In Air France crash, deep seas stand between experts and answers

If there is ever to be an answer to what caused Air France Flight 447 to fall from the sky, the best clues probably lie on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean amid rugged volcanic ridges and steep trenches, some plunging deeper than the Grand Canyon.

Search planes scouring the area Tuesday spotted a seat, an orange buoy, a tank and a fuel slick about 400 miles off the Brazilian coast. Brazilian authorities identified them as pieces from the Airbus A330 that disappeared late Sunday, and French officials reiterated that there was virtually no chance that any of the 228 people aboard survived.Most of the wreckage is probably resting now 9,000 feet to 14,000 feet below the surface, where it is pitch black, the water temperature is 40 degrees and the pressure as high as 7,000 pounds per square inch, scientists said.

Investigators will have to send robotic submarines into this hostile environment to look for crucial pieces of evidence in the disappearance of the Paris-bound flight.

A battery-operated sonar "pinger," 4 inches long and about an inch in diameter, should already have started sending out acoustic signals from the ocean bottom about once every second. The pinger is attached to the flight data recorder, which is embedded in the rear section of the jetliner's fuselage. Another pinger is attached to the cockpit voice recorder.

Even with the help of those homing signals, the task of finding the debris amid the rugged seascape will not be easy, experts said. And if searchers find them, they will face challenges reaching the wreckage and determining what happened.

"You want to treat it like a crime scene, taking detailed photographs," said Dave Gallo, director of special operations at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "In the past, the urge was to remove evidence as quickly as possible, but before you disturb anything you want a detailed survey."

The floating debris was spotted north of the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha off the Brazilian coast, suggesting that the plane disappeared not long after it last radioed its position.

But wind and ocean currents may have pushed the floating debris miles from the impact point in the intervening day, and it will be difficult for investigators to pinpoint the location of the most important pieces of evidence, the two so-called black boxes that record flight data and the voices of the pilots.

Brazilian air force Col. Jorge Amaral offered another explanation for why debris might be found slightly off the scheduled flight path. The pilots might have been attempting to make a turn, he said, acknowledging that his theory was only speculation.

The search crews have about 30 days before the batteries on the homing devices run out, said Thomas A. Greenacre, president of Dukane Corp.'s Seacom Division, the largest supplier of acoustic homing devices.

"It is at an extreme depth," Greenacre said. "The location and recovery will be very difficult." He said the beacons aboard the Airbus A330 were probably made by Dukane, but he could not be certain.

Plane crash investigations have recovered data from deep waters, but seldom at the depths that will be encountered in the case of Flight 447.

Most of the wreckage, as well as many human remains, were recovered from TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 that crashed off Long Island in 1996. But that plane sank in water only 120 feet deep, and at that depth divers were able to help.

Wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger and the remains of the astronauts were recovered off the Florida coast at a depth of less than 1,000 feet in 1986.

Debris from the crash of the small plane that took the life of John F. Kennedy Jr. nearly a decade ago was recovered from the Atlantic, but again from relatively shallow waters.

In 1987, a South African Airways 747 crashed into the Indian Ocean off the island nation of Mauritius, sinking to a depth of about 16,000 feet. After an unsuccessful two-month search by the South African military, the U.S. Navy was able to locate the wreckage and the cockpit voice recorder. The accident was eventually blamed on cargo that caught fire.

The wreckage of the Air France jetliner probably will contain much of the information that will be crucial to determining the cause of the crash, which occurred in a violent thunderstorm.

Search planes and ships converged on the area Tuesday, but clouds and more storms complicated their efforts.

Reaching any conclusion will require a wealth of data about the flight parameters, engine condition and discussions in the cockpit. Investigators will need to determine whether the wreckage shows any sign of an explosion and whether the aircraft broke apart before hitting the water.

The first step in getting that information will involve sending crews to the most likely impact point, where they will lower hydrophones into the water and attempt to pick up the homing signals. They will try to pinpoint the spot in the ocean directly over the wreckage, said Laurence Madin, director of research at Woods Hole.

The area of the crash is on the western flank of a mostly undersea mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which runs roughly north and south down the middle of the Atlantic. It was formed by plate movements and volcanoes, creating a geology of hard dense rock. It will make sonar operations particularly difficult, creating "shadows" in the signals that could mask the wreckage, Gallo said.

Once the wreckage is located, investigators probably will want detailed photographs of the debris field on the ocean floor before any recovery operations begin.

Only a few nations have the deep submersible vessels that can go to 14,000 feet. Woods Hole just sent one of its new robotic craft to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, the deepest place in any ocean on Earth -- more than 35,000 feet.

The Alvin, owned by the U.S. Navy and operated by Woods Hole, can send a crew of three down to about 17,000 feet, but, at least initially, investigators probably will opt for a robotic craft for safety.

The robotic craft are connected to a mother ship by a fiber-optic umbilical cord, feeding video of the undersea scene. The craft has manipulator arms that can use tools to cut into the fuselage and extract the flight recorders.

The bigger question is whether French investigators will attempt to salvage the entire aircraft wreckage, as was done in the case of the TWA accident, and the remains of the passengers. link....

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Arab states discuss Israel concessions

Talks are under way among several Arab states on measures that would reward Israel if Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, commits to a total freeze on the expansion of Jewish settlement as part of a comprehensive American Middle East peace plan.
According to people familiar with the talks, several Arab states are discussing a plan of action that could include stepped up contacts with the Jewish state, telecommunications links and airline access if the US can secure a genuine Israeli adherence to a complete settlements freeze on occupied Palestinian land.

The sources stress, however, that Arab concessions would have to follow the US articulating how to achieve a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with benchmarks for action on both sides.

The Arab moves are, moreover, predicated on a drastic change in Israeli policy. The current government has said repeatedly that it will not curb what it calls the ”natural growth” of West Bank settlements – a loophole that has allowed the settler population to continue to expand rapidly in recent years.

The talks come as Barack Obama, the US president, holds his first summit tomorrow with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, whose right wing government wants to continue expanding settlements and has yet to commit to the two-state solution.

Senior US officials, in turn, have made clear that the administration will take a tougher line on Israel on issues such as the peace process, which has raised concerns in Israel about a looming rift with the country’s most crucial ally.

Officials from pro-western states in the Arab world say the Obama administration provides a rare opportunity for ending the Arab-Israeli conflict and it should be supported if it exerts pressure on its Israeli ally. This is the message that King Abdullah, the Jordanian monarch, is believed to have delivered to Mr Obama in Washington last month.

