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.

news/notes20090428a

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]

Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein, who as president of Iraq (1979–2003) angered and outraged the international community with invasions of neighbouring Iran and Kuwait and who was unseated by the United States, was born this day in 1937.


[On This Day] from [Britannica]

1945: Mussolini executed
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, “Il Duce,” who, after a series of military misadventures, became unpopular even among his fellow Fascists, was captured while trying to flee Italy and was executed on this day in 1945.


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

[NATIONAL NEWS]

Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Mexico flights to Narita face flu scrutiny
（メキシコ飛行便：成田で豚インフル検疫強化措置）

By MINORU MATSUTANI
Staff writer

The government issued orders Monday for doctors and nurses to board aircraft from Mexico at Narita airport starting Wednesday to check passengers and crew for infection of a deadly new virus that combines swine, avian and human influenza.

All arrivals will be required to fill out health questionnaires, and doctors will check people who complain of flulike symptoms while they are still on board, Akimori Mizoguchi of the health ministry said. Those without symptoms will not be tested as a check would be unlikely to detect the flu in an early stage of infection, he added.

Contact information and test results for those without symptoms or who test negative will be sent to local health centers, which will keep in touch with the recent arrivals, he said. If no symptoms occur within 10 days of leaving Mexico, there is little risk of infection, he added.

Although the ministry sometimes takes similar steps when passengers complain of nausea and other ailments, it is rare to dispatch doctors to perform onboard checks on airliners before any complaints are reported, he said.

The decision emerged from a crisis meeting of Cabinet members convened Monday to study the seriousness of the disease, which has killed more than 100 in Mexico and infected people in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Spain. There are also suspected cases in other parts of Europe, South America and Israel.

"It is necessary to take steps to limit damage to public health and maintain social and economic functions," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said. "The government will take all possible measures by closely cooperating with other countries, based on the recognition that countermeasures are important for crisis management."

No cases of the new swine flu strain have been reported in Japan, he said.

Doctors will meet direct flights from Mexico operated twice a week by Mexican airline Aeromexico, and Japan Airlines' twice-a-week flights from Mexico via Vancouver, British Columbia, Mizoguchi said. Kansai and Chubu international airports do not handle Mexico flights.

Passengers arriving from Mexico will receive announcements in Japanese and English asking them to report to quarantine officers if they are experiencing flulike symptoms, Mizoguchi said, adding that announcements in Spanish and other languages will be arranged as soon as possible.

On Saturday, quarantine offices at Narita and two other international airports began using more temperature-measuring devices to detect passengers with a fever. So far no passengers at the three airports have been intercepted by quarantine officers.

Japan's international airports began using the devices in 2003 after the SARS outbreak in China the previous year.

After the Cabinet meeting, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Yoichi Masuzoe told reporters he will place priority on pursuing a vaccine to counter swine flu instead of producing vaccines against seasonal influenza.

Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano suggested at a press conference that he is ready to take budgetary steps, if necessary, to counter swine flu. "It is important to freely use money and manpower in order to address an issue affecting public health," he said.

Meanwhile, farm minister Shigeru Ishiba said Japan has no plans to ban imports of pork from Mexico or the United States, emphasizing the strict sanitary steps maintained by those countries for their foreign-bound pork products.

At the crisis meeting, the government said it will gather information on swine flu in Mexico and other countries and monitor the reaction of the World Health Organization.

It will also boost support for Japanese living overseas, including Mexico, while providing medical care to those who enter Japan from affected countries and are infected or feared to be infected with swine flu.

"We want people to be cautious, check announcements by the government and act calmly," Kawamura said.

On Saturday, the WHO advised all nations to be alert for unusual flu outbreaks following reports of swine flu infections in humans in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.

Japan had 24,104 Mexican visitors in 2008, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization, while 69,946 Japanese went to Mexico in the same year, the Japan Association of Travel Agents said.


[BUSINESS NEWS]

Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Economy to shrink; Yosano warns of more jolts
（景気の悪化：与謝野長官；先行き不安感強まり上伸）

(Kyodo News) The government on Monday cut its economic forecast for fiscal 2009 to a postwar-worst contraction of 3.3 percent from the earlier predicted zero growth as the deepening global slump continues to undermine the economy, and Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano warned that a further downgrade is possible.

The Cabinet Office said it downgraded the estimate for the current fiscal year, which began earlier this month, as the economy "has been deteriorating at an unprecedented speed," particularly since the latter half of fiscal 2008.

It's rare for the government to revise its forecast at such an early stage of the fiscal year. Usually, the Cabinet Office gives the economic forecast in terms of gross domestic product in December for the upcoming fiscal year so it can be used as the base for the year's state budget, with revisions often coming in the summer or fall to reflect the latest economic situations.

"In addition to sharp declines in exports and production, private consumption has been weakening," the office said in its latest economic estimation. The fiscal 2009 economy "will have to get started at a low in negative territory that has never been seen before."

The Bank of Japan is also widely expected to revise downward its real GDP forecast for fiscal 2009 in its economic outlook report to be adopted at a policy meeting Thursday.

For fiscal 2008, which ended March 31, the Cabinet Office said the economy is likely to have shrunk 3.1 percent, a bigger contraction than the 0.8 percent fall it projected in December.

Yosano, noting the risk of further downgrading the economic projection due to worries over overseas situations such as U.S. and European financial institutions' unresolved bad-loan issues, told reporters: "Several giant U.S. companies are in critical situations, and depending on how they are treated, not only Japan but also the global economy could be affected."

For fiscal 2009 through next March, the government expects exports to plunge a record 27.6 percent from the previous year, instead of the 3.2 percent drop it projected in December.

It also revised downward its forecast for business investment to a largest-ever 14.1 percent decline from an earlier forecast 4.2 percent drop.

Despite the second consecutive year of expected economic contraction through fiscal 2009, the office said the government's economic stimulus package, including a cash-handout program and tax breaks on eco-friendly cars, will help prevent the nation from falling into a negative spiral.

Private consumption is projected to recover to 0.3 percent growth in fiscal 2009 after falling 0.3 percent in fiscal 2008, it said.

On prices, the office lowered its outlook for the consumer price index for fiscal 2009 from the previously projected 0.4 percent drop to a record 1.3 percent fall, due to slides in oil prices and weakening demand amid the recession. The index is projected to have risen 1.1 percent in fiscal 2008.

The office also expects the wholesale price index to drop 5.5 percent in fiscal 2009 after rising 3.3 percent in fiscal 2008, raising the deflation alarm.

The government's economic stimulus measures are likely to generate about 200,000 more jobs in fiscal 2009, it said, but added that the jobless rate would rise to 5.2 percent in the period, up from 4.1 percent in fiscal 2008.

