Children and portly tough strike by hog flu: experts

Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON Wed Feb 24, 2010 5:41pm EST Related News Is flu pandemic waning? Not yet, experts sayTue, Feb 23 2010UPDATE 1-Pandemic has not yet peaked, WHO experts adviseTue, Feb 23 2010Is flu pandemic waning? World health leaders debateTue, Feb 23 2010Is flu pandemic waning? World health leaders debateTue, Feb 23 2010Flu experts assess whether H1N1 pandemic peakedTue, Feb 23 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who were morbidly obese and school-aged children were much more likely to become seriously ill or to die from H1N1 swine flu, U.S. experts said on Wednesday.

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Preliminary data showed the morbidly obese had four times the rate of hospitalizations and deaths, while the death rate for children was five times higher than usual, experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

They are working up detailed studies of the pandemic in the United States, the CDC"s Dr. Nancy Cox, Dr. Anne Schuchat and Dr. Lyn Finelli told a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

"We estimate that the deaths in children are probably five fold higher, at least, than what is usually seen in seasonal flu," Schuchat told the meeting.

Deaths among the elderly were about five times less than in a usual flu season, Schuchat added.

Earlier on Wednesday, the World Health Organization said it was too early to say the pandemic had peaked globally, although it has clearly waned in North America and Europe.

Cox said the pandemic version of H1N1 had clearly replaced its distant cousin, seasonal H1N1, this year.

WHO and advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration chose this week to replace the seasonal H1N1 component in next season"s flu vaccine with the swine flu strain.

But Cox said it is too soon to say H1N1 is just one of several circulating seasonal influenza strains.

"We have yet to see what would happen in the Southern Hemisphere. We would prefer not to jump the gun and say the 2009 H1N1 virus is a seasonal virus," she said.

TESTS DOWN

Results from Quest Diagnostics show the number of H1N1 positive tests have dropped 96 percent since the peak in early November.

"The report also finds that 99 percent of all flu tests are H1N1 positive," Quest wrote in a statement released on Wednesday.

The CDC estimates H1N1 has killed up to 17,000 people in the United States alone.

This compares to about 36,000 people killed every year by seasonal flu, but Finelli noted that it takes months to gather data on deaths. Flu weakens people who then can die of heart attacks or strokes and Finelli said once that data is included, deaths this season from swine flu may be more than the normal 36,000.

The CDC and WHO both say people who have not been vaccinated should still get an H1N1 vaccine.

The CDC"s Dr. James Singleton told the meeting that by February 13, 97 million H1N1 vaccine doses had been given to 86 million people in the United States, or 78 percent of doses shipped.

Singleton said a monthly telephone survey of 6,000 U.S. households suggested that a third of children, many of whom need two doses, and about 20 percent of adults had received swine flu vaccines.

People will need seasonal flu vaccines, too, Cox noted. Globally, H1N1 or untypeable viruses likely to be H1N1 made up about 90 percent of viruses taken from patients but H3N2 flu viruses accounted for nearly 6 percent and are on the rise in China. And a new variant of H3N2 has emerged that is different from the one covered in the current season"s vaccine.

Vaccine makers must reformulate the three-ingredient seasonal flu vaccine every year because of such changes.

The United States has contracts with five influenza vaccine makers -- Novartis, AstraZeneca unit MedImmune, Sanofi Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline and Australian vaccine maker CSL.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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Roberto Martinez: I guarantee Wigans 9-1 better to Tottenham was only a weird

It was, says Roberto Martinez, "without a doubt" the biggest game of his life. The Wigan manager is pondering not the 9-1 defeat by Tottenham last November but the match that followed six days later, a 1-0 win over Sunderland.

Plucked from early managerial success at Swansea after his swashbuckling team won the League One title, the 36-year-old Catalan was four months into his Premier League career and looking decidedly vulnerable.

Turning Wigan from a muscular, direct side into one based on a classic Spanish passing game sounded nice but had the potential to end in calamity.

Crushed: Jermain Defoe lashes in his fourth goal against Wigan in the 9-1 win

Conceding eight goals in a catastrophic second half seemed to confirm the opinions of the cynics.

After such an unprecedented humiliation, a further defeat might have been confirmation that Martinez"s idealism was unsuited to the unforgiving Premier League. The football world was watching and waiting.

