Astronauts plucks Hubble Space Telescope from orbit

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is seen in this March 9, 2002 NASA file photo with the Earth as a backdrop. REUTERS/NASA By Irene Klotz

HOUSTON - Space shuttle astronauts plucked the Hubble Space Telescope from orbit on Wednesday and tucked the observatory into their ship's cargo bay for a long-overdue overhaul.

Speeding through space, commander Scott Altman maneuvered the shuttle Atlantis to within about 35 feet of the telescope as crewmate Megan McArthur used the ship's robot arm to latch on to the telescope at 1:14 p.m. EDT (1714 GMT) as the spacecraft soared far above Australia.

"Houston, Atlantis. Hubble has arrived onboard Atlantis," Altman radioed to Mission Control.

NASA last visited Hubble in 2002 and had planned to return for a fifth servicing call a couple of years later, but the destruction of the shuttle Columbia as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere in 2003 derailed those plans.

The mission was restored after engineers came up with a rescue plan in case Atlantis suffered damage during launch like that blamed for the Columbia disaster, which killed its seven crew members.

A second shuttle is poised for liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in case the astronauts need another ride home, as Atlantis is flying too far from the International Space Station for the crew to seek refuge there in case of an emergency.

Atlantis sustained no serious damage during its launch on Monday. Scratches across four heat shield tiles on the right wing that were discovered during an in-flight inspection on Tuesday are not considered a danger.

NASA said no additional inspections of the area would be needed, freeing the seven-member Atlantis crew to focus on the primary goal of their mission -- fixing up Hubble.

Three of the telescope's five science instruments are broken and it is using its last set of positioning gyroscopes, a backup computer for formatting data to relay to the ground and 19-year-old batteries that can only hold half a charge.

Without an upgrade, NASA would be hard-pressed to justify continuing telescope operations, project scientist David Leckrone said.

Astronauts plan five consecutive days of spacewalks to outfit Hubble with new imagers and other gear and to fix two of its broken cameras. Telescope operators also hope to resurrect an infrared camera after Hubble is released back into orbit.

If the refurbishments are successful, Hubble should be back in service in two to three months with an observation program even more ambitious than what it has accomplished since its debut in 1990.

Hubble has provided evidence of how planets are formed and contributed to the still-unexplained realization that the universe is expanding at an increasingly faster rate.

It also gave astronomers a front-row seat for watching a comet smash into Jupiter and made the first measurements of gases in the atmosphere of a planet in another solar system.

NASA hopes the improvements will keep Hubble operational until at least 2014 so it can work in tandem with its replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope.

The first spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday.

© REUTERS 2009

Ganesan Says he is the legitimate Speaker

Andrew Ong | May 13, 09 5:55pm

In a proceeding that would have put wrestling bouts to shame, MIC's R Ganesan was elected as the new speaker for the Perak state legislative assembly. MCPX At a press conference in Ipoh today, the 57-year-old former state assemblyperson explained why he is the legitimate speaker and sheds a little light on the dark episode of May 7, when the state assembly convened for the first time since Barisan Nasional seized control of the state. According to him, Pakatan Rakyat Speaker V Sivakumar, who was literally dragged out of the House, could not chair the motion to sack him (Sivakumar) because he was an interested party. "We brought a motion to remove him. When we do that, he cannot table the motion because he is an interested party. It is against the rules of natural justice," he said. Ganesan said deputy speaker Hee Yit Fong then took over the proceedings from Sivakumar and allowed the motion moved by BN Menteri Besar Zambry Abdul Kadir to be passed, based on Article 36A of the state constitution. "Naturally, the deputy speaker has to take the place of the speaker. This has been done correctly," he said, adding that the motion was seconded by Hamidah Osman (Sungai Rapat) and supported by 29 state assemblypersons. This was followed by the taking of oath and donning of the speaker's regalia, said the two-term (1999-2008) Sungkai assemblyperson. "So, 31 (state assemblypersons) elected me. How can you say I'm not the legitimate speaker? It was legally done. I have no doubts about it," said the lawyer by training. 'Sivakumar ignored my warnings' On Sivakumar's unceremonious ejection, Ganesan said he sought the help of the police to remove the Pakatan speaker after he refused to budge from the coveted seat. He said that he had given Sivakumar ample warning before asking the sargent-at-arms to take action. But when the sargent-at-arms was unable to break the Pakatan state reps' human shield around Sivakumar, the police were called after Ganesan invoked his "residual powers" under Standing Order 90. "Strangers can be allowed in the house. The Standing Orders (even) allow me let them speak during debates," he said.

