, a supermarket cashier and customer when he started shooting just after midnight, federal investigators said in a statement.

The incident began when Major Yevsyukov, whose wife had recently left him, finished his late shift and hitched a ride to the supermarket, Vladimir Pronin, the head of the Moscow police, told Russian television. The gunman was dressed in civilian clothes, although with one part of his uniform slung around his shoulders, Mr Pronin said.

Major Yevsyukov shot the driver of the car with a gun that was reportedlyunlicensed.

Africa

Italian cruise ship guards fire shots to repel pirates near Seychelles

From The Times

April 27, 2009

Richard Owen in Rome

The captain of an Italian cruise ship with 1,527 people on board described yesterday how his ship fought a running battle with pirates.

Commander Ciro Pinto of the MSC Melody, carrying 991 passengers and 536 crew, said the ship was left with smashed windows and bullet holes on its port side after six pirates trying to board the vessel fired at least 200 rounds with assault rifles from their dinghy.

Israeli security guards on the ship responded by firing pistols into the air and spraying them with a firehose.

“They started firing like crazy at the ship,” Commander Pinto said of the attackers, who struck in international waters 200 miles north of Victoria in the Seychelles and 600 miles off the Somali coast.

 Odinga calls for new Kenya poll

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said fresh elections may be needed if the rift in the power-sharing government cannot be solved.

The BBC  

He is demanding that he be put in charge of government business in parliament, to replace Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka.

Mr Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki agreed to share power last year to end months of post-election violence.

But relations have soured and the two parties have held crisis talks.

Over the weekend, President Kibaki’s Party of National Unity accused Mr Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement of “fomenting a coup”.

The president’s allies say he has the power to decide who should hold the crucial position of leading government business in the house.

The speaker of parliament is due to issue a ruling on Tuesday.In response, the prime minister told a meeting of his constituents in Nairobi’s Kibera slum:

“We have been pushed around enough.

Latin America

Ecuador’s populist leader still strong

President Rafael Correa is expected to win big in today’s vote. He talks like a leftist, but many say he doesn’t act like one.

By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 26, 2009 edition

QUITO, ECUADOR; AND MEXICO CITY – In December, Edita Matailo’s husband stopped sending money home to Ecuador after he lost his construction job in Spain. Since then, her support for Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has only grown stronger.

“He is the only one who cares about the poor,” says Mrs. Matailo, sucking on a popsicle on a recent day as she sits with her children and a friend in San Jose de Moran, a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Quito. “If it weren’t for his subsidies, we would not be making ends meet.”

Her words could have been spoken in Caracas, Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez has poured billions into social programs for the poor, or in rural Bolivia, where President Evo Morales has handed new powers to long-oppressed indigenous people. And it is such sentiments that have given Mr. Correa a clear advantage, according to several polls, in today’s presidential elections.

But unlike his peers in the region, Mr. Correa is more difficult to categorize. Despite fiery rhetoric against the US and the wealthy, and social spending that mirrors popular efforts by leftists across Latin America, many political observers say Correa sits on neither the left nor the right.

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