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Readers in Mexico have been emailing the BBC describing the sense of fear gripping the country as a result of a flu virus outbreak, which has so far claimed up to 60 lives. The World Health Organization says the virus has the potential to become a pandemic. Read a selection of BBC readers' comments below. I work as a resident doctor in one of the biggest hospitals in Mexico City and sadly, the situation is far from "under control". As a doctor, I realise that the media does not report the truth. Authorities distributed vaccines among all the medical personnel...

Mexico City cancels all public events to fight flu

Fear, anger and fatalism over swine flu in Mexico By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press Writer 7 mins ago MEXICO CITY – The schools and museums are closed. Sold-out games between Mexico's most popular soccer teams are being played in empty stadiums. Health workers are ordering sickly passengers off subways and buses. And while bars and nightclubs filled up as usual, even some teenagers were dancing with surgical masks on.

Travel advisory warns of severe respiratory illness in Mexico 20 die from severe respiratory illness in Mexico Canadians who have recently returned from Mexico should be on alert for flu-like symptoms that could be connected to a severe respiratory illness, federal health officials said Thursday in issuing a travel advisory. A severe respiratory illness appears to have infected 137 people in south and central areas of Mexico, with cases concentrated in Mexico City and three other areas, including 20 deaths, the Public Health Agency of Canada said. In the United States, health officials in Texas and California were scrambling this...

MEXICO CITY – Iran is exploring ways to expand anemic trade with Mexico as part of stepped up efforts to deepen ties with Latin America, a top Iranian diplomat said Thursday. Annual trade between Mexico and Iran is a mere $50 million, compared to $2 billion with Brazil, said Ali Reza Salari, Iran's deputy foreign minister for the Americas. "We are here to investigate, why so low?" Reza Salari told reporters in Mexico City, where he was to meet with diplomats and business leaders. "With Mexico, there is absolutely no political problem between us. No cultural problems. It shows we...

A drug gang kidnapped and killed six people near a town in the US-Mexican border region, prompting a series of gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead. The violence on Tuesday started when gunmen kidnapped nine alleged members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and later executed six of them along the PanAmerican highway outside of the town, 130km south of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua State. Assailants later released three of the men, although their whereabouts was not immediately known, Torres...

HO CHI MINH COMES TO MEXICO CITY: A STATUE SPEAKS A WARNING TO THE UNITED STATES February 9, 2009 International News Analysis Today By Toby Westerman The dedication of a statue to Vietnamese communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh in Mexico City is a profound warning to the United States concerning growing power and influence of leftist tyranny. The U.S. centralized media has ignored this event, to its disgrace and the peril of all those who love freedom. On January 17, 2008 Marcelo Ebrard, mayor of Mexico City, dedicated a statue of Ho during ceremonies attended by Vietnam's ambassador to...

A leader in the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has declared that the breakdown of traditional families, far from being a “crisis,” is actually a triumph for human rights. Speaking at a colloquium held last month at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy.” "In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes mean that the family is in crisis," he said. "In crisis? More than a crisis, we are in the...

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slum is far from America but not from America's battle over abortion. Aid workers and experts say President Barack Obama's decision to allow aid money to flow again to international groups that offer abortion counseling will help restart programs desperately needed in Africa, the continent hardest hit by a so-called "gag rule."

.... as abortion rights go international, so does the anti-abortion backlash. The globalization of the abortion wars creates some of the same tensions—between universal human rights and community mores, between majority rule and the protection of individual liberty—as Roe v. Wade, on a larger scale. All over the world, in countries including Kenya, Poland, and Nicaragua, local anti-abortion movements (often working with American allies) rail against the meddling of powerful outsiders. In Poland, traditionalists who oppose abortion bemoan the loss of their country's Catholic values as it integrates into secular Europe. They speak about international human rights and the courts...

Dr. Alveda King, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks out about reversal of the "Mexico City policy," which occurred just days after Barack Obama became America's 44th president. The Mexico City policy, first enacted via executive order by then President Ronald Reagan, prohibited use of U.S. tax dollars to fund or promote abortions in foreign countries. Dr. King, a well-known pro-life activist and speaker, notes that President Obama reversed that policy last week, pouring several hundred-million dollars into foreign abortion programs. According to King, that policy reversal takes taxpayer dollars "that could be used for feeding...