Khir Toyo faces suspension

By V Shankar Ganesh

SHAH ALAM, Tues:

Former Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir Toyo may be suspended without pay as a state assemblymen for breaking the assembly’s rules.

Selangor Assembly Speaker Teng Chang Khim said this was one of the options available to the Privilege Committee after Dr Khir and four other Barisan Nasional assemblymen were hauled up for allegedly criticising the assembly’s integrity.

Dr Khir and the assemblymen faced the committee for about 30 minutes this morning to answer the charges against them.

The other assemblymen are Datuk Warno Dogol ( Sabak), Mohd Isa Abu Kasim (Batang Kali), Datuk Marsum Paing (Dengkil) and Datuk Mohamed Idris Abu Bakar (Hulu Bernam).

The five came with a team of seven lawyers, who were allowed to accompany them in the closed-door hearing.
However, all five members of the committee were tight-lipped about what transpired during the hearing, saying it was an offence to reveal anything about the deliberations.

Among the charges Dr Khir faced are disrespecting the Select Committee on Competency, Accountability and Transparency by not attending its hearing and questioning its validity.

The other assemblymen are accused of issuing statements criticising the committee.

Teng said the committee would now deliberate on the matter and a decision would be reached by next Tuesday, and it would be tabled for approval in the next State assembly sitting.

He said among the punishments that can be meted out if they were found guilty were suspension without pay, a warning or asking them to apologise to the House.

He said the charges against the five were brought to the committee under Section 70 of the Standing Orders.

On whether there was a conflict of interest as he sat in both committees, Teng said as the Speaker, he had been vested with a lot of power.

“I can punish anyone. I can be the complainant, the prosecutor and also the judge in this case. All this is allowed according to the law.”

However, he said they could appeal any decision by moving a motion for review in the assembly and the Speaker had to allow it.

Teng said a police report had also been lodged against Dr Khir wife, Datin Seri Zaharah Kechik for not attending the committee’s hearing.

He said police can act against her under the Contempt of House Enactment 2008, which provides a jail sentence up to three years or RM10,000 fine.

Warno Dogol is one of two BN lawmakers in the privilege committee, but he will not be allowed to exercise his right to vote in this case.
The other is Kuala Kubu Baharu assemblyman Wong Koon Mun.

The other members are speaker Teng Chang Khim, deputy speaker Haniza Mohamed Talha, Subang Jaya assemblyman Hannah Yeoh, Rawang assemblyman Gan Peh Nei and Bangi Assemblyman Dr Shafie Abu Bakar.

Perak MB claims unfair reporting by media

TAIPING, Sun:

Perak Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir today expressed regret over what he claimed as unfair reporting by some local media with regard to the ruckus at the Perak State Assembly sitting on Thursday.

"Reports and pictures published in the media did not portray who actually started the fiasco...I urge the media to be objective and fair in their reporting.

"Some pictures published, portrayed as if Barisan Nasional (BN) was responsible to start the ruckus...if the media did not support BN, it is okay but reports must be fair. We are not happy with reports of some media," he told reporters after a meet-the-people session at Changkat Jering here today.

Dr Zambry said the fiasco only started when the opposition crossed over to the section where BN representatives were seated, when he tabled a motion.

"Who started the ruckus?...it was they (opposition) who initially attacked us and that was an irresponsible and uncivilized action," he said.
The action of the opposition to grab and change the names of seats that were supposed to be for the us (BN) was also not reported, he said.

