CDC: Flu Outbreak Could Be Waning

The flu season appears to be waning in some parts of the country, but that doesn't mean it won't make a comeback in the next few weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Five fewer states reported high flu activity levels in the first week of January than the 29 that reported high activity levels in the last week of December, according to the CDC's weekly flu report. This week, 24 states reported high illness levels, 16 reported moderate levels, five reported low levels and one reported minimal levels, suggesting that the flu season peaked in the last week of December.

"It may be decreasing in some areas, but that's hard to predict," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a Friday morning teleconference. "Trends only in the next week or two will show whether we have in fact crossed the peak."

The flu season usually peaks in February or March, not December, said Dr. Jon Abramson, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Wake Forest Baptist Health in North Carolina. He said the season started early with a dominant H3N2 strain, which was last seen a decade ago, in 2002-03. That year, the flu season also ended early.

Click here to see how this flu season stacks up against other years.

Cheryl Evans/The Arizona Republic/AP Photo

Increasing Flu Cases: Best Measures to Ensure Your Family's Health Watch Video

Because of the holiday season, Frieden said the data may have been skewed.

For instance, Connecticut appeared to be having a lighter flu season than other northeastern states at the end of December, but the state said it could have been a result of college winter break. College student health centers account for a large percentage of flu reports in Connecticut, but they've been closed since the fall semester ended, said William Gerrish, a spokesman for the state's department of public health.

The flu season arrived about a month early this year in parts of the South and the East, but it may only just be starting to take hold of states in the West, Frieden said. California is still showing "minimal" flu on the CDC's map, but that doesn't mean it will stay that way.

Click here to read about how flu has little to do with cold weather.

"It's not surprising. Influenza ebbs and flows during the flu season," Frieden said. "The only thing predictable about the flu is that it is unpredictable."

Dr. William Schaffner, chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., said he was expecting California's seeming good luck with the flu to be over this week.

"Flu is fickle, we say," Schaffner said. "Influenza can be spotty. It can be more severe in one community than another for reasons incompletely understood."

Early CDC estimates indicate that this year's flu vaccine is 62 percent effective, meaning people who have been vaccinated are 62 percent less likely to need to see a doctor for flu treatment, Frieden said.

Although the shot has been generally believed to be more effective for children than adults, there's not enough data this year to draw conclusions yet.

"The flu vaccine is far from perfect, but it's still by far the best tool we have to prevent flu," Frieden said, adding that most of the 130 million vaccine doses have already been administered. "We're hearing of shortages of the vaccine, so if you haven't been vaccinated and want to be, it's better late than never."

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Shi'ite leader challenges Pakistan army chief over attacks

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - In a rare challenge, a Shi'ite leader publicly criticized powerful Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani over security in the country on Friday after bombings aimed at the minority sect killed 114 people.

"I ask the army chief: What have you done with these extra three years you got (in office). What did you give us except more death," Maulana Amin Shaheedi, who heads a national council of Shi'ite organizations, told a news conference.

The criticism of Kayani, arguably the most powerful man in Pakistan, highlighted Shi'ite frustrations with the state's failure to contain hard-line Sunni militant groups who have vowed to wipe out the sect.

Most of Thursday's deaths were caused by twin attacks aimed Shi'ites in the southwestern city of Quetta, near the Afghan border, where members of the minority have long accused the state of turning a blind eye to Sunni militant death squads.

Shi'ite leaders were so outraged at the latest bloodshed that they called for the military to take control of Quetta to shield them and said they would not allow the 82 victims of twin bomb attacks to be buried until their demands were met.

The burials had been scheduled to take place after Friday prayers but the bodies would remain in place until Shi'ites had received promises of protection.

Shaheedi said scores of bodies were still lying on a road. "They will not be buried until the army comes into Quetta," he said.

Violence against Pakistani Shi'ite Muslims is rising and some communities are living in a state of siege, a human rights group said on Friday.

"Last year was the bloodiest year for Shias in living memory," said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch. "More than 400 were killed and if yesterday's attack is any indication, it's just going to get worse."

A suicide bomber first targeted a snooker club in Quetta. A car bomb blew up nearby 10 minutes later after police and rescuers had arrived.

In all, 82 people were killed and 121 wounded. Nine police and 20 rescue workers were among the dead.

