Cops shoot dead 2 Uighurs

BEIJING - POLICE shot dead two Uighurs on Monday in renewed unrest in China's far north-western region of Xinjiang, state radio said.

PEOPLE ran into their homes and shops, slamming their doors. An armoured personnel carrier and paramilitary police arrived on the scene, and police waved their guns and shouted for people to get off the streets.

Security vehicles previously deployed on People's Square were no longer there on Monday but helmeted riot police remained in the area.
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The incident happened as frightened Urumqi residents watched earlier on Monday as police in bulletproof vests carrying pistols, shotguns and batons chased down a man and kicked and beat him, shattering a relative calm in the tense city in western China.

Gunfire was heard before and during the brief incident in Urumqi - where recent ethnic unrest left 184 dead - near one of the city's main Uighur neighbourhoods. Some bystanders threw themselves to the ground and others fled.

One policeman was seen raising his rifle to strike the man. Beaten, the man in a blue shirt with blood on his right leg lay on the ground. Police formed a ring around him, pointing their guns up at surrounding buildings as if worried about retaliation.

Hong Kong's radio RTHK reported on its website on Monday that at least two police officers were shot and three Uighurs killed near a Uighur neighbourhood. It did not give any more details. The Urumqi police telephone line rang busy all Monday.

The incident came as authorities try to impose a sense of normality on Urumqi after the July 5 riots and subsequent unrest that also left 1,680 wounded. The death toll in China's worst ethnic violence in decades could rise as 74 of the more than 900 people still in hospitals have life-threatening wounds, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Xinhua said police manned checkpoints and searched buses for any suspects involved in the violence, and people were ordered to carry identification for police checks when travelling in Urumqi.

It quoted the Urumqi Public Security Bureau as saying anyone without proper identification would be taken away to be interrogated.

'Citizens are strictly banned from holding dangerous articles including batons or knives in urban streets or public venues,' the notice said. The move was to 'prevent a tiny number of individual criminals from the riot who were still at large from seeking revenge', it said, according to Xinhua. -- AP

Landfill worker had bird's-eye view of crash

Josh McFadden, taking a methane-gas reading from a landfill Thursday near the site of a deadly car-train crash, had a bird's-eye view of the wreck that took the lives of five young people.
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He said he's scheduled to meet with an inspector today at that crossing in Canton.

From his perch Thursday — 75 to 100 feet up and at least 200 yards away — McFadden saw the railroad gates down and heard the train's horn blowing, he said.

Then he saw the car.

Driving toward the crossing, it slowed slightly behind an SUV waiting for the train to pass and then whipped around and headed for the tracks.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, is he going to try to beat this train?' ” McFadden said. “You can't beat an Amtrak.”

Witness says he often crosses same tracks

First came the familiar ding of the railroad crossing, then the loud horn from an oncoming train.

McFadden looked up from his job taking methane-gas readings from a landfill near the train tracks in Canton.

Standing 75, maybe 100 feet up, at least 200 yards away, McFadden saw the gates down at the crossing on Hannan Road and the lights on as an Amtrak train came barreling down the track Thursday.

A black Ford Fusion raced north on Hannan, he said, and seemed to slow abruptly behind an SUV waiting for the train to pass  —  and then quickly whipped around it.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, is he going to try to beat this train?' ” McFadden said Sunday, recalling the moment. “You can't beat an Amtrak.”

And Dan Broughton didn't.

The 19-year-old was killed — along with his friends Jessica Sadler, 14, of Wayne; her boyfriend, Eddie Gross, 17, of Taylor; Sean Harris, 19, of Taylor, and his brother Terrence Harris, 21, of Stafford, Va. — as the train crushed and crumpled the car, dragging it down the track toward Lotz Road.

Was view obscured?

“He just got impatient,” said McFadden, who lives in Livingston County. But, he said, Broughton may not have known the train charging at them was an Amtrak, since slow-moving freight trains also use those rails. Trees and brush could have obscured their view, said McFadden, who frequently crosses the tracks at Hannan.
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Today, McFadden said, he is scheduled to meet with an inspector at the railroad crossing, though he's not sure what questions he might be asked. He already has filled out a statement and gave it to railroad officials on Thursday.

His recount contradicts what at least one other witness said she remembers from the crash. Ashley Vaughn was driving south on Hannan with her husband, Dwayne, when the crash happened. She told the Free Press on Saturday that she did not remember seeing the gate down or the lights flashing.

Amtrak said the surveillance video taken from the train shows otherwise.