Asked if any action would be taken against such media, Dr Zambry said the Perak state government respected press freedom and would not restrict or bar any media.

"We are not going to impose any restriction like what Nizar (former Perak MB) did to Utusan Malaysia or what happened in Penang when the New Straits Times was barred," he said.

The fiasco caused the first session of the second term of the assembly which was opened by the Regent of Perak, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, to be delayed by six hours.

The commotion started with a motion to remove V. Sivakumar, from DAP, as State Assembly Speaker, and the appointment of Datuk R. Ganesan, from MIC, as the new Speaker. - Bernama

Ministry awaiting ILO's risk assessment report on Retrenchment Fund

KUALA LUMPUR, May 9 (Bernama) -- The setting up of the Retrenched Workers Fund will be able to be realised after the International Labour Organisation (ILO) completes its risk assessment report on it by the end of this year, said Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam.

He said once the assessment report was completed, his ministry would forward a proposal on the fund to the Cabinet for its further action.

"The ministry asked the ILO, which has the actuarial experts on this, to conduct a study based on the situation in our country and recommend a suitable system for the fund.

"We are open on this, if what the ILO suggests meets our needs and can be implemented, the government is willing to go ahead with it," he told reporters after attending the Titiwangsa MIC's annual delegates meeting here today.

He said this when asked to comment on the announcement by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak recently that the government would be adopting two specific measures for the benefit of workers as a result of the global economic crisis.

They were the setting up of the Retrenched Workers Fund to assist workers that were laid off and as a pension scheme for private sector workers for social security during their old age.

One the pension scheme, Subramaniam said his ministry was holding discussions with the relevant parties to realise it.

On other matters, he said he welcomed the announcement by Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein yesterday that 13 Internal Security Act detainees, including three members of the outlawed Hindu Rights Action Force, would be released soon.

A new pecking order in Europe's balance of economic power but don't expect it to last for long

FOR years leaders in continental Europe have been told by the Americans, the British and even this newspaper that their economies are sclerotic, overregulated and too state-dominated, and that to prosper in true Anglo-Saxon style they need a dose of free-market reform. But the global economic meltdown has given them the satisfying triple whammy of exposing the risks in deregulation, giving the state a more important role and (best of all) laying low les Anglo-Saxons.

At the April G20 summit in London, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel stood shoulder-to-shoulder to insist pointedly that this recession was not of their making. Ms Merkel has never been a particular fan of Wall Street. But the rhetorical lead has been grabbed by Mr Sarkozy. The man who once wanted to make Paris more like London now declares laissez-faire a broken system. Jean-Baptiste Colbert once again reigns in Paris. Rather than challenge dirigisme, the British and Americans are busy following it: Gordon Brown is ushering in new financial rules and higher taxes, and Barack Obama is suggesting that America could copy some things from France, to the consternation of his more conservative countrymen. Indeed, a new European pecking order has emerged, with statist France on top, corporatist Germany in the middle and poor old liberal Britain floored.

A cockpit of competing capitalisms

It is easy to dismiss this as political opportunism. But behind it sits a big debate not only about the direction of the European Union, the world’s biggest economic unit, but also about what sort of economy works best in the modern world. Thirty years after Thatcherism began to work its cruel magic in Britain (see article), continental Europe still tends to favour a larger state, higher taxes, heavier regulation of product and labour markets and a more generous social safety-net than freer-market sorts like the Iron Lady would tolerate. So what is the evidence for the continental model being better?

The continental countries certainly have not escaped the recession: France may be doing a bit better than the world’s other big rich economies this year, but Germany, dragged down by its exporting industries, is doing significantly worse. Yet Mr Obama is right to admit that in some ways continental Europe has coped well. Tough job-protection laws have slowed the rise in unemployment. Generous welfare states have protected those who are always the first to suffer in a downturn from an immediate sharp drop in their incomes and acted as part of the “automatic stabilisers” that expand budget deficits when consumer spending shrinks. In Britain, and to an even greater extent in America, people have felt more exposed.