Any moves taken by the Arab world, however, would involve a few countries, and not the whole 22-member Arab League, to avoid what would undoubtedly turn into a bitter dispute. Concessions would also not involve revising the 2002 Arab peace initiative. People familiar with the talks say that states in the Gulf and in North Africa are involved in the current discussions, in addition to Egypt and Jordan , which already have diplomatic ties with Israel .

Officials in the region will not publicly acknowledge that talks are under way. But Nader Dahabi, prime minister of Jordan , yesterday told a panel at the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea in Jordan , that if the peace process moves forward, there can be a “deposit that Arabs will go into confidence-building measures.”

Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary general, also told the FT that action can be taken by both sides if the atmosphere between Israel and its neighbours changes, but warned that the Arab world would not “pay anything upfront.”

Israel’s attempt to develop ties with Arab states - something which could help make Israelis feel more secure in and integrated within their neighbourhood - has faltered as the peace process has stalled.

Arab governments signed up in 2002 to the Arab peace initiative, a Saudi-sponsored plan that promises normalisation with Israel if peace agreements are reached with Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon , on the basis of an Israeli withdrawal from all lands occupied in 1967. Israel raised serious objections to the plan, particularly its call for a solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees.

Senior Arab officials say George Mitchell, the US envoy, has been asking Arab states to consider measures towards normalisation if a peace process is re-launched – and not reward Israel only when peace is achieved.

Normalisation, however, remains a taboo in the region, particularly as it is considered the most valuable card in a conflict in which Israel is the more powerful party. Any attempt to alter the Arab peace initiative would provoke dramatic splits in the Arab League. This is why developing some ties with Israel would be taken by like-minded countries, not the whole region.

Palestinians have long sought a stop on Jewish settlements on occupied land, which are illegal under international law, arguing that they prevent a contiguous Palestinian state from emerging.

Since the launch of the Oslo peace process in 1993, the number of settlers in the occupied West Bank has more than doubled, rising from 116,000 to 285,000 last year. In addition, there are now more than 180,000 Jewish settlers living in occupied East Jerusalem.

Mr Netanyahu goes to Washington after having met both Egypt ’s Hosni Mubarak and Jordan ’s King Abdullah. The Israeli leader’s message was that his coalition is fragile and could collapse if he were to embrace a settlement freeze or agree to discuss issues such as the fate of occupied Arab East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the capital of a future state.

According to one person with knowledge of the meeting in Egypt , President Mubarak told Mr Netanyahu that Israeli leaders have been making this argument for the last 25 years. link...

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Congress eyes new allies for coalition after Indian election victory

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) defied predictions of a tight election and was only 11 seats short of an outright majority from the 543 seats at stake in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of parliament, according to election commission data.
Top Congress leaders, including Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, Sonia Gandhi, the party chief, and Pranab Mukherjee, the foreign minister, met on Sunday to discuss potential allies.A strong Congress-led coalition, free of pressures from its former communist partners, has boosted the prospect of reforms to encourage growth in Asia's third largest economy.
The new government will also have a strong mandate to deal with security issues in a region overshadowed by instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Rahul Gandhi, the Congress dynasty scion credited with inspiring his party's biggest election victory since 1991, has been offered a cabinet post by Mr Singh.
The overwhelming margin by which Congress won has been attributed to Mr Gandhi's reforms of the party's neglected organisation and his strategic decision to shun seat-sharing deals with allies in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The strategy paid off handsomely, with Congress almost doubling its seats in Uttar Pradesh, while its alliance with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal defeated the Communist-led Left Front, which almost brought down the government last year when it resigned from the UPA in protest over the US nuclear deal.
Immediately following the result, Dr Manmohan Singh was reconfirmed as prime minister by Mrs Gandhi. In his first speech following the result, Dr Singh paid tribute to Rahul Gandhi's stewardship of the campaign and said he would try to persuade him to join his cabinet.
Mr Gandhi believes he has unfinished business in overhauling the Congress Party organisation, but his supporters now want him to enter the cabinet to prepare for his "destiny" as the country's prime minister.
On Sunday, Captain Satish Sharma, a close Gandhi family adviser and former Congress minister, called for Rahul Gandhi to follow in his grandfather Jawarharlal Nehru's footsteps by becoming India's foreign minister.
"I'm advising him to take a cabinet post and I think he should take what Jawarharlal Nehru was, external affairs minister, as well as prime minister. Rahul can do more for India as foreign minister.
"One hundred percent he will be prime minister one day. With more than 200 seats, he could be now if he wanted to. But he wants Manmohan Singh as PM. I'm going to try to persuade him to take foreign affairs," he told The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Gandhi's sister, Priyanka, on Sunday backed her brother as a future prime minister. "Yes, providing he works hard towards it, goes through the grind and providing he deserves it," she said. link...

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Sri Lanka rebels 'call ceasefire'

Tamil rebels trapped in a tiny enclave of northern Sri Lanka have declared a ceasefire, a rebel spokesman says.
The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) had given up their fight against a major government offensive and "decided to silence our guns", he said on a pro-Tamil website.
"This battle has reached its bitter end," said Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the Tigers' chief of international relations, in a statement on Tamilnet.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has already claimed victory in the 26-year war.
A later statement on the Tamilnet website appeared to modify the rebel position.
Mr Pathmanathan said the LTTE was "prepared to silence its guns if that is what needed by the international community to save the life and dignity of the Tamil people".
See a map of the conflict region
"In the past 24 hours, over 3,000 civilians lie dead on the streets while another 25,000 are critically injured with no medical attention," said the statement.
A senior Sri Lankan media spokesman told the BBC the government did not respond to documents posted on Tamilnet or take them seriously.
Lakshman Hulugalle said the government was waiting for an official "request" from the LTTE.
Civilians trapped
In contrast, Sri Lanka military officials said earlier that all the civilians who had been trapped in Sri Lanka's northern war zone had escaped.
The government rejected the ceasefire calls, saying that as all trapped civilians had now fled from the area of conflict, there was no reason to stop its offensive.Army spokesman Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said some 50,000 ethnic Tamils had fled the area over the past three days.
Like all accounts from the war zone, neither claim can be independently verified.
Fighting is still continuing, but there has been no sign of the Tigers' leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Sri Lankan defence minister told the BBC.
For months, tens of thousands of Tamil civilians have been trapped in the war zone, vulnerable to bombardments as the government and Tamil Tiger rebels fought bitterly.
The United Nations says they were being forcibly kept there by the rebels and that more than 6,000 have been killed since January.
The UN has told the BBC the army figures reinforced its view that Sri Lanka's authorities were ill-prepared for the huge influx of internally displaced people.
Refugee camps inland are already badly strained accommodating the huge numbers of those who have fled the conflict.
Rebels 'cornered'
Both the UN and Western governments have called on Sri Lanka to exercise restraint in its pursuit of a military victory over the Tigers. link...