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5 fatal seconds

McFadden said that, from his view, the entire incident — from the time he looked up to the time the car was smashed — took five seconds.

When the train hit, he heard a loud boom, as if someone had picked the car “up 20 feet in the air and dropped it.”

He immediately called his boss to tell him what he saw, headed off the landfill to his pickup and headed toward the crash site.

Friends and loved ones have said the young people were in a rush — Broughton was hurrying to get to work at Kroger in Brownstown Township and Sadler's mother had told her daughter to come home.

McFadden said he sees the crash as a simple case of poor judgment. There's no mistaking the train's blaring horn, he said.

“There's no way,” McFadden said, “even if your windows were up.”

The hidden cost of obesity

Before you read this story, please suspend any biases you may have about fat people.

Now consider this question: If it saved you money for morbidly obese people to have weight loss surgery, would you suggest they do it?

The simplistic approach to weight problems is to tell people to stop eating junk and get off the couch. But experts say that’s not realistic for someone who is more than 100 pounds overweight.

“Data shows it’s difficult for someone morbidly obese to lose the weight through something other than bariatric surgery,” said Dr. Lisa Latts, vice president of clinical excellence for the insurance company Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

So if insurance companies affirm that morbidly obese patients benefit from stomach surgery, they must cover it, right?

Nope. They have their reasons. We’ll get back to that.

For now, consider the case of Vincent Daswell.

We met Daswell randomly in early 2008 at a seminar for people considering gastric surgery. He was 33 years old, and he was suffering. He had health conditions beyond his control — bipolar disorder and intractable migraines, which had set in about five years before.

And he had health problems that he could not control. The migraines disabled him. Being disabled depressed him. Depression led him to eat: Butterfinger ice cream by the half-gallon. Pizza by the box. Chicken by the bucket. King-size Snickers bars, three at a time, 560 calories apiece (that’s about as much as a Big Mac).

In his prime, in high school, Daswell carried a sturdy 200 pounds on his 5-foot-10 inch frame. He was a varsity running back. As he packed on the weight, his activity went from playing sports and pursuing his interest in rap music to watching TV and eating. His waist ballooned to 56 inches and he was so ashamed he wouldn’t even visit his mom’s house. He’d beg off when friends would invite him out: “I didn’t know what to say to them,” he recalls, sitting on his couch in early 2008 in sweatpants and a super-sized T-shirt. “I didn’t have nothing to wear. It’s just embarrassing.”

When he married Gail, in July 2004, he was 250, and climbing. He remembers putting on 30 pounds in May 2006 alone. He topped out at 380 in early 2008.

As Vincent was packing on the weight, Gail was going to school during the day and working at night. She tried to help him — even yelling at him a time or two. But after a while she gave up: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” she remembers thinking. Before long, they were gorging together and she was moving up in clothing sizes, too.

The hardest part for Vincent was his relationship with his boys: Phillip, 16, and Randy, 17, who are Gail’s sons from a previous relationship; and Deon, 13, his son from a previous relationship.

He longed to run with them in the park. Throw the football. Do dad stuff. But he strained to get off the couch and wouldn’t even walk to the mailbox.

And here’s where Daswell’s story matters to the rest of us. Obesity carries such a stigma — Daswell knows this — that plenty of people will be unmoved by his plight. Some will probably be angered by it.

But with his obesity came a slew of related health problems and associated costs to society. He injected himself with doses of insulin the size of your pinkie to control his Type II diabetes. His blood pressure and cholesterol were through the roof. He slept with a oxygen mask on his face because of sleep apnea. His weight caused the arches of his feet to flatten and his joints to flare. His main activity outside the house was going to doctors, who all knew him by his nickname, “Junior.”

And this is where we come in — Medicare, the government’s insurance for people who are over age 65 or disabled, picks up the tab for his health care. Thus, any taxpaying American has a stake in the care provided to patients like Daswell.

How big is the tab? According to Daswell’s Medicare summary notice, in the two months from Jan. 22 to March 28, 2008, the government paid doctors $4,662.08. That does not count costs of drugs or hospital visits.

Daswell’s plight illustrates a much broader problem. The number of overweight and obese Americans is on the rise. In 2005, more than a third of American adults older than 20 were obese — about 72 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The fastest growing group of obese Americans are those who are at least 100 pounds overweight, which increased by 500 percent from 1987 to 2005, the RAND Corporation reports.

Obesity is measured by a ratio of a person’s height to his weight. RAND, for example, categorized the following people as obese:

• Someone 5 feet 6 inches tall and more than 186 pounds.