"I was aware everyone would be interested to see that scoreline (against Sunderland) and how we were going to react," he said. "But the moment you lose focus and you think too much about that bigger picture, you can"t affect the smaller things.

Bad memories: Martinez

"I was so focused on what I was doing. The mental side of having a clubprepared to go into that game, that was the biggest challenge we had.We were extremely volatile during the week. You could see the minds ofthe players were up and down, the confidence was non-existent. That"swhy the Sunderland game was such a big result.

"By the Friday I was very confident. We were desperate to get out there and express ourselves."

"It was the biggest game of my career, a real test," he said. "To lose 9-1 and then win the next game shows the character of the group and the leadership material within themselves, the winning mentality. I was extremely proud."

Today Wigan revisit that terrible afternoon, with Spurs the guests at the DW Stadium, but Martinez has no fear.

"If you analyse the Tottenham game, at half-time we went in at a good moment but in the second half we conceded eight goals in 40 minutes, which is impossible to explain. It"s a freak event."

There has only been one Premier League win since that Sunderland game but five draws indicate a taste for survival that Martinez requires if his footballing philosophy is to flourish. Now he talks about Wigan passing their way into the Europa League.

"The only way we would get to go into Europe, which is what I wanted for Wigan, is mastering what we"re trying to do at the moment," he said. "It"s not going to be easy, we"re going to get to difficult times, but I"ve been proud of the way we"ve won the points so far.

"We need to ensure we stay in the Premier League and once we achieve that we will be ready to go to the next level."

More...Wigan boss Martinez craves revenge for 9-1 horror mauling at TottenhamNine reasons to be careful: Redknapp on guard for Spurs trip to WiganWIGAN ATHLETIC FC NEWS FROM ACROSS THE WEB

Competition at the Baftas shows video gaming has transient recession

Nigel Kendall & , : {}

The winners of the GAME British Academy Video Games Awards were voiced at a rite hosted by the stand up comic Dara O"Briain in London on Friday.

Reflecting a year in that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 pennyless all sales annals to turn the majority successful party product nonetheless released, foe this year was quite extreme in the Action, Artistic Achievement and Best Game categories.

Here, Modern Warfare 2 came up opposite Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Batman: Arkham Asylum, both of that have drawn regard for their cinematic visuals and retaining gameplay. The conflict was won on points by Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, that took 4 awards of the fifteen available, even though the last and majority prestigious award, for most appropriate game, went to Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Modern Warfare 2, for all the blurb success, won usually one of the eight awards for that it was nominated, the GAME endowment for most appropriate game, the usually endowment voted for by the public, 70,000 of whom had expel their opinion on the Bafta website.

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Compere Dara O"Briain, a penetrating diversion player, was on typically feisty form. You know the apply oneself I have for your industry, he told the fabricated audience. You remind me what a shite pursuit the movie industry is doing. If I see an additional glossy drudge throw Megan Fox by a polystyrene wall, I don"t know what I"ll do.

The awards paint the perfection of a year in that the games industry has transient the misfortune ravages of the recession, distinct film, DVD and music. Tom Watson MP, presenting the endowment for most appropriate multiplayer game, prisoner the assured tinge of the evening, when he told the audience, You are going to be the widespread beautiful middle of this century.

In industry terms, the awards are a vital shot in the arm for Sony, given Uncharted 2 is accessible to one side for the PlayStation 3 platform. The PS3 has undersold both of the main rivals, the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii given the launch, stubborn by a high cost and a miss of must-play games.

It was, by contrast, a still year for Nintendo; Wii Sports Resort was the usually leader of the night, in the family and amicable category, nonetheless Shigeru Miyamoto, the author of Mario, was on palm to reive a brotherhood of the academy.

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David Beckhams oneness gesticulate will not be concerned the Glazers Manchester United

Simon Barnes, Chief Sports Writer & , : {}

David Beckham knows a must-have conform appendage when he sees one. Now he has stolen the front pages again, this time not with a sarong or moth stitches but with a greenngold scarf. Looks great opposite the black shirt, no?

So hes backing up with the Manchester United supporters who wear the headband as a have a difference of their be vexed of the clubs owners, the Glazers. Theres no alternative reason for wearing it, as everyone in football knows.

