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The new H1N1 strain, which was discovered in Mexico and the U.S. in April, may be the product of three strains from three continents that swapped genes in a lab or a vaccine-making plant, Gibbs, and fellow Australian scientists wrote in Virology Journal. The authors analyzed the genetic makeup of the virus and found its origin could be more simply explained by human involvement than a coincidence of nature.

Their study, published in a free, online journal reviewed by other scientists, follows debate among researchers six months ago, when Gibbs asked the World Health Organization to consider the hypothesis. After reviewing Gibbs’ initial three-page paper, WHO and other organizations concluded the pandemic strain was a naturally occurring virus and not laboratory-derived.

“It is important that the source of the new virus be found if we wish to avoid future pandemics rather than just trying to minimize the consequences after they have emerged,” Gibbs and colleagues John Armstrong and Jean Downie said in today’s eight- page study.

Gibbs and Armstrong are on the emeritus faculty at the Australian National University in Canberra and Downie is affiliated with the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Laboratory Services at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital, according to the study.

While the exact source of the new H1N1 strain is a mystery, their research has “raised many new questions,” they said. The authors compared the genetic blueprints of flu strains stored in the free database Genbank and found the pandemic virus’s nearest ancestors circulate in pigs.

‘Simplest Explanation’

Ensign was the focus of media attention over his affair with a campaign staffer. Just last night, a Nevada man disclosed that he found out about his wife’s affair with the state’s junior senator — his best friend — via a text message.

The common factor among these political players is their involvement with the Family, a secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians that centers on a Washington, D.C., townhouse. Investigative journalist Jeff Sharlet has written extensively about the influential group in his book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

Although he rose to executive director of the Canberra branch, Detheridge was always below the poverty line. He worked 15-hour days for the Church of Scientology, plus another three hours in the early morning as a cleaner to feed his family. Days off were rare.

He told The Age how he learnt to lie, bully, intimidate and humiliate people and particularly to extort money in service of the church and its ostensible aim, the greatest good of the greatest number. Now he calls it ”a crock of shit”.

Detheridge lost 17 years to the church, under constant financial and emotional pressure. He did much of which he is now ashamed, and suffered much more. This week his story hit the headlines when Senator Nick Xenophon called for an inquiry into the church and tabled several letters from former members.

For decades the celebrity-recruiting group, granted legal status as a religion in Australia in 1983, has fought to preserve its secrets. These include a bizarre cosmology involving the galactic dictator Xenu dumping millions of corpses in volcanoes on Earth 75 million years ago and blowing them up with 17 hydrogen bombs (the last word in high-tech when L. Ron Hubbard founded the group in the 1950s).

“Senior government officials say there was a colossal error at the mint itself,” said CTV Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife on Tuesday night.

Mint officials double-counted some gold bullion they sold, and also underestimated the shrinkage of the gold during processing.

The federal government had withheld bonuses for mint executives until the mystery was solved. It’s unclear whether those bonuses will still be paid out.

Junior Transport Minister Rob Merrifield, who’s responsible for the mint, called in the RCMP on June 9 after he learned that an audit would not “rectify the problem” of the missing gold. That’s about 10 weeks after the government first learned of the missing gold.

The Deloitte and Touche audit cost taxpayers $360,000.

Ottawa now requires the mint to report on inventory levels of metals every three months.

Last month, Liberal critic for Crown corporations Joe Volpe said the security, reputation and the quality of the Canadian Mint’s product has been compromised.

William E. Sparkman Jr. died of asphyxiation and was found with hands, feet and mouth bound with duct tape, a rope around his neck and the word “FED” written on his chest, investigators concluded. Passersby spotted his body on Sept. 12 in a remote area of the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Witnesses said Sparkman had discussed ending his own life, recent federal investigations of public officials in Kentucky and negative perceptions of federal agencies expressed by Clay County, Ky. residents, investigators said.

Sparkman also secured two life insurance policies that would not pay out for suicide shortly before his death, investigators said. Authorities decided to share some, but not all of the details of their investigation on Tuesday due to the high level of national interest.

Sparkman was a substitute teacher and one of 5,900 part-time Census field workers that conduct the annual American Community Survey and dozens of other government surveys each year. Such workers are typically called in by the Census Bureau for assignments as needed. The agency said it will hire roughly 700,000 temporary workers to conduct follow-up interviews for next year’s decennial Census.

Normal census operations will resume in Clay County next month, Census spokesman Stephen Buckner said.

“The death of our co-worker, William Sparkman, was a tragedy and remains a loss for the Census Bureau family,” Buckner said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.”

Gilbert Acciardo, a former state trooper who worked with Sparkman at an after-school day-care program, said that Sparkman gave him no clues that he was contemplating suicide. Sparkman had been treated for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, but told Acciardo that it was under control. Nevertheless, he said he was confident in the results of the investigation.

“If that’s what they say, because they are the professionals,” Acciardo said when told of the findings. “With the time frame they worked on it, and the thoroughness of the investigation, it sounds like a reasonable statement.”

Violence against Census employees is extremely rare, according to the agency. Field workers receive safety tips as part of their basic training and are instructed to immediately remove themselves from unsafe situations and to inform supervisors if they consider an area too unsafe to work alone.

Company spokeswoman Gwenan White said that they issued the advice after reports that one batch of the swine flu vaccine might have caused more allergic reactions than normal.

“We have advised health care professionals not to use that batch while health authorities and GlaxoSmithKline investigate,” she said.

White said the batch at issue, which has been distributed across Canada, contains 172,000 doses of the vaccine. She declined to say how many doses had been administered before the advice to stop using them was given.

His crime was a persistent refusal to give counter-terrorism police the keys to decrypt his computer files.

According to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.

The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to—the U-3 rate—which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for October, the highest it has been since June 1983.