• Someone 5 feet 9 inches tall and more than 203 pounds.

• Someone 6 feet tall and more than 221 pounds.

In 2000, the CDC estimated the total cost of obesity in the United States at $117 billion. By 2020, obesity problems will consume more than one-fifth of health care costs in the country, according to RAND. The federal budget is collapsing under the financial weight of Medicare, and reforming health care is at the forefront of the agendas of Congress and President Barack Obama.

In 2007, about 205,000 Americans took the desperate measure of undergoing a bariatric surgical procedure. The surgeries limit the amount of food that can be consumed at a sitting by reducing the size of the stomach by about 90 percent. But as Daswell found, surgery is no magic bullet. Successful weight loss after the surgery requires dramatic life change.

Before surgery, Daswell knew his situation was dire. He knew he would have to have the discipline to stop eating.

“I know I have to do it if I want to reach 40,” he said, laboring to get out the words. “If I want to have a life for myself, there’s no choice for me.”

•••

It’s May 27, 2008, and Daswell is prepping for his surgery at North Vista Hospital with Dr. James Atkinson. His pre-op weight is 376.3 pounds. Medicare covers the surgery by Atkinson, at North Vista, because their short- and long-term outcomes have earned the Bariatric Surgery Center of Excellence designation from the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.

The bands are the latest iteration of bariatric surgery, which has been around since the 1960s. Back then, doctors performed bypass operations so food would go through only two feet of intestine instead of 20, so the body absorbed a minimal amount of food. That procedure lost appeal because it caused chronic diarrhea.

Gastric bypass surgery was also developed in the 1960s and is today the most common weight-loss surgery. A surgeon creates a pouch above the stomach with staples or a band and reroutes it to the middle of the intestine.

The gastric band procedure, approved in the United States in 2001, is much less invasive and is safer than the bypass — but requires much more behavior change. It’s usually done laparoscopically, using small incisions and long instruments to reach the stomach. The band includes a balloonlike collar that wraps around the stomach, creating a pouch that holds about an ounce of food. The band is filled with saline solution, connected to a tube that runs to a port that’s attached to the abdominal wall, under the skin. As the patient loses weight, the stomach loses fat and the collar becomes loose. Doctors’ maintenance includes injecting saline solution into the tube to keep the collar tight.

Atkinson and his partner do about 100 bariatric operations a month. The band is growing in popularity and now makes up about 80 percent of the procedures.

Daswell’s gastric band procedure takes about 20 minutes, and he now defines his life as “before surgery” and “after surgery.” In the first week he was allowed only fluids, for fear of stretching out the cell-phone-sized pouch that is now his stomach. He dropped 23 pounds. Within three weeks he fit into his size 48 pants and had been weaned off four pills — two for gastroesophageal reflux disease, one for diabetes and one for high blood pressure.

His stomach was so small he ate off a small saucer, using a child’s fork. During a meal about a month after his surgery, his 2-ounce serving of meat — about half the size of a deck of cards — was cut into about 20 tiny pieces. On the side he had a spoonful of brown rice and a tiny portion of celery and broccoli. He ate as he was taught at the doctor’s office, chewing patiently, putting the fork down and counting to 25 before taking another bite.

The ensuing months had their ups and downs for Daswell, but at his most recent appointment at Atkinson’s office, on June 29, he weighed 272.2 pounds — more than 104 pounds lost since his surgery.

Daswell looks and sounds like a new man. During a recent visit he wore a button-down shirt and shorts and was lean in comparison to his pre-surgery condition. He’s going to school to become a computer technician. He still suffers from headaches but looks forward to being off Medicare disability.

“That’s not my goal in life, to be disabled and on government assistance,” Daswell said. “I want to get better and see my family life better.”

The preliminary financial outlook for taxpayers is looking better, too. Daswell’s pharmacy records are a single measure, but were the most concrete way for the Sun to measure part of his cost to Medicare before and after the surgery. The Sun calculated the cost of drugs for his obesity-related sicknesses: arthritis, depression, diabetes, gastroesophageal reflux, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

• In the first five months of 2008, taxpayers provided Daswell with 17 medications for obesity-related health problems at a cost of $8,374.19.

• In the first five months of 2009, taxpayers provided Daswell with 13 medications for obesity-related health problems, many at reduced dosages, at a cost of $5,106.54.

It’s a simple measure, but shows a savings of $3,267.65 in the five months, a 39 percent reduction in expenses in drugs alone.

