Indian city bans public gatherings over swine flu fears

An Indian man wears a protective mask as he stands in a queue to board a train at the Secunderabad railway station in Hyderabad, India, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015.Health officials in India are struggling to contain an outbreak of swine flu that has claimed more than 900 lives nationwide in 11 weeks.

AHMEDABAD, India (AP) — A west Indian city has banned most public gatherings in an attempt to halt the spread of swine flu, which has claimed at least 926 lives nationwide in 11 weeks.

Officials prohibited gatherings of five or more people in Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat state, starting Wednesday. Marriages and funerals are exempt from the ban, but participants will need to wear protective masks, officials said.The law invoked for the ban is generally used to maintain law and order, not health, and officials said they would be flexible in interpreting which public events would be prohibited. Gujarat has had the second-highest number of deaths, with 231, after the northwestern state of Rajasthan, where 234 have died.

Among the thousands in Gujarat testing positive for H1N1, the virus which causes swine flu, were its assembly speaker and state health minister. Doctors said the death toll was high because many patients delayed going to hospitals.

The Health Ministry said most of the more than 16,000 cases reported nationwide since mid-December were in the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh. Federal Health Minister J.P. Nadda urged people not to panic, saying there was enough medicine to cope with the rising number of cases.

The ministry has instructed states to set up isolation wards and is providing free flu tests at some government hospitals.

Lok Sabha Speaker calls all-party meeting on February 22 ahead of Budget session

New Delhi: Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has called a meeting of leaders of political parties on February 22 to ensure smooth run of the Budget Session during which the government will also seek to convert six recent ordinances into legislations.

Parliament sources said Mahajan has convened a meeting of leaders of political parties over dinner on February 22, the eve of the Session, to ensure a smooth session.

The session, which will begin on February 23 and conclude on May 8, will see presentation of the first full-fledged budget of the Narendra Modi government which came to power in May last year.

Britain starts public trial of driverless cars

Britain's Business Secretary Vince Cable holds his hands up as he poses for photographers in a prototype driverless car called a LUTZ (Low-carbon Urban Transport Zone) Pathfinder Pod during a launch event for the media near the O2 Arena in London, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015. Britain has begun testing driverless cars in four cities, launching the first official trials ahead of a series of planned rule reviews to accommodate the new technology.

 Driverless cars are hitting Britain's public roads for the first time, giving a glimpse of future travel that's billed as safer and more efficient.

Britain unveiled four prototype self-drive cars Wednesday, launching the country's first public trials ahead of a series of planned rule reviews to accommodate the new technology. Officials showed off four types of autonomous vehicles under trial, including a shuttle that looks like a larger golf cart and a compact two-seater "pod." Journalists took short rides on the shuttle, which zipped around a public square outside central London's O2 Arena as curious pedestrians looked on.

The project was "still in the early days," Transport Minister Claire Perry said, but she added the new technology has the potential to make roads safer and attract global investment. Britain has ambitions to lead development in driverless cars, which are also being tested in U.S. cities by companies including Google. Auto companies from Mercedes-Benz to Nissan are also developing self-drive vehicles, though most are not ready to go on public roads and highways commercially.

Regulation and legal changes are a major hurdle. Officials say fully driverless cars are unlikely to be used on British roads until 2030. Britain's government, which is spending 19 million pounds (US$29 million) on four trial centers around the country, says it will amend and review domestic road regulations by 2017. One focus will be on establishing liability when a self-drive car crashes.

"Until that key concern is clarified, probably by statute, many drivers will remain wary of 'driverless' driving," said Edmund King, president of drivers' organization AA. The next immediate step is for officials to publish guidelines for companies to test the cars in "real-life scenarios" on roads — including highways — by this summer. Qualified drivers will be riding in the cars, ready to take control should anything go awry.

In Germany, which is also pushing for more automated driving, officials have designated a busy stretch of highway — a Bavarian stretch of the A9 autobahn connecting Munich and Berlin — for the testing of systems that measure and transmit to cars such conditions as ice, heat and potholes.

That stretch will eventually be able to handle driver-assistance systems and then fully automated vehicles, the ministry for transport and digital infrastructure said.

World Health Organization says Ebola cases increase slightly

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Swine flue: Eight myths that could endanger your life

The second wave is upon us, but even official advice about the 2009 H1N1 pandemic is sometimes wrong. New Scientist sorts fact from fantasy

Swine flu: The predictable ?