The office also lowered its global GDP forecast, excluding Japan, from the earlier projected 1.2 percent growth to a 1.4 percent shrinkage.

news/notes20090428b

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

[NATIONAL NEWS]

Tuesday, April 28, 2009
ANALYSIS
Nagoya win limited lift for DPJ until Ozawa comes clean
（名古屋市長選の勝利も小沢代表の潔白性次第）

By KAZUAKI NAGATA
Staff writer

Takashi Kawamura's landslide win Sunday in the Nagoya mayoral poll was a much-needed boost for the Democratic Party of Japan, whose image and reputation were badly damaged by the arrest in March of President Ichiro Ozawa's chief secretary over shady political donations.

Kawamura, 60, a former DPJ Lower House member, ran as an independent with DPJ support.

He garnered 514,514 votes, nearly double the number cast for the runnerup, Masahiko Hosokawa, 54, a former trade ministry bureaucrat backed by the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito ruling bloc.

Although he was considered the front-runner, Kawamura's win was all the more welcome given that two DPJ-backed candidates recently lost the Akita and Chiba gubernatorial elections.

Those setbacks were at least partly attributed to Ozawa's dubious ties with Nishimatsu Construction Co., the company at the center of alleged illegal donations.

DPJ Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama said before the Nagoya election that a Kuwamura win was crucial to boost the ratings of both the party and Ozawa.


CONTINUED FROM news/notes20090428a

But it is questionable to what extent the DPJ's fortunes have actually improved on the back of Kawamura's win. Some party members and political observers said the DPJ will continue to struggle to regain momentum unless Ozawa offers a clear explanation of his role in the Nishimatsu scandal.

"(The victory) was because of Kawamura's personal popularity and his character, as well as his policies that criticized civil servants and made a clear distinction between his friends and enemies," said Satomi Tani, political science professor at Okayama University.

Tani said Kawamura's "populist strategy" was in line with tactics opposition candidates have employed in many recent elections, in which they confront and reject the status quo.

Kawamura is a well-known figure in Nagoya, which was his power base as a Lower House lawmaker. In explaining his win, he said voters welcomed his pledge to reduce the local residence tax.

"I think (Kawamura's win) had nothing to do with Ozawa," Tani said, adding his victory will not be a significant boost to the DPJ.

Many DPJ members are aware the party may have trouble in the next general election, which must be held by fall, until Ozawa convinces voters of his innocence in the Nishimatsu affair. Most media polls show that 60 percent to 70 percent of respondents are dissatisfied with the DPJ chief's explanation of the scandal.

"When 60 percent to 70 percent of the people are not satisfied with his explanation, it is impossible to bring about a change in government," said Katsuya Okada, a DPJ vice president, in a speech last week in Tokyo.

"Ozawa needs to explain more," Okada concluded.

It has been about a month since Ozawa's top aide, Takanori Okubo, was charged with violating the Political Funds Control Law, and DPJ executive members have urged Ozawa to provide a fuller explanation of his role.

Ozawa has said he has never met Nishimatsu executives and claimed Okubo followed the law in dealing with the group's political funds report.

Although Hatoyama suggested Ozawa could have a town hall-style meeting to directly communicate with the people, the DPJ head does not seem receptive to the idea, nor has he offered a more detailed explanation.

Ozawa said the media rarely mentions that he thoroughly reports his political funds, so "in that sense, I understand there are people who want me to explain more. And as for the explanation, I am sure they will understand it as I meet with the people and communicate with them," Ozawa said in an April 21 news conference.

Last week, Ozawa resumed visiting electoral districts around the nation but did not touch on the scandal.

Political observers have criticized him and the DPJ for not taking stronger action on this issue.

"A person without communication skills is not eligible to become prime minister," Gerald Curtis, political science professor at Columbia University, said during a meeting of a DPJ-appointed panel that is discussing how Ozawa should respond to the public.

news/notes20090428c

[Today's News] from [The Guardian]

Swine flu: WHO raises pandemic threat level
• Mexican death toll passes 150
• Infected British couple named

Chris McGreal in Washington, Severin Carrell and Patrick Wintour and Rachel Williams
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 April 2009 09.34 BST
Article history

The World Health Organisation's emergency committee raised the pandemic threat level for swine flu last night after the death toll in Mexico rose above 150, the number of cases in the US doubled and the first infections were confirmed in Britain.

Flights to Mexico were being cancelled this morning, and arrangements were being put in place to bring British holidaymakers home after the Foreign Office advised against all but essential travel to the country. All Thomson and First Choice flights out of Manchester this week were grounded until restrictions are lifted.

Passengers due to fly to Mexico with Thomson this morning said they had been offered their money back or an alternative holiday. The company said it was now making arrangements to get customers home from Mexico, and repatriation flights were expected to start today.

THe Foreign Office advised British citizens living in Mexico to "consider whether they should remain".

The WHO committee said the increased threat level, from phase three to phase four (out of a possible six), recognised that the crisis had taken a significant step toward pandemic, but that did not mean one was inevitable. Nonetheless, it said, the virus had spread so far that containment was "not a feasible operation", and the international response should be to try to limit its transmission and treat those affected.

The health secretary, Alan Johnson, will chair a meeting of the government's Cobra emergencies committee this morning.

The Scottish couple suffering from swine flu were named today as Iain and Dawn Askham, from Polmont, near Falkirk. They had been in Mexico on honeymoon in Cancún.

About 22 friends, family and colleagues who had close contact with them were being observed and had been given antiviral drugs. Seven of these were showing "mild symptoms" of the illness. The group being monitored reportedly includes a five-year-old child.

Last night the Scottish health secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, said the couple were recovering well at Monklands hospital in Airdrie, Lanarkshire.

Medics at Manchester airport treated a passenger arriving from Mexico this morning who had complained of feeling unwell on the flight, the Health Protection Agency said. Tests were being done to find out if the young woman had swine flu. She had been sent home.

The first confirmed case in Europe came yesterday in Spain, where 26 other cases are suspected. There are four suspected cases in the Irish Republic.

The suspected number of deaths rose to 152 in Mexico, with nearly 2,000 people believed to be infected. Today, a South Korean woman tested positive for swine flu, making her a "probable" case, the country's authorities said.

In an indication of the seriousness with which the threat is being taken in the UK, the Guardian has learned that if the situation deteriorates Johnson is considering warning the entire population to set up a support network of friends and relatives, so they can be quickly quarantined at home if they are thought to have symptoms. The friends would then collect medicine on their behalf. He abandoned plans to give this advice as one of his four key messages yesterday in a Commons statement.

He told MPs it was too early to say if there was a pandemic, but the UK had been preparing for one for five years and had a stock of 33m anti-flu drugs. He said it was important to note that outside Mexico all those who had shown symptoms of swine flu had recovered.

Yesterday the WHO said it was "very concerned" about the spread, after bringing forward a meeting of its emergency committee to raise the pandemic level to phase four, which recognises that there is now sustained transmission of the infection from human to human. It is two phases short of a pandemic.

