news/notes20090429a

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]

Hirohito
（日本昭和天皇の誕生日）

Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who was born this day in 1901 in Tokyo, ruled his country from 1926 to 1989, a reign that included both Japan's military defeat in World War II and its postwar economic triumphs.


[On This Day] from [Britannica]

1913: Zipper patented
（１９１３： ジッパー特許取得）

Swedish Canadian Gideon Sundback received a U.S. patent this day in 1913 for the modern “hookless” zipper, which improved on the clasp locker exhibited by Whitcomb Judson at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.


[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]

Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Japan takes measures to head off contagion
（日本：新型インフルエンザ対策本部を設置）

By JUN HONGO
Staff writer

The government on Tuesday heightened scrutiny of incoming tourists, warned Japanese living in Mexico to leave, and told those planning to go there to think twice after the World Health Organization raised the alert level for a new type of influenza.

The WHO elevated its alert level on the deadly swine-avian-human virus to Phase 4, indicating a significant human-to-human pandemic risk.

In a hastily arranged news conference after the WHO's alert, health minister Yoichi Masuzoe acknowledged the latest swine-avian-human flu is a new virus and said the government will monitor the nation's ports of entry to prevent a domestic outbreak.

While urging the public to remain calm, Masuzoe said preventive measures, including washing hands and gargling, should be taken to avoid infection.

Prime Minister Taro Aso and his Cabinet held the first meeting of a special task force Tuesday afternoon to discuss how to respond to the rapidly spreading epidemic.

"We recommend those capable of departing from Mexico to do so" due to the lack of available medical support in the country and the possibility of restrictions being placed on future departures, Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone told reporters.

Nakasone said no Japanese has been infected by the deadly virus. Media have reported that 152 deaths in Mexico have been confirmed or are suspected to have been caused by the virus.

Cases of swine flu infection have also been reported in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Spain.

Nakasone said the Foreign Ministry issued the equivalent of its second-highest travel alert, urging all travelers to postpone unnecessary trips to Mexico.

The ministry also advised Japanese living in Mexico to leave if possible, and if not, urged them to "refrain from leaving their home if unnecessary, stock enough food and water, remain at a safe location and conduct thorough measures to prevent infection."

While Japan decided Tuesday to carry out onboard inspections of passengers and crew arriving from the U.S., Mexico and Canada at Narita International Airport, the Foreign Ministry said it will tighten visa rules for Mexican citizens.

The Japanese Embassy in Mexico was to suspend its visa waiver program Tuesday and force Mexicans to apply for a visa in advance, rather than upon arrival in Japan, the ministry said.

Japan will also ask Mexican travelers to Japan to submit a medical certificate from doctors upon arrival and answer a questionnaire to confirm their health status, Nakasone said.

The Foreign Ministry also said extra masks and flu drugs will arrive at the Japanese Embassy in Mexico City to be used for Japanese residents and travelers if necessary.


[NATIONAL NEWS]

Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Towns, hospitals brace for epidemic
（国内の関係機関、病院：新型インフル発生に万全の備え）

(Kyodo News) Municipalities and hospitals intensified efforts nationwide Tuesday to prevent or minimize the impact of a possible outbreak of the deadly new flu from Mexico.

Local government officials said they are ready to ask for school closures, reduced corporate hours and stay-at-home curfews if a person infected with the new swine-avian-human flu virus shows up.

Yokohama set up a special task force Tuesday to deal with a potential outbreak and is looking to stockpile protective masks for distribution.

"As we expect to draw visitors to events commemorating the 150th anniversary of Yokohama port's opening to the outside world, we must prioritize the safety of people who will gather here," said Shuji Kobayashi, head of the task force.

At Yokohama port, quarantine officers said they are poised to board ships for inspections if crew members or passengers show such symptoms as coughing or fevers, although no ships from infected areas are scheduled to arrive at present.

Major transportation facilities are also gearing up for an outbreak. At Narita International Airport in Chiba Prefecture, many travelers were seen wearing masks.

"I'm worried. I'm taking a 1-year-old with me" to Florida to meet relatives, said Etsuko Matsushita, 59, from Fukuoka Prefecture, before departure.

Another traveler, a 67-year-old woman from Fukushima Prefecture who declined to give her name, said she brought about 10 masks for her and her husband's trip to the Czech Republic, saying, "I think airports are most dangerous in terms of infection."

Narita's quarantine office decided the same day to conduct onboard inspections of not only direct flights from Mexico, but also flights from the United States and Canada. Its officers appeared very busy, with one complaining of a lack of staff.


[BUSINESS NEWS]

Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Honda fears 95% plunge in '09 operating profit
（ホンダ：’０９年度営業利益は９４・７％減の１００億円の見込み）

(Kyodo News) Honda Motor Co. said Tuesday it expects group operating profit to dive 94.7 percent from fiscal 2008 to a mere 10 billion for the current business year unless auto sales recover from the damage caused by the global economic crisis.

For fiscal 2008, which ended in March, Honda said group net profit sank 77.2 percent from a year earlier to 137.01 billion, but fared better than its earlier projected net profit of 80 billion.

Operating profit also plunged, dropping 80.1 percent to 189.64 billion on sales of 10.01 trillion, down 16.6 percent for its first year-on-year drop in nine years.

But among Japan's top three automakers, Honda is likely to stand alone in staying in the black, as Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. expect to report huge losses next month for fiscal 2008.

In addition to the stronger yen, which dented overseas profits, Honda was hit hard as vehicle sales across all its overseas markets dropped 10.5 percent from the previous year to 2,961,000 units.

Domestic vehicle sales slid 9.6 percent to 556,000 units.

In total, sales in Japan and abroad shrank 10.4 percent to 3,517,000 units.

Looking ahead, Honda is likely to fall into the red with a group operating loss of 110 billion for the April-September half.

For the full year through next March, the automaker projects group net profit will fall 70.8 percent to 40 billion on sales of 8.37 trillion, down 16.4 percent.

Japan's second-largest automaker also projected car sales would slip 8.7 percent from a year earlier to 3,210,000 units for fiscal 2009. Its sales outlook for motorcycles stood at 8,595,000 units, down 15.0 percent.

news/notes20090429b

[Today's News] from [The Guardian]

Swine flu pandemic plans stepped up as US investigates deaths
• Poorest nations would be hardest hit by a swine flu pandemic, says WHO
• California declares a state of emergency as 13 cases are confirmed

Chris McGreal in Washington and Rory Carroll in Mexico City
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 April 2009 03.52 BST
Article history

The World Health Organisation yesterday called on all governments to prepare for a swine flu pandemic and warned that if the ­disease took hold across the globe it could prove a disaster for ­poorer countries.

The call came as the number of confirmed infections rose above 100 on four continents and the head of the US Centres for Disease Control, Richard Besser, said the virus is almost certain to claim lives in America.

