UPDATE: NYC health authorities say at least eight cases of flu in Queens are probably swine flu (they eliminated types A and B) and two cases were confirmed today in Kansas City.

This is very, very serious, and I'm glad Mexican authorities are treating it as such. One of the key factors in a pandemic flu (a global outbreak) is a mutated strain for which no one has immunity, and of course no one has developed a vaccine yet:

April 25 (Bloomberg) -- The World Health Organization is set to declare the deadly swine flu virus outbreak in Mexico and the U.S. a global concern, potentially prompting travel restrictions, said a person familiar with the matter.

An emergency committee of the WHO in Geneva will declare the outbreak “a public health event of international concern” in a 4 p.m. teleconference today, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting is confidential. In response, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan may raise the level of pandemic alert, which could lead to travel restrictions aimed at curbing the disease’s spread.

“These levels of pandemic alert are all signals for action,” said Malik Peiris, a professor of microbiology at the University of Hong Kong, who has studied influenza viruses for more than a decade. “Raising the level of alertness to influenza, especially in returning travelers, would be a relevant thing to do.”

Human-to-human spread of the previously unseen H1N1 swine influenza in Mexico and the U.S. is heightening concern that the virus may spark a pandemic. At least 68 people have died and more than 1,000 have fallen ill with flu-like symptoms in the Mexico City region in the past month, Jose Cordova, Mexico’s Health Minister, told reporters yesterday. The government has shut schools and distributed face masks.

Sari Setiogi, a WHO spokeswoman in Geneva, declined to comment on the agency’s response, saying it will depend on the outcome of today’s meeting.

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The environmental disaster first disclosed a few days ago is growing much bigger than authorities described:

A coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee that experts were already calling the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States is more than three times larger than initially estimated, according to an updated survey by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.

The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

But don't worry, we don't know for sure that it will kill the victims:

Mr. Moulton said on Friday that the levels exceeded safety limits for drinking water, but that both metals were filtered out by water treatment processes.

Mercury and arsenic, he said, were “barely detectable” in the samples.

The ash pond was adjacent to the Emory River and near a residential area, where three houses were destroyed by the tide of muddy ash. Water sampled several miles downstream from the spill was safe to drink, but its iron and manganese content exceeded the secondary drinking water standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency, which govern taste and odor but not potential health effects, Mr. Moulton said.

Neither the authority nor the E.P.A. has released the results of tests of soil or the ash itself. Authority officials have said that the ash is not harmful, and the authority has not warned residents of potential dangers, though federal studies show that coal ash can contain dangerous levels of heavy metals and carcinogens.

“You’re not going to be endangered by touching the ash material,” said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the T.V.A. “You’d have to eat it. You have to get it in your body.”

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation also released a statement saying there was no indication of risk unless the ash was ingested.

"Ingested." You mean, as in "inhaled"? Because it seems to me it will be almost impossible for residents to avoid breathing it in. Oh well. Thanks, BushCo!

I hope the new Democratic Congress and the corporate media continue to do their bit for more "clean coal"!

naked capitalism: Bear Hearings: A Charade

Threat Level: U.S.funded search engine, run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is blocking searches containing the word "abortion."

Sensen No Sen: A Gulag by any other name...

Opinions You Should Have: A NYT/CBS poll has found that a lousy future has soured the public's view of the future.

Danger Room: al Qaeda #2: We'll attack Iran

Facing South: NOLA public housing advocates bid good riddance to G-Dub's disgraced HUD chief. Heckuva job, Jackie!

Comment is free: Rather than taking advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to reduce inequality and educate the public about how the economy really works, progressive voices have been unusually quiet.

Tom Tomorrow: Pick a side Sparky!

PERRspectives Blog: A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health shows amazing disparities between how Democrats and Republicans perceive the American health care system.

DownWithTyranny! Some Europeans are worried about the prospect of a McCain presidency

The Nation: The NYT's newest columnist, Bill Kristol, just keeps embarrassing himself.

Pharyngula: Watch this appalling video of homeschoolers misusing the Denver museum to promote creationism.

Editor&Publisher: Finally! The MSM will grudgingly report that St. McCain actively sought and accepted the endorsement of a couple old pals of the Bush White House. This minister is anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and wants war with Iran now. The sainted solon has dubbed the other radical cleric a "spiritual guide." Neither, however, is a scary black man.

The Largest Minority: Exxon loses Venezuelan asset freeze and ordered to pay compensation.

Shakesville: Women's and children's issues don't count

Danger Room: Counting the dead in Iraq

Voice Your Choice in the Corporate Hall of Shame 2008. This year's nominees made headlines for breaking the law, influencing elected officials, undermining democratic decision-making and outright endangering the environment and public health.

The Center For Public Integrity: For more than seven months, the nation's top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially "alarming information" as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates.