"It was like doomsday. Bodies were lying everywhere," said police officer Mir Zubair Mehmood.

The banned Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jangvi (LeJ) claimed responsibility for the attack in a predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood where the residents are ethnic Hazaras, Shi'ites who first migrated from Afghanistan in the nineteenth century.

While U.S. intelligence agencies have focused on al Qaeda and the Taliban, Pakistani intelligence officials say LeJ is emerging as a graver threat to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed, strategic U.S. ally.

It has stepped up attacks against Shi'ites across the country but has zeroed in on members of the sect who live in resource-rich Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is capital.

The paramilitary Frontier Corps is largely responsible for security in Baluchistan province but Shi'ites say it is unable or unwilling to protect them from the LeJ.

"STATE OF SIEGE"

The LeJ wants to impose a Sunni theocracy by stoking Sunni-Shi'ite violence. It bombs religious processions and shoots civilians in the type of attacks that pushed countries like Iraq close to civil war.

The latest attacks sparked an outpouring of grief, rage and fear among Shi'ites, many of whom have concluded that the state has left them at the mercy of the LeJ and other extremist groups who believe they are non-Muslims.

"The LeJ operates under one front or the other, and its activists go around openly shouting, 'infidel, infidel, Shi'ite infidel' and 'death to Shi'ites' in the streets of Quetta and outside our mosques," said Syed Dawwod Agha, a top official with the Baluchistan Shi'ite Conference.

"We have become a community of grave diggers. We are so used to death now that we always have shrouds ready."

The roughly 500,000-strong Hazara people in Quetta, who speak a Persian dialect, have distinct features and are an easy target, said Dayan of Human Rights Watch.

"They live in a state of siege. Stepping out of the ghetto means risking death," said Dayan. "Everyone has failed them - the security services, the government, the judiciary."

Earlier on Thursday, a separate bomb killed 11 people in Quetta's main market.

The United Baloch Army claimed responsibility for that blast. The group is one of several fighting for independence for Baluchistan, an arid, impoverished region with substantial gas, copper and gold reserves.

Baluchistan constitutes just less than half of Pakistan's territory and is home to about 8 million of the country's population of 180 million.

In a separate attack on Thursday, in Mingora, the largest city in the Swat valley in the northwest, at least 21 people were killed when an explosion targeted a public gathering of residents who had come to listen to a religious leader.

No one claimed responsibility for that bombing. Swat has been under army rule since a military offensive expelled Pakistani Taliban militants in 2009.

The LeJ has had historically close ties to elements in the security forces, who see the group as an ally in any potential war with neighboring India. Security forces deny any such links.

In a measure of the outrage, several Pakistani social media users posted Facebook comments urging the U.S. to expand its covert programme of drone warfare beyond Taliban strongholds on the Afghan border to target LeJ leaders in Baluchistan.

Among the dead in Quetta was Khudi Ali, a young activist who often wore a t-shirt with fake bloodstains during protests against the rising violence against Shi'ites.

Ali's Twitter profile said: "I am born to fight for human rights and peace."

(Reporting by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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SIA firms up order for another 25 widebody aircraft from Airbus

SINGAPORE : Singapore Airlines (SIA) has firmed up an order for 25 more widebody aircraft from Airbus.

Five of the aircraft are the A380.

SIA has placed three consecutive orders for the A380, making it the second largest customer of the A380, and now has 19 such aircraft in service.

The remaining 20 aircraft are in the mid-size category - the A350-900s, which will be used on medium- and long-haul routes.

- CNA/ms

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Google revs Chrome for Android faster with new beta release

Android users who want to live an edgier life now can try a beta version of Chrome.

Google yesterday released the Chrome 25 beta for Android 4.x smartphones and
tablets, a version number in sync with the release for personal computers. Previously, the only option was the stable version of Chrome for
Android, which is still way back at version 18.

The Chrome for Android beta is available on the Google Play app store, but only by following that link -- it's not visible in Google Play's search, Google said. The beta version can be installed and run side by side with the stable version.

Google has been working to put Chrome for Android on the same six-week update cycle as the personal computer version of the browser, and it looks like this release is part of that change. The Chrome 25 beta brings a number of new features, but Google warns of sluggish performance and some other problems.

