Interesting article on TIME Mobile: WHO: Nearly 5,000 Global H1N1 Deaths

(GENEVA) - Nearly 5,000 people have reportedly died from swine flu since it emerged this year and developed into a global epidemic, the World Health Organization said Friday.Since most countries have stopped counting individual swine flu cases, the figure is considered an underestimate. WHO said there were 4,999 total deaths through Oct. 18, most of them in the Western Hemisphere. The figure was up 264 from a week earlier.Iceland had its first swine flu death this week, and WHO said Sudan and Trinidad and Tobago also reported deaths from the virus for the first time this week. In the United States, swine flu caused at least 95 children's deaths since April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.Forty-six states now have widespread flu activity, the CDC said, adding that only Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and South Carolina are without widespread flu. In London, drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC said children may only need one shot of its swine flu vaccine to be protected.In its statement Friday, Glaxo said one dose was enough to boost children's immune systems to fight the virus, based on data from a trial in Spain in 200 children aged six months to 3 years.Glaxo's finding comes after experts said they expected children would need two doses, since their immune systems are weaker than those of adults. Last week, rival vaccine maker Sanofi Aventis said children would likely need two doses of vaccine against swine flu, or H1N1
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Germany's New Government to U.S.: Take Away Your Nukes!

Germany's new coalition government put the finishing touches to its policy program this weekend, promising moderate tax cuts to help support the economy, a reduction in the length of compulsory military service, and the continued operation of the nation's aging nuclear power plants. No big surprises there. But one detail could have interesting international repercussions: the man designated to be foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, is pushing for the U.S. to remove its remaining nuclear weapons from German soil."We want the last nuclear weapons that are stationed in Germany to be taken away," Westerwelle said at the conclusion of the coalition talks on Saturday. The U.S. doesn't disclose the exact number of nuclear warheads it still keeps in Germany, a legacy of its Cold War policy that dates back to the 1950s, and which made western Germany the frontline of its Soviet containment strategy. But German sources estimate there could be as many as 20 nukes still in the country.The senior partners in the coalition are Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). Westerwelle heads the junior coalition party, the Free Democrats, and campaigned primarily on economic and finance issues. He was forced to scale back his demands for deep tax cuts in the coalition talks, and his demand to turn Germany into a nuclear weapon-free zone may have been agreed partly to assuage the sting of compromise. Merkel said that she would be seeking the withdrawal within the context of NATO, rather than as a unilateral measure. "We don't want to act in this matter on our own," she said
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Interesting article on TIME Mobile: Europe's New Tactic with Asylum Seekers: Send Them Home

When police demolished the illegal refugee squatter camp known as "the Jungle" in northern France in September, the French intended to make a statement -- that European governments were finally getting serious about stemming the constant tide of asylum seekers who have fled war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan for the continent. A month later, French and British officials have begun to forcibly deport some of the tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan refugees whose epic journeys have ended in detention camps in Europe -- making good on a threat they have voiced for months.On Oct. 21, the European Commission in Brussels also took steps to address the problem from a procedural standpoint by issuing new rules for dealing with asylum seekers. Officials set a six-month time limit for governments to hold refugee application hearings and advised all 27 European Union countries to introduce the same asylum procedures, rather than wildly varying standards. Jacques Barrot, the commission's vice president, said the changes aimed to offer "a more level playing field" to the huge numbers of people from Africa, Asia and elsewhere flooding into Europe.But as the crackdown on illegal immigrants has intensified, questions remain as to whether it will do anything to deter refugees from making the arduous trip to the continent in the first place. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said on Oct. 21 that Europe now receives 75% of the world's asylum seekers. And increasingly, these migrants are from Iraq and Afghanistan. About 13,200 Iraqis applied for asylum worldwide between January and August -- the largest number for a single country for the fourth year running. Afghans followed a close second

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Can a Customized Newspaper Survive the Demise of Print?

Still from the Niiu customized newspaper website.As journalists the world over bemoan the state of the newspaper industry amid layoffs and folding broadsheets, two young German entrepreneurs are rushing head-first into the fray, launching a new paper tailored to the individual tastes of their readers.The new paper, called Niiu, is all about consumer choice: it gives readers the freedom to choose the types of articles they want to read, culled from a wide range of German and international news sources. After registering on Niiu's website, www.niiu.de, readers can access other newspapers online and select the pages or sections they find interesting, designing their own specialized paper. But instead of reading it online, Niiu is printed overnight and delivered to the subscriber's door the next morning, just like any other newspaper.So a reader could get the latest gossip about former tennis champion Boris Becker from Germany's biggest selling tabloid, Bild, then add political stories about Chancellor Angela Merkel's negotiations to form a new coalition government from the liberal daily Tagesspiegel, a sprinkling of economic stories from the German business daily Handelsblatt and even incorporate a few pages of international politics from English-language papers like the New York Times and Komsomolskaya Pravda from Russia. If the stories seem repetitive after a few days, the customer can go back online and change their paper design, and a new edition will be delivered to their home

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Balloon Boy's Lesson: The New American Dream

: "You guys said that we did this for the show.""We did this for the show": if some 21st century Betsy Ross were designing a new American flag, she could slap that baby on a ribbon in an eagle's talons and call it a day. Whether it's conceiving octuplets and shopping a TV deal or screaming "You lie!" at the President and reaping millions of dollars in campaign contributions, the equation is the same: Act out=get paid
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