Mexico's health secretary, José Ángel Córdova, said he expected more people to die. In response, the government closed schools across the country. Nearly 2,000 people had been treated in hospital for suspected infection, he said. Half of them had been released.

Córdova admitted that the health authorities lacked the staff to check on all suspected cases. Some foreign health officials fear such difficulties may be contributing to the disease's spread.

In New York, the number of confirmed cases among students at a school rose to 28, with more than 100 suspected. That brought the number of confirmed cases in the US to 42 in five states, twice as many as reported at the weekend.

Peru and Guatemala reported the first suspected infections in other parts of Latin America, where health officials fear swine flu has already spread but so far gone undetected.

The EU health commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, caused a political stir by urging Europeans to avoid non-essential travel to Mexico and the US, but backtracked slightly after criticism from the US and WHO. But that was too late to stop travel agencies and tour operators cancelling flights to Mexico and the share prices of airline companies were hit because of the pandemic fears.

Gauging the spread: WHO viral infection phases

Phase 1: No animal viruses circulating are causing infections in humans.

Phase 2: An animal flu virus is known to have caused human infection and is considered a potential pandemic threat.

Phase 3: Limited human-to-human transmission may occur. This does not indicate the virus has gained transmissibility that would cause a pandemic.

Phase 4: Human-to-human transmission able to cause "community-level outbreaks". Significant increase in pandemic risk but it is not a foregone conclusion.

Phase 5: Human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. A strong signal that pandemic is imminent.

Phase 6: Pandemic phase, characterised by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region along with phase 5.

news/notes20090428d

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

Mexico tries to focus on source of infection

Swine flu is suspected in at least 149 deaths and 1,995 cases, with nearly all states reporting infections. Officials look at what is thought to be the first case, near a pig farm in Veracruz.

By Tracy Wilkinson and Cecilia Sánchez
April 28, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City -- With the death toll climbing, Mexican authorities at the center of an international swine flu epidemic struggled Monday to piece together its lethal march, with attention focusing on a 4-year-old boy and a pig farm.

The boy, who survived the illness, has emerged as Mexico's earliest known case of the never-before-seen virus, Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said Monday. It provides an important clue to the unique strain's path.

The boy lived near a pig farm run by a U.S.-Mexican company, Granjas Carroll, in the municipality of Perote, in Veracruz state on the Gulf of Mexico. He contracted the disease on April 2, Cordova said, one of a group of residents who came down with what was at the time labeled a particularly bad case of the flu.

Only one sample from the group, that belonging to the boy, was preserved. It was retested after other cases of the new strain were confirmed elsewhere in the country, Cordova said. The boy had the same disease. It is unknown how many more of the hundreds of people who fell sick in Perote also were infected by the strain.

In an ominous disclosure, officials said the first confirmed fatality of the disease, a 39-year-old woman from an impoverished state neighboring Veracruz, worked as a door-to-door census-taker and may have had contact with scores of people.

In Perote, residents of the hamlet known as La Gloria have complained since mid-March that contamination from the pig farm was tainting their water and causing respiratory infections. In one demonstration in early April, they carried signs with pictures of pigs crossed out with an X and the word "peligro" -- danger. Residents told reporters at the time that more than half the town's 3,000 inhabitants were sick and that three children under the age of 2 had died.

Local health officials mobilized when the outbreak was first reported, but they gave a different account: The infection may have started with a migrant farmer who returned from work in the U.S. and gave the disease to his wife, who in turn passed it on to other women in the community.

Granjas Carroll, which claims to be Mexico's leading pig farm at a million head a year, issued a statement Monday saying none of its employees had shown any signs of illness and noting that the sick are people who had no contact with its pigs. It is but one of numerous farms in the region.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization announced Monday that it was sending a team of experts to inspect pig farms in Mexico. The agency's chief veterinary officer, Joseph Domenech, said the teams would attempt to determine whether the new strain was circulating among pigs and then trace linkage to human populations.

The first officially confirmed fatality from the disease occurred April 13. Maria Adela Gutierrez died in the southern city of Oaxaca, capital of the state of the same name.

Gutierrez was a door-to-door census-taker for the tax board, meaning she could have had contact with scores of people at her most contagious point, before being hospitalized. But Martin Vazquez Villanueva, the regional health secretary in Oaxaca, denied local news reports that said she had infected 20 people, as well as her husband and children.

The Mexican government has given out information on the outbreak and its victims only in bits and pieces, refusing to provide details on who the dead are and where and when they died. For the second consecutive day, the government was on the defensive against criticism that it acted too slowly to contain the virus and to alert the public to the dangers.

"We never had this type of epidemic, this type of virus in the world," an increasingly exasperated Cordova said at a news conference Monday. "We don't know how many days this will go on, because it's the first time in the world this virus has appeared."

The government took the extraordinary step of ordering all schools in the nation closed until May 6. Separately, the World Health Organization raised its pandemic alert level and the U.S. and Europe advised against travel to Mexico.

Every state in Mexico is now reporting suspected cases of the virus, Cordova said, a major expansion of the spread of the disease. Just Thursday, the government reported the disease in Mexico City, the adjacent state of Mexico and nearby San Luis Potosi.

Cordova said the new form of swine flu is now suspected in the deaths of 149 people and that 1,995 possible cases have been reported at hospitals, all patients suffering serious pneumonia; of those, 172 have been confirmed as infected with the new strain, he said.

"We are at the most critical moment of the epidemic," he said, adding that the number of cases would continue to rise.

Cordova said deaths "probably" from swine flu had been reported in 10 states. But he would not give a breakdown of the demographics or more specific locations, other than to repeat that most victims were in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

At the news conference, numerous journalists and camera operators wore masks as protection against the disease. The meeting grew hostile at points, with journalists shouting more questions than the officials seemed willing to take. And briefly, the conference was halted by an earthquake that shook the city.

In many places, authorities have closed venues such as clubs, bars, museums and theaters.

And they have handed out millions of surgical masks, which Mexicans, from commuters to presidential guards, are wearing.

But Dr. Gil Chavez, deputy director of California's Center for Infectious Diseases, said Monday that the masks do little to prevent the spread of the virus.

news/notes20090428e

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

G.M.’s Latest Plan Envisions a Much Smaller Automaker

By BILL VLASIC and NICK BUNKLEY
Published: April 27, 2009

DETROIT — For all the uncertainty swirling around General Motors, the troubled automaker said Monday that one thing was clear: it must become drastically smaller if it hopes to remain a viable company, regardless of whether it has to file for bankruptcy.

G.M. said it would eliminate another 21,000 factory jobs, close 13 plants, cut its vast network of 6,500 dealers almost in half and shutter its Pontiac division.

By the time it is finished, G.M. expects to have only 38,000 union workers and 34 factories left in the United States, compared with 395,000 workers in more than 150 plants at its peak employment in 1970.

