The World Health Organization said Thursday that up to 2 billion people could be infected by swine flu if the current outbreak turns into a pandemic. The agency said a pandemic typically lasts two years. WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda said the number wasn’t a prediction, but that experience with flu pandemics showed one-third of [...]
The Department of Homeland Security is dismantling a next-generation biological attack warning system in New York City subways because of technical problems, U.S. officials said. Robert Hooks, a deputy assistant secretary, said the department no longer believes it is necessary to expand the pilot program, as he told Congress in July, because of resource and [...]
The FBI has retained almost 24,000 names on the nation’s terrorist watch list without current or proper justification, while failing to include people who are subjects of terrorist investigations, according to a Justice Department report issued yesterday. The FBI’s lapses “create a risk to national security,” Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in [...]
The global swine flu threat is receding, but it could return in a far more deadly form in the fall. The warning was given Monday by Dr. Margaret Chan, head of the 193-nation World Health Organization, in an interview with the Financial Times of London. Chan warned that the swine flu virus known as H1N1 [...]
The tally of confirmed swine flu cases in the United States jumped Sunday to 245 in 35 states, but officials said that’s largely from catching up on a backlog of lab tests rather than a sudden spurt in new infections. The new count reflects streamlining in federal procedures and the results of tests by states, [...]