Word: egypts
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...first glance, one might assume that a swine flu scare would send prices up, as pigs are widely slaughtered and supply disappears. Egypt, for instance, has begun slaughtering more than 300,000 presumably healthy pigs as a precautionary measure. However, the futures market is pricing hogs as if the fall in demand will outpace the drop in supply. (Read "Swine Flu: Don't Blame...
...Still, a little more than a week after the WHO first swung into high alert, it's easy to wonder whether H1N1 might turn out to be much ado about not that much. Certainly the actions of some countries - like Egypt's impulsive move to cull some 300,000 pigs and China's apparent decision to preemptively quarantine hundreds of Mexican nationals - smack of panic. In the U.S., too, hundreds of schools have temporarily closed down because of suspected or confirmed swine flu cases, with Fort Worth, Texas, making the decision to shut down all city schools until...
...governments are already moving. In March, Madrid pledged $1.3 billion to modernize Spain's tourism infrastructure in a bid to fight off competition from sunshine destinations like Turkey and Egypt, which have become more competitive as the euro has appreciated. In Spain's Canary Islands, where tourism represents upwards of 60% of the local economy, the municipal tourism board recently began a series of seminars to help tourism workers cast off their perceived grumpiness; course materials advise cabbies to "ensure your taxis smell nice and don't drive too fast" and remind hotel staff that, "a smile costs nothing...
...Even more vexing are the estimated 800 tunnels linking Gaza (from the town of Rafah) with Egypt, whose border is closed due to friction between Cairo and Hamas. The tunnels are critical conduits not only for weapons but also medicine and food, including live goats and sheep. The occasional bombing along the border is not thought to accomplish much; Israel's US-made bunker-busting bombs would not do much damage to tunnels that are 70-100 feet deep. If tunnels are located - as they were in Israel's latest ground operation in Gaza in January - they are not easily...
...even though the flu virus cannot be contracted through eating dead pig. Kenya, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe say they are checking arriving passengers at borders and airports and have response plans of varying sophistication should an outbreak occur. In some places, they've gone much further: Authorities in Egypt, which was affected by bird flu last year, have begun slaughtering the country's entire unfortunate pig population of more than 300,000. (A Brief History of Flu Pandemics...