Beckham said: Im a Manchester United fan. When I saw the headband I put it spin my neck. Its the old colours ... and thats all I know. A bit disingenuous, methinks. If he is a United fan there is no approach in the universe he could be unknowingly that the headband has a highlight over antiquity.

All the same, I dont think Beckham wore it as an anti-Glazer statement. People dont wear images of Che Guevara since they determine with Guevaras thought that: The series is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to have it fall. No, people wear the Guevara design since it is cool and since it expresses a sure kind of conform solidarity.

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Beckham wore the Newton Heath headband to be in the pitch of things. It was a gesticulate of oneness with the fans who gave him such a hearten when he returned to his former club. In a surreal second half on Wednesday, in the second leg of the Champions League round-of-16 tie at home to AC Milan, United were so far forward that their supporters had zero to do solely hearten Beckham Fergie, Fergie pointer him up and scream bad difference about the Glazers.

So with his clarity of timing and his present for gesture, Beckham took a greenngold scarf, meaningful that design editors around the universe would path it up. It was a gesticulate of sycophancy towards the people who had been entertaining him; if you instruct to take a some-more inexhaustible line, it was a gesticulate of thanks. But the definition was to do with Beckham, not the Glazers: Im similar to you a genuine fan.

Beckham is a addict for love. He was high as a kite on love after all his cheers and knew the headband would usually supplement to that love. Whether the move was intentional or spontaneous, he couldnt assistance himself.

The gesticulate wouldnt mistreat Beckham, since he doesnt rely on the Glazers for anything. It will simply lift his batch in sure buliding that have a difference to him. He hasnt oral out opposite the owners, he has simply, as ever, lined himself up with the fans. He doesnt instruct the Glazers out; he wants the love of United fans.

It wouldnt be concerned the Glazers. The conform of Glazer-hating is using abundant at Old Trafford, but I havent beheld the Americans going pennyless as a result. They can have income no have a difference what colour the scarves of the compulsory supporters. United are the code of preference for fans opposite the face of the universe there are pronounced to be 333 million of them.

A United deteriorate ticket-holder was quoted in The Times this week: The people who own this bar have no romantic attachment. But since should the owners of any compulsory association have an romantic connection to the things on sale? It is not compulsory for a grocer to love meat, or a building a whole noble reinforced concrete.

The Glazers are owners of a compulsory company. Over the past twenty years big-time football has spin a grown-up business. Small-timers, fantasists and Michael Knighton can no longer find space in the boardrooms of the great clubs.

Its as well late to begin swooning since there are genuine crash-hot businessmen in football. Clubs are no longer run by the internal builder done good, selling the bar where he once stood on the terraces with his small heart violence so fast, etc, etc.

No, football is a business, and here is the point of that business: the clients desire to be sole your product. Sure, there were lots of people cheering anti-Glazer slogans on Wednesday, but each one of them had paid a large total to be there. They hatred the Glazers; they compensate the Glazers great income to discuss it them so. That is not the approach to mangle a businessmans heart.

Football fans have themselves exposed by their devotion of a singular club. Businessmen people such as the Glazers are of march rebuilt to feat that willed vulnerability. I am reminded of William S. Burroughs, writer of Naked Lunch and Junky: Junk is the preferred product ... the idealisation merchandise. No sales speak necessary. The clients will yield by a cesspool and desire to buy. Football fans have put themselves in the same position.

If you instruct to demonstrate your restlessness with Pizza Hut, you go to Pizza Express. Where do you go if you instruct to demonstrate your restlessness with Manchester United? Why, Manchester United, of course. Youd die rather than go to Manchester City. Football fans have a code faithfulness for that people in alternative walks of the blurb hold up would sell their daughters in to slavery.

The fans instruct a bar owners whos in it for fun, for love and for humankind. But football is a money-making regard these days and besides, the sums of income compulsory are over the fun bill of any save a sheikh or Roman Abramovich (and Abramovich paid for Chelsea to give a rocket-launch to his tellurian profile, not for anything as small as fun).