Daswell’s surgery cost about $16,000 for the procedure and first year of follow up. If the pharmacy costs were the only savings realized, the expense could be recouped in just over two years. That does not count the costs Medicare would presumably save in doctor visits and medical equipment — he barely uses the sleep apnea machine he once depended on every night. The equation would also have to factor in the long-term chance that Daswell could contribute to the economy by getting a job and going off Medicare disability.

So does this work for other morbidly obese people?

Research shows that Daswell’s weight loss has been exceptional, but that his improved health is the norm.

Atkinson, the doctor who performed Daswell’s surgery, said gastric band patients might lose only 15 percent of excess weight — versus the expected 50 percent — if they don’t do follow-up visits to tighten the band, or eat too many calories through snacking. But they could also lose up to 80 percent if they’re disciplined, he said.

The Surgical Review Corp. keeps comprehensive statistics for the bariatric surgery industry based on data from more than 57,000 people who have undergone bariatric procedures. Dr. Eric DeMaria, the lead researcher who has examined the database, said bariatric surgery patients generally lose about half the excess body weight.

But it’s more important to examine the surgeries in terms of improved health, DeMaria said.

A 2008 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed remission of Type II diabetes — one of the costliest conditions afflicting American society — was 73 percent in a group that underwent gastric band surgery, and 13 percent in a group that underwent conventional therapy. Other studies show decreases in cholesterol, high blood pressure and sleep apnea.

The failure rate for the surgeries can be as high as 20 percent, DeMaria said, but taken as a whole the surgeries are still cost effective.

“All the analysis seem to be supporting cost-saving from a population-based standpoint, as well as tremendous health improvement, even with average weight loss,” DeMaria said.

A study in The American Journal of Managed Care examined the economic effect of bariatric surgery for 3,651 patients who underwent the procedures. At a cost of about $28,000, gastric bypass procedures are more expensive than band surgeries. On average, the downstream savings from improved health offset the initial costs within two to four years, the study found.

“Third-party payers can rely on bariatric surgery paying for itself,” the study said.

Under certain conditions insurance companies do cover bariatric surgeries, but they often do not. Latts, the doctor who works for Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, said the surgeries are covered by some of her company’s plans, but not others.

Insurance companies have several reasons for not automatically covering the procedures, Latts said. First is competition: If Anthem covers bariatric surgery universally but its competitors do not, then morbidly obese patients will flock to Anthem, raising the costs for everyone insured by the company.

Turnover is the second consideration. These days, people change insurance plans often, so Anthem could pay for the surgery upfront and never realize the savings, Latts said.

But heart surgery also costs a lot upfront and insurance companies may never realize the long-term savings. What’s the difference?

“That’s a great question,” Latts said. “I don’t have a good answer for you. But there is a perception that bariatric surgery is a choice. It’s a choice that people have rather than staying the weight they are or going for another mechanism of weight loss ... I can see both sides of the equation. For someone who is morbidly, obese their options are limited. We hear about weight loss on ‘The Biggest Loser’ but it’s incredibly difficult.”

Policymakers could address some of the insurance companies’ concerns by requiring all companies to cover bariatric surgery. But Latts said she does not favor mandates because then every interest group representing people with certain medical conditions would want them, and that would cause costs to rise for everyone else.

Latts said all proposals should be on the table when discussing health care reform. But Anthem spokeswoman Sally Kweskin wondered whether the American public “has the stomach” to endorse bariatric surgery.

“There’s so much prejudice against it, and anger and disgust,” Kweskin said. People tend to think that an obese person should be able to handle the problem on his own, she said.

Josephine Johnston, research scholar at The Hastings Center, a bioethics institute, said bariatric surgery does seem to have merits, but policymaking efforts should emphasize avoiding obesity in the first place. The U.S. health care system should be restructured so providers are paid to help people avoid extreme weight gain, Johnston said.

Michael Kalichman, director of the University of California, San Diego’s research ethics program, said he has not studied the issue, but the scenario may boil down to whether people recognize it’s economically sound and in their best interests for morbidly obese patients to get bariatric surgery.

It’s an “educational challenge for people who are insurers and insured to know what’s best,” he said.

Daswell isn’t thinking about the ethical or policy implications of his gastric band surgery. He looks over at his son Phillip, 16 and thin as a rail, and says one of his goals is to beat him in a

40-yard-dash when he gets down to 200 pounds.

He clearly relishes the thought of taking on the kid. Unlike the pre-surgery Daswell, he’s looking forward to his future.