Among the new features, according to Chrome developer Peter Beverloo:

• A new "text autosizing" technique for formatting text on mobile-device screens, drawing in part upon "font inflation" work by Mozilla. Sometimes it seems to cause Chrome to display different areas of text in mismatched font sizes, though.

• Faster JavaScript performance trough use of a newer version of Google's V8 software.

• A range of developer-oriented features such as CSS filters for visual effects, dynamic viewport units for better handling of screen-size and pixel-size variations, IndexedDB for offline data storage and other data-handling needs, and flexbox layout abilities for more adaptable formatting.

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Sheriff: High school gunman felt he'd been bullied

TAFT, Calif. Authorities say a teen who fired on classmates and critically wounded one at a rural California high school had planned the attack and targeted students he felt had bullied him for more than a year.

Kern County sheriff Donny Youngblood said at a news conference Thursday night that the 16-year-old used a shotgun that belonged to his brother and went to bed Wednesday night with a plan to shoot two fellow students.

"He believed that the two people he targeted had bullied him, in his mind. Whether that occurred or not, we don't know yet," Youngblood said.

Youngblood added that the suspect came to Taft Union High School with ammunition stuffed in his pockets.

According to Youngblood, surveillance video shows the teen trying to conceal the gun as he nervously enters the building through a side entrance after school had started Thursday morning.

The boy went into a classroom, shot one student, then fired on but missed others before a teacher and another staff member talked him into surrendering, Youngblood told reporters.

Morgan Allredge, 16, calmly described what happened to CBS Los Angeles station KCBS. To see the interview, click on the video at left.

The wounded student was flown to a hospital in Bakersfield and was listed in stable but critical condition. He is also 16, reports CBS Bakersfield, Calif. affiliate KBAK-TV.

When the shots were fired, teacher Ryan Heber tried to get the 28 students out a back door and engaged the shooter in conversation to distract him, Youngblood said.

Some students got out the back door, while some barricaded themselves in a classroom storage closet, KBAK says.

A third and final shotgun blast was directed to the windows of the classroom, KBAK reports.

Campus supervisor Kim Lee Fields responded to a call of shots fired and also began talking to the teen.

"(Heber and Fields) talked him into putting that shotgun down. He in fact told the teacher, "I don't want to shoot you,' and named the person that he wanted to shoot," Youngblood said.

"The heroics of these two people goes without saying. ... They could have just as easily ... (have) tried to get out of the classroom and left students, and they didn't," the sheriff said. "They knew not to let him leave the classroom with that shotgun."

The shooter didn't show up for first period, then interrupted the class.

Youngblood did not release the student's disciplinary record, saying he didn't have it.

The Sheriff's Department did not release the boy's name because he was a juvenile and had yet to be charged.

But many students and community members said they knew the boy and said he was often teased, including Alex Patterson, 18, who went to Taft with the suspect before graduating last year.

"He comes off as the kind of kid who would do something like this," Patterson said. "He talked about it a lot, but nobody thought he would."

Trish Montes, who lived next door to the suspect, said he was "a short guy" and "small" who was teased about his stature by many, including the victim.

"Maybe people will learn not to bully people," Montes said. "I hate to be crappy about it, but that kid was bullying him."

Montes said her son had worked at the school and tutored the boy last year, sometimes walking with him between classes because he felt sorry for him.

"All I ever heard about him was good things from my son," Montes said. "He wasn't Mr. Popularity, but he was a smart kid. It's a shame. My kid said he was like a genius. It's a shame because he could have made something of himself."

Officials said a female student was hospitalized with possible hearing damage because the shotgun was fired close to her ear, and another girl suffered minor injuries during the scramble to flee when she fell over a table.

Officials said there's usually an armed officer on campus, but the person wasn't there because he was snowed in. Taft police officers arrived within 60 seconds of first reports.

The alleged shooter apparently lives close to the school, and neighbors saw him carrying the gun into school and called 911, KBAK says.

Wilhelmina Reum, whose daughter Alexis Singleton is a fourth-grader at a nearby elementary school, got word of the attack while she was about 35 miles away in Bakersfield and immediately sped back to Taft.

"I just kept thinking this can't be happening in my little town," she told The Associated Press.

"I was afraid I was going to get hurt," Alexis said. "I just wanted my mom to get here so I could go home."

Taft is a community of fewer than 10,000 people amid oil and natural gas production fields about 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

About 900 students are enrolled at the high school, which includes ninth through 12th grades.

