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

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

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

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

Hartl said WHO was waiting for U.S. authorities to announce that a number of students at a New York high school have passed the virus on to one another after their return from a spring vacation in Mexico. “I think we might have one other instance in the U.S.,” he said.

Pressed by reporters to elaborate, he declined, saying it was up to U.S. authorities to provide further information.

Possible scenarios include students getting infected who did not travel to Mexico, or students who traveled there but became infected only after returning to the United States, or family members getting infected from returning students.

WHO calls this “community transmission” and says it’s a key test for gauging whether the spread of the virus has reached pandemic proportions. The swine flu has already spread to at least six countries besides Mexico, prompting WHO officials to raise its alert level on Monday.

“At this time, containment is not a feasible option,” said Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general of the World Health Organization.

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

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

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

Another suspected case has been tested at another Israeli hospital but results are not in, the ministry said.

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

With the virus spreading, the U.S. prepared for the worst as President Barack Obama tried to reassure Americans. Obama said the outbreak is “not a cause for alarm,” even as the U.S. stepped up checks of people entering the country and warned U.S. citizens to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico.

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

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

The European Union health commissioner suggested that Europeans avoid nonessential travel both to Mexico and parts of the United States. Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the virus.

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

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

It’s still not clear when the first case occurred, making it impossible thus far to determine where the breakout started.

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

WHO raised the alert level to Phase 4, meaning there is sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus causing outbreaks in at least one country. Monday was the first time it has ever been raised above Phase 3.

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

Fifty cases — none fatal and most of them mild — were confirmed in the United States. Including the New Zealand, Israeli and new Spanish reports, there were 92 confirmed cases worldwide on Tuesday. That included six in Canada, one in Spain and two in Scotland.

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

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

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

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

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

Flu deaths are nothing new in the United States. The CDC estimates that about 36,000 people died of flu-related causes each year, on average, during the 1990s in the United States. But the new flu strain is a combination of pig, bird and human viruses that humans may have no natural immunity to.

World stock markets fell Tuesday as investors worried that any swine flu pandemic could derail a global economic recovery.

Source: AP

PADUCAH, Kentucky (Reuters) – A former U.S. soldier on trial in the gang rape of an Iraqi girl and the murder of her and her family in the war zone in 2006 was caught in a “perfect storm of insanity,” his lawyer told a jury on Monday.

But government prosecutors in the same courtroom said former Private 1st Class Steven Green, alleged ringleader of the slayings, was only interested in killing Iraqis “nonstop” and bragged during a barbecue celebration later that what he had done was “awesome.”

Green, 23, is being tried in federal court as a civilian since his arrest came after he was discharged from the U.S. Army later in 2006 for a “personality disorder.”

He is the last of five men charged in the rape of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, 14, and the slaying of her and her father, mother and 6-year-old sister. The incident unfolded after the soldiers drank whiskey, played cards, and plotted the attack in Mahmudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, prosecutors have said.

Three of the other soldiers pleaded guilty in the attack and the fourth was convicted, all in military courts-martial. They were given sentences of from five to 100 years, though they could be paroled much sooner. Prosecutors said they are seeking the death penalty for Green.

In opening statements at the trial, Patrick Bouldin, a public defender, said Green’s platoon had been decimated by deaths and injuries before the crime.

“You have to understand the background that leads up to this perfect storm of insanity,” Bouldin told the jury.

Bouldin said Green had sought help dealing with combat stress after the deaths of close colleagues and was unsure whether Iraqis he encountered were friend or foe.

“They couldn’t tell the village people and the farmers from the insurgents and the terrorists,” he said.

IRAQIS HORRIFIED BY CRIME

Green, from Midland, Texas, faces 17 charges including sexual assault, murder, and obstruction of justice.

Outlining the gruesome details of the crime, federal prosecutor Brian Skaret said: “Who could have done these things? It wasn’t done by insurgents or terrorists. It was the work of this man, Steven Green.”

