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...Guardian-ization of their newspaper. A union representative warned that any attempt to impose compulsory staff cuts would trigger a strike ballot. But the bulk of the evening was devoted to fond reminiscences of past Observer glories and readings from its archive. (Wisely, nobody attempted the 26,000-word leading article published in 1956, a translation of Nikita Khrushchev's famous speech attacking Joseph Stalin.) "Are there any more questions?" asked David Mitchell, a British comedian and Observer supporter, who was drafted to chair the meeting. "Yes," came a voice. "What do we do next?" "Literally," answered Mitchell...
...than two centuries, the paper has not only described and analyzed profound social and political upheavals, but also survived them. Yet the twin challenges of repositioning print media for the digital age and a global downturn in advertising threatened to deliver the coup de grâce. In August, word leaked of proposals to turn the Observer into a Thursday magazine. In keeping with the robustly competitive spirit of British newspaper journalism, the story was broken by the Observer's arch-rival, the Sunday Times, a weekly broadsheet owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (See pictures of Rupert Murdoch...
...word spread that three students at Hayden's school had the new flu, people in his town began trying to stamp out the uncertainty. It was an unsatisfying endeavor. Health officials came to Hayden's house and asked him dozens of questions. Had he been to Mexico lately? (No.) Had he had contact with any pigs? (No.) That weekend, Texas health officials closed all 14 schools in Hayden's district, sending 11,000 children home. Workers wiped down the school district's 100-plus buses. At Cibolo city hall, employees posted signs asking residents to pay their utility bills...
...This time around, we have superior armaments. We have global surveillance to track the evolution of the virus, antiviral drugs to help reduce the suffering, antibiotics to treat dangerous secondary infections like pneumonia, and real-time communications to spread the word. Soon we will almost certainly have a vaccine as well. We're living through an unprecedented opportunity for civilization - a chance to pre-empt a catastrophic pandemic influenza rather than just react...
...this strain of H1N1 has proved blessedly mild. So far, at least, many people get it; not many die. But mild is a tricky word. "Mild, when you're talking about flu, can still be dangerous," says Michael Shaw, a microbiologist at the CDC who has been working with influenza for 30 years. "It may be mild in the majority of cases, but the more cases you have, the more chances you have of infecting someone for whom it will not be mild. There are lots of kids with asthma...