NEW YORK: The number of laboratory-confirmed cases of the swine flu or A (H1N1) virus has increased to 4,694 - double from the last Friday's figure - and also claimed 53 lives around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.According to latest WHO update, Mexico and the US have topped the list of 30 countries where laboratory-confirmed human cases of the virus have been reported. Mexico has 1,626 cases with 48 deaths while the US has 2,532 with three deaths."WHO's pandemic alert level remains at Phase 5 – on a six-point warning scale – as it has for the past several days," Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO's Acting Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment said."Community-level sustained human-to-human transmission has been documented in North America, in Mexico and in the United States most clearly. We do not see clear evidence of sustained community-level transmission going on in other countries yet," he said.The agency said it is mindful of the many travel-related cases that have now been reported from a large number of countries in almost all regions of the world.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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