Four of the five papers I cover daily, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and LA Times, have returned to the swine flu crisis in Mexico and around the world as their top story this morning. The NYT and WaPo both feature the most famous 5-year-old on the planet today, Edgar Hernández of La Gloria, Mexico. Édgar, it now turns out, is being recognized as the first to have been infected with the swine flu virus, and he’s a survivor at that. The boy is one of hundreds of people in the state of Veracruz who came down with flulike symptoms in an outbreak that now appears to have begun way back on March 9. “I was very bad. I feel good now,” the 5-year-old remarks with simplicity in the NYT today, describing symptoms that appear no different than the common flu. The WaPo adds that the link between pig farms around La Gloria, the boy, and the spreading of the virus around the globe is far from certain. No one has located a pig infected with the virus yet, and adding more mystery, the strain (which the WSJ’s world news headline says has now been reported on 4 continents and 8 countries) appears to, in fact, be Eurasian in origin. The number of suspected cases in Mexico rose to 2,498 on Tuesday with 159 deaths now believed to be caused by the virus there. Moreover, cruise lines have suspended operations to many Mexican ports, flights have been cancelled from Cuba and Argentina to Mexico, and California, with a grand total of 13 alleged cases of swine flu, has declared a state of emergency. I don’t mean to be flippant or understate the potential severity of the swine flu outbreak. Better safe than sorry, I would agree. But no need for global hysteria quite yet it seems (Wendy Orent, author of “Plague” and on the opinion pages of the LAT this morning, seems to agree). For some perspective, 36,000 people die each year from seasonal influenza in the United States alone.
Meanwhile, the Miami Herald takes us away from swine flu for a moment as the paper reports from Haiti where last week’s Senate elections produced no winners in the first round. The results leave 11 seats open in the 30-member Senate, positions now to be filled in a runoff election. Just 11 percent of voters turned out for the April 19 vote. Supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide boycotted the election after his Fanmi Lavalas party candidates were disqualified because they failed to produce documents signed by the exiled party leader. Nine of the 20 candidates advancing to the runoff are from President René Préval's Lespwa party, which already controls six of the Senate seats currently filled.
And in other news this morning, the swine flu appears to have not sidelined the activities of organized crime in Mexico just yet. From Tijuana the LAT reports that 7 police officers were killed late Monday in an attack by heavily armed gunmen. The paper says that Monday's attacks resulted in one of the biggest one-day police death tolls in recent memory. About 500 police officers have been killed in Mexico since December 2006.
In the NYT, the AP writes that Colombia’s Department of Administrative Security (DAS) fired yesterday another 11 individuals connected an illegal eavesdropping program targeting politicians, journalists, and judges. A total of 33 persons have now been let go from the department since the scandal broke in February. Also, on Colombia, the AP reports that Colombian drug baron Eugenio Montoya Sanchez, a top financial manager who supervised money-laundering for a cocaine cartel accused of smuggling $10 billion in drugs into the U.S., was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in federal prison in Miami.
On Cuba in the MH, Asst. Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Tom Shannon, met with Jorge Bolanos, chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington recently—what one anonymous State Department official described as “one of a series” to discuss issues like pending visa cases. The issue of trade may also be on their agenda.
And, another bizarre health issue is being reported on by the MH from Nicaragua. The so-called “crazy sickness,” which makes those afflicted alternate between “states of a coma-like trance and indomitable mania,” has returned to the port town of Bilwi on Nicaragua's northern Caribbean coast. More than 80 cases of the illness reported here in the past two months, including eight more girls who were afflicted while at school on April 21. Some health experts say the illness is more mental than physical. However, according to the MH, “it behaves similar to other viral outbreaks in that it's contagious and can last for months or years.”
Photo: Huffington Post
No comments:
Post a Comment