The downturn has also confirmed that the continental model has some strengths. France has a comparatively efficient public sector, thanks in part to years of investment in better roads, more high-speed trains, nuclear energy and even the restoration of old cathedrals (see article). Nor is it just a matter of pumping in ever more taxpayers’ cash. By any measure France’s health system delivers better value for money than America’s costlier one. Germany has not just looked after its public finances more prudently than others; its export-driven model has forced its companies to hold down costs, making them competitive not only in Europe but also globally. By design as well as luck, much of continental Europe avoided the debt-fuelled housing bubbles that popped spectacularly in Britain and America (though Spain did not, see article).

But will it last? The strengths that have made parts of continental Europe relatively resilient in recession could quickly emerge as weaknesses in a recovery. For there is a price to pay for more security and greater job protection: a slowness to adjust and innovate that means, in the long run, less growth. The rules against firing that stave off sharp rises in unemployment may mean that fewer jobs are created in new industries. Those generous welfare states that preserve people’s incomes tend to blunt incentives to take new work. That large state, which helps to sustain demand in hard times, becomes a drag on dynamic new firms when growth resumes. The latest forecasts are that the United States and Britain could rebound from recession faster than most of continental Europe.

Individual countries have specific failings of their own. Even if it did everything else right, Germany’s overreliance on exports at the expense of consumer spending has proved a grave weakness in a downturn (see article); its banks also look weak. The rate of youth unemployment in France is over 20% and it can be twice as high in the notorious banlieues where Muslim populations are concentrated. Italy and Spain have seen sharp rises in unit labour costs and their labour-productivity growth has stalled or gone into reverse. It may not be long before the fickle Mr Sarkozy is re-reading his Adam Smith.

Not what you aim for, but how you do it

If there is to be an argument about which model is best, then this newspaper stands firmly on the side of the liberal Anglo-Saxon model—not least because it leaves more power in the hands of individuals rather than the state. But the truth is that the governments on both sides of the intellectual divide could go a long way to making their models work better, without changing their underlying beliefs.

On the continental side, there is nothing especially socially cohesive about labour laws that favour insiders over outsiders, or rules that make the costs of starting a business excessive. Even Colbert might admit that Europe’s tax burdens are too onerous today, particularly since they are likely to have to rise in the future to meet the looming cost of the continent’s rapidly ageing populations.

For the liberals, even if the cycle swings back in their direction, the financial crisis and the recession have shown up defects in the way they too implemented their model. Getting regulation right matters as much as freeing up markets; an efficient public sector may count as much as an efficient private one; public investment in transport, schools and health care, done well, can pay dividends. The pecking order may change, but pragmatism and efficiency will always count.The Economist

European Champions League Final - its Barcelona vs Man United

LONDON (AP): Barcelona is out to do much more than just take the Champions League title away from Manchester United when they meet in the final in Rome.

Pep Guardiola's team wants to prove itself the best and most entertaining side in the world.

After United knocked out Arsenal on Tuesday and Barcelona eliminated Chelsea on Wednesday, the two European powerhouses will square off on May 27 in the matchup fans across the continent have looked forward to all season.

While United is trying to hold on to the title it won in Moscow last year, Barcelona is chasing its third title and hoping to end the English Premier League's recent dominance in European football's most prestigious competition.

Both teams also look set to win their domestic leagues, with United three points ahead in the Premier League with a game in hand, and Barcelona seven in front in La Liga.

But the statistics aren't the most important thing in this final.

It is a meeting of perhaps the two most entertaining sides in Europe, both of them with big-name forwards who enjoy taking opponents apart with their imaginative interpassing.

"It's great to be playing against such a top side as Manchester United," Guardiola said after a dramatic 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge put his team through on away goals.

Andres Iniesta equalized in the third minute of injury time after Michael Essien's ninth-minute strike threatened to put Chelsea through.