One goal of this latest plan was to convince the Obama administration, which has been skeptical of G.M.’s previous restructuring goals, that the company is willing to take harsh measures and cut its bloated infrastructure to match its steadily declining share in the United States.

Absent such steps, the government has said it is reluctant to lend the company more money. But for the first time since it toppled into financial crisis last year, G.M. appears to be earning government support.

That might mean billions more in loans if the company’s stakeholders can come to an agreement before a deadline at the end of May. G.M. said on Monday that it needed to borrow $11.6 billion more, for a total of $27 billion.

President Obama’s auto task force said Monday it had “made no final decision” on future investments in G.M., which is subsisting on $15.4 billion in federal loans. The task force, however, called the new plan an “important step in G.M.’s efforts to restructure its company.”

This plan is a far cry from G.M.’s strategy of just a year ago, when it was waging a spirited battle with Toyota for the title of world’s largest automaker.

Where once G.M. had a 50 percent share of the market for new vehicles in the United States, the company hopes to at least hang on to its current 18 percent share.

Analysts warned that even those projections could be optimistic. “There is still a huge risk for market share losses beyond what the company is forecasting,” said John Casesa, an industry consultant.

G.M., however, still faces difficult odds of restructuring outside of bankruptcy court.

The company is still negotiating with the United Automobile Workers union. The government wants the union to accept company stock to finance half of G.M.’s $20 billion obligation for retiree health care.

The U.A.W. this weekend agreed to a similar health care deal with Chrysler, which has borrowed $4 billion from the government and hopes to get $6 billion more. The union’s new retiree health care trust would own a majority stake in Chrysler in exchange for helping the carmaker save $4.5 billion.

A summary given to union leaders said Fiat would ultimately own 35 percent and that 10 percent would be held by the government and Chrysler’s lenders, two people with direct knowledge of the deal said.

Chrysler would give the union a 55 percent stake to cut its obligations to the health care trust in half, said these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the agreement have not been released publicly.

The deal suspends cost-of-living pay increases, limits overtime pay and reduces paid time off. It also eliminates dental and vision benefits for retirees. It also provides for Fiat to begin building cars in at least one Chrysler plant.

G.M., however, will have more trouble winning over its bondholders.

The company, after consulting with Treasury officials, offered on Monday to give the holders of $27 billion in unsecured debt 225 shares in G.M. stock for every $1,000 in debt.

G.M. said it would have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection unless 90 percent of the vast bondholder group accepted the terms by June 1.

“I can’t imagine that this is going to go through,” Shelly Lombard, a bond analyst with the firm Gimme Credit, said. “This is not an olive branch to come back to the table. This is basically a sledgehammer. Having said that, I’m not sure that bondholders have a lot of other options.”

Fritz Henderson, G.M.’s chief executive, also expressed doubts that enough bondholders would take the offer. Even if they do not, which would push the company into bankruptcy, he said he expected the company to pursue its restructuring.

“If it can’t be done outside a bankruptcy, we’ll do it in a bankruptcy,” he said.

If bondholders approve the debt-for-equity exchange, they would own about 10 percent of G.M., making them a minority shareholder in a company controlled by the Treasury and the U.A.W.’s retiree trust.

According to the offer, the Treasury would own at least 50 percent of G.M. in exchange for forgiving about $10 billion in federal loans. The union trust, in turn, would receive a stake of about 39 percent.

A committee of big G.M. bondholders on Monday called the offer a “a blatant disregard for fairness for the bondholders” and an example of “political favoritism” toward the U.A.W. “The current offer is neither reasonable nor adequate,” the committee said.

Representative Thaddeus McCotter, a Michigan Republican, is concerned that some bondholders want the company to go bankrupt because they also hold credit-default swaps insuring them against losses.

He is urging the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, to disclose which G.M. bondholders have default swaps from the American International Group, the insurance company that was bailed out by the government.

“It would be unconscionable to use taxpayer money to help people benefit from the bankruptcy of General Motors,” Mr. McCotter said.

Several industry analysts said the bondholder offer appeared destined to fail.

“Unless the offer is revised before May 8, G.M. could potentially file for Chapter 11 protection by the end of next month,” Brian Johnson, of Barclays Capital, wrote in a note to clients.

Many dealers said they were stunned by how quickly G.M. wanted to eliminate more than 2,600 showrooms.

“This is just too rapid, and I think it’s going to create a disorderly shutdown of a lot of stores,” said John McEleney, chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association. “In the short term, they’re likely to lose sales, which is counterproductive to G.M.’s recovery.”

Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, said he received assurances from the task force late Monday that protecting jobs would be a high priority as it evaluated G.M.’s new plan.

“The depth of the pain inflicted on our workers, families and communities by these decisions should not be minimized,” Mr. Levin said. “It appears G.M. was left no choice, and I now believe bondholders have no choice, either, but to accept significant losses as a better alternative to bankruptcy.”

news/notes20090428f

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

WHO Raises Global Threat Level As Reports of Swine Flu
Increase
Confirmed Cases Double in U.S.

By Rob Stein and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 28, 2009; 8:48 AM

Cases of swine flu were confirmed early today in Israel and New Zealand, the first definitive proof that the dangerous new virus has spread to the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions.

The World Health Organization, which yesterday raised its pandemic threat level from 3 to 4, two levels below a full-scale pandemic, will not meet today to consider another increase, a spokesman said at a news conference.

While the agency said people should think carefully before traveling to or from areas known to be affected by the flu virus, spokesman Gregory Hartl said it considers formal travel restrictions and border closures ineffective because people who would be screened could be infected but not yet showing symptoms.

"Border controls don't work. Screening doesn't work," Hartl said, according to Reuters news service, describing the economically-damaging travel bans as basically pointless in public health terms.

He said "we are still at phase 4" in terms of threat level because officials do not yet "have incontrovertible evidence" that the virus spreads easily from human to human. Yesterday was the first time the international body had elevated its official estimation of the threat of an influenza pandemic up from level 3, using a system that was revised in the wake of the 2003 SARS outbreak.

"A pandemic is not considered inevitable at this time," said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director general for health security and environment. "The situation is fluid, and the situation continues to evolve."

What is clear, officials say, is that the virus is causing sustained community-wide outbreaks, with a rise in the suspected death toll in Mexico to 149 as of yesterday, along with the confirmation of the first case in Europe and a doubling of the number of confirmed cases in the United States. In the first signs that the outbreak could be taking a toll on the staggering global economy, oil prices, the Mexican peso and airline stocks all plunged.

The level 4 alert could in some circumstances prompt health authorities to launch massive efforts to contain an outbreak, but Fukuda said the virus had spread too widely to make that realistic.

"This virus has already spread quite far," Fukuda said.

Instead, the move was designed to prompt countries to intensify efforts to minimize the spread of the virus by identifying new cases and clusters quickly and taking other measures.