"I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection," he said.

In New York officials said 18 children from two schools were being tested for swine flu after showing symptoms, and the city's health commissioner said "many hundreds" more children who have fallen sick may be infected with the virus, although all appear to be recovering.

The possible infection of large numbers of children in the city could be evidence of human-to-human transmission of the disease outside the source of the ­epidemic, Mexico. A group of children from a New York school who visited the country recently may have spread the illness to other children since their return.

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, appeared at a press conference to calm fears in the city. He said that so far the virus had behaved according to the pattern of normal seasonal flu.

"Additional cases do not come as much of a surprise – flu spreads, that's what a virus does. But the good news is that all our cases are mild, and are recovering."

Lastnight Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, declared a state of emergency following the confirmation of 13 cases of the illness.

The Mexican authorities said yesterday that three more people died of swine flu on Monday, bringing the toll to 152.

Mexico City's mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, ordered the closure of gyms, sports clubs and swimming pools. Schools, theatres and many other public places are shut and the city authorities are considering closing the extensive underground system.

Mexicans stripped supermarket shelves bare yesterday, prompted by growing concerns that the outbreak could result in a nationwide curfew.

Dr Keiji Fukuda, the WHO assistant director general for health security, said that while the organisation continued to say that a pandemic was not inevitable, the rising number of infections meant that governments should plan for the worst.

"Countries should take this opportunity to really prepare themselves for the possibility of a pandemic," he said.

The number of confirmed infections in the US, the largest outside Mexico, rose to 65 with new cases in Indiana and New Jersey. The US homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, said: "We anticipate that there will be confirmed cases in more states in the coming days."

Napolitano said the US will begin isolating people arriving at airports and borders who exhibit flu-like symptoms. President Obama has asked Congress for $1.5bn to build antivirus drug stockpiles and to monitor the spread of the disease.

But American officials were keen to keep the threat in perspective, noting that 36,000 people a year die of flu.

The number of confirmed swine flu cases continued to rise across the world to more than 100 outside Mexico. Yesterday there were 11 new cases of the disease in New Zealand and two in Israel, all among people who recently travelled to Mexico. Canada said it had seven more cases, bringing its total to 13. A second case was confirmed in Spain.

But while the latest confirmations were in developed nations, Fukuda warned that the greatest threat is to the poorest countries: "We know from history … that the poorer countries are the ones who really get hit the hardest, they are really hit disproportionately hard, and they also have the least resources to deal with these kind of situations," he said.

Suspected infections are being investigated in Brazil, Guatemala and Peru, all countries that would struggle to cope with a large-scale swine flu outbreak.

Although the flu season is passing in the northern hemisphere, the onset of winter in southern Africa and parts of South America means that the impact of any pandemic could be particularly severe on countries with fragile health services.

Fukuda said the WHO is still investigating why all the deaths have so far been confined to one country and is looking to see if infections are becoming established in communities or countries outside Mexico. But he warned that even if the disease does not take hold immediately, that does not mean the threat has passed.

"Even if activity goes down and quiet over the next few weeks, I think it would be very hard to know if it has disappeared," he said, noting that the 1918 flu pandemic was not initially taken seriously, fell into a lull for a few months, and then returned to claim millions of lives.

The authorities ordered all restaurants in Mexico City – there are more than 30,000 – to serve only takeaway food to reduce the risk from people congregating to eat. For the third consecutive day, pharmacies were sold out of face masks, prompting media advice on how to make home-made versions with cloth and tape.

US health officials said it would take several months to ready a vaccine.

news/notes20090429c

[Today's Paper] from [Los Angeles Times]

Schwarzenegger, Obama boost efforts against swine flu
The governor declares state of emergency, opening the door for quicker action by state agencies. Obama seeks $1.5 billion to fight the outbreak.

By Thomas H. Maugh II
April 29, 2009

As isolated outbreaks of swine flu continue to be confirmed around the world, with new cases reported Tuesday in Canada, Israel, France, New Zealand, Costa Rica and South Korea, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed a state of emergency and the White House asked Congress for an additional $1.5 billion to fight the outbreak.

State health officials have been aggressively working to address the crisis, and the proclamation is one more step in that effort, not an indication that the outbreak in California has become more severe.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, officials are holding their breath to see whether the virus' spread will turn into something more severe or, as many hope, peter out. Meanwhile, like Schwarzenegger, they are responding aggressively.

President Obama, in a letter to Congress, asked for the $1.5 billion with "maximum flexibility to allow us to address this emerging situation." The letter said the money could go toward stockpiling antiviral medicine, vaccine development, disease monitoring and diagnosis, and assisting international efforts to limit the spread of swine flu.

"In our opinion, this is about prudent planning moving forward," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.

Also Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she was forming a swine flu task force to coordinate U.S. efforts and noted that the government had made 12 million doses of antiviral drugs available to states. She said her agency was resisting calls from Capitol Hill to screen inbound air travelers from Mexico and those crossing at border checkpoints.

"Our focus is not on closing the border or conducting exit screening," she said. "It is on mitigation."

The total number of confirmed swine flu cases in the United States had reached 68 as of late Tuesday afternoon and more than 100 worldwide, not counting the still-unknown number of cases in Mexico. At least some of the new cases appear to have come from human-to-human transmission outside Mexico.

Such community transmission is one of the early earmarks of a pandemic, and if it continues to be observed, experts predicted, the World Health Organization is likely to raise its alert to Level 5, from elevated Level 4. Such an increase might involve more travel restrictions and stronger efforts to control the spread of the virus.

At a Tuesday morning news conference in Geneva, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general of the WHO, said a pandemic was not inevitable, but that if one did occur it was likely to be mild -- a conclusion drawn from the lack of deaths outside Mexico.

But he cautioned that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed millions worldwide, also started out mild. In the spring of that year, a mild pandemic petered out, only to return with a vengeance in the fall.

"I think we have to be mindful and respectful of the fact that influenza moves in ways we cannot predict," he said.

Moreover, he added, it is unlikely that health authorities will be able to limit the current outbreak's spread. "At this time, containment is not a feasible option," he said.

One ray of good news is that the outbreak may be leveling off in Mexico, where the first cases appeared. Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said Tuesday that the number of new suspected cases of swine flu had declined from 141 on Saturday to 119 on Sunday and 110 Monday.

At least 159 people have died in Mexico from influenza and its complications, and more than 2,000 cases have been reported. It is not clear, however, what proportion of those deaths and cases are attributable to swine flu. So far, only 26 of the deaths have been firmly linked to the virus.

Mexican authorities ordered all restaurants in Mexico City to begin serving only take-out food in an effort to limit spread of the virus, and they closed down archaeological sites in an effort to limit assemblies of people. Officials had already requested that bars, movie theaters, pool halls, gyms and churches in the capital close. Schools nationwide are closed until May 6.