United manager Alex Ferguson has to decide which of his three main strikers - Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov and Carlos Tevez - to leave on the bench, with Cristiano Ronaldo also attacking from the wings.

Guardiola usually sends his trio of strikers - Lionel Messi, Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto'o - out together, and they have rewarded him with a combined 69 league goals out of a total of 100. That century was reached on Saturday with a spectacular 6-2 victory at Real Madrid, Barcelona's main rival.

The likelihood of all these attacking stars playing at Rome's Olympic Stadium suggests the game could be one of the best in the 53-year history of the competition.

Behind these forwards are some of the best midfielders, too.

United will be able to field veterans Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, while Barca has Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta, two of the stars of Spain's impressive triumph at last year's European Championship.

Barcelona reached its sixth final despite the absence of three defenders on Wednesday through injury or suspension. Defender Eric Abidal was sent off against Chelsea on Wednesday and will be suspended for the final as will Daniel Alves, who picked up a second yellow card in the competition. But Guardiola will have Carles Puyol back after serving a ban.

United meanwhile, has set some impressive defensive records this season. United's center back pairing of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic made huge contributions to goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar going a British record 1,311 minutes without conceding a goal in the league.

Giggs gets the chance to be on the winning side for the third time, having also played in the 1999 and 2008 finals. Scholes was suspended for the '99 victory over Bayern Munich in Barcelona but played in last year's win over Chelsea.

"It's not a nice feeling when you have to sit there and watch the final. Obviously if you're team is in the final, you want to be involved," said Scholes, who has just gone past 600 appearances for the Reds. "It's the biggest game of your life, the European Cup final, everyone wants to be playing and it's desperately disappointing if you can't be."

United midfielder Darren Fletcher will get that experience this time, after being harshly sent off for bringing down Arsenal's Cesc Fabregas in the quarterfinal second leg with his team already coasting at 3-0 up.

Israel and the Palestinians

America and Israel lay the ground for forthcoming talks

AP

"YOU’RE not going to like my saying this," said Joseph Biden, America’s vice-president, addressing members of AIPAC, a powerful pro-Israel lobby group, at its convention in Washington, DC, on Tuesday May 5th. Mr Biden was probably right. He went on to ask of Israel that it should "not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement…and access to economic opportunity."

The audience presumably liked it a bit better when the vice-president stressed that the Palestinian Authority “must combat terror and incitement against Israel.” He went on to reassure his audience that "With all the change you will hear about, there is one enduring, essential principle that will not change, and that is our commitment to the peace and security of the state of Israel."

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, also seemed prepared for some change. On Monday he told the convention by video-link from Israel that he was "prepared to resume peace negotiations [with the Palestinians] without any delay and without any preconditions—the sooner the better." He said he was proposing "a fresh approach…a triple track towards peace between Israel and the Palestinians—a political track, a security track, an economic track."

The Obama administration and the Netanyahu government, both relatively new in office, have been batting carefully nuanced statements at each other in advance of an important first meeting between the two leaders in Washington later this month. Officials and commentators in both countries are meticulously parsing the volleys of words to see if they portend conflict or accommodation between the Jewish state and its superpower patron.

The American statements, Mr Biden's among them, reiterate America's commitment to the “two-state” solution between Israelis and Palestinians. The Israeli pronouncements, including Mr Netanyahu's to AIPAC, stop short of that formula, even though it was the bedrock of the previous Israeli government's policy towards the Palestinians.

Both sides focus on Iran's nuclear ambitions and stress the dangers they pose to Israel and to other regional powers, especially key American allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. A linkage between the two issues, Palestine and Iran, is becoming common currency in diplomacy in the Middle East. But some observers discern potential discord between America and Israel over the order of the two linked issues. Is it to be progress on Palestine that will help American diplomatic efforts to end Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb? Or will American success in blunting the Iranian threat facilitate Israeli concessions towards the Palestinians?