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Taming of Tamil Tigers threatens to breed fiercer creatures

Thousands of Sri Lankans are celebrating their government's military victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa expected to tell the country on national television on Tuesday that the war is over. On the ground, the rebels have admitted that their 25-year struggle for a Tamil homeland has reached "its bitter end".

However, the victory has come at a high price in terms of civilan life and damage to Colombo's international reputation. According to UN figures, an estimated 7,000 ethnic Tamil civilians were killed between 20 January, when a military offensive pushed back the rebels into a tiny enclave in the north-east, and 7 May.

Although the military largely blocked the world's media from covering the carnage in the so-called no-fire zone, some TV images have conveyed part of the horror, showing civilians making a desperate break across a lagoon to escape the last strip of land controlled by the rebels.

Doctors have recounted the cries of the wounded at a makeshift hospital thart they had to abandon because of continual artillery shelling – bombardments denied by the Sri Lankan military. UN officials and human rights groups have been horrified at the disregard for civilians on both sides, particularly in the final stages of the conflict.

Despite pleas from the US president, Barack Obama, and the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, Colombo has zealously pursued its objective of wiping out the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) once and for all.

For Rajapaksa, military victory is the climax of his election campaign in November 2005, when he ruled out autonomy for Tamils – a harbinger of the military option.

Rajapaksa has been able to dress up the offensive as part of the global fight against terrorism. There is little sympathy for the Tigers. A ruthless group, listed as a terrorist organisation by both the US and the EU, the Tigers pioneered suicide attacks, carried out assassinations and stand accused of using civilians in the war zone as human shields and shooting those who tried to flee.

However, such tactics provide no excuse for the Sri Lankan government's blatant disreguard for the plight of civilians. While many Tamils are appalled by the Tigers' tactics, they also harbour deep grievances about their treatment by the Sinhalese majority. Analysts claim the government's conduct has hardened an already humiliated Tamil diaspora, storing trouble for the future.

"If the Tigers' leadership is removed or killed in a government assault, it's easy to imagine one of the newly energised generation stepping in to fill the void," said Robert Templer, of the International Crisis Group thinktank.

"The dream of an independent Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka resonates powerfully across the diaspora and will certainly live on even after the defeat of the LTTE as a conventional military force. The deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians – while their family members watch from afar – is a recipe for another, possibly more explosive, generation of terrorism."

For now, the Sri Lankan government has prevailed, militarily. It has a huge humanitarian problem on its hands, with tens of thousands of displaced civilians to care for, and it will need international aid. For western leaders who have urged restraint, this is the time to call on Rajapaksa to address Tamil demands for devolution of power and language rights now that the military conflict is over. link...

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Citing Auschwitz, Pope Assails Hatred

TEL AVIV — Recalling a visit to the Auschwitz death camp, Pope Benedict XVI wound up a sometimes fraught and often politically charged trip to Israel and the West Bank on Friday with a call for peace and a plea that the Holocaust — “that appalling chapter in history” — must “never be forgotten or denied.”But, as he has since he arrived from Jordan on Monday on his first trip to the Holy Land as pope, he avoided evoking his German nationality and his personal history in Nazi Germany as some Israelis had demanded. Rather, he blamed the Holocaust on “a godless regime.”

The pope has sought to walk a narrow line between the tripwires of Middle East politics, addressing the concerns of Israelis and of Palestinians. As he left, he spoke in a farewell statement from Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport of the separation barrier that Israel has built to fence itself off from Palestinian areas, saying it was “one of the saddest sights for me during my visit to these lands.”

He added: “No friend can fail to weep at the suffering and loss of life that both peoples have endured over the last six decades. Allow me to make this appeal to all the people of these lands: No more bloodshed! No more fighting! No more terrorism! No more war! Instead let us break the vicious circle of violence.”

But he used his most direct and personal language when he recalled one of his first acts after his arrival here when he visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and met survivors “who suffered the evils of the Shoah.”

“Those deeply moving encounters brought back memories of my visit three years ago to the death camp at Auschwitz, where so many Jews — mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends — were brutally exterminated under a godless regime that propagated an ideology of anti-Semitism and hatred,” he said.

“That appalling chapter in history must never be forgotten or denied,” he said. “On the contrary, those dark memories should strengthen our determination to draw closer to one another as branches of the same olive tree, nourished from the same roots and united in brotherly love.”

Earlier Friday, the pontiff walked into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem accompanied by a traditional escort of men in black robes and red fezzes rhythmically banging staffs on the ground to announce his approach, The Associated Press reported.

Benedict knelt down and kissed the rectangular stone on which Jesus’ body is believed to have been placed after the crucifixion. Then he entered the structure inside the church marking the site of Jesus’ tomb and knelt inside alone for several minutes, hands clasped, as priests chanted nearby.

In a speech afterward, he told those gathered in the church not to lose hope.

“The Gospel reassures us that God can make all things new, that history need not be repeated, that memories can be healed, that the bitter fruits of recrimination and hostility can be overcome, and that a future of justice, peace, prosperity and cooperation can arise for every man and woman, for the whole human family, and in a special way for the people who dwell in this land so dear to the heart of the Savior,” he said, The A.P. reported.

The language he used in addressing the Holocaust in his farewell remarks later seemed less emotive than in May 2006, when Benedict prayed at the cells and crematories of the Auschwitz camp on a visit he called “particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany.”

“Words fail,” Benedict said at that time. The pope was born Joseph Ratzinger in Bavaria in 1927. The son of a policeman, he was inducted into the Hitler Youth and the German Army — biographical details that he has not recalled during his Middle East journey but that some Israelis have.

“In the end, there can only be a dread silence, a silence that itself is a heartfelt cry to God,” Benedict said in 2006. “Why, Lord, did you remain silent?” he said, his voice trembling. “How could you tolerate this?”

