mydailyglobalnews: Hog Flu Update 1

"Stop breathing on me." "You stop breathing on me."

My favourite news website reports:

More than 100 schoolchildren and their teachers from the UK and US have been quarantined in Beijing after 8 young kids were found to have hog flu.
The 4 UK and 4 US young kids have been being treated with colour in a Beijing sanatorium and have been pronounced to be in a fast condition. The young kids had only proposed a revisit to the nation to sense about Chinese enlightenment and language.

Chinese marines impersonating British teenagers.

Four of the 52 British pupils influenced told the BBC from their road house room which they were being great looked after. The four, pictured above, who attend Clevedon School in north Somerset, have been all in their late teenagers and have been partial of a organisation of twelve from which school, and dual teachers.
“We have been quarantined in the road house and have been all right away great as we have every day heat checks which have been all good,” they pronounced in an e-mail sent from their road house room."The road house is unequivocally great and we have correct toilets. We goal we knowledge some-more of China as we should be out inside of 4 days.”
One of the boys, Christopher Hicks, pronounced which they had been on vacation the Great Wall of China when they were called back, since they had formerly common a train with a student from an additional propagandize who had tested certain for the virus.

High temperatures

Both British and American groups were on visits organized by the Confucius Institute, an central Chinese physique which promotes Chinese denunciation and enlightenment overseas.
Speaking about the 4 UK pupils who have hog flu, the institute’s director, Katharine Carruthers, said: “They have been being intensely great looked after and cared for, to the border where they’re removing pizza delivered to where they are. They have been all happy and removing better. There have been a series of young kids in solitary confinement in really gentle conditions in a four-star road house in Beijing, who have been in tighten hit with the hog influenza cases. Everyone is in great spirits, removing concerned in activities and carrying on their Chinese learning.”
There have been 600 students from opposite the UK who arrived in the Chinese collateral this week and the immeasurable infancy have been stability their outing as normal, she said.
The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville, in Beijing, pronounced 3 of the 4 UK young kids were found to have tall temperatures when they arrived in Beijing progressing in the week.
They were taken true from the airfield to a sanatorium where it was reliable they had the virus. A fourth classmate fell sick later. The American young kids had been in hit with the UK organisation and 4 of them were additionally diagnosed as carrying the virus.
UK Foreign Office officials contend 52 British schoolchildren and their teachers have been right away quarantined in a Beijing hotel. The BBC understands a identical series of Americans is additionally underneath quarantine.
Amii outpost Amerongen, from London, told the BBC which her 15-year-old sister was one of the young kids underneath quarantine.
“She called me this sunrise revelation me which she is cramped in a road house and she is being really dauntless about the total thing. She pronounced it was utterly intimidating - they have these ‘guns’ which they indicate at your conduct which magnitude your temperature,” she said.

"One gin and tonic for you sir. Nuts?"

Chinese officials told the BBC which the young kids were being great looked after and they had unchanging hit with their families. Simon Calder, transport editor for the UK’s Independent newspaper, told the BBC which most countries were regulating “thermal imaging” at airports to exam travellers, and the UK was noticed as a high-risk area.

"We got you, Babe"

China has taken an assertive proceed to containing the widespread of hog flu. It has quarantined hundreds of unfamiliar visitors who have shown symptoms of the H1N1 pathogen or who have trafficked with people suspected of carrying the disease.

Rave-ing Mad.

Have a 30th birthday party, use Facebook to invite your friends and tell them they're welcome to stay the night. Put up a classy Woolworth's gazebo,


sort some music out, get the barbie going, sweet, everyone's happy.
Hang on, what's that noise?



Read the rest of this birthday treat in 21st C Britain here.


(And whilst you're at the excellent Register, get the real truth behind Sara Palin's disappearance from the public eye.)

The C Street Choirboys and their zipper challenges

Since we're heading into the weekend, how about a little sex-and-intrigue? Right then, siddown here and I'll spin you a story or two. Or four. Or six . . .

I don't know how closely you Brits follow U.S. politics, but you may have noticed that our Republican Party has been pursuing a gaudy self-destruction every bit as complete -- though somewhat more salacious -- than your Labour Party's. Beyond the supernova blowup of Sarah Palin, the Republicans' remarkably-constant problem is sexual hypocrisy. This is inevitable: relying as they do on the fundamentalist-Christian vote, GOP politicians feel they needs must appear holier-than-thou. Dommage.


For instance: Not long after Senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and David Vitter (R-Louisiana) co-sponsored something called the Marriage Protection Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which went nowhere), "Wide Stance" Larry got caught soliciting sex from an undercover cop in an airport gents' as little Davie engaged Washington and New Orleans prostitutes to diaper him (ewwww).

And just here recently, another goodly handful of Jesus-beating GOP office-holders have run into extramarital-nookie trouble.

Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, coulda just kissed Michael Jackson for croaking a few days after a tipped-off reporter intercepted the married Sanford flying in from a weeklong AWOL in Buenos Aires with his eye-catching "soulmate" named Maria. This occasioned a number of very unfortunate press conferences and interviews, as Sanford dug his hole deeper.

But before we could catch our breath from laughing at Don Marco de BA, Nevada's Senator John Ensign saw his credibility equally minced to flitters. He had to own up to paying off a married couple, formerly his top staffers, after screwing the wife and cuckolding the husband. Well, truth be told, Ensign himself didn't supply the pay-off; turns out the white-haired Senator's parents coughed up $96,000 to succor-and-hush the aggrieved Mr. and Mrs. Doug Hampton.

Though they'd all loudly demanded that Bill Cinton do so, neither Craig, Vitter, Sanford, nor Ensign resigned from office; indeed, Vitter and Ensign are running for re-election (if he weren't term-limited, Sanford probably would be too). But besides the parallels already apparent, our gropin' GOPers have something else in common -- something that, if you've previously followed links from here to Rodney's guest posts at folo.us, you may have seen.