A forthright presentation of American thinking came from Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief of staff. He reportedly said that America’s ability to stand up to Iran depended on its ability to achieve progress on the Palestinian front. Mr Emanuel spoke on Sunday to a closed meeting of some 300 top AIPAC contributors and officials. In a separate meeting with American Jewish leaders last month Mr Emanuel was reported to have said that the administration was determined to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians based on the two-state solution during its first term, regardless of who was prime minister in Jerusalem.

Mr Obama’s national security adviser, General James Jones, is said to have told an EU foreign minister recently that the administration would be "more forceful toward Israel than we have been under [George] Bush.” General Jones also said, according to a diplomatic report leaked in the Israeli press, that "The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestine question. We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus."

On the other side, Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, suggested in Rome on Monday that America and its allies have set a three-month deadline in the effort to open up a dialogue with Teheran. If after three months there are no results, he said, "practical steps" should be taken. In a more placatory vein, Israel's president, Shimon Peres, sought to assure Mr Obama that Mr Netanyahu wanted to make his mark in history as a peacemaker. In a departure from the largely ceremonial role of president, the elder statesman of Israeli politics is trying to smooth possible friction between the two governments. "Netanyahu says he doesn't want to rule over the Palestinians," he pointed out to reporters in Washington. The Economist

Ulama Pas dibidas kerana tidak faham konsep sebenar kepimpinan ulama

RANTAU PANJANG 1 Mei — Pengarah Pilihan Raya PAS Kelantan Abdul Fatah Harun hari ini membidas sesetengah pemimpin ulama yang tidak memahami konsep sebenar kepimpinan ulama bagi mewujudkan barisan kepimpinan yang mantap.

Kepimpinan ulama yang sebenarnya ialah kombinasi antara kalangan ulama dengan profesional bagi memantapkan masa depan parti, katanya ketika diminta mengulas kenyataan Ketua Dewan Ulama PAS Pusat, Datuk Mohamad Daud yang mahukan jawatan Presiden dan Timbalan Presiden PAS diberi kepada golongan ulama bagi memastikan kesinambungan masa depan parti.

Beliau berpendapat saranan Mohamad itu tidak berbangkit kerana kombinasi antara dua golongan itu penting jika PAS mahu terus diterima oleh semua peringkat pengikut sepanjang masa.

Sehubungan itu beliau mahu pemimpin terbabit diberi pendedahan mengenai konsep itu seperti yang diputuskan oleh Dewan Pemuda PAS pada muktamar agung parti 20 tahun lalu, di Bukit Mertajam.

“Saya bimbang jika konsep kepimpinan ulama ini tidak difahami, sesetengah ahli PAS mahu PAS hanya dimonopoli oleh golongan ulama,” katanya kepada Bernama di sini, hari ini.

Semalam Mohamad dilaporkan berkata, kepimpinan tertinggi PAS perlu diterajui golongan ulama.

“Orang nombor satu (presiden) dan nombor dua (timbalan presiden) mesti ulama. Sebab kalau orang nombor satu ada tugasan lain, seperti cuti, sakit dan sebagainya, tugasnya mesti diambil oleh orang nombor dua,” kata Mohamad. — Bernama

The Pandemic Threat

It’s deadly serious; so even if the current threat fades, the world needs to be better armed

Illustration by KAL

IT IS said that no battle-plan survives contact with the enemy. This was certainly true of the plan drawn up over the past few years to combat an influenza pandemic. The generals of global health assumed that the enemy would be avian flu, probably passed from hens to humans, and that it would strike first in southern China or South-East Asia. In fact, the flu started in an unknown pig, and the attack came in Mexico, not Asia.

The hens, though, deserve some credit. The world has not had a pandemic (a global epidemic) of influenza since 1968. Four decades are long enough to forget that something is dangerous, and people might have done so had they not spent the past ten years considering the possibility that a form of bird flu which emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 might be one mutation away from going worldwide.