January 29, 2009 Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/January/09-nsd-071.html Imprisoned Spy and His Son Indicted on Charges of Acting as Russian Agents and Money Laundering WASHINGTON -- A federal indictment was unsealed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon charging Harold James Nicholson, 58, of Sheridan, Ore., and Nathaniel James Nicholson, 24, of Eugene, Ore., with two counts of Conspiracy, one count of Acting as Agents of a Foreign Government, and four counts of Money Laundering. Both defendants are scheduled to appear today at 1:30 p.m. before U.S. Magistrate Janice M. Stewart for arraignment on...

Congressman Chris Smith was joined by Congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), in introducing H.R. 708, aimed at restoring the abortion-neutral Mexico City Policy. This 25-year old guideline establishes a wall of separation between abortion and family planning by ensuring that U.S. international family planning funds directed to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) could not be used to actively promote or perform abortion as a method of family planning. This bill would reverse one of the first acts of newly sworn-in President Barack Obama, who quietly issued an edict late Friday, Jan. 23, to allow...

Washington, DC -- On Wednesday, members of the U.S. Senate defeated an amendment sponsored by pro-life members to restore the Mexico City Policy that President Barack Obama rescinded last week. The policy prevents taxpayers from funding groups like Planned Parenthood that promote or perform abortions overseas.

NEW YORK, January 27, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) -  Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for Rabbinical Alliance of America, will be in Rome Thursday meeting with high ranking Vatican officials. While there he will express solidarity regarding the recent Vatican criticisms of US President Barack Obama and his executive order which has permitted US taxpayer funds to be given to organizations performing and lobbying for abortion internationally.  Levin will be representing over 800 Orthodox Jewish Rabbis who form the Rabbinical Alliance of America. His visit is being coordinated by the Rome office of Human Life International. Following Obama's overturning of the Mexico City...

BRAZILE: Two point six million Americans lost their jobs last year. Do we want this president to fail in trying to create or save 4 million jobs, do we want this president to fail in trying to prevent more people from losing their homes? No, we don't. We want this president to succeed. We want every president to succeed because we're Americans. BENNETT: It's rhetorical. If he's doing the wrong thing you don't root for him. If he's doing the right thing, sure. In general you want to give him a lot of room to move and Republicans don't have...

Well, that didn’t take long.  Only 72 hours after he took the oath of office, newly-minted President Barack Obama signed an executive order releasing federal funds to agencies that promote and provide abortion overseas.  Known as the “Mexico City Policy,” this has gone back and forth since Reagan instituted the original ban.  Bush I kept it in place.  Bill Clinton lifted it.  Bush II put it back into place.  Obama has lifted it again. Yes, I know everyone expected it.  I know the issue of abortion is sooooo last administration.  I know that nothing will take the bloom off of...

he U.N. family planning agency could see the United States pay at least 10 percent of its budget following U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to restore funding, the agency's head said on Tuesday. Obama announced the decision on Friday, reversing a policy of his predecessor George W. Bush, who banned U.S. government funding for family planning services by clinics or groups that offered abortion services or counseling in other countries. The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) says its does not promote or support abortion. But Bush ended funding for it in 2002, saying it supported a one-child-per-family policy in China that...

CBS and NBC Minimize Obama's Abortion Funding Order; ABC Highlights 'Brutal' Reaction from Religious ConservativesCatching up on an item from Friday night, the three broadcast evening newscasts aired virtually nothing on January 23 about President Obama’s executive order permitting federal funding of abortions, overturning orders signed by President Bush in his first week in office back in 2001. Both CBS and NBC’s White House reporters squeezed in a single sentence about Obama’s action during stories about the economic stimulus bill, while ABC’s World News said nothing about the orders on Friday.But on Sunday’s World News, ABC’s Dan Harris highlighted conservative...

January 25, 2009 Vatican attacks US abortion move Mr Obama lifted the controversial funding ban in his first week in office The Vatican has condemned President Obama's move to restore US funding for family planning clinics abroad that give advice on or carry out abortions. One Vatican official warned against the "arrogance" of those in power who think they can decide between life and death. Another official said it dealt a blow to groups fighting against "the slaughter of the innocents". The White House says the move aligns the US with other nations fighting poverty and promoting health care. On...