Gail, too, looks forward to the future. Her gastric band surgery is scheduled in the coming months.

Sun reporter Alex Richards contributed to this story.

Thieves might have smuggled mint gold in acid, experts say

OTTAWA -- Was $15-million worth of gold stolen from the Royal Canadian Mint by dissolving it in acid, rendering it invisible to metal detectors?

Two gold-refining industry sources say gold chloride dissolved in an acid solution can be unrecognizable to metal detectors, such as those guarding the mint's high-security Sussex Drive refinery in Ottawa -- and the method might explain the recently announced disappearance of more than half a metric ton of gold from the mint's inventory.

"It could be taken out in that form . . . in a liquid chemical form," one U.S. refining executive said.

A similar method was used to hide two Nobel laureates' gold medals from the Nazis when Germany occupied Denmark in 1940.

The mint dissolves gold in hydrochloric acid as part of the process to refine the precious metal to 99.99 and 99.999% purity, the finest gold in the world. The process electro-chemically disintegrates the metal into imperceptible particles of gold chloride suspended in the black-coloured acid solution.

"Being a high-security facility, the mint does not discuss its various security procedures and protocols," Christine Aquino, mint spokeswoman, said. "But I can confirm that we have methods to detect such a liquid."

The alternative -- spiriting even minuscule quantities of solid gold from one of Ottawa's most secure buildings -- seems all but impossible, save for a Hollywood-style heist plot, which seems almost as improbable.

"It would be highly unlikely that it would easily get out of the mint" in a solid form, the U.S. industry source said.

Stone-faced armed guards in RCMP-look-alike uniforms staff the high-security area containing the gold and silver refineries and coin-production shops. Workers wear metal-free uniforms. Any metal in their bodies, from dental work to surgical implants, is noted in a computer and electronically compared every time they arrive and leave.

To lessen the likelihood of an inside job on the shipping/receiving dock, guards are assigned that duty on a random basis. What's more, only certain armoured-car companies are permitted on the property, and drivers must match photographs on file with mint security before heading off with bullion and coins.

Within the gold refinery, thousands of ounces are "in process" at any one time, amounting to several million ounces annually. Exacting efforts are made to retrieve every speck. Everything from the ductwork and crucibles used to handle molten gold, to rags and tissues that come in contact with the metal, are routinely scoured and processed for trace amounts.

And everywhere, unblinking security cameras watch and record every move in the multibillion-dollar enterprise.

So how then, did the mint lose track of 17,514 ounces of gold, and a smaller but undisclosed amount of silver and other precious metals?

That's the equivalent of almost 44,400-ounce gold bars, worth about $15.3-million. It apparently vanished between April and October, 2008, around the same time a new computerized inventory system was being implemented.

Almost 16,500 of the ounces disappeared from the gold refinery, a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the gold typically lost during the refining process.

An eight-month hunt by mint staff and external auditors ruled out recent accounting, bookkeeping and other internal errors. They're continuing to hope, and investigate the possibility, that production miscalculations or accounting errors before April, 2008 will explain the puzzle.

But with the most obvious possible explanations now discounted, speculation grows about a massive and clever theft.

The Deloitte auditors, however, were not asked to probe that scenario. Instead, the mint has asked the RCMP to investigate. But for unexplained reasons, the Mounties' commercial-crime section in Ottawa continues to review the request -- the federal government ordered the mint to call in police -- and has yet to open a criminal investigation.

With the mint also planning to file an insurance claim for the missing fortune, it's likely its insurance carriers would first dispatch their own forensic accountants and other experts to investigate before cutting a $15.3-million cheque.

The Nobel Foundation website details how prize medals belonging to German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) were hidden from the Nazis at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen during the Second World War by dissolving them in aqua regia. After the war, the gold was recovered and reconstituted, and the Nobel Foundation presented the men with new Nobel medals.

In the mint case, could the acid solution be somehow siphoned off and taken from the mint unnoticed, and the gold reconstituted at another location?

The electrolysis room is about two metres below grade. High windows facing Sussex Drive are sealed. There are no floor drains. And, as always, a security camera stares down from the ceiling.

If that's not daunting enough, there's the math of gold electrolysis: each litre of hydrochloric acid contains about three ounces of gold. Based on the 17,500 ounces reported missing, it would take 25 working years to steal one litre a day, hidden in a bottle of some sort.

A more plausible alternative would be to sneak a few far larger quantities out, presumably in metal or plastic drums from the shipping area and -- somehow -- cover up the thefts by replacing the gold anodes and acid from other parts of the refinery.

