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Dr. Margaret Chan of the World Heath Organization (WHO) has officially raised the status of H1N1 Swine Flu to six, the highest level.

Dr. Chan said there are two main concerns now:

a) a second wave of the flu is to be expected, probably within the next 6 to 9 months, and

b) in developing countries who have not yet come into their influenza season, that they may not be able to cope well with H1N1 when it arrives.

The virus which is currently called Swine Flu is still a somewhat mild version, meaning it is more severe than normal flu but not yet killing too many people.

Influenza viruses are notorious for quickly changing their behaviour and because of that the concern is that it could mutate into something much more severe.

The last Pandemic was in 1968 when Hong Kong Flu killed some 50,000 people.

Almost 30,000 have been infected by the H1N1 virus in some 74 countries according to the WHO.

Much more news on Twitter.

WordPress 2.8 (named Baker after Jazz artist Chet Baker) has many new features and clever ideas built right into it. I’ll list some of the links at the bottom of this post.

When upgrading to WP 2.8, remember to do the following:

1) Make a backup of your database:
either via your control panel or use a plugin like WP-DBManager

2) Make sure all your plugins are up-to-date. Usually this just means clicking the automatic update feature, otherwise, download the new version and follow the instructions.

3) If you have customized anything within your WordPress installation, make sure you have a backup!
For example, if you changed the automatic post revisions feature, remember to backup the custom php files. And of course backup your customized Themes, wp-config.php file, .htaccess and any other files you may have changed. Just check for newer dates via your FTP software if you have forgotten which files you changed. (Tip: I wait a day or so before changing any core WP files so I can see which files are newer.)

4) If you have custom sidebars and have been using widgets such as widget_logic, you should copy the custom code into a text file and save it. WP 2.8 has added some widget logic of its own which may conflict with how your prior widgets were done.

5) Deactivate your plugins just as you start the upgrade process. If your theme is old and you were on a WP pre-2.5 version, it is a good idea to use the default theme for the few moments it will take upgrade.

NOTES: When you have successfully upgraded, check the links to posts from the home page work. If they do not, login to WP, click Settings >> Permalinks >> Save Settings (even if you have not made changes here, which in fact you shouldn’t have in the upgrade process).

NOTES 2: If you suddenly find you can’t login to WP after the upgrade (as happened right here), check the Codex Forums but what worked for me was to move the root directory .htaccess into my WP directory. That worked!

Here are links to detailed steps:

About WordPress 2.8:

What’s new in WordPress 2.8?

Upgrading WordPress:

Installing WordPress from the beginning:

New WordPress Installation Checklists:

WordPress Plugin Compatibility Checker:

Follow us on Twitter:

These were the headline news from May 2009 about influenza whether Bird Flu (H5N1) or Swine Flu (H1N1).

31 May » Vietnam has first case of H1N1 flu: doctor
Reuters – USA
Vietnam — which has grappled with the more deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in recent years — requires any suspected H1N1 cases to be isolated for seven days. …

30 May » Gov’t spends more to prevent A/H1N1 flu
SGGP – Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam
In related news, when asked about the purchase of 32 specialized trucks that would be used to spray chemicals to prevent the H5N1 bird flu, …

29 May » Scientists develop new basis for H5N1 vaccine: WHO
Reuters – USA
Pharmaceutical companies including Novartis are already working on vaccines against H5N1 bird flu, which has killed or forced the culling of more than 300 …

28 May » Swine flu: genetics of the novel virus
Agoravox – Paris,France
… to be of importance for pathogenicity, virulence and transmissibility in humans on the basis of the reconstructed 1918 virus or H5N1 (”bird flu“). …

27 May » Egypt announces 27th bird flu fatality
The Associated Press
… succumbed to the H5N1 virus in Egypt are women and children, tasked with caring for domestic poultry. Egypt is the country worst hit by bird flu outside …

26 May » Health care workers being trained to detect, manage pandemic flu
Stabroek News – Georgetown,Guyana
He said since the emergence of the H5N1 bird flu in 2003, Guyana established a national committee to follow up on outbreaks of the virus. …