A couple of years ago the United supporters sang, to a balance of Verdis: F*** off, John Magnier. Magnier sole his shares to the Glazers at a large profit. Now the fans instruct the Glazers to go. No disbelief they will, in the end. Perhaps they will even sell out to the self-aggrandising Red Knights, ludicrous as that seems. But they positively wouldnt be offered but a large distinction of their own a distinction that comes in conclusion from people who hatred them. But even more, they hatred the thought of selling elsewhere.

Who wouldnt instruct to do blurb operation with a serf market? All the cards are hold by the owners and that will be loyal for as prolonged as there is a tellurian marketplace of people peaceful to compensate the most appropriate income for that bar and no other.

Unless they are peaceful to do cold turkey and travel afar from United, the protesting fans are merely creation a noise. For them, as for Beckham, the greenngold scarves are the same thing: a conform statement.

Why do fans select to live similar to this? Ill allude to Woody Allen at the finish of Annie Hall: This man goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brothers crazy. He thinks hes a chicken. The alloy says, Well, since dont you spin him in? And the man says, I would but I need the eggs.

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The debt that lies underneath Dan Roberts Comment is free

Signs of the times: the destiny of the housing marketplace stays uncertain. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

When the nation"s tip monetary watchdog tells banks to prop themselves for a misfortune box unfolding of 4 million impoverished and a uninformed tumble in the housing market, it is value profitable attention. The Financial Services Authority competence have been defunct at the circle prior to the good crash, but it has been supernatural in spotting intensity potholes ever since.

The doomsday unfolding spelled out on Wednesday in the FSA"s annual "stress test" is especially dictated to shock banks in to creation certain they have sufficient income put in reserve to cover destiny losses. The good spectacle of last year"s rescue measures is that both jobs and residence prices have so far hold up in few instances well. But the proof used in the FSA highlight exam highlights a genuine constructional debility in the recovery: we still haven"t finished anything to plunge in to all that debt.

Record low seductiveness rates have usually paid for us respirating space. The FSA Financial Risk Outlook calculates that homeowners are £20bn a month better-off as a outcome of the Bank of England"s puncture rate cuts, but wonders what happens next:

The rebate in seductiveness rates has played an critical purpose in stabilising the domicile zone and tying the goods of the recession. However, the high turn of debt income has left most households exposed to skill price, income and seductiveness rate shocks.

One unfolding that worries FSA authority Lord Turner is what happens if the Bank of England is unexpected forced to ramp up rates since of events over the control: a nasty run on the pound, resurgent inflation, or both. Despite new scaremongering, conjunction is function yet, but these sojourn non-trivial risks.

For a glance in to what happens next, see no serve than the old crony Northern Rock, that currently certified some-more than 4% of the business are unwell to encounter their mortage payments already. Given how low rates are, and how far at the behind of mortgage-holders have to tumble prior to they are strictly classed as in arrears, the commission is scarier than it sounds.

Many of these Northern Rock business were additionally on mortgages over 100% during the bang years. The longer-term subject is not either they can encounter the seductiveness payments, but either the underlying debt will ever be paid off.

So far, most of the discuss about the strength of the housing liberation has focused on intentional factors: are sellers assured sufficient to exam cost levels by putting houses on the marketplace and are buyers penetrating sufficient to soak up these some-more normalised levels of supply but pushing down prices? The engorgement of estate representative play opening up this open suggests we are about to find out sincerely harmlessly. The scarier thought is what happens if random seductiveness rate rises force contingent sellers behind onto the marketplace – pushing millions some-more in to disastrous equity only as stagnation starts to stand again.

If that does happen, we"d need some-more than the FSA for highlight relief.

British infantryman from twenty-eight Engineer Regiment killed by explosve in Nad-e Ali

Deborah Haynes & , : {}

A explosve blast killed a British infantryman yesterday as he took piece in an descent in Nad-e Ali in Helmand province, the Ministry of Defence said.

The serviceman, from twenty-eight Engineer Regiment, trustworthy to the Brigade Reconnaissance Force, is the third Briton to die in southern Afghanistan in as most days.

An airman killed by a roadside explosve on Wednesday was declared as Senior Aircraftman Luke Southgate, from Bury St Edmunds. His family described the immature man, who hoped one day to stick on the Special Forces, as the most appropriate son, hermit and beloved any of us could ever have wished for.