The Mexico City Chamber of Commerce estimated that Mexico City is losing approximately $60 million a day from reduced tourism, trade and other business.

Mexican authorities were still trying to pinpoint where the disease started. They say they have found no infected pigs in the country, although a boy who lives near a pig farm in the state of Veracruz was confirmed to have contracted the disease as early as April 1. His community is also a largely migrant community, with people traveling to and from the U.S. regularly.

"Where did the virus come from? We don't know. Did someone come from California or did someone go from Mexico to California? We don't have that information," Cordova said.

As more countries around the world warned against unnecessary travel to Mexico, soccer's regional governing body, CONCACAF, said it was canceling a beach soccer tournament scheduled in Puerto Vallarta today. The group had already suspended an under-17 tournament, the semifinals of which were to be played today in Tijuana.

Two new confirmed swine flu cases were reported in Sacramento County on Monday evening, bringing the California total to 13. In the wake of that announcement, the governor's emergency proclamation orders all agencies and employees to provide all possible assistance to the Department of Public Health, authorizes that department to enter any necessary contracts for materials and services to combat the outbreak, makes it easier to purchase materials and waives some certification requirements for public health laboratories.

In Indiana, one case was reported Tuesday, a young adult in the northern part of the state.

Three new cases were also confirmed in Texas, bringing that state's total to six, and 17 probable cases in New York were confirmed. Authorities had previously confirmed 28 cases in New York, two in Kansas and one in Ohio, and more confirmations are expected hourly as testing continues.

New York City health officials also said that two people with swine flu symptoms, unconnected to the well-publicized outbreak at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens, have been hospitalized.

All the previous confirmed U.S. cases have been mild, but five of them now involve hospitalizations, three in California and two in Texas, said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There have been no known deaths from the virus outside Mexico. The Los Angeles County coroner's office had said it was investigating two deaths thought to be linked to swine flu, but in a statement Tuesday said no links could be found.

"We still do not have a good explanation for why the pattern of cases in other countries appear relatively mild while the pattern of cases in Mexico appear to be much more severe," Fukuda said. "This will be the object of a great deal of research and attention, but at this time we can't say why there appears to be a difference."

U.S. officials said more severe cases in this country were likely. "I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection," Besser said. All types of flu kill people, experts said, and there was no reason to believe this one should be different.

New Zealand authorities said that 13 residents who had recently traveled to Mexico showed symptoms of the virus. Swine flu was confirmed in three, and the authorities are assuming that all have it, Health Minister Tony Ryall said. The number broadened to include another traveler from North America.

Canadian officials said seven new cases had been confirmed in that country, bringing its total to 13.

Israel's Health Ministry confirmed two cases in that country among travelers, and Spain confirmed a second case there. South Korean authorities said they had found a probable case there in a recent visitor to Mexico. There was also a confirmed case in Costa Rica and a probable case in France.

Two cases had previously been confirmed in Britain.

All of the foreign cases have been mild, but the victims have been hospitalized for quarantine, in light of fears about the spread of the virus.

Also Tuesday, Cuba became the first country to suspend flights to and from Mexico, ordering a 48-hour cessation. Mexico is a major transit point for flights to that isolated country, which has not yet reported any cases of swine flu. Argentina subsequently canceled all flights to and from Mexico for five days.

Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise lines said their ships would not stop in Mexico until at least next week.

news/notes20090429d

[Today's Paper] from [The New York Times]

Specter Joins Democrats; Senate Count May Reach 60

By CARL HULSE and ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: April 28, 2009

WASHINGTON — In an unexpected turnabout in political loyalties, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced on Tuesday that he was leaving the Republican Party to become a Democrat, bolstering President Obama at a pivotal moment for his policy agenda and further marginalizing Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Specter acknowledged that the surprise decision was driven by his intense desire to win a sixth term next year. It came after he and his political advisers concluded over the weekend that he could not win a Republican primary against a conservative challenger, particularly in light of his vote for the president’s economic stimulus package.

“I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate — not prepared to have that record decided by that jury,” said Mr. Specter, 79, a moderate who has long been known for breaking with his party.

Republicans were knocked off stride by the announcement, and many had no warning from Mr. Specter, who met a polite but chilly reception when he entered a party luncheon to inform his colleagues. They immediately labeled it, in the words of Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who heads the party’s campaign arm, a naked act of “political self-preservation,” and they sought to portray it as an isolated case growing out of Pennsylvania’s political environment.

The defection of Mr. Specter creates the potential for Democrats to control 60 votes in the Senate if Al Franken prevails this summer in the court fight over last November’s Minnesota Senate election, a prospect that appears increasingly likely.

If Democrats could hold those votes together, Republicans would be unable to mount filibusters as Congress moves into the critical phase of acting on Mr. Obama’s ambitious agenda on health care and energy. A last line of defense against a Democratic-controlled Congress and White House would thereby be eliminated.

“This is transformative,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “It’s game-changing.”

Democrats warned that it would remain a formidable challenge to keep their ranks together. Mr. Specter said he would not be an automatic Democratic vote, though he will be pulled in that direction since he now faces the prospect of running in a Democratic primary.

Mr. Specter was one of just three Republican senators to vote in favor of the stimulus package this year. He is a supporter of abortion rights and expanded embryonic stem cell research, and he opposed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. But he also voted to authorize the war in Iraq, backed President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees, favors school vouchers and has taken many other positions that put him at odds with most Democrats.

Mr. Specter said he had received commitments from Mr. Obama and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, to support him in any primary, backing intended to deter Democratic challengers. Mr. Obama is scheduled to endorse Mr. Specter on Wednesday morning at a joint appearance.

Administration officials said Mr. Obama was handed a note from an aide at 10:25 a.m. Tuesday in his daily economic briefing. The note, said a senior administration official, read, “Specter is announcing he is changing parties.” Seven minutes later, Mr. Obama reached Mr. Specter by telephone.

In a brief conversation, the president said, “You have my full support,” said the official, who heard the phone call. The president added that Democrats were “thrilled to have you.”

White House officials said Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had been at the center of the effort to persuade Mr. Specter to change parties. They said a switch had been the subject of years of bantering and discussion between the two men, who often sat together while riding the Amtrak train home. But the conversation turned more earnest after Mr. Biden lobbied Mr. Specter to vote with the White House on the stimulus bill this year.

One adviser to Mr. Biden said that since that day 10 weeks ago, Mr. Biden and Mr. Specter had spoken 14 times — six times in person and eight in telephone conversations. In each case, White House officials said, Mr. Biden argued that the Republican Party had increasingly drifted away from Mr. Specter since the election and that ideologically, he was closer to the Democratic Party.

