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World Health Organization says swine flu pandemic is over The World Health Organization declared the swine flu pandemic officially over Tuesday, months after many national authorities started canceling vaccine orders and shutting down hot lines as the disease ebbed from the headlines. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the organization’s emergency committee of top flu experts advised her that the pandemic had “largely run its course” and the world is no longer in phase six — the highest influenza alert level. “I fully agree with the committee’s advice,” Chan told reporters in a telephone briefing from her native Hong Kong. The virus has now entered the “post-pandemic” phase, meaning disease activity around the world has returned to levels usually seen for seasonal influenza, she said. Story continues below… But Chan cautioned against complacency, saying that even though hospitalizations and deaths have dropped sharply, countries should still keep a watchful eye for unusual patterns of infection and mutations that might render existing vaccines and antiviral drugs ineffective. “It is likely that the virus will continue to cause serious disease in younger age groups,” she said, urging high-risk groups such as pregnant women to continue seeking vaccination. Unusually, swine flu hits young adults harder than the over-65s, who are believed to have some immunity to the A(H1N1) strain. At least 18,449 people have died worldwide since the outbreak began in April 2009. WHO said last week that the true figure is likely to be higher, but the organization’s flu chief, Keiji Fukuda, said a final number won’t be known for some months. Still, lab-confirmed deaths globally increased by only about 300 in the past two months and many countries have long since closed the chapter on swine flu. Governments in Europe and North America started dumping vaccines earlier this year after finding their stocks were full of unused and expiring supplies. Health authorities in Britain shut down their pandemic flu hot line in February and canceled vaccine orders by a third back in April as it became clear the pandemic strain would be less dangerous than feared. Worst-case scenarios had predicted up to 65,000 deaths in Britain. In the end there were 457 confirmed deaths from swine flu. In Germany, authorities are meeting later this week to discuss who is going to pick up the bill for the 34 million doses of vaccines that were ordered and mostly not used. A report by the French Senate published last month criticized WHO’s handling of the pandemic, in particularly what it described as an “overestimation” of the risk and insufficient transparency about links between WHO experts and the pharmaceutical industry. In January, polls showed 70 percent of French population thought the government overestimated the danger of the virus H1N1 and ordered too many doses of vaccine. The government had purchased 94 millions doses of vaccine, but canceled half of the initial order at the start of the year. WHO chief Chan insisted that declaring swine flu a pandemic had been the right decision, based on the internationally agreed rules that existed at the time. “We have been aided by pure good luck,” she said, adding that if the virus had mutated then the death rate could have been much higher. But she acknowledged that changes may be made to the way WHO defines pandemics. “We need to review the phases, including the severity,” she said. Prof. Angus Nicoll, flu program coordinator at the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, said the decision to declare the pandemic over was consistent with the Stockholm-based body’s recent findings. While flu activity in the northern hemisphere is seasonally low, monitoring in southern hemisphere countries shows that few people are falling seriously ill from swine flu, said Nicoll. Local spikes in flu deaths, such as seen recently in India, are likely due to better surveillance, he said. Nevertheless, health officials around the world should prepare for a new type of seasonal flu to appear in the near future that will combine elements of the pandemic A(H1N1) strain, and older A(H3N2) strain and several lesser strains, said Nicoll. “It looks sort of middle of the road at the moment,” he said. ____ Associated Press writers Daphne Rousseau in Paris, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and AP medical writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report. Source: AP News Mochila insert follows… Powered by Mochila