"Given the current situation, the current focus of efforts should be on mitigation efforts," he said.

Fukuda urged people who are sick not to travel and said travelers who become ill should seek medical attention.

The agency also said it would work to develop a swine flu vaccine as quickly as possible, but it rejected proposals to try to deploy a swine flu vaccine instead of the vaccine already in development for the next regular flu season.

At the epicenter of the outbreak, in Mexico, the situation continued to deteriorate. Although the number of confirmed deaths remained at 20, the suspected death toll rose to 149, and at least 1,995 people had been hospitalized with pneumonia. The news prompted officials to shut down schools nationwide. The capital, Mexico City, where most of the cases have been reported, had already been brought to a virtual standstill by measures intended to contain the outbreak.

New Zealand's health ministry said today that three people who tested positive for the virus had been part of a school group that recently visited Mexico,. Reuters reported. Officials told the news service that they were awaiting test results for the other eight people in the group but expected them to test positive as well.

The 26-year-old man found to be suffering from the virus in Israel also had just returned from Mexico, officials said. Matilda Schwartz, spokeswoman for Laniado Hospital in Netanya, said the patient remained in isolation. She said he was in good condition and improving. A second person remains under observation in a hospital in the town of Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv, officials said. U.S. and state health officials, meanwhile, said yesterday that the number of confirmed cases had more than doubled to 45 and recommended that Americans put off unnecessary travel to Mexico. "This is out of an abundance of caution," said Richard E. Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

"We want to be aggressive and take bold action to minimize the impact on people's health from this infection," Besser said during a briefing with reporters.

Most of the new U.S. cases were tied to an outbreak at a Catholic high school in New York, where more than 100 students got sick last week after several returned from a spring break trip to Mexico. Eight students were confirmed to have swine flu on Sunday, and at least 20 more were determined Monday to have the virus as well, New York officials said. The new cases are the result of additional testing and not a sign that the infection is still spreading there, Besser said. He added that all the cases were mild, except for one that required hospitalization, and that all the students had recovered.

New Jersey officials reportedly identified five new suspected cases. Eleven have been confirmed in California, including two that required hospitalization, along with three in Texas, two in Kansas and one in Ohio. Confirmed or suspected cases have prompted officials in New York, Texas, California, South Carolina and Ohio to close schools.

President Obama said his administration was monitoring the situation closely. "This is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert," he said at an appearance at the National Academy of Sciences. "But it is not a cause for alarm."

U.S. border officials began screening people entering the country for signs of the disease and handing out cards to everyone arriving from affected areas, advising them to be on the lookout for signs of the illness.

Officials also started shipping millions of doses of antiviral drugs from the federal government's strategic stockpile to California, New York, Texas and other states in case they are needed -- action made possible Sunday when the federal government declared an official "public health emergency."

The Department of Health and Human Services also announced that the Food and Drug Administration is working with the CDC to distribute diagnostic tests to state and local public health laboratories by midweek. And Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the government will allow the FDA to permit the distribution of drugs such as Tamiflu to populations, such as very young children, that normally are not encouraged to take them.

In addition to the government measures, Besser urged businesses to begin making contingency plans for workers calling in sick and said individuals should help reduce the chances that the virus will spread by taking common-sense steps, such as staying home from work or school if they are sick, washing hands frequently and covering mouths if they sneeze or cough.

"Hopefully this outbreak would not progress, but leaning forward and thinking about what you would do is one of the most important things individuals and communities can undertake right now," he said.

In Maryland, Virginia and the District, health officials activated plans developed in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist and anthrax attacks. They are monitoring reports from hospitals and clinics and readying hundreds of thousands of doses of medication. Maryland officials said it was inevitable that the flu would hit the Washington region given how infectious it is and the large number of travelers who pass through the area.

The day started with a warning by the European Union's health commissioner against unnecessary travel from Europe to parts of the United States and Mexico where the disease is circulating.

The warning followed Spain's confirmation of its first case, fueling fears that the virus was spreading to Europe. Cases were later confirmed in Scotland as well. An additional 20 cases were being investigated in Spain, along with 17 potential cases in Britain, and at least one each in France, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland.

"Personally, I would try to avoid nonessential travel to the areas that are reported to be in the center of the cluster in order to minimize the personal risk and to reduce the potential risk to spread the infection," said Androulla Vassiliou, the E.U. official.

Vassiliou later said she was simply advising Europeans to avoid "unnecessary travel" to affected areas in North America. Canada also has confirmed six cases of swine flu.

CONTINUED ON news/notes20090428g

news/notes20090428g

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

WHO Raises Global Threat Level As Reports of Swine Flu
Increase
Confirmed Cases Double in U.S.

By Rob Stein and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 28, 2009; 8:48 AM

CONTINUED FROM news/notes20090428f

The White House, meanwhile, said Mexican authorities did not notify U.S. officials about the swine flu issue in advance of the president's April 16-17 visit, "but we have no reason to believe they withheld any information they had at the time," and U.S. officials praised the Mexican response. "To date Mexican authorities have been exceptionally cooperative and forthcoming," White House homeland security adviser John Brennan said. "There's been very strong cooperation."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that he is confident that the administration is ready to handle the crisis even though dozens of key public health and emergency response jobs in the administration remain vacant.

"Our response is in no way hindered or hampered by not having a permanent secretary at HHS right now," Gibbs said. "Dr. Besser and thousands of people both at CDC and throughout HHS are responding to this. . . . We feel confident with the team that is there now."

news/notes20090428h

[Today's Papers] from [Slate Magazine]
To Panic or Not To Panic

By Daniel Politi
Posted Tuesday, April 28, 2009, at 6:42 AM ET

The Los Angeles Times and New York Times lead with the new restructuring plan outlined by General Motors yesterday that would make the U.S. government the majority shareholder of what was once the world's largest company. The old adage that what's good for GM is good for America could become a reality. But first the automaker would have to get pretty much all of its bondholders to agree to receive next to nothing in return for the billions of dollars they lent the company. That seems unlikely, so the automaker might very well have to settle all this in bankruptcy court. Under the plan outlined yesterday, GM would accelerate its plans to become a smaller company by cutting 21,000 factory jobs and closing 13 plants and 2,600 dealers, while focusing on only four brands.

The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal 's world-wide newsbox lead with, and everyone else fronts, the World Health Organization moving one step closer to declaring a pandemic as the number of confirmed swine flu cases continues to rise. The WHO raised its pandemic alert system to phase 4 from phase 3, indicating that the disease is being spread person-to-person and governments should be prepared for community outbreaks. Phase 6 is a pandemic. There are now at least 48 confirmed cases in the United States, and Spain and Scotland also confirmed their first cases of the new flu strain, raising fears that the disease has already spread throughout Europe. Mexico continues to be the epicenter, where officials say 149 people have died of influenza and at least 1,995 cases have been reported, although only 26 of the deaths and 172 of the cases have been confirmed to be swine flu. U.S. officials warned against unnecessary travel to Mexico, and the European Union has called on travelers to avoid the United States and Mexico.