TomDispatch: Laura Flanders suggests we take a breath and consider where change is really coming from and whether it will ever actually arrive.

Shapely Prose: Body hatred: not just for fat chicks anymore

Jeff Frankels Weblog: Fiscal Stimulus: What do Ronald Reagan and Joseph Stalin have in common? (h/t Make Them Accountable)

Working Life: Ho-Hum, another Bush hack casts an ugly shadow

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Don't answer that...How Big Media Hides the Real Economic News...How about a candidate debate on science?...It's the stupidity, stupid...New owner of the Tribune Company, Sam Zell, says 'F*ck You' to his journalist, but he's a bit more enlightened on other subjects...Fox terrorizes its audience with a non-terror story...Sure, the NYT reviewed a vacuous, Internet-bashing book, twice, but they also cater to people's ignorance...Why do Peggy Noonan, George Will, and David Brooks favor Obama?...Swallow...A film depicting actual Bush administration activities is considered too "controversial" by the Discovery Channel...One way of telling what you're reading isn't government or corporate propaganda...Hannity Meltdown

at-Largely: Zounds! Are we really gonna see some good reporting?

The Orstrahyun: Coming soon to the US? A new wave of "restrictions" on mobile phone content, websites, chatrooms and message boards will be introduced in Australia by late January, 2008.

Vagabond Scholar: The 27th edition of Batocchio's "Right Wing Cartoon Watch." And the Comics Curmudgeon keeps an eye on all da comix all da time.

The Newshoggers: An invitation to fraud

The Pump Handle: The water cooler for the public health crowd has it's own roundup. Go look...

HOLY CRAP: Put On Your Jesus Glasses...Breasts have no place in art...God likes Republicans and animal killing...We could fill several entire editions of Holy Crap with this guy's religious insanity...even former enablers are spooked...Christian Embassy Jr...The real "War On Christmas" and Christians is in Iraq...When to stone your children...Is I-35 a a holy road?...Oppressing The Stranger...The Immanent Frame is a blog discussing secularism, religion and the public sphere... Mitt ‘Double-Crosses' Huck

...Take a minute and sign the statement of conscience at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture

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Every once in a while Chris Wallace surprises me. You can see the hint of journalist rather than the White House sanctioned propagandist. Chris asked Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee about his 1992 statements questioning whether we might consider quarantining AIDS patients as a potential public health risk, and Huckabee tried to dance around it, claiming that back then we just didn't understand the risks. Now, if Mike had made those statement 10 years earlier in 1982, that might have been believable, but as Chris Wallace points out:

But Governor, forgive me, I don’t think that’s right. All the way back in 1985- this wasn’t political correctness--the Center for Disease Control, seven years before you made your statement, said that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact.

Oops. As PERRspectives points out, even Ronald ("AIDS? What's that?") Reagan refuted Huckabee's extremism--in 1987.

Huckabee's big lead in Iowa is certainly stirring things up on the GOP side. Looks like Murdock's gang has their guns pointed at Huckabee. Not that his postion on AIDS is excusable at all.

- Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk."

When asked about AIDS research in 1992, Huckabee complained that AIDS research received an unfair share of federal dollars when compared to cancer, diabetes and heart disease....read on

Great new read by Ben Wallace-Wells in this month's Rolling Stone that exposes how the $500 Billion spent on the Drug War over the last 35 years has been all but a complete waste of time and money, and an absolute failure by any standard of measure.

[A]fter U.S. drug agents began systematically busting up the Colombian cartels - doubt was replaced with hard data. Thanks to new research, U.S. policy-makers knew with increasing certainty what would work and what wouldn't. The tragedy of the War on Drugs is that this knowledge hasn't been heeded. We continue to treat marijuana as a major threat to public health, even though we know it isn't. We continue to lock up generations of teenage drug dealers, even though we know imprisonment does little to reduce the amount of drugs sold on the street. And we continue to spend billions to fight drugs abroad, even though we know that military efforts are an ineffective way to cut the supply of narcotics in America or raise the price.

All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs - with very little to show for it. [...]

Even by conservative estimates, the War on Drugs now costs the United States $50 billion each year and has overcrowded prisons to the breaking point - all with little discernible impact on the drug trade. ...(read on)

That is a truly one great article every policy maker should have to read. I can't ever read a word on this topic without remembering how Col Oliver North was involved in smuggling cocaine into the U.S. under Reagan, circumventing Congress to pay for an illegal proxy war, which coincided with the birth of the crack epidemic at the very same time the President had declared a 'War on Drugs' (Remember Nancy's 'Just Say No'?) and the great expansion in the building of prisons and increasing sentences that has resulted in the disenfranchisement of generations of disproportionately black would-be voters to this very day. But of course all that was just another unintended but electorally significant consequence of Ronald Reagan's.