The attack there came less than a month after a gunman massacred 20 children and six women at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., then killed himself.

That shooting prompted President Obama to promise new efforts to curb gun violence. Vice President Biden, who was placed in charge of the initiative, said he would deliver new policy proposals to the president by next week.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement that her father had attended Taft Union and she has visited the school over the years.

"At this moment my thoughts and prayers are with the victims, and I wish them a speedy recovery," Feinstein said. "But how many more shootings must there be in America before we come to the realization that guns and grievances do not belong together?"

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Judge: Holmes Can Face Trial for Aurora Shooting

Jan 10, 2013 8:45pm

(Arapahoe County Sheriff/AP Photo)

In a ruling that comes as little surprise, the judge overseeing the Aurora, Colo., theater massacre has ordered that there is enough evidence against James Holmes to proceed to a trial.

In an order posted late Thursday, Judge William Sylvester wrote that “the People have carried their burden of proof and have established that there is probable cause to believe that Defendant committed the crimes charged.”

The ruling came after a three-day preliminary hearing this week that revealed new details about how Holmes allegedly planned for and carried out the movie theater shooting, including how investigators say he amassed an arsenal of guns and ammunition, how he booby-trapped his apartment to explode, and his bizarre behavior after his arrest.

PHOTOS: Colorado ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Theater Shooting

Holmes is charged with 166 counts, including murder, attempted murder and other charges related to the July 20 shooting that left 12 people dead and 58 wounded by gunfire. An additional 12 people suffered non-gunshot injuries.

One of the next legal steps is an arraignment, at which Holmes will enter a plea. The arraignment was originally expected to take place Friday morning.

Judge Sylvester indicated through a court spokesman that he would allow television and still cameras into the courtroom, providing the outside world the first images of Holmes since a July 23 hearing. Plans for cameras in court, however, were put on hold Thursday afternoon.

“The defense has notified the district attorney that it is not prepared to proceed to arraignment in this case by Friday,” wrote public defenders Daniel King, Tamara Brady and Kristen Nelson Thursday afternoon in a document objecting to cameras in court.

A hearing in the case will still take place Friday morning. In his order, Judge Sylvester said it should technically be considered an arraignment, but noted the defense has requested a continuance.  Legal experts expect the judge will grant the continuance, delaying the arraignment and keeping cameras out of court for now.

Sylvester also ordered that Holmes be held without bail.

Holmes’ attorneys have said in court that the former University of Colorado neuroscience student is mentally ill. The district attorney overseeing the case has not yet announced whether Holmes, now 25, can face the death penalty.

SHOWS: World News

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NATO official says more missiles launched in Syria

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A short-range ballistic missile was fired inside Syria on Wednesday, following similar launches last week, a NATO official said on Thursday.

The official condemned as "reckless" the missile launches, which U.S. officials called an escalation of the 21-month-old Syrian civil war when their use was first spotted last month.

"The use of such indiscriminate weapons shows utter disregard for the lives of the Syrian people," he said.

The official said NATO had detected the launch of an unguided, short-range ballistic missile inside Syria on Wednesday, following similar launches on January 2 and 3. All the missiles were fired from inside Syria and landed in northern Syria, he said.

The description of the missiles fits the Scuds that are in the Syrian military's armory, but the official said NATO could not confirm the type of missile used.

The NATO official was responding to a report from a Syrian opposition activist living near the Qaldoun army base, 50 km (30 miles) north of Damascus, who said four large rockets, apparently Scuds, were fired from the base overnight.

NATO has agreed to send Patriot anti-missile batteries to protect its member Turkey from possible missile attack from Syria.

(Reporting by Adrian Croft; editing by Rex Merrifield and Sebastian Moffett)

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58,000 commuters affected by NEL train disruption

SINGAPORE: Some 58,000 commuters were affected on Thursday when train services between HarbourFront and Dhoby Ghaut stations on the North East Line (NEL) were disrupted for six-and-a-half hours.

Rail operator SBS Transit said the disruption was traced to three broken U-shaped bolts between the HarbourFront and Outram Park stations, resulting in a power trip.

The fault is similar to one that had occurred in last August in the same tunnel section.

The stainless steel U-bolts in question were checked following the August incident and found to be in good working condition.