At that time — one year into his papacy — he did not seek forgiveness for Germans or the Roman Catholic church during World War II. He laid the blame squarely on the Nazi regime, avoiding the painful but now common acknowledgment among many Germans that ordinary citizens also shared responsibility.

In 2006, he said he went to Auschwitz “as a son of the German people, a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honor, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation.”

But the pope’s attitude to the Holocaust resonated strongly during his visit here, just four months after he provoked outrage by revoking the excommunication of four schismatic bishops, one of whom, a Briton, Richard Williamson, has denied the scope of the Holocaust. Benedict’s words on Friday seemed a direct rebuttal of attempts to minimize or deny the Holocaust.

The pope’s visit has rarely been free of a political edge. On Thursday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, urged him to denounce Iran. A day earlier, the pope visited a Palestinian refugee camp, calling for the creation of a Palestinian state — a policy not endorsed by Mr. Netanyahu’s hawkish Likud Party.

In his departure remarks, Benedict repeatedly referred to the stark symbolism of the separation barrier built by Israel beginning in 2002. He crossed the barrier in his motorcade when he visited Bethlehem, the biblical birthplace of Jesus, on Wednesday.

“As I passed alongside it,” he said, “I prayed for a future in which the peoples of the Holy Land can live together in peace and harmony without the need for such instruments of security and separation, but rather respecting and trusting one another and renouncing all forms of violence and aggression.” link...

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Nobel committee blasts Aung San Suu Kyi treatment

OSLO -- The Nobel Peace Prize awards committee issued a rare public statement Friday to condemn the imprisonment of 1991 peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and to demand her immediate release.

The 63-year-old opposition leader was jailed on Thursday on charges of violating her house arrest. She has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention without trial for her nonviolent promotion of democracy.

The secretive Nobel committee traditionally does not comment on past laureates. However, its non-voting secretary Geir Lundestad said they are deeply concerned about Suu Kyi and had made earlier appeals on her behalf.

"We sent this because it is a matter of the life and health of a laureate," Lundestad told The Associated Press.The five-member committee said in the statement that it "protests strongly against the way in which the government of Myanmar (Burma) has treated Aung San Suu Kyi. Her recent detention in prison is totally unacceptable. She has done nothing wrong."

Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy won national elections in 1990, but the military junta refused to relinquish power. She was not able to attend her Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony because she was under house arrest, so her son Alexander Aris accepted the prize for her in 1991.

"The unacceptable treatment of her has to come to an immediate end. Recent reports about Aung San Suu Kyi's health are of great concern. We demand that she be given the necessary medical assistance without delay," said the Nobel committee. link...

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How ObamaCare Will Affect Your Doctor

At the heart of President Barack Obama's health-care plan is an insurance program funded by taxpayers, administered by Washington, and open to everyone. Modeled on Medicare, this "public option" will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose. It will restructure the practice of medicine in the process.


Chad Crowe
Republicans and Democrats agree that the government's Medicare scheme for compensating doctors is deeply flawed. Yet Mr. Obama's plan for a centrally managed government insurance program exacerbates Medicare's problems by redistributing even more income away from lower-paid primary care providers and misaligning doctors' financial incentives.

Like Medicare, the "public option" will control spending by using its purchasing clout and political leverage to dictate low prices to doctors. (Medicare pays doctors 20% to 30% less than private plans, on average.) While the public option is meant for the uninsured, employers will realize it's easier -- and cheaper -- to move employees into the government plan than continue workplace coverage.

The Lewin Group, a health-care policy research and consulting firm, estimates that enrollment in the public option will reach 131 million people if it's open to everyone and pays Medicare rates, as many expect. Fully two-thirds of the privately insured will move out of or lose coverage. As patients shift to a lower-paying government plan, doctors' incomes will decline by as much as 15% to 20% depending on their specialty.

Physician income declines will be accompanied by regulations that will make practicing medicine more costly, creating a double whammy of lower revenue and higher practice costs, especially for primary-care doctors who generally operate busy practices and work on thinner margins. For example, doctors will face expenses to deploy pricey electronic prescribing tools and computerized health records that are mandated under the Obama plan. For most doctors these capital costs won't be fully covered by the subsidies provided by the plan.

Government insurance programs also shift compliance costs directly onto doctors by encumbering them with rules requiring expensive staffing and documentation. It's a way for government health programs like Medicare to control charges. The rules are backed up with threats of arbitrary probes targeting documentation infractions. There will also be disproportionate fines, giving doctors and hospitals reason to overspend on their back offices to avoid reprisals.

The 60% of doctors who are self-employed will be hardest hit. That includes specialists, such as dermatologists and surgeons, who see a lot of private patients. But it also includes tens of thousands of primary-care doctors, the very physicians the Obama administration says need the most help.

Doctors will consolidate into larger practices to spread overhead costs, and they'll cram more patients into tight schedules to make up in volume what's lost in margin. Visits will be shortened and new appointments harder to secure. It already takes on average 18 days to get an initial appointment with an internist, according to the American Medical Association, and as many as 30 days for specialists like obstetricians and neurologists.

Right or wrong, more doctors will close their practices to new patients, especially patients carrying lower paying insurance such as Medicaid. Some doctors will opt out of the system entirely, going "cash only." If too many doctors take this route the government could step in -- as in Canada, for example -- to effectively outlaw private-only medical practice.

These changes are superimposed on a payment system where compensation often bears no connection to clinical outcomes. Medicare provides all the wrong incentives. Its charge-based system pays doctors more for delivering more care, meaning incomes rise as medical problems persist and decline when illness resolves.

So how should we reform our broken health-care system? Rather than redistribute physician income as a way to subsidize an expansion of government control, Mr. Obama should fix the payment system to align incentives with improved care. After years of working on this problem, Medicare has only a few token demonstration programs to show for its efforts. Medicare's failure underscores why an inherently local undertaking like a medical practice is badly managed by a remote and political bureaucracy.

But while Medicare has stumbled with these efforts, private health plans have made notable progress on similar payment reforms. Private plans are more likely to lead payment reform efforts because they have more motivation than Medicare to use pay as a way to achieve better outcomes.

Private plans already pay doctors more than Medicare because they compete to attract higher quality providers into their networks. This gives them every incentive, as well as added leverage, to reward good clinicians while penalizing or excluding bad ones. A recent report by PriceWaterhouse Coopers that examined 10 of the nation's largest commercial health plans found that eight had implemented performance-based pay measures for doctors. All 10 plans are expanding efforts to monitor quality improvement at the provider level.