Under the restructuring plan outlined yesterday by GM, the automaker asks the Treasury Department for an additional $11.6 billion in loans, in addition to the $15.4 billion it has already received. In return, the government would get a promise to be paid back half of the money and at least a 50 percent ownership of the company. For its part, the United Auto Workers would receive up to a 39 percent stake in the company as payment for half of the $20 billion that GM owes the retiree health care fund. Bondholders, on the other hand, would get the shortest end of the stick—so short, in fact, we might call it a twig. Investors holding $27.2 billion of GM bonds would get a 10 percent equity stake in the company, and, to no one's surprise, current shareholders would be effectively wiped out and receive 1 percent.

Bondholders were none too happy with what GM proposed. The deal "must look to bondholders like something Tony Soprano dreamed up," an analyst tells USAT. Bondholders are particularly upset at what they see as favorable treatment to the union, even though both parties would have similar claims in bankruptcy court. GM said it must get the support of 90 percent of bondholders in order to move forward, something that seems very unlikely. Bondholders have until May 8 to try to negotiate better terms, but if the offer is ultimately rejected, then it seems highly likely that GM will be declaring bankruptcy.

In a separate Detroit development, Chrysler announced that it had reached a deal with the UAW that would give the union a 55 percent stake in the automaker, while Fiat would eventually get 35 percent. The government and Chrysler's lenders would get 10 percent. In other Chrysler news, the WP hears word that the Treasury Department is once again trying to play matchmaker. This time around, it wants GMAC, the nation's largest auto-financing company, to buy Chrylser Financial, the automaker's financing arm. GMAC wouldn't be able to complete the purchase without further government financing, and the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are resisting. In order to carry out the deal, the Fed would have to make an exception to its rule separating banking and commerce, which it has done before, but using FDIC resources for this purpose "would be without precedent," declares the Post. Even if the sides manage to come to a deal, it's not entirely clear that Chrysler would be able to avoid bankruptcy. If Chrysler can't reach a deal with lenders, the automaker could file for bankruptcy by Thursday.

The WHO's move to raise the pandemic alert system to phase 4 marks the first time that the organization has raised the threat of an influenza pandemic under a system that was revised after the SARS outbreak in 2003. "A pandemic is not considered inevitable at this time," a WHO official said. U.S. officials urged caution, noting that the increase in cases doesn't mean swine flu is spreading and could just mean that more testing is being done. In a front-page piece, the NYT notes that in responding to "its first domestic emergency," the Obama administration is benefiting from measures instituted during his predecessor's tenure. At the same time, White House officials are taking lessons learned from the Bush administration's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina in trying to avoid sounding too alarmist while also making it clear that they have a handle on the situation. "It can be very dangerous to overreact. And it can be very dangerous to underreact," one expert tells the paper. The Obama administration is now in the unenviable position of having to react to this crisis without some key officials, including a secretary of health and human services, who still hasn't received confirmation from the Senate.

Mexican authorities say that while they're doing everything they can to contain the spread of the disease, they don't have sufficient resources to keep up with the fast-spreading virus. All schools nationwide have been closed for more than a week, and public gatherings have been limited. The country has received aid from around the world, including teams of specialized workers to help the country get a handle on the situation. The swine flu outbreak is obviously hitting the Mexican economy, but it's hardly alone. In a piece inside, the WP notes that the outbreak comes at a time when economic data suggested the global financial crisis could be close to hitting bottom. But economists now say that if there is a full-blown pandemic, the recession "could become two or three times as painful." Of course, airlines and the tourism industry could be the hardest hit. During the 2003 SARS outbreak, airline traffic to Asia fell by as much as 60 percent.

In an interesting op-ed piece, John Barry, author of The Great Influenza, writes that it's impossible to know what will happen next since that "is chiefly up to the virus." There is a "strong possibility" that if the cases begin to diminish soon, that could just be a sign that the virus has gone underground and could re-emerge in a few months, stronger than ever. Barry notes that in all of the four well-known pandemics—in 1889, 1918, 1957, and 1968—"the gap between the time the virus was first recognized and a second, more dangerous wave swelled was about six months." That is why it's important to start working on a vaccine as soon as possible.

In the WSJ 's op-ed page, Henry Miller does an admirable job of explaining how a virus like swine flu can originate and why it's so difficult to contain. "The epidemiology of such disease outbreaks is rather like a jigsaw puzzle," writes Miller, "and we are now at the stage where the picture is intriguing even if we're not sure what we're seeing." Pigs are essentially a great incubator for diseases, particularly since they can be infected by a virus that then can adapt and become more efficient at targeting other mammals. People who live close to the animals are particularly susceptible—indeed, Mexican authorities said the earliest known case involved a 4-year-old boy who lived near a pig farm in Veracruz. Mexico now looks like what "we might expect for an outbreak of a major human-to-human pandemic in its earliest stages." But experience has also shown that attempts to prevent an outbreak from spreading can actually make matters worse.

CONTINUED ON news/notes20090428i

news/notes20090428i

[Today's Papers] from [Slate Magazine]
To Panic or Not To Panic

By Daniel Politi
Posted Tuesday, April 28, 2009, at 6:42 AM ET

CONTINUED FROM 20090428h

The NYT fronts a look at how amid all the talk about how the United States is stepping up efforts to defend the nation's computer systems from spies and attacks, little is being said about the ongoing debate over the billions of dollars the military and intelligence agencies are spending on offensive cyberwarfare capabilities. The paper makes clear that "there are no broad authorizations for American forces to engage in cyberwar," although there have been a few isolated instances where such capabilities were used. Many think that building up defensive capabilities simply isn't enough, but it's difficult to come up with a policy to strike back against attacks when it's often impossible to know who the attacker might be. Some say a policy of pre-emption should be instituted that would allow U.S. officials to go into foreign computers and destroy any threats before they become a problem. But, that, of course, would raise problems of its own if other countries, or individual hackers, decide to take revenge for such actions.

The WP 's Richard Cohen writes that while he's "glad we're no longer torturing anyone … ceasing this foul practice will not in any way make Americans safer." It may seem ridiculous, but the debate over torture "has been infected with silly arguments" about whether it works. It's impossible to say that torture, or at least the threat of it, doesn't ever work, but that's hardly the point. "America should repudiate torture not because it is always ineffective—nothing is always anything—or because others loathe it but because it degrades us and runs counter to our national values."

news/notes20090427a

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]

Coretta Scott King
Born this day in 1927 was Coretta Scott King—civil rights activist, wife of civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and, after her husband's assassination, the founder of a centre for nonviolent social change.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]

1937: Bombing of Guernica
During the Spanish Civil War, the Condor Legion of the German air force, supporting the Nationalists, bombed the Basque city of Guernica on this day in 1937, an event memorialized in Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica.


