World battles swine flu as death toll rises

The police are guarding the hospital entrance. No one knows how to treat it properly yet. the doctors at mexico were mystified. Everyone has their masks on. Patients keep flowing into hospitals all day long. People are sick and are dying. At a school in New York, the school was closed due to 28 confirmed cases of the swine flu. So far, a total of approximately 90 cases of outbreaks were confirmed around the world. 50 in the states, 6 in Canada, 3 in New Zealand, 2 each in spain and the UK, and 1 in Israel. Experts suspect that there are 11 more other countries that are infected. In response to the problem, the World Health Organiztion raised its alert level to 4 on the six-level-scale. This shows that the UN Agency thinks that the virus can be spread human-to-human.

Over the last 2 weeks, out of nearly two thousand that came to a hospital in Mexico, 150 died. Patients are kept clustered in rooms. There is also a problem trying to figure out if someone actually needs treatment or not. Hospital workers are complaining because they were not given medicine or masks. All school in Mexico have closed until at least the sixth of May. Mexico also ran out of medicine and sanitary masks, which is growing to be a huge problem. Airport quarantine systems have become more strict than before. China and Russia have cut off pork imports coming in from the US and Mexico. Japan and Indonesia are using thermographic censors to check the temperatures of the passengers arriving from Mexico. The Phillipines Health Department even urged people not to kiss in public.

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Although not mentioned in this paper, South Korea is influenced by the disease. The South Korean government has confirmed a suspected case of the swine disease. Pork prices have falled drastically during the past days. People are frightened. The Agriculture and Forestry Ministry stated that the government and the Korea Swine Association are coming up with new standard procedures to check for possible infections and devising actions to be taken if a sick animal is discovered. They are also limiting pork imports from the US and Mexico. This shows that the disease is highly contagious because it has reached people living on the other side of the Earth. It is a problem that should not be taken lightly.

South Africans Vote, Expecting Few Big Changes

On Wednesday, South Africans lined up to vote for their new president. At one polling building, the line stretched down 200 yards down one street. However, the people did not seem to mind the long wait. Thomas Baloyi, 49, had arrived at 5:45 a.m. and was able to cast his ballot five hours later. He had voted for the African National Congress, the party that liberated them from apartheid. It had governed the country for the past fifteen years.

Almost every in South Africa were croweded like this one. Many voting places ran out of paper ballots and cardboard boxes where the votes were stored. The country's electoral commission says that these are only minor delays, while some politicians are saying that the failures are pitiful. A record of 23 million people showed up to vote, in a country of 48.7 million.

This election was the 4th election of this new democratic nation, and it seems that Jacob Zuma, leader of the African National Congress, is going to win the election. From the early votes counted on Thursday out of 1.5 million votes, the African National Congress party had received more than 62% of the votes, despite the internal conflicts that the party has been facing.

The city of Diepsloot shows why the A.N.C. still received the most votes. The 150,000 people living there have always lived poverty on their backs. Some are lucky enough to live in government-funded homes, while other live in shacks known as "mkhukhus." However, things are getting better little by little, and the people think that it is because of the A.N.C. The A.N.C. remains as a symbol of liberation. Voters also relate Nelson Mandela to the party, and said that they do not want to let him down.

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The article shows evidences that South Africa is still a very young and premature country. People are voting for a party that has broken down for its traditional symbol of liberation. The South Africans must start to vote for the present and the future, and not for the past. Just because a party has helped to liberate the country from apartheid does not mean that it will continue to serve the country well. Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who had also contributed tremendously to liberating South Africa stated that he will not vote for Jacob Zuma because he was accused of political corruption while he was president.

N. Korea orders out nuclear inspectors

After the United States criticized Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, for the recent missile launch, Kim Jung Il expelled all of the U.S. nuclear inspectors that were watching over North Korea. All surveillance cameras were taken down along with all of the other surveillance equipment. The tension rises as State Department acting spokesman Robert Wood stated that the U.S. has warned the North Koreans that they would face consequences for kicking inspectors out. Wood said that they are working his partners, both on the Security Council and outside of the Security Council to bring consequences to North Korea's action.

He also stated that the U.S. proposed ideas of additional sanctions. The U.S. would cut off all exports of any goods that could support North Korea's nuclear program. Wood stated that the committee will have further meetings on the list of good and entities to be sanctioned. If the committee cannot come to an agreement by April 24, the U.N. Security Council will take over the case. North Korea said that it will reactivate all of its nuclear plants and continue with reprocessing spent fuel. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton refered North Korea's move "an unnecessary response to the legitimate statement put out of concern by the U.N. Security Council."

In addition to the expelling of the IAEA inspectors, Pyongyang left the six-party talks focusing on nuclear programs and said that it would continue to expand its nuclear self-defense capabilities. The six-party talks were comprised of China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. The North Korean Foreign Ministry called the U.N. condemnation of its missile launch on April 5th as a gross interference on North Korea's authority. The North Korean government is still insisting that the launch was peaceful launch of a satellite into orbit.

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Even though the satellite launch had been confirmed as a failure, this provocative act could have been a long-range missle that could have reached the U.S. easily. I do not think it is wise for North Korea to start these kind of rash and reckless provocations. It is obvious President Obama and North Korean officials' first meeting was not the most friendly one. The United States is being threatened and provoked constantly, and these times could become a powerder keg that could explode anytime in the future. Kim Jung Il should stop his selfish acts and start thinking about the future of his country. The North Korean citizens are living in such dismal living conditions that they try to escape to the South under the extremely high threat of getting shot down by the border patrols.