"DC Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey (may she R.I.P.) only later learned that her infantile client was a United States Senator; she knew him as "David from C Street." But as Rodney explained in February, "C Street" is one of several names for a secretive, far-right "Christian" group -- also called the Family or the Fellowship -- that reveres the likes of Mao and Hitler, cultivates Third World dictators (the more murderous the better, seemingly), and hosts Washington's annual National Prayer Breakfast. Rodney told us foloers all about it on the day Barack Obama and Tony Blair led the guest list at this year's breakfast.

But Ensign and Sanford are only two of numerous current or former members of Congress who live/d -- for below-market rents -- at the Family's townhouse, a former convent now identified as a "church" for tax purposes, on C Street near Capitol Hill. Why, just yesterday the State of Mississippi contributed another name to both the GOP’s and the Family's burdens.

Boyish-looking former congresscritter Chip Pickering had been all set to assume Trent Lott’s U.S. Senate seat when Trent up-and-resigned in late November 2007, one year into his latest six-year term. (A small digression here: two days later, Sen. HelmetHair Lott's brother-in-law, the fearsome mass-tort plaintiff's attorney Dickie Scruggs -- plus Dickie's son, another law partner, and two other Mississippi operators -- got busted by the Feds for bribing a little ol' country judge. Since I'm Mississippi-born, this smelly coincidence started me posting about it on then-new folo. Long-story-short, the bribers eventually went to prison -- but not before making my little folo a website that attracted a sizeable international crowd that included a certain Man from Porlock.)

But back to this saga. The next news was that Chip P and his wife, the parents of five little boys, were separating and he was leaving the House of Representatives; though Chip soon filed for divorce, the decree isn't final yet.

Now come to find out, via folo's and TMfP's friend Ducky, that Mrs. Chip has just commenced an alienation-of-affections lawsuit against one Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, a telecom heiress who was not only Chip’s college girlfriend but, according to Mrs. Chip's complaint, his longtime mistress. Where did Chip bunk on weeknights (and, allegedly, boink Beth BigBucks) while Congress was in session? You guessed it: in the famous C Street townhouse convent church.

And things might have rocked merrily on -- except that, Mrs. Chip alleges, when Mississippi governor Haley Barbour was on the verge of naming Chip to the Senate, Beth issued a “Senate seat or me” ultimatum that he couldn’t resist (maybe they're soulmates too?). They’re a hot item to this day, Mrs. Chip claims, with Chip now living in Jackson, quite near Beth but 30 miles from wife-and-kiddies, and making his living as a lobbyist for Beth's family's company. (Oh honey, what I'd give to be a fly on the wall around Mississippi's bridge tables and nineteenth holes this weekend!)

Call it "C Street" or "the Family" or whatever, this-here boys' club just hates hates hates the publicity its horny members are drawing. Oh, it ain't the sex that bothers them (obviously), but the exposure of their agenda. For that is none other than invisible world dominion in Jesus' name. Listen to Jeff Sharlet, the guy who literally wrote the book on the Family, explaining to our best interviewer, NPR's Terry Gross, how it rolls. Thanks to Ensign, Sanford, and now Pickering, Sharlet has appeared three nights in a row this week on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, and Pickering's Problem has splashed onto the pages of TalkingPointsMemo.

With any luck, before this is over, 2009's edition will have proven to be the last National Prayer Breakfast that Barack Obama, Tony Blair, or anyone else has to attend. ThainkyaJeezes.

-- lotus

Goldang meddlin' congresscritters!

Eau deah, I fear this may impact our old friend Neal Horsley's social life.

Tsk.



-- lotus

For NL* (I've got a new camera!)

With the aid of my Canon TimeShot superdooper new bit of kit from pixel heaven, I managed to get this shot of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in a previous life.

*See comment

'Ere, whazzup?

[plink plink plink] This thing on? Hello, Porlockers!

Now, I know it's the case that both the British government and the British press are all up in a heaval these days, but seriously . . .

The Guardian today:

Thousands more troops could be sent to Afghanistan within months under an emergency review of the UK mission being carried out by the Ministry of Defence. ...

An MoD source confirmed that ministers were "re-examining" troop numbers in Helmand following the bloodiest day for UK ground troops since the start of current operations. "Troop levels are under review. They could go up, depending on events on the ground," said a defence spokesman. It is believed that the maximum extra deployment would be 2,000. ...

The Independent today:

Ministers are secretly planning to cut the number of British troops in Afghanistan, at a time when defence chiefs are appealing for thousands more reinforcements to meet the deadly threat from the resurgent Taliban.

Hours after the death toll of UK forces in Afghanistan rose above the number killed in Iraq, The Independent on Sunday established that Gordon Brown wants to bring up to 1,500 service personnel home from the war-torn country after its elections next month, seemingly on grounds of cost. ...

Sunday Times of London today:

Senior Labour figures accused the head of the army last night of playing politics as he said that there were too few troops and helicopters in the Afghan war zone.

One minister expressed fury that General Sir Richard Dannatt, the chief of the general staff, had attended a private dinner with Tory MPs and suggested an extra 2,000 troops were needed in Helmand province.

The general’s remarks put him at odds with the official government line, that the 9,000 British troops already in Afghanistan are sufficient to cope with the offensive.

A Labour minister said: “General Dannatt has crossed an important line. He is playing a high-risk game.” ...

Somebody in one or more of these places is just making shit up, innit? And here I thought the Republican Party and Fox News were the reigning world champs at that. Help me out here, won't you? Who's full[est] of it? Thanks!

-- lotus