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

[NATIONAL NEWS]

Monday, April 27, 2009
Hereditary politicians a fact of life
（世襲議員とその実態）
Some in LDP call for curbs on blue bloods

By KAZUAKI NAGATA
Staff writer

What does Prime Minister Taro Aso have in common with predecessors Yasuo Fukuda, Shinzo Abe, Junichiro Koizumi and Yoshiro Mori, and others who came before them?

They are all political blue bloods whose fathers, grandfathers or other close relatives were political notables, some prime ministers. This trend is especially conspicuous in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Such aristocracy is all too common in Nagata-cho, the nation's political hub.

Koizumi, a third-generation lawmaker and one of the most popular prime ministers in recent years, has no plans to run in the next election and has already effectively passed his baton onto his son, Shinjiro, who will be expected to "inherit" his Kanagawa Prefecture electoral district.

The abrupt resignations of Abe and Fukuda after each only served a year in office triggered the public to label such political gentry as spoiled and gutless.

With a general election expected to be called by fall, junior lawmakers are now looking to upset the hereditary pattern of candidates who are related to current, retiring or past politicians from automatically assuming a spot on the ballot.

Ichita Yamamoto, an Upper House LDP member, suggested candidates should not be allowed to run in the same electoral district as a parent or other close kin, or at the least, only run twice in the same district.

"Regulating the candidacy of politicians' (relatives) does not mean that if someone is born into a political family, that person can't become a politician. That would go against the (freedom of career choice under the) Constitution," Yamamoto recently wrote in his blog, but added that some limits are needed so a politician's next of kin doesn't automatically inherit a family electoral district.

According to Nikkei Shimbun research after the 2005 general election, 112 LDP Lower House members, or 37.8 percent of the chamber, have or had direct blood kin in politics. Out of the 17 ministers in Aso's Cabinet, 11 fall in that category.

The debate heated up after Yoshihide Suga, LDP deputy chief on election campaigns, suggested the party, to ease public criticism, include on its platform for the next general election some kind of limits on candidates with hereditary connections to politicians.

Suga, who is expected to be part of the team that drafts the LDP's poll platform, has said the party needs to demonstrate a determination to pursue unpleasant internal reforms.

Many LDP veterans, however, do not welcome Suga's proposal. They argue that curbing the candidacies of political blue bloods would violate the freedom of career choice guaranteed under the Constitution.

Because many veteran lawmakers effectively inherited their constituencies — that is to say the political support and vote-soliciting machines of their next of kin — they fear being restricted on where they could run could prevent them from being elected.

Aso has also been cool to the notion of restricting the eligibility of an election candidate.

Critics say politicians who inherit an electoral district from a relative have a great advantage over their opponents.

"Those candidates who inherit electoral districts from family members are already well-known in the districts and have the necessary infrastructure for the campaign, including support groups and political funds," Yasuhiro Tase, a political science professor at Waseda University, said as a guest speaker at an LDP political reform team meeting Thursday.

The political reform team of the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition force, said Thursday it wants to submit a bill during the current Diet session to limit hereditary candidates.

The DPJ wants to ban politicians and candidates from inheriting the electoral districts of relatives, defining heredity as first- to third-degree kinship. The party has not specified when such a ban would be imposed.

"If we can't do it (in the current Diet session), we will proudly include this in the (election platform)," DPJ Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama told reporters Friday, adding that if the party beats the LDP in the next election and takes control of the government, "we will do it immediately."

The DPJ has 20 hereditary Lower House members, accounting 17.7 percent of the Lower House members, according to Nikkei Shimbun's research. They include DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa, himself a former LDP member whose father once was as well.

Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kunio Hatoyama, whose grandfather is the late Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama and whose older brother, Yukio, is a key DPJ figure, criticized the DPJ plan, calling it "mediocre."

Hatoyama told reporters it is unfair to allow already-elected hereditary politicians to stay in office but close the gate on future candidates.

Nonetheless, the DPJ's move is pressuring LDP members to address the heredity issue.

LDP Lower House member Masahiko Shibayama suggested there is a reluctance among party executives to raise the issue of a ban, because that would provide the opposition camp with an advantage.

But he meanwhile said the issue should be thoroughly discussed because it could provide an opportunity to prove many hereditary politicians are, in fact, potent.

"Prime Ministers (Abe and Fukuda) did not quit because they were weak. It was just the magic of media surveys" that pressured them to quit.


[NATIONAL NEWS]

Monday, April 27, 2009
Panasonic, Sharp issue Mexico travel bans amid flu fears
（豚インフルエンザ拡大：パナソニック・シャープがメキシコ渡航禁止）

(Kyodo News) Amid the feared spread of an apparent deadly strain of swine flu, Panasonic Corp. and Sharp Corp. instructed their employees Sunday to forgo business trips to Mexico for the time being.

Sharp will also order its employees in Mexico to wear masks and refrain from visiting crowded areas to lessen the chances of infection.

Also on Sunday, Prime Minister Taro Aso ordered the Cabinet's crisis-management officer to come up with measures to block swine flu from entering Japan, officials said.

"We must stop the entry and spread (of swine flu) in Japan at the border," Aso told reporters on a Japan Coast Guard vessel he had boarded for an inspection parade.

The crisis-management officer, Tetsuro Ito, was also ordered to closely cooperate with other countries and provide information to the public, following reports of swine flu infections in humans in Mexico, the United States, Europe and Oceania, the officials said.

The government will convene a meeting of all Cabinet ministers Monday morning to look into the issue.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry received inquiries about the safety of travel to Mexico from 314 people Saturday after it set up a 24-hour telephone consultation service on the disease.

The health ministry will also strengthen its surveillance on direct flights from Mexico by asking all passengers, regardless of whether they show flu symptoms, to provide contact information.

Local public health centers will monitor their conditions for about 10 days to see if there is any sign of swine flu infection.

Quarantine officers continued to use thermographic imaging to check the temperatures of passengers coming from the United States and Mexico to detect signs of flu.

To prepare for confirmation of a new type of influenza by the World Health Organization and raising its alert level from the current phase 3 to 4, the ministry will confirm the amount of flu drug Tamiflu in distribution and secure accommodations near Narita airport to be used for isolating infected people from the general public.

Reflecting public concern about swine flu, JTB Corp. and Hankyu Travel International Co. will cancel their package tours to Mexico.

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Shigeru Ishiba meanwhile said on a television program Sunday that eating pork poses no danger of being infected.