He said Green took his turn raping the girl after he shot to death the girl’s mother, father and sister. He said Green was predisposed to the crime.

“Steven Green wanted to kill Iraqi civilians,” Skaret said. “He wanted to kill them all the time, nonstop.”

After the crime, Skaret said, the men celebrated with a barbecue, and Green was said to have commented “that was awesome.” He also told an Army investigator the day after, “I did that. I killed them,” Skaret said.

The family was chosen because the soldiers viewed them as an easy target, prosecutors have said.

Iraqis were horrified by the crime, one of a series of incidents involving U.S. soldiers that strained relations with the Iraqi government. But the onset of Green’s trial three years later is not resonating with most Iraqis, observers there say.

The incident was portrayed in the 2007 movie “Redacted” by director Brian De Palma, who complained the film was censored by the studio. Its graphic images shocked many viewers.

Source: Reuters

The government plans to spend £2bn for ISPs to intercept details of their customers’ emails, VoIP calls, instant messaging and social networking.

Under the proposals, mobile and fixed line operators will be required to process and link the data together to build complete profiles of every UK internet user’s online activity. Police and the intelligence services would then access the profiles, which will be stored for 12 months, on a case-by-case basis.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said today she had “ruled out” the idea of a central government-run store of communications data on privacy grounds. Instead, the consultation on the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) proposes a “middle way” requiring ISPs to retain much more data than they currently do.

Most of the proposed 10-year budget for the system would be spent on deep packet inpection equipment that would allow ISPs to tap into third party communciations data carried by their networks. Authorities are worried that the growth of internet-based communications services such as Skype diminishes their ability to monitor who contacts whom, when, where and how.

“This option would resolve the problem that some communications data which may be important to public authorities will not otherwise be retained in this country,” the IMP consultation document says.

“However it would not address the problem of fragmentation: as data is increasingly held by a wider range of communications service providers, it might take longer than it does at present to piece together data from different companies relating to one person or communications device.”

In response to such fragmentation, the government plans to order ISPs to “not only to collect and store data but to organise it, matching third party data to their own data where it had features in common”.

The plan is likely to be seen as onerous by ISPs. According to one senior industry source, many in the industry hope the next government will abandon it. “I don’t know anyone in the communications sector that will be sorry if IMP gets cancelled the day after the election,” the source said.

“I agree that what we’re asking the industry to do is something that will put a burden on them,” Smith said at today’s IMP briefing for journalists. She said providers will be refunded the cost of collecting and processing the data by the government.

By tapping ISPs to collect and process communications data from across the whole internet, officials will avoid opposition to the plans from websites and other third party services. Facebook recently voiced opposition to government monitoring of its users, but when the data is intercepted in transit, it will have no choice. Intelligence and security agencies already have close relationships with ISPs.

Source: The Register

In February 1976, an outbreak of swine flu struck Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey, killing a 19-year-old private and infecting hundreds of soldiers. Concerned that the U.S. was on the verge of a devastating epidemic, President Gerald Ford ordered a nationwide vaccination program at a cost of $135 million (some $500 million in today’s money). Within weeks, reports surfaced of people developing Guillain-Barré syndrome, a paralyzing nerve disease that can be caused by the vaccine. By April, more than 30 people had died of the condition. Facing protests, federal officials abruptly canceled the program on Dec. 16. The epidemic failed to materialize.

Medical historians and epidemiologists say there are many differences between the relatively benign 1976 outbreak and the current strain of swine flu that is spreading across the globe. But they also say the decisions made in the wake of the ‘76 outbreak — and the public’s response to them — provide a cautionary tale for public health officials, who may soon have to consider whether to institute draconian measures to combat the disease. (See pictures of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico.)

