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What most people do not recognize is that a fire drill is really an emergency evacuation plan and emergency evacuation plans are growing to include drills such as an influenza pandemic event.

The Houston Federal Executive Board sponsored such a drill, April 14-15. The Interagency Continuity Influenza Pandemic Tabletop Exercise was as an opportunity for federal, state, and local emergency coordinators to discuss how their agencies would manage during a pandemic event.

“My goal since 9-11 is to facilitate the preparedness of federal agencies in the Houston area by providing emergency training opportunities,” said Houston Federal Executive Board Director Michael Mason. “Every class we offer, we open it to state and local agencies where the emergency managers can create partnerships during the training rather than during an emergency.”

The training, provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was interactive requiring attendees to break into small groups to discuss the scenario and the current procedures their agency used to manage an emergency. Group members discussed what certain procedures should be implemented at varying stages and why other procedures could wait.

Obama visited Mexico City on April 16 and 17, three days after the first case of swine flu was confirmed in Mexico.

Mexican newspapers reported last Saturday that a prominent archaeologist who gave the U.S. president an April 16 tour of Mexico City’s famous anthropology museum fell ill with flu a day later and died of it last week.

A Houston Chronicle reporter tracked down family members of the late archaeologist, Felipe Solis, at their home not far from the museum. The man neither had the flu nor died of it, a family spokesman said.

“It’s absolutely false,” said Julio Castejon, adding that Olis died of a heart attack linked to chronic diabetes and other ailments. “They found no evidence of influenza. This is yellow journalism.”

Authorities have canceled school at all levels in Mexico City and the state of Mexico until further notice, and the government has shut most public and government activities in the area. The emergency decree, published today in the state gazette, gives the president authority to take more action.

“The federal government under my charge will not hesitate a moment to take all, all the measures necessary to respond with efficiency and opportunity to this respiratory epidemic,” Calderon said today during a speech to inaugurate a hospital in the southern state of Oaxaca.

At least 20 deaths in Mexico from the disease are confirmed, Health Minister Jose Cordova said yesterday. The strain is a variant of H1N1 swine influenza that has also sickened at least eight people in California and Texas. As many as 68 deaths may be attributed to the virus in Mexico, and about 1,000 people in the Mexico City area are showing symptoms of the illness, Cordoba said.

Obama’s Visit

The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico’s anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported. The newspaper didn’t confirm if Solis had swine flu or not.

The Mexican government is distributing breathing masks to curtail the disease’s spread. There is no vaccine against the new strain of swine flu, health authorities said.

Museums, theaters and other venues in the Mexico City area, where large crowds gather, have shut down voluntarily and concerts and other events canceled to help contain the disease. Two professional soccer games will be played tomorrow in different Mexico City stadiums without any fans, El Universal newspaper reported. Catholic masses will be held, the newspaper said, although church officials urged worshipers to wear breath masks and to avoid contact.

Schools will likely remain closed next week, Calderon said in the Oaxaca speech. The decree allows Calderon to regulate transportation, enter any home or building for inspection, order quarantines and assign any task to all federal, state and local authorities as well as health professionals to combat the disease.

“The health of Mexicans is a cause that we’re defending with unity and responsibility,” Calderon said. “I know that although it’s a grave problem, a serious problem, we’re going to overcome it.”

Normal Airport Operations

Mexico City’s international airport, which handles about 70,000 passengers each day, is operating normally, said Victor Mejia, a spokesman. Passengers are given a questionnaire asking if they have flu symptoms and recommending they cancel their trip and see a doctor if they do. The measures are voluntary, Mejia said, and no case of swine flu in airport passengers, workers or visitors has been confirmed.

Authorities throughout Central America have issued alerts to prevent the outbreak from spreading. Guatemala ordered tighter control yesterday of its northern border with Mexico, according to EFE. Gerberth Morales, who’s heading the Guatemala government’s response, said no cases of swine flu have been reported in his country, the Spanish news agency reported.

American Southern Bank of Kennesaw, Georgia; Michigan Heritage Bank in Farmington Hills; and First Bank of Beverly Hills in Calabasas, California, were shut by state agencies. First Bank of Idaho in Ketchum was closed by the Office of Thrift Supervision. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named receiver of all four.

The seizures will cost the FDIC’s insurance fund a total of $698.4 million, with more than half of that tied to the failure of the California bank. While banks in the other three states are being taken over by institutions in their regions, the FDIC couldn’t find a buyer for First Bank of Beverly Hills, forcing the regulator to assume the company’s $1.5 billion in assets.

Bank of North Georgia in Alpharetta, a unit of Synovus Financial Corp., is taking over American Southern’s insured deposits and its single office, which will open April 27. Michigan Heritage’s deposits are being assumed by closely held Level One Bank in Farmington Hills and its three branches will open next week. U.S. Bancorp in Minneapolis, the sixth-largest U.S. bank by deposits, takes control of First Bank of Idaho’s seven branches.

“Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage,” the FDIC said.

Surpassing 2008

A deadly strain of swine flu never seen before has broken out in Mexico, killing as many as 60 people and raising fears of a possible spread across North America.

“WHO will convene, sometime in the very near future, an emergency committee under the International Health Regulations, which will consider whether or not this event constitutes a public health event of international concern,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told Reuters in Geneva.

Hartl also said that 12 of 18 samples taken from victims in Mexico showed the virus had a genetic structure identical to that of a swine flu virus found in California.

But more epidemiological information was needed before any change to the WHO’s pandemic alert level, currently at ‘3’ on a scale of 1 to 6, he said.

They claim to have infiltrated a number of environmental groups and said they are receiving information about leaders, tactics and plans of future demonstrations.

The dramatic disclosures are revealed in almost three hours of secretly recorded discussions between covert officers claiming to be from Strathclyde police, and an activist from the protest group Plane Stupid, whom the officers attempted to recruit as a paid spy after she had been released on bail following a demonstration at Aberdeen airport last month.

Matilda Gifford, 24, said she recorded the meetings in an attempt to expose how police seek to disrupt the legitimate activities of climate change activists. She met the officers twice; they said they were a detective constable and his assistant. During the taped discussions, the officers:

* Indicate that she could receive tens of thousands of pounds to pay off her student loans in return for information about individuals within Plane Stupid.

* Say they will not pay money direct into her bank account because that would leave an audit trail that would leave her compromised. They said the money would be tax-free, and added: “UK plc can afford more than 20 quid.”

* Accept that she is a legitimate protester, but warn her that her activity could mean she will struggle to find employment in the future and result in a criminal record.

* Claim they have hundreds of informants feeding them information from protest organisations and “big groupings” from across the political spectrum.

* Explain that spying could assist her if she was arrested. “People would sell their soul to the devil,” an officer said.

* Warn her that she could be jailed alongside “hard, evil” people if she received a custodial sentence.

The meetings took place in a Glasgow police station last month and in a supermarket cafe on Tuesday. Gifford used a mobile phone and device sewn into her waistcoat to record what they described as a “business proposal” that she should think of as a job.

They intimated that in return for updates on Plane Stupid’s plans she could receive large sums of money in cash.

When lawyers acting for Plane Stupid contacted Strathclyde police this week to establish the identities of the detective constable, they were initially told by the human resources department there was no record of his name.

But when the Guardian contacted the force, they acknowledged officers had had meetings with Plane Stupid activists.

Dr Thomas Friedberg, a notable member of the medical research team at Dundee University, was found dead in his car on Wednesday evening, close to the family’s Blairgowrie home on Emma Terrace.

But the police officers and ambulance staff who first arrived at the scene had to be taken to hospital after a number of unidentified substances found in Dr Friedberg’s car and home prompted a chemical scare.

A full-scale cordon was established around the Emma Road area while Tayside Police along with the fire and rescue service, forensic experts and chemists worked to establish the type of chemicals found.

Dr Friedberg (59) worked in the Biomedical Research Institute, part of the School of Medicine at the University where staff have described him as warm, kind and well-loved part of the team.

Professor Martin Pippard, Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Dundee, said: “We are deeply saddened by news of Dr Thomas Friedberg’s death.

“Dr Friedberg was an eminent scientist in his field who had made many important contributions in the field of cancer research, particularly in drug development and toxicology.

“He was a much respected and loved colleague of many in the School of Medicine and across the University.

“Our thoughts at this time are with his family,” the Dean added.

And colleague Professor Roland Wolf, Director of the Biomedical Research Institute, added: “Thomas was a warm, kind and much-loved member of the Biomedical Research Institute.

“He made an exceptional contribution to the research programme of the institute and will be greatly missed.”

Dr Thomas Friedberg had been researching ways to improve anti-cancer therapy, identifying people with an increased risk of the disease and methods to prevent it.

The area in Blairgowrie close to where Dr Friedberg’s body was found remained cordoned off until the chemicals were identified.

All the emergency staff taken to Ninewells Hospital amid the chemical scare were checked over and released without the need for treatment.

In March 2008, 168,000 Californians had been out of a job 27 weeks or more — the point where marchunemploymentdurationregular unemployment insurance typically runs out. Last month the number of long-term jobless jumped to 371,000.

The largest group of unemployed in the state is those who have been without jobs five to 14 weeks — 454,000 in March compared to 326,000 a year ago.

Unemployment statewide surged to 11.2% in March, a modern-day record, as the total number of jobless topped 2 million.

Congress has approved three extensions of unemployment insurance in states like California with high unemployment rates. California has the fourth highest rate in the country after Michigan, Oregon and South Carolina.