Latest News Clips 2013.04.29

1.      WHO: H7N9 virus 'one of the most lethal so far' CNN    April 26, 2013

Hong Kong (CNN) -- On the same day yet another death was reported in China's bird flu outbreak, the World Health Organization warned the H7N9 virus was one of the most lethal that doctors and medical investigators had faced in recent years.

"This is an unusually dangerous virus for humans," Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health, security and the environment told a news conference in Beijing Wednesday.

"We think this virus is more easily transmitted from poultry to humans than H5N1," he added, referring to the bird flu outbreak between 2004 and 2007 that claimed 332 lives.

"This is definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses that we have seen so far."

As investigations continue into the possible sources of infection, Fukuda warned that authorities were still struggling to understand the virus. The WHO said China must brace for continued infections.

Fukuda's warning came as Taiwanese health authorities said they've confirmed the first human case of H7N9 in Taiwan -- one they said was imported from China.

A 53-year-old Taiwanese man who worked in eastern China was confirmed to have H7N9 on Wednesday, the Taiwanese Centers for Disease Control said. His condition was described to be severe.

He had been traveling back and forth regularly between China's Jingsu province and Taiwan, health officials said.

"According to the case, he had not been exposed to birds and poultry during his stay in Suzhou (in Jingsu province) and had not consumed undercooked poultry or eggs," the Taiwanese CDC said.

2.      Zao Wou-ki: Painting beyond words (1920-2013) CNN   April 12, 2013

Editor's note: Julia Grimes is a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese modern and contemporary art history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her dissertation examines the early artistic career of Zao Wou-ki.

(CNN) -- The Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-ki once told me that painting expresses the thoughts we struggle to put into words. Faced with this challenge, "It's easier to learn English!" he joked, his wit shining through, even though Alzheimer's disease had already begun its slow, relentless onslaught on his mind.

Zao, widely regarded as one of the foremost Chinese contemporary painters of the 20th century, passed away at his home in Switzerland on Tuesday at the age of 93.

Born in Beijing in 1920, he formed part of the second generation of Chinese artists to turn westward in their search for inspiration. Encouraged by the French-educated Chinese artist Lin Fengmian, his teacher at the prestigious Hangzhou National College of Art (today the China Academy of Art), he relocated to Paris in 1948. Although he did not know it at the time, the move would be permanent, due in part to the rapidly changing political situation in China.

Apart from brief trips abroad, Zao would remain in France until the year before his death, one of the few Chinese artists from his generation to emigrate to Europe. Embraced by France, he was elected to the prestigious Academie des Beaux Arts society in 2002 and received the Legion of Honor in 2006 from then-president Jacques Chirac.

For Zao and his contemporaries, Paris represented the source of modern art. Living there meant direct access to the paintings that he had until then only encountered as black-and-white reproductions in art magazines. An oil painter by vocation, he immersed himself in the riches that surrounded him -- heading directly to the Louvre on the very day he arrived in the city.

Meanwhile, with the assistance of his friend and mentor, noted poet and painter Henri Michaux, and blessed with the warm charm and wit that would impress me decades later, Zao cultivated an extensive circle of fellow artists and cultural figures. In just a few years, he established himself as an integral member of the postwar French art world.

3.      If Syria Is Using Sarin, Obama Must Act

The Bloomberg   2013.04.25

Well, Bashar, now you’ve done it. We’ve seen that killing tens of thousands of your fellow Syrians with conventional weapons is more or less acceptable to the civilized world, as evidenced by the fact that the civilized world hasn’t stopped you from killing tens of thousands of your fellow Syrians with conventional weapons.

But now, if U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is to be believed -- and Hagel isn’t a man looking for excuses to get entangled in theMiddle East -- you have apparently used chemical weapons (the nerve agent sarin, to be specific) on civilians.

If you recall, President Barack Obama drew a “red line” for you: no use of chemical weapons in your brutal attempt to put down the uprising against your regime. Any use of such weapons (even any “moving around” of such weapons) would “change my calculus,” Obama said, “change my equation.” In other words, welcome to the day in which the calculus might just be changing.

Hagel, speaking to reporters in Abu Dhabi, said that U.S. intelligence has come to believe -- like the Israelis, the French and the Britishbefore them -- that President Bashar al- Assad’s regime seems to have used sarin “on a small scale.”

I spoke with Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who said that he thinks the Obama administration is hesitant to face the truth that the Assad regime has already used these sorts of weapons. “Clearly the administration doesn’t want to see this,” he said. “We have lost the confidence of the Arab League and the Syrian opposition because of our inaction.” Rogers said he was convinced at least a month ago that Syria had used a small quantity of chemical weapons against civilians.

Before we get to the meaning and potential consequences of this horrifying news, a brief primer on sarin, which was invented in Nazi-eraGermany for use as a pesticide, and which was most famously used in the Tokyo subway attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in 1995 and against Kurdish Iraqis during Saddam Hussein’s genocide campaign.

Convulsions, Death

Exposure to sarin gas, even in small doses, will cause victims to experience vomiting, diarrhea, an increased heart rate, eye pain and drooling. In larger amounts, the exposure can cause convulsions, paralysis, breathing difficulty and, within a short time, death. Sarin stops the body from controlling muscle and gland functions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and this causes muscles to twitch and breathing to become faster and irregular. Eventually, the body is overwhelmed, and breathing stops. On a single day in 1988, in a single town, Saddam’s forces killed some 5,000 Iraqi Kurds using a combination of mustard gas, sarin, VX and tabun.

Assad has committed many terrible crimes against his people, but if these latest reports are confirmed, he will have entered into the pantheon of the modern era’s worst war criminals, just as Saddam did in 1988. Back then, Saddam was considered an ally by the U.S. (he was in the midst of a war with Iran). So, to the everlasting shame of President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. did nothing to stop his genocide.

4.      The Beauty Market Resists Recession

The New York Times    2013.04.26

LONDON — If you’re of a sensitive disposition, turn away now. Today we’re looking at the phenomenon of fish pedicures.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, these are treatments increasingly available at beauty salons in which clients voluntarily plunge their feet into tanks of tiny fish to have them nibble off the dead skin.

The procedure may be at the yucky end of the eternal quest for youth and beauty, but it has caught on in Europe in recent years, thanks to celebrity endorsements and media coverage.

Now, France’s environmental safety agency, Anses, has issued a warning that, while being chewed by fish might be good for your feet, it could also be bad for your health.

There was a potential risk of contamination from the transmission of human or fish pathogens, according to a report this week, although the agency acknowledged it had no documented cases of infection.

Noting that the treatment, banned in a number of U.S. states but offered by several hundred spas in France, was largely unregulated, it called for more studies to determine the health risks.

The French report focused on the toothless garra rufa, the fish of choice in a procedure imported from Asia. The use of other toothed varieties potentially posed an even greater threat, the agency warned.

The boom in the fishy foot fad appears to provide further evidence that, in a period of much-publicized belt-tightening, European consumers are not prepared to scrimp on their beauty treatments.

In an article this week on the growing popularity of Botox and dermal filler treatments, Fergus Walsh, the BBC’s medical correspondent, said, “The cosmetic procedures industry is booming,”
which, he continued, “in the teeth of a recession it is all the more astonishing.”