White House officials said that there was no realistic way to guarantee that Mr. Specter would not face a primary race for the Democratic nomination, but noted that there was no Democrat in a position to resist the state’s political machine and make a serious challenge. More than that, White House officials said they had assured Mr. Specter that Mr. Obama would campaign for him and raise money for him if necessary.

“The president’s appreciative of this decision and particularly appreciative of the support that he gave on a number of things, the stimulus package being one of them,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser. “And the president will do whatever he can do to help.”

Some Republicans bade good riddance to Mr. Specter, who was badly trailing in polls against former Representative Patrick J. Toomey, who also once led the Club for Growth, a group of fiscal conservatives who have financed primary challenges against Republicans they consider to have strayed too far from conservative principles.

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, did not mince words, saying Mr. Specter “left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record.”

But Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, a Republican who also supported the administration’s economic stimulus plan, said Mr. Specter’s view that the party had shifted too far to the right reflected the increasingly inhospitable climate for moderates in the Republican Party.

Ms. Snowe said national Republican leaders were not grasping that “political diversity makes a party stronger, and ultimately we are heading to having the smallest political tent in history.”

Other Republicans said Democrats were on the verge of unchecked power in Washington, a theme Republicans have pushed in an effort to turn political weakness into a strength.

“The danger of that for the country,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, “is that there won’t automatically be an ability to restrain the excess that is typically associated with big majorities and single-party rule.”

Mr. Specter, who sat on the Democratic side of the dais during a committee hearing Tuesday afternoon, said he had been assured that his seniority would be recognized by his new party, which would put him in line to jump over some Democrats for subcommittee chairmanships after the 2010 midterm elections.

Mr. Specter has suffered from a variety of serious illnesses over the years, but said on Tuesday that he was “full of vim, vigor and vitality.”

He has angered many Democrats over the years with his positions, particularly his support of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. But he said that with his record of 10,000 votes cast over almost 30 years, he had done something to anger virtually everyone.

“I don’t expect everybody to agree with all my votes,” he said. “I don’t agree with them all myself at this point.”

news/notes20090429e

[Today's Newspaper] fom [The Washington Post]

Specter Leaves GOP, Shifting Senate Balance
Democrats Are Poised to Hold A Powerful 60-Seat Majority

By Paul Kane, Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania provided a boost to President Obama's ambitious legislative agenda yesterday by abandoning the Republican Party in the face of shifting political realities at home and an aggressive courtship by the White House and party leaders.

In an announcement that shocked colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Specter said he had become increasingly uncomfortable as a moderate in a party dominated by conservatives and would join the Democrats. He bluntly admitted that his decision was tied to his belief that he could not win reelection as a Republican next year.

Although he said he "will not be an automatic 60th vote" for Democrats, Specter's decision left Democratic Party leaders jubilant. The addition of Specter to their ranks, coupled with the likelihood that the Minnesota Supreme Court will name Al Franken the winner of that state's disputed Senate race in the coming months, means that Democrats are all but certain to control a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the chamber for the first time in about 30 years.

The news came on the eve of Obama's 100th day in office, and in a phone call shortly after he was informed of the party switch, the president promised Specter his "full support" in attempting to secure another term in 2010. Specter will appear with Obama and Vice President Biden, who helped lead efforts to bring Specter into the party fold, at the White House this morning.

Neither party has controlled 60 or more seats since 1978, and Republicans warned yesterday that such a majority would give Obama almost unfettered control over the federal government. But Specter vowed to maintain his current policy positions -- including opposition to a labor organizing bill and to the nominee Obama has tapped to run the key legal counsel unit at the Justice Department.

But even as Specter pledged his continued independence, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) later told reporters that there is an effort underway to refashion the union legislation in an effort to gain Specter's support. The Pennsylvanian supported the legislation, known as the Employee Free Choice Act, in 2007 but announced his opposition to the bill in its current form as his primary challenge from former congressman Pat Toomey (R) gained momentum.

Democrats also hope the move will increase momentum for Obama's universal health-care plan, given that Specter, who has battled a brain tumor and Hodgkin's disease, is an ardent advocate of increased spending on medical research and causes.

Specter, 79, will retain seniority in the Senate as if he were elected as a Democrat when he first took office in 1980. As a result, he will likely receive a plum subcommittee chairmanship on the Appropriations Committee in the future, and he indicated that his goal is to one day chair the full committee. He has already served as Judiciary Committee chairman, after conservatives put aside major ideological concerns to elevate him to that post in 2004, and until yesterday he was the top Republican on that panel.

The decision was the culmination of a months-long effort by key Democrats to woo Specter, who began his political career as a Democrat in Philadelphia but has been a Republican for 43 years. Biden, a regular Amtrak passenger with Specter as the two traveled to Wilmington and Philadelphia, respectively, when both served in the Senate, met with him face to face six times and spoke on the phone with him on eight more occasions since mid-February, aides said. Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, whose first job as a prosecutor in Philadelphia came under the tutelage of then-District Attorney Specter, had also lobbied him about making the switch, but it was his Senate colleagues who apparently closed the deal.

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said he approached Specter at the Senate gym a few weeks ago and, aware that he faced a difficult primary next year, asked, "Did you ever think about returning to your original party?" He said Specter responded, "You know, a number of people have talked to me about that."

During a vote Monday evening, Durbin realized the prospect of a switch could be more serious when he saw Specter's wife, Joan, seated in the visitors gallery. Specter and Reid then disappeared into the majority leader's office, and Durbin got a call from Reid a short while later, telling him the deal was done.

Specter's political standing in Pennsylvania has become increasingly tenuous in recent years. His record as a moderate, combined with the shrinking GOP base in the Keystone State, would make a general election difficult, and Toomey, who came within two percentage points of defeating Specter in 2004, was leading in public polls by double digits heading into next April's GOP primary.

Specter received his own final poll Friday, an assessment he called "bleak." He ultimately chose to cast his lot with Democrats, he said in a news conference yesterday, because "I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate."

A handful of Pennsylvania Democrats had been considering pursuit of the Senate nomination, but potential opposition to Specter began to melt yesterday as the would-be contenders learned that he would have support from Obama and practically every leading Democrat in Washington.

Earlier this year, Specter outraged his Republican colleagues by supporting Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program. Specter said at the time that the plan -- which he worked with two other Republicans to trim by more than $100 billion -- was necessary to avert another Great Depression. Toomey jumped in the race after he cast the votes, and Democrats soon stepped up their courtship efforts.

"The stimulus vote was a schism," Specter told reporters yesterday.

A decade ago, Republicans counted nine senators from the 11 states stretching up the Interstate 95 corridor north of the Capitol; today, they have three GOP senators from those states, and one, Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), will retire in 2010.

While Democrats celebrated the surprise move, Republicans alternately blasted Specter as a turncoat who had embraced political expediency over principle, or sank into soul-searching about the future of their party. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), a fellow Northeastern moderate, called the news "devastating" for a party that has been unable to appeal to centrist voters.