Among the promising examples of private innovation in health-care delivery: In Pennsylvania, the Geisinger Clinic's "warranty" program, where providers take financial responsibility for the entire episode of care; or the experience of the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia, where doctors are paid more for delivering better outcomes.

There are plenty of alternatives to Mr. Obama's plan that expand coverage to the uninsured, give them the chance to buy private coverage like Congress enjoys, and limit government management over what are inherently personal transactions between doctors and patients.

Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D., N.Y.) has introduced a bipartisan measure, the Small Business Cooperative for Healthcare Options to Improve Coverage for Employees (Choice) Act of 2009, that would make it cheaper and easier for small employers to offer health insurance. Mr. Obama would also get bipartisan compromise on premium support for people priced out of insurance to give them a wider range of choices. This could be modeled after the Medicare drug benefit, which relies on competition between private plans to increase choices and hold down costs. It could be funded, in part, through tax credits targeted to lower-income Americans.

There are also measures available that could fix structural flaws in our delivery system and make coverage more affordable without top-down controls set in Washington. The surest way to intensify flaws in the delivery of health care is to extend a Medicare-like "public option" into more corners of the private market. More government control of doctors and their reimbursement schemes will only create more problems. link...

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What's Your Idea of the Perfect Mother's Day Gift?

Are you a hard-working mom looking forward to Mother's Day? What's on the top of your list of best gifts for a mom this Mother's Day?ABCNews.com wants to hear from you. Please share your story by filling out the form below. An excerpt from your response may be used in a future ABCNews.com story or an ABCNews.com producer may contact you for more information. link...

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Mothers’ Day: Say I Love You

Dimapur | May 9: Philosophers have talked at great length their great roles; poets have sung praises of their love and caring nature; sculptors have immortalized their beauty in their works. And still words often fail to describe the love and care of a mother: Mothers’ Day, the time for everyone to honor their mothers for their eternal love. Just say, ‘I love you.’
While Dimapur city teemed with shoppers, card-sellers did brisk business selling Mothers’ Day cards. Families everywhere, especially children, secretly went about trying to surprise their mothers with a special gift on the special occasion. Perhaps, a simple gift it may be, but meaningful for that special woman in the family called ‘Mom’. “We were just sitting together here (at home) just discussing and talking how fortunate that we are with our mother,” said a government employee in Dimapur, whose father expired a few years ago. “Even my nephew has made a handmade card and presented it to my mother…for him it is his granny but she is like his mom (for his mother is dead),” she added, while wishing not to be named.
“For a mother she suffers and still feel great till her last breath,” said a single mother of two residing in Duncan Basti whose husband has also expired. She maintained that right from the time she carried her babies and their birth, she felt “great”, and still feels happy to look after her children. Tomorrow, she would quietly spend the day with her 78-year old mother.
The president of the Naga Mothers’ Association (NMA), Khesheli Chishi said mothers hold a huge responsibility in the family. “Nobody can take the role of a mother, when it comes to children,” the NMA president said while making a wish that all Naga mothers would know their responsibilities as a homemaker and have fear of God in their hearts.
While traditionally, mothers have been seen to take the role of staying at home and take care of children; modern day Naga mothers have dared to come out of this traditionalist notion and have taken up more responsible roles in the society. Starting from responsible positions in the government, private offices or NGOs, women, or for that matter, mothers, have taken on the mantle of bringing about active change in the society, besides taking care of their families side by side with their husbands.
Despite all these roles which mothers have taken up, there can’t be a time when your mother is not there by your side in sickness, sorrow and happiness; she is the perfect person to share moments with and is someone who would never do anything bad for you. “I don’t have any other wish just that I have my mom there for me,” said journalist when queried to make a wish on Mothers’ Day.
Perhaps it might be just another ordinary day for many, but it is a day nonetheless to express ‘I love you’ to a person who has to be loved for simply being the person that she is- mother. So don’t lose that chance. link...

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Record crowd for Mother's Day Classic

More than 2,500 people have turned out for the Mothers' Day Classic walk and run in Hobart.

The national event raises money for breast cancer research.

Perfect weather greeted hundreds of runners early this morning who lined up for the eight and four kilometre races on Hobart's domain.

Organisers struggled to keep up with those registering for the four kilometre walk, eventually running out of numbering bibs.

One of the organisers Alison Dixon says the turn out was overwhelming.

"Just amazing, I'm one of the very lucky people who gets to stand on the stage and watch the crowd and in the walk today we believe we have over 1800 people so it's absolutely fantastic," Ms Dixon said..

It's hoped $30,000 will be raised from today's event. link...

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Hubble ready for final service

NASA will on Monday launch the shuttle Atlantis and seven astronauts into orbit on a high-risk last service mission to one of the greatest scientific instruments ever, the space telescope Hubble.

There is no room for error, the US space agency warned this week, in the fifth and final maintenance operation on the Hubble before the shuttle fleet is retired.

If all goes well, NASA says the telescope's long-overdue service will extend the star-gazer's life by at least five years.

"If successful we will be entering our second quarter century. That's not bad for a mission that we hoped will last for 10 to 15 years," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA'S science missions directorate.

Hubble "will be more powerful and robust than ever before and will continue to enable world class science for at least another five years an overlap with the James Webb Space Telescope" its successor, he added.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has long been considered the greatest tool in the history of astronomy.

Using powerful instruments to peer into deep space, it has provided profound insights into the origins and evolution of the universe.

A journey to the 11-ton Hubble carries more risk of being hit by space debris or micrometeorites than a flight to the International Space Station, as the telescope orbits at almost twice the height of the ISS.

But officials hope the nearly 11-day mission will allow Hubble to keep functioning until 2014, when it is due to be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope, a highly sophisticated space telescope with an eagle-eye camera.

The mission launch is scheduled for 1801 GMT Monday from the Kennedy Space Centre near Cape Canaveral, Florida.

But even before undertaking the challenging task of carrying out a maintenance job 575 kilometres above Earth, NASA has left itself only a limited window for a launch.

The shuttle must liftoff on either May 11, 12 or 13 because planned military launch activities would block all other launches until May 22.

Hubble's servicing will entail five space walks, each lasting up to seven hours. Crew members plan to replace the telescope's six gyroscopes and batteries and upgrade its optical instruments.

The crew will carry out a variety of tasks including replacing electronic circuit boards, said scientist Dave Leckrone.