The new epidemic (see article) was raised on April 29th to just one notch below the level of a certified pandemic by the World Health Organisation. In an effort to halt the spread of the disease, Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, has announced that non-essential services should close down between May 1st and 5th, and people should stay at home. Part of the reason for worry is that, unlike ordinary flu, which mostly carries off the old, the victims of this disease are mostly young and otherwise healthy.

Still, this epidemic has not actually killed many people yet. That there have been a mere handful of confirmed deaths is probably the result of a lack of proper tests. But even if all the possibles are counted in, a couple of hundred fatalities cannot compare with the 30,000 deaths caused in America each year by seasonal influenza. So how scared should we be?

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

As far as this epidemic is concerned, it’s too early to tell. One unknown is how widespread the virus is in Mexico. If it is ubiquitous, and had not been noticed earlier because it emerged during the normal flu season, then this epidemic may turn out to be insignificant, at least to start with. No flu death is welcome, but in this case the new disease might not increase the immediate burden greatly. But if the new strain is relatively rare, or what is being seen now is a more dangerous mutation of what had once been a mild virus, then the proportion of infected people dying may already be high. The death-toll, then, will rise sharply as the disease spreads.

Either way, the authorities were right to hit red alert. Influenza pandemics seem to strike every few decades and to kill by the million—at least 1m in 1968; perhaps 100m in the “Spanish” flu of 1918-19. And even those that start mild can turn dangerous. That is because new viral diseases generally happen when a virus mutates in a way that allows it to jump species, and then continues to evolve to exploit its new host. If that evolution makes the virus more virulent, so much the worse for the host. HIV, the AIDS-causing virus, lived happily and benignly in chimpanzees before it became a scourge of people. In Mexico, the early indications are that two pig viruses that can infect people but rarely pass from person to person recombined with each other to create a virus which does so easily.

Changes in virulence have certainly happened before in influenza epidemics, which have struck in successive waves of different severity. The message is that it makes sense to put money and effort into containing the new infection even if it does turn out to be relatively harmless today. The more people who have the virus, the more virus particles there are for that one, fatal mutation to appear in.

Resistance is another reason to try to contain an epidemic early. New antiviral drugs that were not around during past epidemics seem to be effective against the current outbreak. But natural selection is a powerful force, and if the spread of the disease means they have to be used widely, a resistant strain of the virus could easily evolve.

Don’t wait till winter

Now is the time to prepare for the worst. Flu—including pandemic flu—tends to be seasonal. The infection will probably tail off in the north over the next few months and head south as winter gets a grip on the Earth’s less populated hemisphere. It would make sense, therefore, to put the antiviral factories on overtime immediately, and try to develop, manufacture and distribute a vaccine.

Crash vaccine programmes pose their own risks. In 1976 flu vaccines killed a lot of people in America. But the growth of biotechnology means there are new ways of making vaccines and new types of vaccine to make. Mostly, these have been aimed at the threat of bird flu. But laboratories will already be clearing the decks to receive their first samples of the new swine flu, and getting to work on countermeasures.

And there is one further lesson. The system of checking for new diseases also needs to be improved. Partly because everyone was looking at Asia, no one was concentrating on Mexico. But as genetic sequencing becomes cheap and routine, it ought to be possible to pick dangerous mutations up quickly.

That would mean sending samples from doctors’ surgeries to a central laboratory dedicated to sequencing, even when nothing strange was suspected. And that would require organisation and money. Not every person with a sniffle need be tested—only a small, representative sample. But if this had happened in Mexico over the past few months, the generals of global health would have seen that something was coming down from the hills and they could have mobilised sooner.

Active caution, then, is what is called for. The world’s policymakers, most of whom live in the northern hemisphere, should not be fooled into thinking the new virus is going away for long, even if it declines over the next few months. Instead, as in any phoney war, they should use the time they have been granted to reinforce the world’s defences by stocking up with antiviral medicine and making vaccines. They should also remember that, even if this flu turns out to be less frightening than feared, it is only a matter of time before a deadlier one comes along. A drill today will help to spare millions of lives in the future.

Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.