There were signs that swine flu posed a human pandemic threat over a decade ago,yet no one paid any attention

Timeline: The secret history of swine flu

16 August 1957: a nurse at Montefiore Hospital gets the first Asian flu vaccine shot in New York (Image: Associated Press)

Six months ago, swine flu emerged as a massive threat to global health. It seemed to come out of nowhere, but our timeline explains how the origins of the H1N1 pandemic go back more than a century

1889

Prior to 1889, the main flu virus circulating in humans has been from the H1 family. But this year, a new strain of H2 flu emerges in Russia and spreads around the world, killing about 1 million people. Afterwards, H2 replaces H1 in humans. Such replacements seem to be a regular feature of flu pandemics.

People born before 1889, who have been exposed to H1 flu, have some immunity to it. This affords them some protection in the deadly H1N1 epidemic of 1918. Those born after 1889 do not have any immunity to H1.

1918

The "Spanish flu" epidemic of 1918 kills at least 50 million people worldwide. It is caused by an H1N1 virus which evolves directly from a bird flu into a human flu.

After a mild wave of infections in the summer, the epidemic goes global: one-third of the population eventually get sick. Although most cases are mild, many sufferers develop a rapidly fatal infection deep in their lungs. People born before 1889 are less susceptible, thanks to their previous exposure to H1N1.

Most deaths are caused by bacterial lung infections that move in after the virus. Modern antibiotics might mean that a re-run of the 1918 pandemic would be less dangerous.

After 1919, the descendants of the H1N1 virus continue to circulate and cause seasonal flu outbreaks in humans – and pigs.

1931

Swine flu is first isolated from a pig in Iowa.

1933

The first human flu virus is isolated at Mill Hill in London. When given to ferrets, it produces a disease whose symptoms are all but identical to the Iowan pig virus. But ferrets that have had the human virus are not fully immune to the pig virus, showing that the two viruses have already started to evolve apart.

1957

An H2N2 virus causes the "Asian" flu pandemic, completely displacing the H1N1 viruses that have been circulating in humans since 1918. The pandemic is fairly mild, killing 1 to 1.5 million people worldwide.

The virus is produced by a reassortment, in which human-adapted H1N1 swaps genes with an H2N2 bird flu. The new H and N surface proteins mean most people do not have antibodies to the virus, allowing it to go pandemic. However, its human-adapted genes mean it is not as lethal to humans as the 1918 virus, which came, with few changes, from birds.

People tend to mount the best immune response to the first kind of flu virus they experience. Because of this, people born before 1957, whose first experience of flu would have been the H1N1 viruses then in circulation, have some immunity to the 2009 H1N1 strain causing the current pandemic. People born after the 1957 pandemic do not have this immunity.

1968

An H3N2 virus causes the "Hong Kong" flu pandemic, which is even milder than the Asian flu, killing an estimated 0.75 million to 1 million people worldwide.

The virus only differs from H2N2 in one of its surface proteins, the H; since many people still have antibodies to the unchanged N2 protein, its effects are less severe. But because H3N2 completely replaces H2N2 in people, no one born since 1968 has any immunity to H2.

1972

Researchers Graham Laver and Robert Webster discover that waterfowl are the natural hosts of influenza viruses. The birds harbour strains unknown in humans that could reassort with human strains and give rise to new human pandemics.

1976

An H1N1 virus jumps from pigs to humans and kills a US army recruit. However the virus does not spread beyond the army base and fizzles out without triggering a pandemic.

Nevertheless, fears of a replay of the 1918 pandemic lead to 48 million people being hastily vaccinated against the swine flu virus. The vaccine is associated with an unusual number of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome: 532 people get it, and 25 die.

1977

An H1N1 virus appears in north-east China and starts circulating in humans. It causes seasonal flu in every subsequent year. No one knows where it came from, though it looks like an H1N1 that circulated in the Soviet Union in 1950 and some suspect it escaped in a laboratory accident.

The virus causes a mild flu pandemic, which mainly affects people born after H1N1 flu disappeared in 1957. However, the real surprise is that it does not displace the previous, and more virulent, seasonal flu, H3N2. Instead, it continues circulating alongside it.

The antibodies people produce after being infected by this new seasonal H1N1 do not protect against 2009 H1N1. However, infections also trigger another reaction called cell-mediated immunity, in which certain white blood cells target and destroy infected cells. Tests of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic vaccine show that, unlike antibodies, cell-mediated immunity to seasonal H1N1 may help protect against the pandemic virus. This does not prevent disease altogether, but can reduce its severity

1998

The predecessor of the 2009 H1N1 swine flu virus emerges in the US. It is a hybrid of human, bird and swine flu viruses, and by 1999 it is the dominant flu strain in US pigs.