“I think 1976 provides an example of how not to handle a flu outbreak, but what’s interesting is that it made a good deal of sense at the time,” says Hugh Pennington, an emeritus professor of virology at Britain’s University of Aberdeen. Pennington points out that conventional wisdom in 1976 held that the 1918 flu pandemic — which started among soldiers and eventually killed as many as 40 million — was the result of swine flu (scientists now know it was in fact a strain of bird flu). Despite modern advances in microbiology, today’s health officials still make decisions in a “cloud of uncertainty,” Pennington says. “At the moment, our understanding of the current outbreak is similarly limited. For example, we don’t yet understand why people are dying in Mexico but not elsewhere.” (See pictures of bird flu.)

In a quickly evolving situation, deciding what public health orders to make becomes as much an art as a science, and can often stir debate. On Monday, for example, health officials in Europe advised citizens to cancel all nonessential trips to Mexico and the U.S. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that advisory was too severe. Such decisions, difficult enough to make on purely medical grounds, become even more complicated when they involve politics. In 1976, President Ford’s vaccine program came during an election cycle, and some historians believe he was swayed as much by a desire to display strong leadership as by the advice of health experts. (Read “Swine Flu: 5 Things You Need to Know About the Outbreak.”)

Howard Markel, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and a historical consultant to the CDC on flu pandemics, says the most vexing decision facing health officials is when to institute mass vaccination programs. Vaccines carry risks of complications, leading to agonizing ethical dilemmas. In 1976, Ford offered indemnity to the vaccine manufacturers. But according to reports, President George W. Bush decided in 2002 not to administer a nationwide smallpox vaccination program — despite Vice President Dick Cheney’s belief that doing so was a prudent counterterrorism step — because it could have resulted in dozens of deaths (the smallpox vaccine kills between 1 and 2 people per million people inoculated).

Markel says the political climate in the U.S. is much less combustible today than in the post-Watergate era, when Ford faced a skeptical public. Even so, he says, citizens still need to trust that the government is working for the greater good. He says, “The good news is that our surveillance, methodology and public health professionals have never been better. But we are human and mistakes may be made — as happened with the 1976 swine flu affair — and we may jump the gun in the hope of preserving life. The current outbreak is a situation in flux. The American public has to be forgiving and patient and do [their] part too.”

Source: Time

Iraq wants American troops to withdraw from urban areas and only return with government approval, a defense ministry spokesman said Monday, casting doubt about whether the U.S. can maintain troops in certain trouble spots even as they withdraw elsewhere.

Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari said that the ministry’s position is still that U.S. troops must leave by the agreed deadline despite some calls for them to remain in northern city of Mosul and Diyala province.

U.S. and Iraqi commanders will make recommendations to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who will decide whether to grant exceptions to a security pact requiring U.S. troops to leave Iraq’s major cities by June 30.

“The general position of the Iraq Defense Ministry is to keep the timings in the withdrawal pact that American troops withdraw from Iraqi cities and not enter the cities unless they get Iraqi approval,” al-Askari said.

Under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact that took effect Jan. 1, American troops will leave the country entirely by the end of 2011. President Barack Obama has announced plans to withdraw combat troops by Aug. 31, 2010, leaving a contingency force of 30,000 to 50,000 troops in advisory and training capacities.

Violence in Iraq remains at some of the lowest levels since the months following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But a series of high-profile suicide bombings in recent weeks, have killed hundreds and wounded hundreds more.

The attacks have also brought into question the ability of Iraq’s security forces as they take over from U.S. troops.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has not specifically said whether U.S. troops would leave by the deadline, but said that any exception would have to be made by al-Maliki.

But American commanders have said if there are exceptions, the northern city of Mosul would be a priority. The city is considered one of the last bases of Sunni insurgents.

The main U.S. operation in Mosul is effectively on the outskirts of the city. It is unclear, though, if like Baghdad’s Camp Victory — U.S. military headquarters — it will be considered outside the city limits.

Another possibility where exceptions might be considered is in the Diyala province, where American troops in Baqouba are still battling insurgents.

But al-Askari said there was adequate security in Mosul, adding there were two Iraqi army divisions.

“If we need the support of American troops, we will recall them with Iraqi governmental approval,” he said.

Source: AP