New York - New York City authorities considered Monday to close schools to prevent the swine flu from striking children after eight students at a Queens high school were confirmed sick of disease, reports said. The US government has declared a national public health emergency after tests confirmed 40 people in the United States, including the eight students in New York, have mild cases of the flu.
The Saint Francis high school in Fresh Meadows, Queens, where the eight students were found sick, was closed Monday and Tuesday to allow cleaning crews to sanitize the school.
Washington - The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was to issue an advisory against non-essential travel to Mexico - the epicentre of the global swine flu outbreak - acting director Richard Besser said Monday. "This is out of an abundance of caution," he said, adding that the Atlanta, Georgia-based CDC had confirmed 26 deaths in Mexico were a result of swine flu. "This is a small fraction of what they are seeing," Besser warned.
New York - New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday that 28 cases of swine flu have been confirmed and another 17 cases were suspected in New York City, where more than 100 students at one school had become sick and were being tested. Bloomberg said at a news conference that it appeared the swine flu cases have been mild so far and precautions were needed to make sure that the health situation in New York is safe while authorities struggle to contain the flu.
New York - The United Nations has taken steps to lead the fight against the sudden outbreak of swine flu, mobilizing its agencies to help countries where cases have been verified, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday. "The UN system is responding, quickly and effectively, with the director general of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, taking the lead," Ban said.
San Francisco - General Electric has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology, using holographic images to allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs, the company announced Monday. The storage advance is only a laboratory success at this stage but researchers said that the technology has passed critical thresholds that will make it transferrable to commercial and consumer applications.
Washington - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for the development of "meaningful proposals" to combat climate change as she kicked off a two-day international conference in Washington. Warning that the pace of global warming is overrunning even "worst case" scenarios, Clinton said at the State Department Monday that the effort to reduce its effect must take place on national, regional and international levels. 