"Many Republicans feel alienated and disaffected from the party," Snowe said.

Senate Republican leaders appeared ashen after Specter made a brief appearance at their weekly policy luncheon to tell them the news in person. "Obviously, we are not happy that Senator Specter has decided to become a Democrat," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) told reporters, attempting to minimize the blow. "This is not a national story. This is a Pennsylvania story," he said.

news/notes20090429f

[Health] from [abcNEWS]

First U.S. Death From Swine Flu in Texas the CDC Confirms
A 23-Month-Old Child Is the First American to Die From Swine Flu, the CDC Reports

By AMMU KANNAMPILLY
April 29, 2009

A 23-month-old child from Texas has become the first American to die in the swine flu outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed today. The CDC has also confirmed that the baby had recently traveled to Mexico.

"This is obviously a serious situation," said President Obama of the developments Wednesday. He further urged local health departments to watch for new cases -- and for schools to "strongly consider" closing their doors if the virus is suspected or detected among students or staff.

There are now 71 confirmed cases in the U.S., the CDC reports.

In Chicago, officials closed a school on the city's North Side after a "probable" swine flu infection was reported Tuesday. Blood samples are being sent to the CDC for analysis. If confirmed, Illinois would become the sixth state to report an outbreak.

Germany and Austria today became the latest countries to confirm swine flu infections. The Robert Koch Institute, Germany's national disease control center, has confirmed three cases, including two women -- a 37-year-old in Bavaria and a 22-year-old in Hamburg -- and one man. All three are undergoing treatment at German hospitals.

And the Egyptian government has begun slaughtering all 300,000 pigs in the country, according to local reports. No swine flu cases have yet been confirmed on the country, though its neighbor Israel has reported two.

Governments around the world are struggling to contain the disease, but no one is ready yet to call the outbreak a full fledged pandemic.

"It's a very serious possibility, but it is still too early to say that this is inevitable," the World Health organization flu chief, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, told reporters today.

Swine Flu Death Reinforces CDC's Prior Warnings

The death comes as public fears over swine flu continue to grow. Before this fatality, health officials confirmed Tuesday that five patients in the United States have been hospitalized with swine flu; all have recovered.

And last night, a flight from Baltimore to Mexico was, for a time, suspected of carrying a passenger with swine flu. The airport had prepared to quarantine the plane before authorities said the concern was unwarranted.

Both the Obama administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been warning for days that American deaths should be expected from swine flu.

"I think what the American people need to be confident of is that President Obama, the Department of Homeland Security and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are being very aggressive in tackling the problem," Valerie Jarrett, senior White House adviser, told "Good Morning America" today.

"We were unfortunately expecting that there would be deaths, but we're working really hard to educate the American people so that we take reasonable precautions."

The White House has already requested a billion and a half dollars to fight the growing outbreak.

Meanwhile, Mexico's Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said on Tuesday night that more than 1,300 people were in hospitals, some of them "seriously" ill, out of a total of around 2,500 suspected cases of the virus.

"In the last few days there has been a decline (in cases)," Cordova told a news conference. "The death figures have remained more or less stable."

Cordova said the victims ranged from children through young adults and middle-aged people to the elderly, a different pattern to the common seasonal flu that mainly kills the elderly and already unwell people.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today three more cases of the flu have been confirmed, for a total of five known cases.

After Mexico, U.S. Is Hardest Hit

In the U.S., the outbreak has escalated, with the total number of cases confirmed in the United States jumping to 71 and spreading to two more states, health officials said. Experts expect that figure to keep rising.

"I do expect more cases and expect more states to be affected," Rear Admiral Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's science and public health program, told a Senate hearing today. "I think we need to be prepared that even if it starts to look a little better, it may get a little worse."

The CDC has been working to distribute test kits for the virus, identified only last week in the country. Without the kits, confirming infection can take days. To fight the epidemic, the Obama administration is asking Congress for $1.5 billion. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president was requesting the funds "out of an abundance of caution" to "enhance our nation's capability to respond to the potential spread of this outbreak."

The government's request underscores how seriously U.S. officials are treating the threat. Alarmed by the growing number of swine flu cases and the possibility that a California man may have died from the disease, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency today to help deal with the outbreak.

California has confirmed 15 cases of swine flu, and Tuesday it was investigating whether one man may have died as a result of the virus. According to Los Angeles County public health official Jonathan Fielding, the case is still being investigated. If it is confirmed, it would be the second death in the U.S. attributed to the illness.

Richard Besser, acting director of the CDC, declined to comment on the California investigation, but said, "I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection."

Florida has reported an incidence of swine flu today, and Indiana health officials confirmed this afternoon that a student at Notre Dame has swine flu. These developments bring to seven the number of states where the infections are being investigated.

In Orlando, Fla., the chief medical officer at Florida Hospital Loran Hauck indicated the flu has spread to a tourist who visiting the crowded Disney World.

"A case was diagnosed here in Orlando today on a tourist from Mexico who came to Disney attractions two days ago to visit," Hauck wrote in the email. Florida health officials have not confirmed that the tourist was stricken with swine flu.

Indiana joins Ohio, New York, Texas, Kansas and California as states with confirmed cases.

The outbreak is expected to keep growing because the CDC said today the new count includes "a number of hospitalizations."

The CDC in Atlanta has become the center for the swine flu investigation. It is one of only four laboratories in the world that have the expertise to unravel a novel flu strain.

"What we're trying to do is to identify how bad, how good, the swine flu is currently operating -- is it expanding, is it contracting, is it maintaining a steady state," said Phillip Navin, director of the Division of Emergency Operations at the CDC.

With the uptick in cases, the CDC shipped out more anti-virals and sent additional teams into the field.

"I think at the moment we need to be looking forward and making sure that we're doing everything that we can to keep people from getting sick," said Dr. Steve Reed, director of the CDC's Influeza Coordination Unit.

New York City Sees Big Jump in Swine Flu Cases

The biggest increase occurred in New York City where the number of cases leaped from 28 to 45, the CDC said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the cases were confined to a "single cluster," students of St. Francis Preparatory School and their relatives. Several of the students had spent spring break in Cancun, Mexico, which health officials suspect is the origin of the outbreak.

But Bloomberg said Tuesday that it appears to have spread to at least one other school, Public School 177, a school for autistic children. Of PS 177's 380 students, 82 called in sick today and at least a dozen have fevers. One of those students has two siblings at St. Francis Prep, Bloomberg said. Both of the those schools are located in the borough of Queens.

The mayor also said there are six possible cases of the flu in a Manattan school, Ascension parochial school.

And New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said today that "many hundreds" of students and teachers at St. Francis are sick -- though most of those cases appear mild so far.

"It is here and it is spreading," Frieden said. "We do not know whether it will continue to spread."

