Word: fitness
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...Obama had personally launched a goodwill campaign to improve relations with Iran and restart negotiations over its nuclear program. But Iran was stalling on Obama's offer of nuclear talks, and now the U.S. team, led by veteran diplomat Dennis Ross, had to figure out where the Saberi gambit fit in. Her potential release could be a sign that moderates in Tehran were on the rise, in which case the U.S. should reciprocate. Or it could be a ploy by hard-liners in Tehran, who oppose détente with the West, to get the three Iranians released. In that case...
...disease is still killing people - in small numbers, with 140 deaths so far - and there have been confirmed deaths in victims who seemed perfectly healthy before the flu struck. The virus has also proven evolutionarily fit and very active, still spreading in the U.S. in the first week of June, when seasonal flu is normally a rarity. "This is a virus that appears to be evolving into a pandemic," said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's interim director general for health, safety and the environment...
...raising the pandemic alert to phase 5 (out of six phases), there were 114 confirmed cases in just a handful of countries, along with an unknown - though suspected to be large - number of infections in Mexico. That wasn't a huge total, but H1N1 was clearly spreading and it fit the WHO's very specific criteria for the pandemic phase to change from level 4 to level 5: it was a novel influenza virus that was sustaining human-to-human spread in at least two different countries (in that case, the U.S. and Mexico). (See pictures from the thermal scanners...
...fact that the disease has been quite mild shouldn't factor into the alert level - which Fukuda confirmed in a call with reporters today. With the sudden surge in cases in the southern hemisphere, however - where the winter flu season is about to begin - the global situation seems to fit the criteria for phase 6. But the WHO is still holding back...
...Political Act, a slim volume of essays that, in addition to being a kind of World According to Rick, argues that more travel might help keep the U.S. out of trouble overseas. "If every American were required to travel abroad before voting," he writes, "the U.S. would fit more comfortably into this ever-smaller planet...