KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Urging its citizens not to panic, Ukraine on Monday closed the nation's schools for a week to avoid the spread of swine flu and suggested that nightclubs, cinemas and food markets in the west also shut down.
The World Health Organization said Monday there was no evidence that Ukraine had a bad outbreak of swine flu but at the government's request it had sent a health team there to help the country cope.
A commuter wears face mask as a precaution against flu seen through a bus window in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, Nov. 2, 2009. Ukrainian politicians have seized on the country's apparently mild swine flu outbreak as a political issue in the run-up to January's presidential election, a pivotal vote that could overturn the Orange Revolution of 2004 that swept a pro-Western government to power.
A woman walks under the trees covered in snow on November 1, 2009 in Beijing, China. The Chinese capital embraced its first heavy snowfall in winter.
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A torch bearer, left, is lead to a waiting truck before his torch was extinguished by organizers and driven to a new location after protestors disrupted the route for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games torch relay on Vancouver Island in Victoria, B.C., on Friday October 30, 2009.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
In this undated photo made available by the family, Paul and Rachel Chandler, who went missing when sailing from the Seychelles to Tanzania after sending a distress signal on Friday, Oct. 23, 2009, are seen at an unknown location. Britain's Foreign Office said Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009 that searches are under way for a British couple missing after their yacht activated a distress beacon off Somalia. The Foreign Office said Tuesday it is checking reports the couple may have been seized by pirates.
AP Photo/PA
This handout image taken Wednesday Oct. 28, 2009 made available Thursday Oct. 29, 2009 by EU NAVFOR shows the yacht Lynn Rival belonging to a British couple apparently taken captive by pirates off the east coast of Africa. The British navy on Thursday found an empty yacht in international waters belonging to a missing British couple and a defense official said Somali pirates may have transferred them to another vessel. International naval forces have been searching for the couple for days. Paul and Rachel Chandler were heading to Tanzania in their yacht, the Lynn Rival, when a distress signal was sent last Friday.
AP Photo/ EU NAVFOR
Greek hurdler Fani Halkia takes part in the Greek leg of the torch relay for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic flame under the ancient Acropolis in Athens, late Wednesday Oct. 28, 2009. Greek officials will hand the flame over to Canadian organizers on Thursday, Oct. 29. Former Olympic champion Halkia was expelled from the Beijing Olympics after testing positive for a banned steroid, is currently serving a two-year competition ban for doping. She carried the Vancouver torch from the foot of the Acropolis to the entrance of the archaeological site, where the flame remained overnight. Greek Olympic officials had no immediate comment on her selection for the relay.
AP Photo/Newsports, Nikos Chalkiopoulos
An abandoned car sits alongside Colorado Highway 93 as a winter storm continues to deposit snow throughout the state on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009.
AP Photo/Peter M. Fredin
FILE - In this file photo taken Saturday, Jan. 20, 2007, a woman believed to be Rochom P'ngieng, dubbed the "jungle woman," holds a wooden pole looking away at her home in Oyadao, Rattanak Kiri province, about 660 kilometers (410 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. P'ngieng, dubbed the "jungle woman" after emerging, naked and unable to speak from the wilds of northeastern Cambodia two years ago, is sick and apparently suffering from mental illness, a doctor said Friday, Oct. 30, 2009.
AP Photo/Heng Sinith, File
Catriona Le May Doan, right, and Simon Whitfield run as the first torchbearers with the Olympic flame, Friday, Oct. 30, 2009, in Victoria, British Columbia. The Olympic flame which travelled all the way from Greece will now start a 106-day cross country relay which will end in Vancouver on Feb. 12, 2010, to mark the start of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward
Four month old elephant "Rani" and her mother "Thura" are pictured in Hagenbeck's zoo in Hamburg, northern Germany on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009.
AP Photo/Fabian Bimmer
A vendor transports marigolds by boat at a canal in Xochimilco Lake in Mexico City, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009. Known as "cempasuchil" in Nahuatl language and "flor de muerto" in Spanish, marigolds are purchased throughout the country each year to adorn traditional Day of the Dead altars.
"But this is not an indication that the situation is severe," said WHO spokeswoman Liuba Negru. "The information we have gotten (from the government), we have to double-check it and make sure it is real, evidence-based information."
Ukraine's Health Ministry said Monday that 70 people in the nation of 40 million have died of flu, but did not say how many of those deaths were related to swine flu. Worldwide, outbreaks of regular seasonal flu claim 50,000 lives each year.
Nevertheless, all schools have been closed for a week across Ukraine, even in the capital, Kiev, where there have been no confirmed cases of swine flu.
In western Ukraine, local authorities advised people to travel only when necessary, a Health Ministry spokeswoman said.
Evan Frustaglio, who died from the swine flu on Monday, Oct. 26, is shown in a family handout photo. A grief-stricken father whose otherwise healthy teenage son died suddenly from the swine flu struggled to make sense of the tragedy Tuesday and urged other parents to keep a close eye on their ill children.
Michelle Mack has turned medical thinking upside down. Born with only half a brain, Mack can speak normally, graduated from high school and has an uncanny knack for dates.