At one point the Ernst and Young corporation said it had confirmed a case at its Manhattan headquarters, but later retracted the statement.

In addition, there were four more cases in Texas and three additional cases in California.

Leaders in Congress raced each other to hold hearings on the outbreak. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that deals with pandemic preparedness, called an emergency hearing to address funding for states and federal government

CONTINUED ON news/notes20090429g

news/notes20090429g

[Health] from [ABC NEWS]

First U.S. Death From Swine Flu in Texas the CDC Confirms
A 23-Month-Old Child Is the First American to Die From Swine Flu, the CDC Reports

By AMMU KANNAMPILLY
April 29, 2009

CONTINUED FROM news/notes20090429f

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., called another hearing for Wednesday and Rep. Henry Waxman, D- Calif., the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee called for a hearing on Thursday.

Concern among travelers was so great that Carnival Cruises Tuesday suspended its stops at Mexican ports because of its concerns about swine flu.

Around the world, New Zealand confirmed 11 cases, and Israel confirmed one Tuesday. South Korea, Australia and the Czech Republic announced several suspected cases.

A South Korean Catholic nun traveling in Mexico has tested positive for swine flu, according to reporting by ABC's Joohee Cho. South Korean authorities believe the 51-year-old woman caught the disease from a taxi driver and have requesting the Mexican government look into the matter.

Ten countries have restricted their imports of U.S. pork or swine, including Russia, China, Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and Ecuador.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said pork, soybean and corn prices had fallen in the last two days and criticized what he said were illogical restrictions on pork.

Officials Fighting Swine Flu Learned Lessons From SARS

Korean health authorities are examining 315 other passengers that were on the same flight with the nun and have already injected Tamiflu into eight passengers who sat near her. Spain had one previously confirmed case, the United Kingdom, two and Canada, six. France is still testing some people and some test results in Germany came back negative.

Most of the individuals involved had recently returned from Mexico.

To slow the global spread of the virus, the U.S. State Department and the European Union's health commissioner recommended avoiding nonessential travel to Mexico.

Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the virus amid global concern about a possible pandemic, which means a prevalent and rapidly spreading disease over a large region.

Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew told the Straits Times that Singaporeans returning from Mexico would be quarantined.

Argentina also installed airport heat sensors and suspended flights from Mexico, as did Cuba.

But Gregory Hartl, a World Health Organization spokesman, told reporters that it did not recommend border closure or travel restrictions as a countermeasure.

He noted that infected people may not show symptoms at the airport or when they reach a border crossing. "Certainly, if you feel that you are ill, you should not travel, in any case, to anywhere," Hartl said.

Lessons learned from the SARS (a viral respiratory disease) outbreak in Asia in 2003 showed that border closure was economically disruptive and not particularly effective. "In public health terms, it didn't work, so we don't want to repeat something that didn't work" Hartl said.

But governments in Asia were not taking any chances. Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines dusted off thermal scanners used in the SARS crisis as they checked for signs of fever among passengers from North America.

South Korea and Indonesia introduced similar screening. In Malaysia, health workers in face masks took the temperatures of passengers as they arrived on a flight from Los Angeles.

China said anyone experiencing flulike symptoms within two weeks of arrival had to report to authorities.

India will start screening people arriving from Mexico, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, Britain and France for flulike symptoms, said Vineet Chawdhry, a top health ministry official. It also will contact people who have arrived from Mexico and other affected countries in the past 10 days to check for the symptoms, he said.

These measures came after the World Health Organization announced that it had raised its pandemic alert level to Phase 4 from Phase 3, the first time the alert level has been raised above 3 since the system was adopted in 2005.

The Phase 4 designation signifies that the new swine flu virus can cause sustained outbreaks and is adapting itself to spread among humans, significant steps toward a pandemic. But the ranking does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a foregone conclusion.

"If the virus is an efficient virus, if it spreads easily from human to human, it will probably continue to spread," Hartl said.

All transmission of the disease so far appears to have been human to human and not from animal or other contact, according to the WHO. "There is no danger from eating pork," Hartl said. "If you cook pork well, if you cook all meat well, it kills all virus."

Swine Flu Ground Zero

Outside Mexico, where 159 people have died, the United States has been the country worse hit by the swine flu outbreak. Many of the cases appear to be students who recently visited Mexico.

Addressing the National Academy of Sciences Monday, President Obama acknowledged the efforts to keep pace with the spread of the disease within the United States.

"We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States," he said. "And this is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it is not a cause for alarm."

There is no vaccination for the swine flu strain, which has elements of pig, bird and human strains. But officials said they have ramped up medical surveillance around the country and, as part of the emergency declaration, freed up state and federal resources for prevention. Officials also emphasized the importance of individual care and good hygienic practices.

"Even if this outbreak is a small one, we can't anticipate we won't have follow-up outbreaks," U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.

A different scenario is unfolding across the border in Mexico. While authorities hunt for the source of the swine flu outbreak, the country is under lock down. Schools, museums, parks and even churches in Mexico City have been shut down by the government. A leading business group estimates that canceled events and closure of establishments to prevent the spread of swine flu is costing Mexico City at least $57 million a day.

All of Mexico's Mayan ruins and Aztec pyramids have also been shut down until further notice.

"I haven't been out for days," said one woman, who only left to bring her baby to the doctor for a routine vaccination.

The government has advised people to stay home and indicated that those infected by the virus could be isolated. In the country's deserted capital, public events were cancelled for the next week or so. Sales of masks have soared as people try to prevent themselves from the potentially deadly disease.

Mexican officials are hoping the 10-day shut-down will be enough to cover the two-day incubation period and the seven-day recovery of anyone who has the virus.

Mexico's first suspected case of the swine flu was detected in the remote farming village of La Gloria, where 5-year-old Edgar Hernandez contracted the disease nearly one month ago, authorities say.

"The most likely way that this young boy got the infection was from another person who had been in contact with the pigs," said Dr. Kathryn Edwards of Vanderbilt Medical Center.

More than 800 people in the town of 2,000 were infected, authorities say, but no deaths were reported. It took seven days for Mexico to confirm its first cases of swine flu, according to World Health Organization estimates.

Officials say it's still too early to determine how the disease spread from La Gloria into a global health emergency.

"It's a new virus, new virus combination, it does transmit from person to person and we already know it causes fatalities so we already have all the makings of a possible pandemic," Irwin Redlener of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health said.

But Dr. Nancy Cox of the CDC has said she believes the earliest onset of swine flu in the United States in this current outbreak happened March 28.

A quarter of the 50 million doses of Tamiflu stockpiled by the U.S. government has been released and the Obama administration has declared a public health emergency to free up the medicine and federal help to the states who need it.

But pharmacies in several states have been flooded with phone calls from concerned customers.