25 May » WHO to Rewrite Its Pandemic Rules
New York Times – United States
The six-point system was created in 2005 when the threat was H5N1 avian flu, which has a fatality rate of about 60 percent. But the system does not take …

24 May » Anti-bird, swine flu measures affecting livelihoods in Egypt
Middle East Online – London,UK
CAIRO – The death of a four-year-old girl on 18 May after she contracted the H5N1 avian flu virus brings the total number of bird flu deaths in Egypt to 27 …

23 May » Team hopes to start testing H1N1 vaccine within weeks
The Exponent – West Lafayette,IN,USA
“We are trying to use a similar approach as we did with the H5N1 bird flu virus,” Mittal said. “The technology we are using is the same as the bird flu; …

22 May » The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future
Online Journal – Silver Springs,FL,USA
NPR and Alaska Public Radio was reporting what was extracted from the 1918 flu victim’s corpse was the H5N1 avian flu virus, but that was erroneous. …

21 May » Two Egyptian boys contract bird flu – agency
Reuters – USA
CAIRO, May 20 (Reuters) – Two Egyptian boys have contracted the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, bringing the total number of cases in the most …

20 May » Value of vaccination
Malaysia Star – Malaysia
In recent years, the world faced new threats in the forms of the 1997 H5N1 bird flu and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and now, the influenza A …

19 May » H1N1 Flu Now Seen In 39 Countries – Danger Level Decreasing
NewsBlaze – Folsom,CA,USA
This actually is the situation with the H5N1 “bird flu” which still shows up occasionally and which has an extremely high mortality rate among normally …

18 May » A Lethal Mixture: Swine and Bird Flu. Can We Trust Baxter, GSK and …
Age of Autism – Trumbull,USA
“The biggest worry would be if a person or a pig became infected with both swine flu and H5N1 avian flu at the same time. …

17 May » The Human Nose As Noose For Bird Flu
The Statesman – Kolkata,India
PTI LONDON, May 15: The human nose is too cold for Bird Flu, says a new study. An international team, led by Imperial College London, has found that avian …

16 May » WHO: Countries must share swine flu virus samples
PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung) – Wien,Austria
Chan said no one knows what change might occur in the H5N1 bird flu virus should the swine flu outbreak develop into a pandemic. Chan says swine flu, …

15 May » Egyptian boy, 4, contracts bird flu virus
Reuters – USA
CAIRO, May 14 (Reuters) – A four-year-old Egyptian boy has contracted the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, bringing to 70 the number of human avian …

14 May » Is Tamiflu ‘better’ than Relenza?
ZDNet Asia – Singapore
Sales of antiviral drugs got a shot in the arm, if you will, in 2006, when the avian influenza–”bird flu“–epidemic broke out in Asia. …

13 May » New virus “very unstable”, more changes seen-expert
Reuters – USA
“Both H1N1 and H5N1 are unstable so the chances of them exchanging genetic material are higher, whereas a stable (seasonal flu) virus is less likely to take …

12 May » Swine Flu Outbreak From Mexico to New Zealand: Timeline
Bloomberg – USA
American scientists said the pathogen lacks the lethal genetic traits of the virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic or the H5N1 bird flu virus that’s …

11 May » Egyptian girl contracts bird flu, 69th case
Reuters – USA
The case brings to 69 the number of people confirmed to have contracted the H5N1 avian influenza virus in Egypt, which has been hit harder than any another …

10 May » Pandemic’s impact on trade gauged
Washington Times – Washington,DC,USA
… Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the threat of an Avian (H5N1) human bird flu pandemic of 2005-07 as benchmarks to estimate scenarios of the possible impact …

09 May » Top flu expert warns of a swine flu-bird flu mix
The Associated Press
While people can catch bird flu from birds, the bird flu virus — H5N1 — does not easily jump from person to person. It has killed at least 258 people …

08 May » Keeping swine and bird flus apart top priority
AsiaOne – Singapore
PARIS, May 7, 2009 (AFP) – Preventing the swine flu that is spreading across the globe from infecting patients sick with the deadly H5N1 avian flu should be …