US pig farms try to control it with vaccines, but these attempts are largely ineffective because the virus evolves too rapidly, changing the surface proteins targeted by the vaccine while keeping its internal genes unchanged. The 2009 pandemic virus is a variant on this 1998 flu, and behaves the same way.

2004-2006

H5N1 flu, first identified as a threat to humans in Hong Kong in 1997, spreads from Asia around the world, apparently carried by wild birds. While this "bird flu" proves deadly to humans, killing more than half of its victims, it is kept in check by its inability to spread readily from human to human. H5N1 is alsofound in pigs in Indonesia, raising fears that it might reassort with other human flu viruses that pigs can harbour.

The threat posed by bird flu leads to the first real efforts to be made atpandemic planning: governments start to stockpile antiviral drugs, and the world's drug companies start doing serious research on pandemic vaccines. These plans are made with the highly lethal H5N1 in mind, meaning that they are not always appropriate for the 2009 pandemic.

Read more: Bird Flu

2007-2008

Pandemic fears boost spending on flu research. European scientists start organising to track flu in wild birds, Vietnamese scientists find that antibodies from bird flu victims can cure other cases of the virus (a technique used in Hong Kong in 2009), the risk of dying of flu is found to be partly genetic, and it turns out that your mother was right to warn you about catching the flu when it's cold out.

However, Indonesia, where most H5N1 outbreaks are happening, refuses to share samples of the virus, arguing that it will not benefit in return from any vaccines developed as a result. This means scientists cannot monitor the virus's evolution.

But worries about H5N1 subside as it fails to become contagious in people – although virologists continue to warn that it is not the only threatening flu virus out there. Viruses from the H9, H7 and H2 families all give cause for concern.

March 2009

The first cases of a new type of swine flu are reported in California and Texas in late March. Subsequent genetic analysis suggests that it may have started circulating in humans in January.

April 2009

On 27 April, with 900 cases of suspected swine flu reported in Mexico, the World Health Organization (WHO) upgrades the pandemic warning level from 3 to 4 on a six-point scale. Intensive efforts to understand the virus and develop a vaccine begin immediately.

The US government advises against travel to Mexico, although research suggests that travel bans will not stop the virus spreading.

May 2009

Although swine flu seems to be spreading slowly, it is still progressing quickly enough to justify preparing for a pandemic. However, the WHO delays declaring a pandemic, partly because there is not enough evidence that the virus is spreading in the general population outside the Americas, where it originated.

New Scientist reveals that Europe is not testing people with flu symptoms unless they have recently travelled to an affected area in the Americas, or have had close contact with someone who did. As a result, Europe cannot detect spread in the general population. These restrictions may be making the pandemic "invisible" to the monitoring authorities.

As concerns mount, it transpires that many countries are poorly prepared for this scenario and that supplies of H1N1 vaccine cannot be prepared in time to catch the second wave.

June 2009

The UK and other countries change their rules and start testing people who have flu but no North American contacts. Cases of swine flu are soon detected.

On 11 June the WHO officially declares swine flu to be a pandemic. This is the signal for the vaccine industry to start making pandemic vaccine (paid for by governments), rather than conventional flu vaccine (paid for by ordinary health services).

July 2009

Treatment plans are shaken by the discovery of swine flu that is resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu and the realisation that the H1N1 vaccine is growingonly half as fast as the ordinary flu vaccine.

The US decides to use its standard formulation for flu vaccine, so no new regulatory tests will be needed. This will allow it to authorise pandemic vaccine before September, when a renewed wave of the pandemic is expected. But this formulation uses a lot of virus, and so reduces the number of doses that can be made.

Researchers discover that the swine flu virus binds far deeper in the lungs than ordinary flu, possibly explaining why it is sometimes fatal. However, the majority of cases are still mild, and it appears that many of the people with severe cases have an underlying health problem – although some of these "problems" are no more remarkable than being overweight, pregnant or unborn.

In the southern hemisphere, where it is winter, swine flu apparently replaces the usual seasonal flu. This suggests that the pandemic virus will displace the two previous seasonal flu strains, as previous pandemics have done. However, after the experience of 1977, when this did not happen, scientists do not rule out the return of H3N2 after the autumn wave of swine flu.