CNN
Flowers at the gate of Blue Coat Church of England School in Coventry England Tuesday Sept. 29, 2009, after a pupil from the school died Monday after receiving the HPV1 Cervarix jab. Health authorities launched an investigation Tuesday into the death of a 14-year-old girl who had just received a vaccine for cervical cancer. Natalie Morton died in a hospital Monday, a few hours after being the given the Cervarix vaccine, which protects against two strains of the human papilloma virus that causes cervical cancer. She was vaccinated at her school in Coventry in central England.
AP Photo/Rui Vieira/PA
Health officials said Tuesday the batch of vaccine given at the school has been quarantined. A number of other girls at the school reported mild symptoms such as dizziness and nausea after receiving the shot.
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Carolyn Savage, 40, is seen at her home, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2009, in Sylvania, Ohio. Savage says a fertility clinic implanted the wrong embryo and that the baby she is about to give birth to is not hers. She and her husband are prepared to give the boy to his biological parents, whom they have met.
AP Photo/J.D. Pooley
Professor Karim Nayernia, is seen at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (Nesci), in Newcastle, England, Wednesday, July 8, 2009. British scientists claimed Wednesday to have created human sperm from stem cells but other experts questioned their data. Researchers at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute say they used a new technique to derive what they described as sperm cells from embryonic stem cells. Stem cells have the potential to become any cell in the body. Newcastle research leader Karim Nayernia said in a statement Wednesday that the technique would allow researchers to study how sperm develops and possibly help develop treatments for infertile men.
AP Photo/Scott Heppell
A woman who gave birth in a Wal-Mart washroom in Prince Albert, Sask., and left the baby behind has been found not guilty of child abandonment, a judge has ruled. Queen's Bench Justice Neil Gabrielson released his decision Wednesday, June 24, in the case of April Dawn Halkett, 22. He said the Crown didn't prove its case. During her judge-alone trial in May, Halkett testified that she did not realize she was pregnant when she went to use the store's washroom during a shopping trip in May 2007.
CBC News
Jennifer Schofield was just 11 days old when she died in November 2006 of multiple organ failure caused by the herpes simplex virus. The newborn was infected by her mother, Ruth Schofield, either through kisses or breastfeeding. "The hardest thing any woman can do is watch her baby die," Schofield told the BBC on Friday.
Manchester Evening News
Schofield, a 35-year-old hairdresser, is campaigning to make other mothers aware of the symptoms of the herpes virus and the dangers it poses to newborn babies. Doctors did not realize Jennifer had the virus until an autopsy was conducted. "She should be here today. It's such a treatable disease. I didn't know what I had," Schofield told the BBC. "It broke my heart to know what she died of." (Sources: BBC, Daily Mail)
Darren Andrews, Manchester Evening News
An inquest in Lancaster, northeastern England, heard that Schofield probably contracted the virus late in her pregnancy. Although she saw her doctor, the virus -- a common cause of cold sores -- is difficult to detect and Schofield had no idea she had it. "If I had known I was suffering from HSV and the risks of being near a newborn baby, then Jennifer could be here today," Schofield said, according to the Daily Mail.
Manchester Evening News
Thomas Beatie, a transgendered man, gave birth to his second child, a son, Tuesday. Here he appears his wife Nancy, left, and daughter Susan Juliette on a German TV show in December. Susan Juliette was born last June.
AP Photo
All outdoor markets have been closed in the western region of Lviv, where the governor also urged cinemas, cafes, nightclubs and theaters to shut down until further notice.
Some observers, including the speaker of the parliament, Vladimir Litvin, suggested that these measures are the result of political wrangling ahead of the country's presidential election in January. The pivotal vote could overturn the 2004 Orange Revolution that swept a pro-Western government to power.
"We are seeing a political competition to see who will be the first to lead this process (of fighting swine flu)," Litvin said, according to the UNIAN news agency.
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko met a Swiss shipment of anti-viral drugs at the Kiev airport on Monday.
"The government has declared the situation an epidemic, but there is absolutely no need to panic," she declared on national television.
Her main rival, President Viktor Yushchenko, said thousands of people were infected and called for assistance from NATO, the European Commission, the United States, Russia and other countries.
Konstantin Bondarenko, director of the Gorshenin Institute, a political consultancy, said that Tymoshenko has the most to lose from public sentiment over the outbreak, as state health officials answer to her.
"Right now all the candidates are weighing their political options, looking around for a theme, and this is a very hot topic right now. The panic is there, and they are acting on it," Bondarenko said.
After receiving the shipment of 300,000 doses of Tamiflu at Kiev's Borispol airport, Tymoshenko said her government plans to increase its hoard of the drug by another 300,000 to 950,000 doses.
"This is the supply that will reliably protect Ukraine," Tymoshenko said, ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Viktor Yanukovych, the Regions' Party candidate for the presidency, has not commented on the swine flu uproar. Yanukovych, who was beaten in 2005 by Yushchenko, is leading in the polls with a platform that emphasizes closer ties with Russia.
During the past five years of Yushchenko's presidency, relations with Moscow reached historic lows. Yushchenko's approval ratings at home have fallen to single digits in the wake of the economic crisis, which hit Ukraine hard, and years of political gridlock with Tymoshenko.
Associated Press writer Simon Shuster reported from Moscow.
Sommelier Masahiko Mori pours a bottle of 2009 Beaujolais Nouveau into the wine spa at the Hakone Yunessun resort west of Tokyo, Japan.
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