07 May » Is H5N1 the One?
American Enterprise Institute – Washington,DC,USA
Other strains of avian influenza that have caused disease in humans include H7N7 (which caused communicable human illness in the Netherlands and one death …

06. May  » Egypt pig farmers clash with police over cull
AFP
Egypt has been battling an outbreak of bird flu for three years. Twenty-six people have died in Egypt from the H5N1 strain of bird flu since it was first …

05. May  » Swine Flu Source Traced to Birds and People; Don’t Blame Pigs
Bloomberg – USA
While the H5N1 bird flu that spread across Asia the past six years, killing millions of fowl and several hundred people, never gained genes to spread easily …

Quick news available on Twitter

A friend of mine new to Twitter was feeling stuck and asked how to get followers / following and started. So I thought I would post it here as well hoping it will help you.

Here are some tips or at least the way I started out on Twitter.

Tell the world:

• a) I added links from all my websites. (Probably where most of my followers come from)
• b) Tell everyone on your email list you are on Twitter. Ask some questions, people love to respond.
• c) Add yourself to Twitter directories such as Wefollow.com and Twellow.com etc.

Decide some strategy:

• a) Whatever category you add yourself too, click around on others in your category. People will follow you if they see a common interest (at least at first).
• b) You should check to see if they are still using Twitter by clicking directly to their Twitter profile. According to reports, many leave Twitter after a few months. If they haven’t updated recently, perhaps they aren’t coming back. And of course if they are not following many, you have to decide if they will follow you back. I generally only click those who are following over a few hundred folk. Many with small numbers are using Twitter for family and friends.
• c) 2001 / 1000 gap: If folk are following 2001 but are followed by 1500 or less, they can’t follow you back. If there is a gap of 1000 between following and followers they also can’t follow you back. And if they never updated (posted) or only posted a few times, I doubt they’ll add much value to you.
• d) You can send those you are following DM’s (Direct Messages) either by hand or even automatically. It is a great tool to welcome folk and perhaps offer a link to your site. I joined Twitter specifically to help our network find prayer resources, so adding the web link was key for me. Tweetlater.com works great for me as far as auto DM’ing folk.
• e) Speaking of Tweetlater.com, they offer you a way to automatically follow back. Most recommend against using it. I personally am quite picky about who is on my list, so I don’t auto follow. However, it is time consuming to check each person and of course I would have many more followers if I weren’t so picky : -)

Tools (and Tricks):

There are some tricks. I stay away from them, but judging from the numbers of those pushing them, some do work. Still, for most of us who just want to meet new friends and collages, I don’t think the tricks are worth it.
There are also (many) tools. Again, I don’t use them, but then again the Twitter world hasn’t found me yet! Some tools include sites or bots (Robots) which recommend followers based on keywords, geographical status and other combinations. (I still prefer to click through Directories where I know at least someone put in some effort to add themselves.)
Sites which list tools include http://twitter.pbworks.com/ and http://www.squidoo.com/twitterapps.

PS. Here is a quick video about Twitter which still makes me laugh: http://mashable.tumblr.com/post/88576009

Trust that helps! Ron

PPS. Follow me on www.twitter.com/30dp and feel free to add comments to this post.

PPPS. More on the subject of Twitters Direct Messages (DM’s) and much more is here >> A Helpful Guide to Twitter.

Cases of Swine Flu have surged since the weekend in Japan forcing authorities to close schools and kindergardens as a precaution for the teenager-hit crowd.

Meanwhile the WHO (World Health Organization) says that making swine flu vaccine is harder than thought and will not be available until mid-July.

The WHO says 40 countries are now infected with H1N1 and have officially reported 8480 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection.

Bird Flu also keeps in headline news as Reuters reports a 4-year-old Egyptian girl has died after contracting the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, Egypt’s state news agency MENA said on Monday. Fears continue that the two could mix creating a potent virus deadly to humans. While it is expected that the flu virus will die down until later in the year, it is still an unknown as to what exactly will happen.

Currently the USA leads in cases of Swine flu (4714) followed by Mexico (3103), Canada (496), Japan (176), Spain (103) and the UK (101).