SBS Transit has decided to replace all U-bolts in the tunnel, starting with the section between HarbourFront and Outram Park stations.

This initial section contains about 1,900 U-bolts and is expected to take about three months for the replacement to be completed.

SBS Transit said it is working with the Land Transport Authority to review and examine all possible causes and contributory factors to the recent incidents.

Commuters were first alerted to the train disruption at about 10am on Thursday.

In addition to signboards, SBS staff wearing "Goodwill Ambassador" were also on the ground to advise and direct commuters on where to go.

Shuttle services were activated at designated bus stops at around 10.30am to provide free bus rides.

Commuters were informed at around 12.30pm that train services would resume in the late afternoon.

And shortly after 4.30pm, the full NEL service was up and running.

This is not the first time the NEL has been disrupted.

On December 20 last year, some 26,000 commuters were affected by a train fault.

- CNA/fa

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Google's Schmidt presses North Korean officials for open Web

Google's Eric Schmidt (right) upon his arrival in North Korea earlier this week with former N.M. Gov. Bill Richardson.

(Credit:
CBS News/Screenshot by CNET)

Eric Schmidt wrapped up a controversial visit to North Korea on Thursday, saying that his private delegation warned officials that global Internet access was key to developing its economy.

"As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their view of the world," he told reporters upon his return to Beijing, according to a Wall Street Journal account. Lack of such access would "make it harder for them to catch up economically. We made that alternative very, very clear," he added.

Despite official U.S. opposition to the visit, Google's executive chairman flew to the reclusive nation on Monday as part of a delegation led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who described the trip as a "private humanitarian mission."

"We had a good opportunity to talk about expanding the Internet and cell phones in the DPRK," Richardson told the Associated Press before departing for Beijing.

The U.S. State Department had discouraged the visit, saying that the timing was not right for the delegation to visit the country, which is subject to U.S. economic sanctions. A department spokesperson cited recent missile launches by North Korea as a reason for opposing the visit

During the visit, the delegation, which also included Jared Cohen, head of Google Ideas, got a tour of a computer lab at Kim Il Sung University Pyongyang, where a student showed how he goes online to look at reading material from Cornell University.

It's unclear whether the delegation had the opportunity to inquire about Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American whose arrest on unspecified charges was announced by the North Koreans last month.

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New rules seek to shield consumers, mortgage lenders

WASHINGTON Federal regulators for the first time are laying out rules designed to ensure that mortgage borrowers can afford to repay the loans they take out.

The rules being unveiled Thursday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau impose a range of obligations and restrictions on lenders, including bans on the risky "interest-only" and "no documentation" loans that helped inflate the housing bubble.

Lenders will be required to verify and inspect borrowers' financial records. They generally will be prohibited from saddling borrowers with loan payments totaling 43 percent of the person's annual income.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray, in remarks prepared for an event Thursday, called the rules "the true essence of 'responsible lending."'

The rules, which take effect next year, aim to "make sure that people who work hard to buy their own home can be assured of not only greater consumer protections but also reasonable access to credit," he said.

Cordray noted that, in years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, consumers could easily obtain mortgages that they could not afford to repay. In contrast, in subsequent years, banks tightened lending so much that few could qualify for a home loan.

The new rules seek out a middle ground by protecting consumers from bad loans while giving banks the legal assurances they need to increase lending, he said.

The mortgage-lending overhaul is a priority for the agency, which was created under the 2010 financial law known as the Dodd-Frank Act. The agency is charged with reducing the risk of a credit bubble by helping to ensure that borrowers are better informed and loans are more likely to be repaid.

The agency is charged with writing and enforcing rules that flesh out the law passed by Congress. Some provisions are required under the law, but the agency had broad discretion in designing many of the new requirements.

The rules limit features like teaser rates that adjust upwards and large "balloon payments" that must be made at the end of the loan period.

They include several exceptions aimed at ensuring a smooth phase-in and protecting access to credit for underserved groups. For example, the strict cap on how much debt consumers may take on will not apply immediately. Loans that meet separate federal standards also would be permitted for the first seven years.

Balloon payments would be allowed for certain small lenders that operate in rural or underserved communities, because other loans may not be available in those areas.

The bureau also proposed amendments that would exempt from the rules some loans made by community banks, credit unions and nonprofit lenders that work with low- and moderate-income consumers.

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