August 2009

A New Scientist poll reveals widespread concern about swine flu among public health officials and epidemiologists, many of whom have obtained supplies of antiviral drugs for their own families.

September 2009

Four major vaccine manufacturers report that their swine flu vaccines work with only one shot. This is good news, given that vaccine is in short supply despite researchers' success in finding faster-growing strains. The vaccine's effectiveness suggests there must be pre-existing cell-mediated immunity, possibly because of similarities between the surface proteins on swine flu and the seasonal H1N1 flu that emerged in 1977.

As autumn arrives in the northern hemisphere, experts are on tenterhooks: a particular worry is that swine flu will hybridise with bird flu to create a readily contagious human flu armed with a lethal H5 surface protein. At time of writing, the virus had not become more severe, causing mild disease in most sufferers but making a small number – probably less than 1 per cent –extremely ill.

October 2009

Vaccination programmes begin in the US and Europe, but many healthcare workers are reluctant to have the vaccine, even though it is virtually identical to the seasonal vaccines used in previous years, which have a good safety record.

Production delays also continue to plague the deployment of vaccine. By 22 October, the US has only 27 million doses available, compared with the expected 45 million. Researchers show that this much vaccine will reduce the number of cases in the second wave by less than 6 per cent – but that is still enough to save 2000 lives.

Six months after swine flu first shot to world attention, US President Barack Obama declares the virus a national emergency.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, and U.S. President Barack Obama, right, look out through rain covered protective glass to watch the Republic Day Parade in New Delhi, India, Monday, Jan. 26, 2015

President Barack Obama's experience at India's Republic Day celebration may have felt a little like his two presidential inaugurations.

He watched the two-hour parade of military hardware, marching bands and elaborately dressed camels from a rain-soaked, open-air reviewing stand. The experience was somewhat similar to his inaugurations in Washington. But it was different in some respects, too.Obama watched both inaugural parades from an enclosed, glass-fronted reviewing stand that temporarily erected on the north side of the White House. The weather both times was dry and biting cold. There were no tanks or other military hardware doing a slow roll up Pennsylvania Avenue.

No dressed-up camels, either. But there are always plenty of marching bands.

Republic Day commemorates the anniversary of when India's constitution came into force in 1950.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited Obama to be the celebration's chief guest, which an Indian TV commentator said is one of the most significant honors India can bestow upon a foreign leader.

Obama is the first American president to attend Republic Day.

He sat between Modi and Indian President Pranab Mukherjee.

On television, Obama was seen smiling as a group of children in blue uniforms danced and clapping after another performance. Michelle Obama, who accompanied her husband, also smiled at a dance performed by a big group of children in bright jumpsuits.

White House reporters who logged the nearly 7,500 miles to New Delhi to provide real-time coverage of Obama's attendance at the parade arrived to find out that some of them wouldn't be able to.

India, the world's largest democracy, gave the small "pool" of U.S. reporters that travels with the president a distant view of him during the two hours that he spent watching the colorful procession.

They also were not allowed to bring some of the most essential tools of 21st century journalism: the BlackBerries, iPhones and laptop computers they rely on to file quickly.

Security even confiscated ball-point pens. Cell phone service was also limited.

Reporters who didn't venture out to the parade site hung back at their temporary workspace to watch the festivities unfold on TV and take notes.

The unspoken political rule that political leaders should avoid putting anything on their heads apparently has no place in India.

Modi showed up at the parade wearing a safa, a traditional celebratory headdress that some Indian men wear for festivals and special occasions.

Modi's had a large, red pleated circular plume and an orange scarf running down his back.

Obama stepped out of his armored limousine and into the rain bare-headed.

The president once said that "you don't put stuff on your head if you're president." But he broke his rule last year by posing in a tiara with tiara-wearing members of a Girl Scout troop from Tulsa, Oklahoma, that participated in a White House science fair.

The photo, taken by the official White House photographer, has circulated widely on the Internet.

The significance of an American president viewing the elaborate parade won't be lost on India's contentious neighbors — Pakistan and China.

Until recently, relations between India and the U.S. were lukewarm at best.

Just look at some of the earlier Republic Day guests of honor: Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito in 1968 and 1974, Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov in 1969 and Tanzanian politician Julius Nyerere in 1971.

In those days, India was largely aligned with the former Soviet Union while Washington's closest regional ally was Pakistan — India's bitter rival.

Back then, India would not have dreamed of inviting a U.S. president as the guest of honor. And, if asked, an American president may have politely declined.

But the chill is gone and India and Washington are warming up to each other.

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.