"Our first phone calls were doctors asking if we had Tamiflu," New York City pharmacist Yvonne Zampitella said. "They were prescribing it for their patients and family members."

Symptoms of the swine flu are similar to the regular flu, health officials say, including aching muscles, fever and fatigue. The virus appears to be responsive to medication.

"These drugs do not kill the virus, they help prevent its replication and therefore help reduce the symptoms, but they have to be taken within 48 hours so people have to recognize they have a serious illness, get to a doctor and start treatment," ABC News' Dr. Tim Johnson said on "World News" Monday.

"But we should not be telling people to go out and buy these drugs for use as preventive measure. We need to reserve drug for actual cases and outbreak."

news/notes20090429h

[HEALTH] from [CNN NEWS]

First U.S. swine flu death confirmed
（アメリカで初めて豚インフルエンザで死亡）
・2-year-old child in Texas is first fatality from swine flu in United States
・World Health Organization says at least 105 cases confirmed worldwide
・More than 159 deaths in Mexico are thought to have been caused by swine flu

CNN) -- A 2-year-old child became the first swine flu fatality in the United States, while more European countries announced confirmed cases of the disease on Wednesday.

The apparent spread of swine flu was not unexpected, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control Dr. Richard Besser told CNN.

"Flu is a very serious infection and each virus is unique, and so it's hard to know what we're going to be seeing," Besser said. "But given what we've seen in Mexico we have expected that we would see more severe infections and we would see deaths."

Germany and Austria became the latest European countries to report swine flu, while the number of cases increased in Britain and Spain.

The United States is taking precautionary measures to stem the spread of the disease, of which most cases are not severe.

Besser said the CDC is "taking aggressive action to try and limit the impact of this on our communities," but is not changing its recommendations as a result of the confirmed swine flu death.

"I expect we'll see more cases," Besser said. "And as we do, we'll learn more about this, and if there needs to be more stringent or less stringent recommendations, we'll be making those."

He stressed that people should maintain their perspective on the swine flu outbreak.

"Seasonal flu each year causes tens of thousands of deaths in this country, on average, about 36,000 deaths," Besser said. "And so this flu virus in the United States, as we're looking at it, is not acting very differently from what we saw during the flu season."

The 23-month-old child who died from swine flu in Texas had traveled from Mexico to Houston, for treatment, a spokeswoman for the Houston Health Department told CNN.

Kathy Barton said the child, who died Monday, was not an American citizen. She did not know where the child was from in Mexico.

President Barack Obama called on schools in the United States with confirmed or possible swine flu cases to "strongly consider temporarily closing so that we can be as safe as possible."

Obama expressed condolences for the family of the child in Texas who died from the disease. Six of the 64 confirmed swine flu cases in the United States have been reported in Texas, according to the CDC.

The only other confirmed swine flu deaths have been seven in Mexico, out at least 112 confirmed swine flu cases worldwide.

Mexico is where the global outbreak originated. While only 26 cases have been confirmed in Mexico -- including the seven deaths -- health officials there suspect the swine flu outbreak has caused more than 159 deaths and roughly 2,500 illnesses.

They also believe they may have found "patient zero" in the global outbreak in the small village of La Gloria in the mountains of Mexico.

Five-year-old Edgar Hernandez -- known as "patient zero" by his doctors -- survived the earliest documented case of swine flu in the current outbreak. He lives near a pig farm, though experts have not established a connection between that and his illness.

Edgar has managed to bounce back from his symptoms and playfully credits ice cream for helping him feel better.

Researchers do not know how the virus is jumping relatively easily from person to person, or why it's affecting what should be society's healthiest demographic. Many of the victims who have died in Mexico have been young and otherwise healthy.

The deadly outbreak in Mexico has prompted authorities to order about 35,000 public venues in Mexico City to shut down or serve only take-out meals as health officials tried to contain spreading of the virus.

Governments around the world are scrambling to prevent further outbreak.

Some, such as China and Russia, have banned pork imports from the United States and Mexico, though the World Health Organization says the disease is not transmitted through eating or preparing pig meat. Several others countries, such as Japan and Indonesia, are using thermographic devices to test the temperature of passengers arriving from Mexico.

Obama said the outbreak is a cause for concern, not for alarm. The U.S. government has urged travelers to avoid non-essential travel to Mexico.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued emergency authorization for the use of two of the most common anti-viral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza. The authorization allows the distribution of the drugs by a broader range of health-care workers and loosens age limits for their use.

In Mexico City, however, there is a shortage of such medication. And it became impossible to find protective surgical masks, which the government had handed out to one out of every five residents.

Swine influenza, or flu, is a contagious respiratory disease that affects pigs.

When the flu spreads person-to-person, instead of from animals to humans, it can continue to mutate, making it harder to treat or fight, because people have no natural immunity.

Symptoms include fever, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Common seasonal flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people every year worldwide, far more than the current outbreak of swine flu.

But there is no vaccine for the new disease, and little natural immunity, an expert said.

"I think the reason to be concerned is ... we had a vaccine for regular flu," said Dr. Carlos del Rio of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. "This is a totally new virus. ... You have a virus to which there's no pre-vaccination, there's no prior immunity. And, therefore, the mortality rate may be higher than other influenza viruses."

news/notes20090429i

[Top News] from [REUTRS]

Texas flu death first outside Mexico
（テキサスで初死者、メキシコの豚インフルエンザ感染者）

Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:39am EDT
By Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A baby in Texas has died of the H1N1 flu strain, the first confirmed death outside Mexico from a virus which health officials fear could cause a pandemic as it spread to two more countries in Europe.

Nearly a week after the threat emerged in Mexico, where up to 159 people have died, a U.S. official said on Wednesday a 23-month-old had died in the state bordering Mexico. A health official said the baby was Mexican and was in the United States for medical treatment.

Richard Besser, acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he expected more bad news even though most of the 65 U.S. cases of swine flu were mild.

"We're going to find more cases. We're going to find more severe cases and I expect that we'll continue to see additional deaths," he said.

President Barack Obama said the death showed it was time to take "utmost precautions" against the possible spread of the virus.

Germany reported its first three infections and Austria one, taking to nine the number of countries known to be affected.

"We have about 100 cases outside Mexico, and now you have one death. That is very significant," said Lo Wing Lok, an infectious disease expert in Hong Kong.

TOURISM HIT

France said it would seek on Thursday a European Union ban on flights to Mexico because of the influenza outbreak. Argentina and Cuba have already banned them.

The EU, the United States and Canada have advised against non-essential travel to the popular tourist destination.

Like the baby in the United States, all seven new cases in Europe had recently been in Mexico.

They comprised a Bavarian couple in their 30s, a 22-year-old woman from Hamburg, a 28-year-old Austrian, who was now recovering, and three Britons with mild symptoms -- adults in London and Birmingham and a girl aged 12 in southwest England.