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2 US Embassy workers in Paris undergo medical tests after opening suspicious letter. Two men who work for the U.S. Embassy in Paris underwent medical tests after handling a suspicious letter Friday, but the embassy said preliminary analysis suggested it was not harmful. “There is no indication that the envelope contained something dangerous or poisoned,” Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said. “There is no indication that anyone is in danger or hurt.” A Paris police official said the employees were “unwell” after the incident. The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named because an investigation was under way, did not elaborate on the workers’ condition. Mailroom employees identified a suspicious letter and the embassy alerted the French authorities, Patin said. Story continues below… “The letter is being examined by chemical experts. The two people who handled the letter are being examined by medical authorities” at the Paris hospital Hotel Dieu, Patin told The Associated Press. The embassy could not immediately provide further information about where the letter came from or what was suspicious about it, or the nationalities of the employees. The mailroom is in the main building of the embassy, located just off the Champs-Elysees and not far from the French presidential palace. The embassy, which is always surrounded by layers of security, remained open after the incident, and employees were entering and exiting the building as usual Friday afternoon. ___ Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report. Source: AP News Two men who work for the U.S. Embassy in Paris underwent medical tests after handling a suspicious letter Friday, but the embassy said preliminary analysis suggested it was not harmful. “There is no indication that the envelope contained something dangerous or poisoned,” Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said. “There is no indication that anyone is in danger or hurt.” A Paris police official said the employees were “unwell” after the incident. The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named because an investigation was under way, did not elaborate on the workers’ condition. Mailroom employees identified a suspicious letter and the embassy alerted the French authorities, Patin said. “The letter is being examined by chemical experts. The two people who handled the letter are being examined by medical authorities” at the Paris hospital Hotel Dieu, Patin told The Associated Press. The embassy could not immediately provide further information about where the letter came from or what was suspicious about it, or the nationalities of the employees. The mailroom is in the main building of the embassy, located just off the Champs-Elysees and not far from the French presidential palace. The embassy, which is always surrounded by layers of security, remained open after the incident, and employees were entering and exiting the building as usual Friday afternoon. ___ Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report. Source: AP News Two men who work for the U.S. Embassy in Paris underwent medical tests after handling a suspicious letter Friday, but the embassy said preliminary analysis suggested it was not harmful. “There is no indication that the envelope contained something dangerous or poisoned,” Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said. “There is no indication that anyone is in danger or hurt.” A Paris police official said the employees were “unwell” after the incident. The official, who was not authorized to be publicly named because an investigation was under way, did not elaborate on the workers’ condition. Mailroom employees identified a suspicious letter and the embassy alerted the French authorities, Patin said. “The letter is being examined by chemical experts. The two people who handled the letter are being examined by medical authorities” at the Paris hospital Hotel Dieu, Patin told The Associated Press. The embassy could not immediately provide further information about where the letter came from or what was suspicious about it, or the nationalities of the employees. The mailroom is in the main building of the embassy, located just off the Champs-Elysees and not far from the French presidential palace. The embassy, which is always surrounded by layers of security, remained open after the incident, and employees were entering and exiting the building as usual Friday afternoon. ___ Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report. Source: AP News Powered by Mochila

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A “gay zombie porn” flick which shows aliens engaging in necrophilia has been pulled from Australia’s biggest film festival after being rejected by censors, organisers said Tuesday. “L.A. Zombie”, which also features homosexual sex and full-frontal male nudity, is the first film in seven years to be banned from screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, which starts on July 22. Festival director Richard Moore told The Age newspaper he had received a letter from censors rejecting the film by Canadian director Bruce LaBruce. Described by Moore as a “video art zombie film”, “L.A. Zombie” stars French porn actor Francois Sagat as a man convinced he is an alien zombie sent to Earth to roam the streets of Los Angeles in search of dead bodies and gay sex. Australia’s film classification board said the movie had been denied an exemption from classification, not banned as Moore had claimed. Story continues below… An exemption would have allowed the film to be shown at the festival, but board director Donald McDonald said he had concluded, from the film’s synopsis and the director’s previous classification history, that “L.A Zombie” was not suitable for screening. “In the opinion of the director, the film, if classified, would be classified X18+ or RC (refused classification) and, in this circumstance, the law requires the director to refuse an exemption,” McDonald said in a statement to AFP. Films may not be screened publicly unless they are classified, while classifications of X18+ or RC prevent a film from being shown in most public cinemas. Moore has defended the festival’s attempt to show the film, telling public broadcaster ABC that people have a right to judge it for themselves. “They know they’re not gonna go and see Fantasia or Bambi,” said Moore. “L.A. Zombie” will have its world premiere next week in Locarno, Switzerland. The director expressed his delight at the censors’ decision in an interview with an Aussie news talk platform . Last year’s festival drew protests from China and had its website hacked over the decision to show “Ten Conditions of Love”, a biopic of Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer. This video is a trailer for LA Zombie . It contains scenes of violence and gore and should be considered not safe for work. LA Zombie trailer Uploaded by blankytwo . – Check out other Film & TV videos. With additional reporting by RAW STORY .