Pork is sanitized at the shipment stage regardless of whether it is produced domestically or imported, he said.

news/notes20090427b

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

[NATIONAL NEWS]

Monday, April 27, 2009
DPJ-backed candidate wins Nagoya mayoral election

NAGOYA (Kyodo) Takashi Kawamura, backed by the Democratic Party of Japan, won Sunday's Nagoya mayoral election.
（日本民主党支援候補者：名古屋市長選で勝利）

The win by Kawamura, a 60-year-old former House of Representatives member, is a relief for the DPJ and its leader, Ichiro Ozawa, who has been hit by a fundraising scandal, ahead of a general election that must be called by the fall.

Voter turnout registered 50.54 percent, up sharply from 27.50 in the previous mayoral election.

Four independent candidates ran in the election to pick the mayor of the nation's fourth-largest metropolis.

The other three candidates were Masahiko Hosokawa, 54, a former head of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's Chubu Bureau supported by the local chapters of the Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito ruling bloc; Yoshiro Ota, 65, a local businessman backed by the Japanese Communist Party; and former office worker Katsuaki Kuroda, 36.

news/notes20090427c

[Today's News] from [The Guardian]

Swine flu death toll exceeds 100 as pandemic fears grow
• Spain confirms first European case
• World Health Organisation urges global vigilance

Chris McGreal in Washington, Jo Tuckman in Mexico City and Rachel Williams
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 April 2009 11.32 BST
Article history

Governments around the world are today on high alert for a possible swine flu pandemic as the death toll from the virus in Mexico rose to more than 100 and the first European case was confirmed in Spain.

Possible cases were reported as far afield as Israel, New Zealand and Scotland, after 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.

Spain's health ministry today said a young man who had recently been in Mexico had been confirmed as having swine flu, and 17 other people were under investigation.

The health minister, Trinidad Jimenez, said the man was responding well to treatment and was not in serious condition.

The European commission had already called for an emergency meeting of Europe's health ministers "as soon as possible".

The illness has rapidly claimed 103 lives, confined hundreds of people to hospital, and brought Mexico City, one of the world's largest cities, to a near standstill.

Financial turmoil

Fears of a potential pandemic have spooked financial markets worldwide, with airline and tourism stocks plunging today, the dollar dropping to its lowest level against the yuan, and the Mexican peso losing about 3% in electronic trading last night. Oil prices also fell. In London, the FTSE 100 index lost more than 60 points in early trading, falling about 1.5% to 4095.06.

But shares soared in drug companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, and medical glovemakers. Shares of Top Glove, the world's largest listed rubber latex glovemaker, jumped more than 8% to 5.95 ringgit on the Malaysian stock exchange.

The Czech government, which currently holds the EU presidency, will be asked to organise the gathering of European health ministers.

"The timing is up to the Czech presidency, but we are asking for this meeting to happen as soon as possible," a spokeswoman for the EU health commissioner Androula Vassiliou said.

Mexico

José Angel Cordova, the Mexican health secretary, said suspected swine flu cases in his country had risen to 1,614, including 103 deaths, 22 of which have been confirmed to be linked to the new virus. Tests are being carried out on the others. A further 1,614 cases of pneumonia are under investigation for links to the virus.

In Mexico City, the centre of the outbreak, schools, many public buildings and most restaurants remain closed.

The government is warning citizens not to shake hands or to stand close to each other. Many people stayed at home, or only ventured out wearing masks. Some stored water and food. Others left the city altogether.

Across Mexico, more than 1,300 people were tested for suspected swine flu infection and 400 were taken to hospital for checks. Health officials believe that tens of thousands, and possibly more, have been infected but have since recovered.

"[We are] monitoring, minute by minute, the evolution of this problem across the whole country," said the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón. The World Bank yesterday approved $205m (£141bn) in loans to the country to fight the outbreak.

United States

Although confirmed infections outside Mexico remain few, the head of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Richard Besser, said he expected the flu to spread in the US. "I would expect that over time we are going to see more severe disease in this country," he said. "This will continue to spread, but we are taking aggressive actions to minimise the spread."

Another CDC official, Anne Schuchat, went further and said the virus had spread widely and could not be contained.

The US last night declared its own national health emergency, however White House officials urged people not to panic and pointed out that no case outside Mexico had proved fatal.

The US has found 20 confirmed cases of swine flu: eight students in New York and other sufferers in California, Kansas and Texas.

The US homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, ordered the immediate release of 12m doses of antiviral treatments, such as Tamiflu, collected over five years in response to fears about the spread of avian flu.

The US has begun work on a vaccine, but that is unlikely to be available for months and CDC officials say schools may be closed and large gatherings banned in the worst affected areas.

In New York health officials confirmed that eight pupils at a high school in Queens had been infected. The mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said all the cases were mild and there was no evidence that the disease had spread. "So far there does not seem to be any outbreak," he said. "We don't know if the spread will be sustained. What's heartening is the people who tested positive have only mild illnesses."

The US said it would begin testing suspect arrivals from infected areas. China and Russia took quarantine measures at airports to prevent entry by anyone infected.

Some governments issued travel warnings as suspected infections were reported in Spain, Israel and Canada. In New Zealand 10 pupils at an Auckland school who had visited Mexico were treated for symptoms similar to swine flu. Four suspected cases have been found in France.

British action

In the UK the Health Protection Agency chief executive, Justin McCracken, told BBC News it was better to assume the UK would be affected by some cases. "I think probably we should expect cases given the way this has spread across America. It is sensible that we plan in the assumption that there will be cases," he said. "We are already mobilising things in the UK in case the virus comes over here. I definitely think we have enough of the drugs."

He added: "I don't think at this stage there is any need to declare an emergency."

In Scotland the health secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, said two people in Lanarkshire had been admitted to hospital on their return from Mexico; however, their flu-like symptoms were mild and the couple's condition was causing little concern, she said. Test results due today should reveal whether they have contracted swine flu.

Another man, Chris Clarke, from Stannic, Northamptonshire, fell ill on a British Airways flight from Mexico City to Heathrow and was told to stay indoors, but tests came back negative.

Britons arriving back at Gatwick airport from Cancún said a doctor on board had questioned them about possible flu symptoms before they left the aircraft today.

World Health Organisation

Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director general for health security, said it had convened an emergency committee. "We have asked all countries to increase their surveillance," he said.

But Fukuda said the committee had held off raising its pandemic crisis alert system from phase three to four, which would ratchet up the response, until more information about the disease had been gathered.

He said that past experience with avian flu had laid the ground for officials to deal with this crisis. "I believe that the world is much, much better prepared than we have ever been for dealing with this kind of situation."

Of particular concern to health officials is that those most at risk of death are healthy adults whose immune systems are strong and overreact to the virus.

The WHO is likely to raise its pandemic alert level within days if more cases are confirmed. It will go to phase four if the virus shows sustained ability to pass from human to human, and to phase five if it is confirmed in two countries in the same region. "Declaration of phase five is a strong signal a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalise the organisation, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short," the WHO said. Phase six is the declaration of a global pandemic.