Astronauts will also install a new imaging camera and a Cosmic Origins Spectrograph -- an especially sensitive instrument designed to split light it captures into individual wavelengths.

The spectrograph, NASA says, will not only be able to study stars, planets and galaxies but also basic elements found throughout the cosmos, such as carbon and iron.

And the new instruments will allow Hubble to peer even further back into time, perhaps as far back as some 600 million years before the Big Bang, much further than the billion years it can reach back now.

The maintenance is overdue after the years-long delay for US space flights since the 2003 Columbia disaster that saw the shuttle disintegrate as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crewmembers.

Last year a flight by the shuttle Atlantis to the telescope had to be twice rescheduled after it had a computer failure on board.

NASA announced this week that the IMAX Corporation and the filmmaking Warner Bros. company will launch IMAX 3-D cameras with the shuttle to document the mission.

Astronauts will use the cameras during the five spacewalks and, along with the telescope's astounding array of images of distant galaxies, the footage will be released next year as the movie "Hubble 3D." AFP link..

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Netanyahu to urge Egypt, Jordan to help Israel counteract Iran

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will tell Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah II at meetings this week that they need to work with Israel to counteract the Iranian nuclear threat.

At the talks, which come before Netanyahu's May 18 meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Netanyahu is expected to brief Arab leaders on preliminary details of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians.

A source close to Netanyahu said on Saturday that the premier would tell Mubarak and Abdullah that the Iranian regime was attempting to use nuclear weapons to impose its agenda on the region, and that it could be stopped by working together. Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive on Monday at Sharm el-Sheikh, where he will meet with Mubarak in the presidential compound. Netanyahu will be joined by Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who is on good terms with Mubarak and Egyptian intelligence chief General Omar Suleiman. Ben-Eliezer has been sending messages to Cairo for Netanyahu over the past few weeks.

Netanyahu's bureau has been discussing possible dates for a meeting with King Abdullah. The meeting may be held on Wednesday or on Friday morning.

"The timetable is very crowded, but we are making every effort to hold a meeting before the prime minister's trip to Washington," a government source in Jerusalem said.

Abdullah invited Netanyahu to take part in the Davos Forum discussions scheduled for this weekend on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea, and to meet on the sidelines. However, Netanyahu may have to decline the invitation due to his trip to Washington.

Netanyahu told Israeli Russian-language journalists Thursday that he would not stop settlement building designed to meet natural population growth. "When the demand is made to freeze construction in the settlements entirely, I always ask, what are the children of the settlers to do? Live on the roof or underground?"

No preconditions for PA talks

Netanyahu also told reporters that he would not present preconditions for negotiations with the Palestinians, and would not accept preconditions from them.

On the possibility of talks with Syria, Netanyahu said Israel would never withdraw from the Golan because the region was strategic for Israel's security.

The prime minister stressed that he is ready to stand up to U.S. President Barack Obama and that he would not give up on matters he believes are critical to Israel's security.

Netanyahu said he intends to emphasize to Obama the need to deal with Iran and its "nuclear program, which is a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East."

"If Iran turns into a nuclear power, it will force all Arab states to ally with it, and the extreme Iranian regime that revealed its plan to eliminate Israel will not allow Arab states to normalize relations with Israel," Netanyahu said. link..

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Firefighters gain upper hand over California blaze

Thousands of residents forced to flee a wildfire raging in California returned home as cooler weather allowed firefighters to gain the upper hand on the blaze.
A moist layer of marine mist from the Pacific Ocean had drifted over the coastal town of Santa Barbara after days of sizzling temperatures and powerful local gusts sent the fire roaring out of control.
The benign weather enabled firefighters to increase containment of the blaze to 40 percent, officials said. So far, the flames have destroyed or damaged some 80 homes and scorched 8,700 acres (3,500 hectares).
Fire officials expressed optimism that the weather break would see them make further inroads into the blaze, which was now burning away from Santa Barbara and into unpopulated mountain areas.
"We're going from a defensive in the past few days to an offensive," said fire commander Kevin Wallace. "We're going to start chasing the fire and not have it chase us."
Fire commanders said the fire could be fully contained by Wednesday but cautioned that the weather conditions which fueled the fire could return.
"The weather tends to be a little fickle around here, so we're keeping our guard up," Santa Barbara County Deputy Fire Chief Chris Hahn.
Later Saturday, officials said most mandatory evacuation orders -- which had forced 30,500 people to leave their homes -- had been lifted. Residents were allowed to return in phases throughout the day.
"I don't have the exact figures, but the bulk of the people that have been displaced are now going to be able to go home," Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said at an emergency shelter to applause from evacuees.
Around 15,000 people were given the green light to return home.
An army of around 4,300 firefighters tackled the fire Saturday. Fourteen air tankers, including a retardant-dropping DC-10 jet plane, and 15 helicopters were bombarding the fire in a sustained aerial assault.
So far, 13 mostly minor injuries have been reported in the fire, including three firefighters, who were overrun by flames on Wednesday. Two of the men are still being treated for burns while the third has been released.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who declared a state of emergency in the region earlier this week, toured an evacuation center Saturday along with actor Rob Lowe, one of many celebrities who live in the region.
California is frequently hit by scorching wildfires due to its dry climate, winds and recent housing booms that have seen home construction spread rapidly into rural and densely forested areas.
In 2007, California suffered devastation from wildfires among the worst in its history that left eight people dead, gutted 2,000 homes, displaced 640,000 people and caused one billion dollars in damage.
Last November, at least 100 homes were destroyed by a wildfire in the celebrity enclave of Montecito near Santa Barbara. link...

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Week's Best: Holy Site Prayer, More

A Christian pilgrim prays near the Cenacle, traditionally believed to be the site of the Last Supper, in the Tomb of David complex near Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, on Tuesday, May 5, 2009. Pope Benedict XVI will visit Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories during his eight-day Holy Land tour that began Friday, May 8. It's only the second official papal visit to the Jewish state and comes nine years after a groundbreaking trip by Pope John Paul II. link...

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Zuma to announce South African cabinet on Sunday

South African President Jacob Zuma names his cabinet Sunday, with investors eager to know the fate of Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, widely considered a deft handler of the economy.

Zuma faces pressure to appoint effective ministers who can deliver on the ruling ANC's promises to tackle widespread poverty, crime and AIDS and create jobs.

He said in his inauguration speech Saturday the country should acknowledge it faces tough economic times and will not be spared the impact of the global credit crunch.