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A “gay zombie porn” flick which shows aliens engaging in necrophilia has been pulled from Australia’s biggest film festival after being rejected by censors, organisers said Tuesday. “L.A. Zombie”, which also features homosexual sex and full-frontal male nudity, is the first film in seven years to be banned from screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, which starts on July 22. Festival director Richard Moore told The Age newspaper he had received a letter from censors rejecting the film by Canadian director Bruce LaBruce. Described by Moore as a “video art zombie film”, “L.A. Zombie” stars French porn actor Francois Sagat as a man convinced he is an alien zombie sent to Earth to roam the streets of Los Angeles in search of dead bodies and gay sex. Australia’s film classification board said the movie had been denied an exemption from classification, not banned as Moore had claimed. Story continues below… An exemption would have allowed the film to be shown at the festival, but board director Donald McDonald said he had concluded, from the film’s synopsis and the director’s previous classification history, that “L.A Zombie” was not suitable for screening. “In the opinion of the director, the film, if classified, would be classified X18+ or RC (refused classification) and, in this circumstance, the law requires the director to refuse an exemption,” McDonald said in a statement to AFP. Films may not be screened publicly unless they are classified, while classifications of X18+ or RC prevent a film from being shown in most public cinemas. Moore has defended the festival’s attempt to show the film, telling public broadcaster ABC that people have a right to judge it for themselves. “They know they’re not gonna go and see Fantasia or Bambi,” said Moore. “L.A. Zombie” will have its world premiere next week in Locarno, Switzerland. The director expressed his delight at the censors’ decision in an interview with an Aussie news talk platform . Last year’s festival drew protests from China and had its website hacked over the decision to show “Ten Conditions of Love”, a biopic of Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer. This video is a trailer for LA Zombie . It contains scenes of violence and gore and should be considered not safe for work. LA Zombie trailer Uploaded by blankytwo . – Check out other Film & TV videos. With additional reporting by RAW STORY .

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MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann made a brief return from a two-week vacation Wednesday to deliver a “special comment” on how a selectively edited videotape that the conservative media ran with cost a USDA worker her job this week. Olbermann compared Shirley Sherrod to the story of an innocent French infantryman that was unfairly convicted and sent to prison in 1895. Alfred Dreyfus was later released and reinstated. Like Dreyfus, selectively edited evidence led to a presumption of guilt instead of innocence, Olbermann essentially argued. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asked Sherrod to resign and the NAACP condemned her before the unedited video tape had been seen. After seeing the full video, the NAACP, Vilsack and the White House apologized and she was offered a new job with the Department of Agriculture. “Well we need to congratulate ourselves,” said Olbermann. “How far we have come! We can pull a Dreyfus faster than the French could in 1894. Eighty-two days until they sent him to Devil’s Island? We did it to Shirley Sherrod in 48 hours.” Story continues below… Olbermann believes there’s plenty of blame to go around for the quick condemnation of Sherrod. “We — the howling fools of the far right, the stand-aside pathetic bureaucrats of the Department of Agriculture, the whole of the cowering media, this network included, the whole of the government, this self-defeatingly above-it-all president, included,” he said. But clearly he thinks the bulk of fault lies with Andrew Breitbart and Fox News. “Shirley Sherrod has been to her own Devil’s Island, and thanks to the perpetual fraud machine that is Fox News, and the scum that is this assassin Breitbart, there will be a portion of this country – the mindless, the hateful, the reactionary, the racist – to whom she is forever convicted and ever imprisoned,” said Olbermann. “And today the proof lies in front of you, bleeding: the reputation of Shirley Sherrod, a woman who 24 years ago saw and overcame the vengeance in her own heart and achieved the kind of true greatness the rest of us can only hope we might express for one moment in the whole of our lives. Assassinated by Fox News! Assassinated by that scum Breitbart! Assassinated by all their meager-brained imitators on other channels and other sites, their limp fellow travelers who never asked questions first, but simply shot, and shot, and shot, and shot and laughed!” Olbermann continued to assail the conservative news network. “Let me make this utterly clear: What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites, is the utter and complete perversion of journalism, and it can have no place in a civilized society. It is words crashed together, never to inform, only to inflame. It is a political guillotine. It is the manipulation of reality to make the racist seem benevolent, and to convict the benevolent as racist — even if her words must be edited, filleted, stripped of all context, rearranged, fabricated, and falsified, to do so.” His own network shares in the culpability for allowing Breitbart airtime, explained Olbermann. “The legitimate media didn’t first look at the whole videotape. We didn’t first ask if the doctored clip perverted by the scum Breitbart didn’t seem to be leading up to a ‘however.’ We didn’t, even today, when even this network let this pornographer of propaganda Breitbart come on and spew his lies and his venom and his fraudulent self-defense like a quack doctor attending a life-or-death surgery, we didn’t once… consider the source,” he said. This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown , broadcast July 21, 2010. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy

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Divers have found bottles of champagne some 230 years old on the bottom of the Baltic which a wine expert described Saturday as tasting “fabulous”. Thought to be premium brand Veuve Clicquot, the 30 bottles discovered perfectly preserved at a depth of 55 metres (180 feet) could have been in a consignment sent by France’s King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court. If confirmed, it would be by far the oldest champagne still drinkable in the world, thanks to the ideal conditions of cold and darkness. “We have contacted (makers) Moet & Chandon and they are 98 percent certain it is Veuve Clicquot,” Christian Ekstroem, the head of the diving team, told AFP. “There is an anchor on the cork and they told me they are the only ones to have used this sign,” he said, adding that a sample of the champagne has been sent to Moet & Chandon for their analysis. Story continues below… The group of seven Swedish divers made their find on July 6 off the Finnish Aaland island, mid-way between Sweden and Finland, near the remains of a sailing vessel. “Visibility was very bad, hardly a metre,” Ekstroem said. “We couldn’t find the name of the ship, or the bell, so I brought a bottle up to try to date it.” The handmade bottle bore no label, while the cork was marked Juclar, from its origin in Andorra. According to records, Veuve Clicquot was first produced in 1772, but the first bottles were laid down for 10 years. “So it can’t be before 1782, and it can’t be after 1788-89, when the French Revolution disrupted production,” Ekstroem said. Aaland wine expert Ella Gruessner Cromwell-Morgan, whom Ekstroem asked to taste the find, said it had not lost its fizz and was “absolutely fabulous”. “I still have a glass in my fridge and keep going back every five minutes to take a breath of it. I have to pinch myself to believe it’s real,” she said. Cromwell-Morgan described the champagne as dark golden in colour with a very intense aroma. “There’s a lot of tobacco, but also grape and white fruits, oak and mead,” she said of the wine’s “nose”. As for the taste, “it’s really surprising, very sweet but still with some acidity,” the expert added, explaining that champagne of that period was much less dry than today and the fermentation process less controllable. “One strong supposition is that it’s part of a consignment sent by King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court,” Cromwell-Morgan said. “The makers have a record of a delivery which never reached its destination.” That would make it the oldest drinkable champagne known, easily beating the 1825 Perrier-Jouet tasted by experts in London last year. Cromwell-Morgan estimated the opening price at auction of each bottle at around half a million Swedish kronor (53,000 euros, 69,000 dollars). “But if it’s really Louis XVI’s wine, it could fetch several million,” she added. The remaining bottles, which could number more than the 30 uncovered by the divers, will remain on the seabed for the time being. Their exact location is being kept secret. Meanwhile local authorities on Aaland will meet Monday to decide who legally owns the contents of the wreck. The archipelago at the mouth of the Gulf of Bothnia belongs to Finland, though it enjoys autonomy from Helsinki and its inhabitants speak Swedish.

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MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, never shy of a macho photo opportunity, has visited a championship match of Ultimate Fighting with a fellow strongman — Hollywood star Jean-Claude Van Damme. Ultimate Fighting — helpfully known in Russian as “Fight Without Rules” — is a vicious combination of boxing and karate where virtually anything goes, save eye-gouging and biting. It is wildly popular in the south of Russia. So it seemed a perfect night out for the man who has dominated Russia for the last decade and the film star known for a string of martial arts films. The pair, who have known each other for years, sought to catch up Wednesday evening at a restaurant in the Black Sea resort of Sochi known for its fish specialities and an Italian chef, Putin’s spokesman said. “They just talked,” Dmitry Peskov told AFP, speaking of the two men’s fine dining experience at the Sineye More (Blue Sea) restaurant. “They also spoke about the upcoming match.” Story continues below… After the restaurant outing, Van Damme and Putin, sporting snow-white dress shoes, attended the Ultimate Fighting European Championship where the premier bestowed a prize on the winner and singled out French and British sportsmen. “It was quite a spectacular show,” Putin’s spokesman Peskov said. Television pictures showed judo specialist Putin applauding enthusiastically as the combatants pummelled each other with their fists and knees in the ring. At the championship former KGB agent Putin indicated however he was not one to switch his allegiances and used the chance to promote sambo, once known as the official in-house martial art of the Soviet security service. “The so-called fist fights have always been in favour in Russia,” Putin said in comments released by the government. “All types of fights in our recent history originate from sambo.” “He is not a fan of Ultimate Fighting, he is a fan of judo and sambo,” Peskov said. Putin is keeping the world in suspense over whether he is plotting a return to the presidency in 2012 and summertime provides his minders with a wealth of opportunities to promote Putin as a photogenic, healthy, intrepid leader. Last summer Putin dived in a mini-submarine to the floor of the world’s deepest lake, Baikal, and rafted down fast flowing rivers in Siberia. He also clipped a radio transmitter onto a beluga whale and rubbed shoulders with bikers.

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