The ultimate infantryman to die in Afghanistan was strike by an blast whilst on a feet patrol. His family has been informed.

Related LinksTwo some-more servicemen die in AfghanistanAfghan dwindle hoisted over Marjah

The genocide takes to 266 the sum series of servicemen and women to die given the dispute began roughly 9 years ago.

Four of the deaths were continuous to Operation Moshtarak, the largest descent in Afghanistan given 2001, involving thousands of US, British and Afghan forces who are pulling by a Taleban hotspot in executive Helmand.

Major-General Gordon Messenger, a infantry spokesman, pronounced that the mission was well on lane and the rebellion was levelling off opposite the targeted area of Nad-e Ali, together with Marjah, the toughest objective, where US Marines and Afghan infantry have been assigned.

Major-General Nick Carter, commander in chief of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force in southern Afghanistan, stays really assured about how the going, Major-General Messenger told a headlines discussion in London.

Senior Aircraftman Southgate was killed by a roadside explosve whilst on a unit to strengthen Kandahar Airfield, a infantry bottom in the south of the country.

The man, described as a indifferent impression who was intensely fit, was a unapproachable part of of the Royal Air Force Regiment, apropos a machinegun specialist.

He programmed to sojourn with Number II Squadron Royal Air Force Regiment for an additional dual years prior to volunteering for a new plea with UK Special Forces. His some-more evident priority, however, was to move in with Caley, his girlfriend.

We cannot find the difference to report the comfortless loss of the dear son Luke, his family said. He died you do the pursuit he desired and regularly longed for to do. He will be in the hearts regularly and the thoughts for ever.

Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, said: My deepest condolences are with his family and friends at this time.

The second infantryman to be killed was declared as Rifleman Martin Kinggett, 19, from A Company 4 Rifles

Balls defends last-minute U-turn on sex education

Jenny Booth and Joanna Sugden & , : {}

Ed Balls currently shielded the right of conviction schools to learn that contraception, termination and homosexuality are wrong as campaigners indicted him of "betraying" young kids in conviction schools and capitulating to the conviction run by watering down new laws on sex education.

The Schools Secretary pronounced that schools should be authorised to safety the right to learn their pupils about sex and relations in suitability with their own sacrament notwithstanding new legislation creation sex preparation compulsory.

"It has regularly been the case, for years and years, that any propagandize training sex and attribute preparation can do so inside of the context of their own faith," Mr Balls told the BBC. "The check does not shift this."

From subsequent year training about sex and relations will turn a mandatory piece of the inhabitant curriculum and relatives will additionally lose the right to remove their young kids from the lessons once they are over 15.

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But Mr Balls has tabled an legislative addition to his Children, Schools and Families Bill, that completes the thoroughfare by the Commons today, reinforcing the right of conviction schools to learn about issues such as contraception, abortion, homosexuality and polite partnerships in a approach that reflects their eremite character.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, has indicted ministers of being in a superb mess-up over the issue, arguing that the last-minute shift utterly undermines the objectives of this piece of the Bill.

But Mr Balls pronounced that critics of the Bill were worrying unnecessarily. The insubordinate aspects of the check - requiring all schools for the initial time to learn about passionate relations in a satisfactory and offset way, and abolishing the right for relatives to opt their comparison teenage young kids out of sex preparation classes - were unvaried by the amendment.

The Bill has cumulative the subsidy of a large series of conviction schools and organisations, and has the await of the Most Rev Vincent Nichol, the Archbishop of Westminster, who is the head of Britain"s five million Catholics.

The Catholic Education Service claimed that the legislative addition being debated currently was "secured" interjection to the lobbying.

Mr Laws told BBC Radio 4"s Today programme that the legislative addition would concede conviction schools to evasion mandate to foster equivalence and apply oneself for farrago in a approach that a little people would cruise intolerant, he said.

The issue is, in the 21st century, are we going to have a propagandize complement that is going to be passive of dogmatism in the name of eremite freedom?" asked Mr Laws.

Or should we contend in the 21st century that it is right that all state-funded schools should be training toleration and apply oneself for diversity? After all, there are already opt-outs for relatives and there is already the wider requisite to learn in propinquity to the eremite and enlightenment credentials of pupils.

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