Manuel could stay in his post or be transferred to a powerful new planning commission. A transfer would be welcomed by markets provided it kept him at the heart of policy-making.

Stacking his cabinet with loyalists could undermine the credibility of Zuma, who has told ANC officials they should not expect jobs just because they supported him.

Zuma won a wide mandate in the ruling African National Congress' (ANC) April 22 landslide election victory. His toughest task may be balancing the interests of unions and communists who helped him rise to the top against those of investors who fear he will steer the economy to the left.

One of the most divisive figures in South African politics, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has returned from the political wilderness after a fraud conviction to appear alongside Zuma at party rallies, and may well join the cabinet.

Feared by investors for her old-style revolutionary rhetoric, Nelson Mandela's ex-wife is unlikely to secure a high-profile ministry. But her return to prominence may provide clues about Zuma's focus and priorities.

Accused by critics of embarrassing South Africa by backing governments with dubious human rights records, Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma also has a frosty relationship with her ex-husband Zuma, and may get the boot from her job.
Whoever Zuma appoints as finance minister will be tasked with helping him guide Africa's biggest economy through what may already be its first recession in 17 years.

A frontrunner for the post is Pravin Gordhan, who has headed the South African Revenue Service since 1999, serving under Manuel, and has been praised for turning it into an efficient body that has repeatedly collected tax over target.

His appointment could lead to a relatively seamless transition and policy continuity, a key hope of foreign investors.

Zuma might choose ANC heavyweight Cyril Ramaphosa to head the finance portfolio.

The former trade unionist served as ANC secretary-general and was an architect of the globally-admired constitution that took effect after the end of apartheid. link...

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Critics warn US air strikes bolstering Taliban

KABUL (AFP) — Charges that scores of villagers died in US bombings against the Taliban have led to demands for a halt in air strikes amid warnings that civilian casualties are driving Afghans to join the insurgency.
But the US and NATO forces taking on the militants say air power is an essential advantage that insurgents are trying to disable by engineering situations in which it harms civilians.
Several investigations are trying to clarify what happened in the western province of Farah nearly a week ago when troops battling Taliban fighters called in the strikes.
President Hamid Karzai says around 130 civilians, including children and the elderly, were killed in the bombings; a local investigation says 147 civilians died, including 94 girls.
The US military concedes only that "a number" of civilians died although it is not yet clear how.
The bombs hit compounds where people had taken refuge from the fighting, Granai village tribal chief Mohammad Na'eem Qader told AFP by telephone.
"At that time there were no Taliban in the village," he said, adding that US President Barack Obama must "stop his military from bombing innocent people or the people will join the Taliban. This is dangerous for him."
Karzai meanwhile demanded an end to air strikes saying they were not an effective way of fighting terrorism but rather cause civilian casualties.
Any military action that harms civilians becomes a recruiting tool for the insurgents, parliamentarian and former army general Noor-Ul Haq Ulumi told AFP.
"The more you kill civilians, the more you've added to the list of your enemies. One house you destroy, one person you kill, you've added 10 to your enemies," said Ulumi, who heads parliament's defence committee.
And in Afghanistan's complicated battleground where insurgents are often among ordinary people, "Using air strikes is like using an artillery shell to kill a fly," he said.
"Would you bombard an American facility if a few Taliban broke into it somehow?" he asked.
Ulumi said the security forces would do better to surround areas where militants were holed up and wait them out. "You don't need to kill women and children only because there are few enemy fighters hiding among them," he said.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has long called for an expansion of ground forces and a reduction in air strikes for the same reason, commissioner Nader Nadery told AFP.
Civilian casualties win support for the Taliban and play into their propaganda against the government and international forces, he said.
The Farah incident "is likely to be the largest and most tragic loss of life to US bombs so far in Afghanistan," added Human Rights Watch.
"Yet another devastating error inevitably calls into question the continued viability of the use of US and NATO airpower in Afghanistan," said researcher Rachel Reid.
Military procedures in place to stem the civilian toll from air strikes, including verifying intelligence before launching attacks, were not working and must be reviewed, she said.
The United Nations says nearly two-thirds of 828 civilians allegedly killed by pro-government forces in the conflict last year died in air strikes.
Insurgents were however responsible for 55 percent of 2,118 civilian deaths in 2008, the deadliest year since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime, it says.
And humanitarian groups have warned that a surge of about 21,000 US troops this year will likely see more civilians caught up in the fighting. link...

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Ministers' 'Expenses' Prompt Explanation From U.K.'s Brown

LONDON -- The U.K. prime minister and several officials are embroiled in a public fray over their use of taxpayer funds to cover their expenses, giving rise to another embarrassment for Gordon Brown's government.

Mr. Brown was forced to issue an explanation Friday after a London-based newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, published details of the expenses he and other officials claimed while serving in Parliament.

The expenses, which are allowed under a system that reimburses members of Parliament for certain personal costs of doing their jobs, include toilet-seat repairs for a former deputy prime minister. They also include £6,577 ($9,911) in payments Mr. Brown made to his brother for cleaning services at the prime minister's London apartment. Mr. Brown's spokesman said the payments were passed on to the cleaner and didn't benefit the brother.

The expenses revealed in the news reports weren't filed only by parliamentarians from Mr. Brown's Labour Party. Some were from conservative members of Parliament, who sought reimbursements, including one for £134.30 for two table lamps with elephant motifs.

While the reimbursements don't appear to have broken any rules, their publication presents another headache for Mr. Brown, whose government faces rising voter resistance amid the recession.

In recent years, the U.K. has seen a series of political scandals over expenses, in which lawmakers have hired several family members as staff, or, in one case, submitted expenses for a spouse's pornographic movie rentals. Mr. Brown has made efforts to reform the system, and the government plans to publish four years of expense data in July.

U.K. rules allow members of Parliament to claim any expenses necessary for them to carry out their roles -- including the cost of maintaining a second residence for politicians with constituencies outside central London. Lawmakers are supposed to avoid extravagance, and their expenses must be approved by parliamentary officials.

Many of the expenses detailed in the Daily Telegraph involve politicians' second homes. Several cabinet ministers changed their designated second home several times in as many years, claiming thousands of dollars for refurbishments. Communities Minister Hazel Blears submitted expenses for £5,000 of furniture for second homes over a three-month period. Peter Mandelson, the business minister, billed taxpayers almost £3,000 for work carried out on his home a week after he announced his decision to step down from Parliament in 2004. A spokesman for Mr. Mandelson, who later sold the property, said all the work done was "necessary maintenance."