Cases have been confirmed in Canada, New Zealand, Israel and Spain.

The World Health Organization said it might raise its pandemic alert level to phase five -- the second highest -- if it were confirmed that infected people in at least two countries were spreading the disease to other people in a sustained way.

Before the U.S. death was reported, Keiji Fukuda, acting WHO assistant director for health security and environment, said it could be a "very mild pandemic", adding, however, that influenza "moves in ways we cannot predict".

H1N1 swine flu poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu re-emerged in 2003, killing 257 people of 421 infected in 15 countries. In 1968 a "Hong Kong" flu pandemic killed about 1 million people globally, with twice that number dying a decade earlier.

Stock markets in Asia and Europe rose on Wednesday, partly on optimism the world could be spared a deadly pandemic. However, considerable market uncertainty remained.

The new strain contains DNA from avian, swine and human viruses and appears to have evolved the ability to pass easily from one person to another, unlike most swine H1N1 viruses.

It cannot be caught from eating pig meat products but Egypt ordered all its pigs to be slaughtered and some countries, led by Russia and China, have banned U.S. pork imports.

The World Trade Organization said on Wednesday it had not been told officially of any such bans, and the EU and Japan said they would not follow suit.

DIFFERENT PATTERN

Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said more than 1,300 people were in hospitals, some of them seriously ill, out of a total of about 2,500 suspected cases.

"In the last few days there has been a decline (in cases)," he said. "The death figures have remained more or less stable."

Victims included young adults, a different pattern from common seasonal flu that mainly kills the elderly and infirm. It kills 250,000 to 500,000 people in a normal year, including healthy children in rich countries.

Health agencies advise frequent hand-washing and covering sneezes and coughs to help stop the spread. Experts generally agree that face masks, especially the surgical masks seen on the streets of Mexico City, offer little protection.

The outbreak has deeply affected life in Mexico and ravaged tourism, a key earner.

Mexico City was unusually quiet, with schools closed. Many parents took their children in to work.

All Mayan ruins and Aztec pyramids, dotted through central and southern Mexico, were closed until further notice.

Cruise firms Carnival and Royal Caribbean said they were temporarily suspending port calls in the country and land-based tour groups were calling off trips.

In a sign of how mild many cases outside Mexico have been, New Zealand gave the all-clear for a group of students and a teacher who caught the virus.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said pork, soybean and corn prices had fallen in the past two days and criticized what he said were illogical trade restrictions on pork.

news/notes20090429j

[Today's Papers] from [Slate Magazine]

GOP Faces Specter of Permanent Minority

Joshua Kucera
Posted Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at 6:10 AM ET

Sen. Arlen Specter's surprise defection from the Republican Party to join the Democrats was the lead story in all the papers. Assuming that Al Franken is eventually seated as senator from Minnesota, that gives the Democrats a 60-person, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, which will ease passage of key Obama administration priorities like health care reform and capping carbon emissions. Political considerations motivated Specter's switch; he said internal polling showed that his chances of surviving a Republican primary challenge in 2010 were "bleak."

The Washington Post runs a Dan Balz analysis inside about what the move might mean for the Republican Party: "The question now is whether Specter's departure will produce a period of genuine introspection by a party already in disarray or result in a circling of the wagons by those who think the GOP is better off without those whose views fall outside its conservative ideological boundaries," he writes. "Specter's shocking departure may provide a wake-up call to Republicans that a broad reassessment is urgently needed."

The New York Times has an op-ed by Olympia Snowe, a moderate Maine Republican senator who might have seemed a more likely candidate for defection, called "We Didn't Have to Lose Arlen Specter."

"It is true that being a Republican moderate sometimes feels like being a cast member of 'Survivor'—you are presented with multiple challenges, and you often get the distinct feeling that you're no longer welcome in the tribe. But it is truly a dangerous signal that a Republican senator of nearly three decades no longer felt able to remain in the party," she wrote.

Mainstream Republicans, however, tried to put a brave, or defiant, face on the news. Most of the papers quote Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, saying Specter left "to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record." And USA Today notes that the Republican congressional campaign committee e-mailed a fundraising appeal citing Specter with the subject line "Good riddance."

This is not the first time Specter has changed parties; early in his political career he switched from the Democrats to the Republicans. USA Today digs up a nice tidbit from Specter's biography in which he called that move "almost like changing my religion." (The book, Passion for Truth, has a subtitle he may now regret: From Finding JFK's Single Bullet to Questioning Anita Hill to Impeaching Clinton. It's out of print but available for $0.01 from several sellers on Amazon.)

The move appeared to be effective immediately: The New York Times noticed that he sat on the Democratic side of the dais at a committee hearing shortly after his announcement.

Both the NYT and Post run front-page photos of 5-year-old Edgar Hernandez, whom the Mexican government has identified as the first person in Mexico to come down with the variant of swine flu that is threatening to become a global epidemic. It's not clear why the boy came down with the flu, but his hometown is host to large pig farms. The Wall Street Journal reports that new cases of the flu were found on four continents yesterday, and the number of cases confirmed in the United States rose to 66, including five people who were hospitalized. The Los Angeles Times takes a more cautious tack and notes that the number of new cases in Mexico appears to be leveling off, and World Health Organization officials said that even if a pandemic occurs, it's likely to be mild.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials warned other countries not to ban U.S. pork as a result of the swine flu, the Post reported, and even tried a little rebranding. "This really isn't swine flu. It's H1N1 virus," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The U.S. "surge" in Afghanistan is going to target poppy-growing areas, the NYT says, and that will likely provoke bloody battles with the Taliban. Poppy growing is the main source of income for the insurgency, and U.S. commanders believe the Taliban is likely to fight hard to defend it. And their credibility is on the line, as well: Poppy farmers pay protection money to the Taliban and will expect the Taliban to hold up its end of the bargain when the U.S. disrupts the cultivation. What effect will this have on Afghan hearts and minds? The piece ends with a pessimistic kicker, an anecdote of some American soldiers on patrol stopping to talk to an Afghan farmer. "I'm very happy to see you," the farmer told the Americans. "Really?" one of the soldiers asked. "Yes," the farmer said. The interpreter sighed and spoke in English. "He's a liar."

But Afghanistan is receding in importance now: The recent advances by the Taliban in Pakistan are forcing the United States to recalibrate its new AfPak strategy to focus more heavily on Pakistan, reports the Post. Among the initiatives being considered is a plan for U.S. troops to train Pakistani soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques.

Also in the papers: The LAT Column One piece is a first-person account of a Times reporter who married an Iraqi staffer in the Baghdad bureau and was then unable to get permission to move with her to the United States. The Journal reports that Whittier, a suburb of Los Angeles, is exploring the possibility of drilling for oil to solve its budget problems. College cafeterias are doing away with trays, the NYT finds.