"Influenza viruses evolve rapidly and nimbly"

    
     Japan (BBC) - "New strains of the flu virus are showing resistance to drugs experts hope would help slow the spread of a pandemic, research suggests.

       Tamiflu is viewed as the best weapon currently available against a flu pandemic, and is being stockpiled by governments including the UK's.

       But Japanese researchers found evidence of emerging resistance to Tamiflu, and a second drug Relenza.

     No one should rely solely on vaccines or medications to fight the threat of the flu.  "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

     WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "The U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee said on Friday it will hold a hearing in mid-April on ways to curb the rise in home mortgage foreclosures.

       The hearing is scheduled for April 17 and would be the latest in a series targeting home mortgages including predatory lending activities and the subprime mortgage market.

       Representatives from mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration, the mortgage industry and consumer organizations will testify, the committee said.

     Colorado River (National Geographic) - "The unprecedented drought that has gripped the southwestern United States isn't almost over, researchers say, it may have only just begun.

      That's the consensus of all but 1 of the 19 climate models used as the basis for this week's upcoming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to a new analysis.

      Richard Seager, a senior research scientist with the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, and co-authors report their findings today in the online advance version of the journal Science.

      Based on the climate models, the U.S. Southwest and parts of northern Mexico could become as arid as the North American Dust Bowl conditions of the 1930s, the study authors report.

      "If these models are correct, the levels of aridity of the recent multiyear drought … [will] become the new climatology of the American Southwest," the team writes..."

     Wonderful...  Something else to look forward to.

     East Anglia, United Kingdom (BBC) - "As activists organised by the group Stop Climate Chaos gather in London to demand action, one of Britain's top climate scientists says the language of chaos and catastrophe has got out of hand.

      Climate change is a reality, and science confirms that human activities are heavily implicated in this change.

      But over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country - the phenomenon of "catastrophic" climate change.

      It seems that mere "climate change" was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be "catastrophic" to be worthy of attention.

      The increasing use of this pejorative term - and its bedfellow qualifiers "chaotic", "irreversible", "rapid" - has altered the public discourse around climate change.

      This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as "climate change is worse than we thought", that we are approaching "irreversible tipping in the Earth's climate", and that we are "at the point of no return"..."

     HONIARA (Reuters) - "Aid workers battled an outbreak of diarrhea on Thursday among Solomon Islanders who fled their homes after an earthquake and tsunami that killed at least 34 in the tiny Pacific nation.

      Australian media said 11 children were believed to have perished in the village of Titiana, once home to about 700 people but now mostly deserted with only a few buildings still standing.

      A two-year-old girl and her four-year-old brother were swept from their mother's arms by Monday's tsunami, and another family lost three children, the Sydney Morning Herald reported..."

     I didn't know "diarrhea" was contagious.  Cholera, Dysentery and other pathogens that CAUSE diarrhea are.  But it's a result, not a contagion.  Either way, when sanitation conditions deteriorate, it is a common ailment.

     TOKYO (Reuters) - "The dollar hovered below a five-week high against the yen on Thursday as investors shifted their focus to a monthly U.S. payrolls report due the following session.

      The dollar also stayed in sight of a two-year low against the euro and a fresh 10-year low versus the Australian dollar hit after data showing growth in the U.S. service sector was at a four-year low in March, reinforcing the view that U.S. interest rates could be cut.

      The jobs data on Friday will provide more clues on whether the Federal Reserve will lower rates from the current 5.25 percent to support the economy.

     PHOENIX (Fox) —  "Behind the county hospital's tall cinderblock walls, a 27-year-old tuberculosis patient sits in a jail cell equipped with a ventilation system that keeps germs from escaping.

      Robert Daniels has been locked up indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life, since last July. But he has not been charged with a crime. Instead, he suffers from an extensively drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. It is considered virtually untreatable.

      County health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up as a danger to the public because he failed to take precautions to avoid infecting others. Specifically, he said he did not heed doctors' instructions to wear a mask in public.

      "I'm being treated worse than an inmate," Daniels said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press last month. "I'm all alone. Four walls. Even the door to my room has been locked. I haven't seen my reflection in months."

      Though Daniels' confinement is extremely rare, health experts say it is a situation that U.S. public health officials may have to confront more and more because of the spread of drug-resistant TB and the emergence of diseases such as SARS and avian flu in this increasingly interconnected world..."

     I guess this means that if you become infected with a highly contagious, deadly pathogen all of your rights go out the window.  Habeous Corpus may become irony here, because in a jail, without sufficient medical treatment, this is a dead man.

     MILAN (Reuters) - The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu may spread from Indonesia, Egypt and Nigeria to other countries as it continues to circulate in Africa and Asia, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Monday.

      "The risk of a pandemic will be with us for the foreseeable future," said the United Nations body's chief veterinary officer Joseph Domenech, reiterating calls for global efforts to contain the disease.

      Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria have not been able to contain the disease, effectively making them reservoirs of the virus for possible spread to other countries, the FAO said in a statement.

     HONIARA (Reuters) - At least six people were killed and entire villages engulfed by the sea after a powerful earthquake and tsunami struck the tiny Solomon Islands, triggering a Pacific panic and fears of more deaths.

      The shallow quake, with a magnitude of at least 8.0, leveled buildings and damaged a hospital on Gizo island northwest of the Solomons capital, Honiara, while a tsunami sucked homes into the sea as thousands of panicked residents fled for higher ground.

     I wonder if that "Tsunami Warning System" everyone has been talking about has been implimented yet.

      A lack of factual knowledge among some teachers, particularly in primary schools, is also leading to “shallow” lessons on emotive and difficult subjects, according to the study by the Historical Association.

      The report, produced with funding from the Department for Education, said that where teachers and staff avoided emotive and controversial history, their motives were generally well intentioned.

      “Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship,” it concluded.

      However, it was concerned that this could lead to divisions within school, and that it might also put pupils off history..."

     If you live in a tornado-prone area, now is the time to seriously think about taking the necessary preparedness precautions.

      NEW YORK (Reuters) - "The weak housing market is starting to affect overall U.S. employment, and job losses that are now limited to sectors like construction will likely spread to other parts of the labor market in coming months.

      For builders, realtors and mortgage lenders, the full impact of the downturn may take more than year to work through the system.