The triviality of some expenses could prove embarrassing for politicians. Foreign Secretary David Miliband's claim for a £199 baby stroller was rejected. Former deputy prime minister John Prescott had a toilet seat in his home repaired twice in two years at taxpayer expense. Spokeswomen for Messrs. Miliband and Prescott and a spokesman for Ms. Blears said they followed the rules laid out by parliamentary authorities. link...

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Canada's first swine flu death, US cases double

The Americas are back in the spotlight over swine flu fears after Canada announced its first death, the number of US infections almost doubled, and more cases were found in Latin America.
On the other side of the world, Japan and Australia announced their first confirmed infections.
Brazil on Friday also confirmed its first case transmitted from person to person while Mexico said it was investigating 10 more possible swine flu deaths.
US President Barack Obama warned the United States was not out of the woods yet, as across the nation's northern border a woman in western Alberta province became the first person in Canada to succumb to the disease.
"We have our first fatality in Alberta that is associated with the H1N1 flu," said Andre Corriveau, the province's chief medical officer.
Canada has the third highest number of swine flu infections with 224 cases, but the United States overtook Mexico on Friday to become the country with the highest number of patients, recording 1,639 cases in 43 states.
Mexico, which was the epicentre of the worldwide epidemic, raised its swine flu death toll to 45, with confirmed cases going up to 1,319, of which more than half were younger than 20. Two people have also died in the US.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that 2,500 people in 25 countries had tested positive for the A(H1N1) virus, with 46 deaths.
As the number of US cases jumped overnight with more tests put in place, Obama warned Americans to remain vigilant.
"We are seeing that the virus may not have been as virulent as we at first feared," Obama said at a Spanish-language town hall-style meeting at the White House.
"But we are not out of the woods yet. We still have to take precautions."
The US president warned the autumn and winter flu season later in the year could be "even worse" and see cases spike again.
Brazil confirmed its first case of swine flu transmitted from person to person within the country.
Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao said a new case, one of two found on Friday, was "up to now the only case of person-to-person transmission (of the virus) in Brazil."
The discovery brought to six the total number of cases detected in Latin America's largest nation.
Earlier, Panama confirmed a case of the virus while Guatemala said it had two people who had caught the disease.
However, life in Mexico was slowly returning to normal after a week-long shutdown with the reopening of schools and tourist sites, Mexico City eateries, theatres and cinemas. Primary schools were due back on Monday.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Australia and Japan became the latest countries to confirm cases of the A(H1N1) virus.
An Australian woman tested positive for the disease as she returned from a trip to the United States, the government said.
"We have a person who had contracted the disease overseas and has fully recovered by the time they returned to Australia," Health Minister Nicola Roxon said.
She said authorities were contacting other passengers who were on the woman's flight from Los Angeles, which arrived in Brisbane on Thursday.
In Japan a teacher and two students returning from North America tested positive for swine flu in the first confirmed cases of the virus in the island nation, the government said.
Japanese authorities quarantined the three males, who had been on a high school trip to Canada, and 49 others who were aboard their flight, which arrived Friday at Tokyo's Narita international airport from the US city of Detroit.
Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe said the government was trying to contact for testing all of the 391 passengers and 21 crew who were on the Northwest Airlines flight that arrived around 4:30 pm (0730 GMT) Friday.
"All the passengers who were aboard the plane could possibly have contracted the flu," he said. "We want to track all of them down by this evening."
In Hong Kong, still haunted by memories of the 2003 SARS epidemic that killed nearly 300 people there, more than 280 guests and staff were finally allowed to leave a hotel after spending a week in quarantine. link...

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Last outer space repair of Hubble telescope pairs genius of two South Bay women

More than 300 miles above the Earth, Megan McArthur will extend a robotic arm next week and grapple the ailing Hubble Space Telescope toward space shuttle Atlantis.
The astronaut, who first dreamed of spaceflight as a teenager growing up in Silicon Valley, has replayed the precise maneuver again and again as she prepares for Monday's 11:01 a.m. launch.
"If you don't get that right," she said of the delicate capture, "you don't do anything else on the flight."
If not for University of California-Santa Cruz astronomer Sandra Faber, McArthur might never have gotten to set out on the mission to repair one of the most important astronomical instruments in history.
The rookie astronaut and the prominent astronomer have never met, but the two women from the South Bay are central characters in the long struggle to repair and upgrade one last time the famous space telescope, much of which was built in Silicon Valley.
With the shuttle fleet scheduled to be retired next year, this will be the fifth and final repair mission to Hubble. If successful, it will extend the telescope's operational life forward to 2014 and add two new instruments that will allow Faber and other astronomers to peer back toward the beginning of time.
Faber helped make it possible to repair the space telescope — twice. With one of her former Santa Cruz students, Jon Holtzman, it was Faber who first realized that Hubble was launched in 1990 with a profounderror in the shape of its main mirror, leading to the first repair mission in 1993.
After the Columbia disaster in 2003, NASA halted plans for a last repair mission to Hubble. The agency feared that a shuttle launched to the telescope would be unable to take refuge at the space station if the thermal tile damage that doomed Columbia were to happen again.
Faber was a key figure in the National Academy of Sciences panel that pushed NASA to undertake this final repair mission. In an unprecedented move, the shuttle Endeavour is waiting on the launch pad if a rescue mission becomes necessary.
The seven Atlantis astronauts are confident about that backup plan.
"They know they can come and get us" if the tiles on Atlantis are damaged, McArthur said. "That's something we've trained for and talked about — all the EVAs that would take place" for astronauts to spacewalk from Atlantis to the rescue shuttle.
Mysteries
The 11-day Hubble mission will feature five difficult spacewalks, with the astronauts replacing the telescope's gyroscopes and batteries, and repairing two existing instruments. They also will install two new instruments — the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.
Hubble has set the age of the universe at about 13.7 billion years and discovered that virtually all galaxies have black holes at their center. It also helped find evidence that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, due to a mysterious force astronomers call "dark energy."
"You might say that Galileo's telescope was more productive, being the first view of the universe," Faber said. "But I would say that after Galileo's tiny little telescope, yeah, Hubble is right there."
Still, Faber and other astronomers around the world are salivating at the cosmological mysteries Hubble's new instruments could solve — if Atlantis is successful. The major difficulty:
The spacewalkers must replace components not designed to be changed in space. link...

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