The mystery continues.

Teen charged in party slaying

A Hamilton teen is charged in the fatal stabbing of an Oakville teen during a weekend birthday party in Burlington.

According to a Facebook site honouring the 17-year-old victim, a BMX biking enthusiast and a competitive tae kwon do athlete, he was trying to break up a fight at a Prospect St. townhouse around 1 a.m. Saturday when he was knifed.

The victim's name hasn't been released by Halton police.

Neighbours said four youths crashed the birthday party for a 17-year-old girl who lives at the townhouse and a fight erupted when they were asked to leave.

Police added that the fight broke out between two groups of teens who didn't know each other.

A girl and another male teen were stabbed in the melee. The girl was treated and released from hospital, while the other was admitted to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

A suspect was arrested a short time after the stabbings, apparently riding a skateboard, police said.

The outpouring of grief for the slain teen on Facebook sites continued yesterday. Many recalled that he was often at Shell Park, on Lakeshore Rd., near Burloak Rd. in Oakville, performing bicycle stunts.

Bradley Todorovich, 18, is charged with second-degree murder, attempted murder and assault with a weapon.

He's to appear in a Milton court for a bail hearing today.

Girl, seven, dies from swine flu

A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD girl has died from swine flu – the second Brit to be killed by the virus and not to have underlying health problems.

Little Chloe Buckley, from West Drayton, Middlesex, attended the nearby St Catherine's RC Primary School.

She fell ill with a sore throat on Wednesday and went to see the doctor, but was told she had tonsillitis and sent home without getting the Tamiflu antiviral drug.

Her condition deteriorated over night and at 10am on Thursday her parents took her to Hillingdon Hospital in Uxbridge.

The dark-haired youngster was then transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, but she died hours later on Thursday evening.

'Devastated'

Her devastated parents – who are practising Catholics – learnt last night their daughter had died from swine flu following tests.

A mother with a child at the same school as the tragic tot said: "Chloe was fit and healthy and in school on Monday and Tuesday.

"By Wednesday she had developed a very sore throat and her mother took her to the doctors.

"But the doctor said she had tonsillitis and sent her home without giving her Tamiflu.

"Over night she became incredibly unwell and at 10am on Thursday her parents took her to hospital and she was transferred to Great Ormond Street.

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"But it was too late and she died that night.

"Then last night her parents were told the test results had come back and she died of swine flu.

"They are devastated because they feel Chloe could still be alive if she was given Tamiflu on Wednesday.

"They are such a close family and those parents did everything for their children."

Many of Chloe's classmates are being kept at home today because parents fear the virus could sweep through the school.

The headteacher has invited concerned parents to a meeting at 3.15pm in the school's hall, where they will discuss the swine flu menace.

Chloe is the 16th fatality of the swine flu pandemic so far in the UK.

There are at least 9,718 confirmed cases of swine flu in the UK – the third highest in the world behind Mexico, where the bug was first identified, and the US.

But it is not known how many people are truly suffering from swine flu as many may be treating themselves at home rather than contacting their GP.

London and the West Midlands are approaching epidemic levels in terms of the number of cases being reported.

Toyota mulling liquidation of Fremont NUMMI venture

NEW YORK (Kyodo) Toyota Motor Corp. said Friday it will consider liquidating New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., a Fremont, Calif.-based joint manufacturing venture with General Motors Corp.

Toyota revealed the plan following GM's announcement the same day that a "new GM," now majority-owned by the U.S. government, has emerged from the bankrupt GM by taking over the best assets of the Detroit-based automaker, including Cadillac and Chevrolet.

The joint venture, NUMMI, which has been in operation since 1984, is not included in the assets the new GM has inherited. As Toyota itself has excess production capacity, the automaker will probably look to liquidate the venture.

Toyota said it must mull the liquidation given the current business environment.

"We have not yet made a formal decision, but it is very difficult to turn a profit by continuing to operate the factory on our own," a senior Toyota official said in Aichi Prefecture.

Another senior official said it may take some time to liquidate the plant even if the automaker decides to go ahead with the plan because its closure will impact area communities and auto parts suppliers.

At present, the joint venture produces the Pontiac Vibe compact for GM as well as the Corolla car and Tacoma pickup truck for Toyota.

About 460,000 Pontiac Vibes were produced between 2002 and the end of this May at the venture.

On June 29, struggling GM said it would discontinue producing the Pontiac Vibe at the venture in August.

Troy Clarke, president of General Motors North America, said at that time in a statement that GM "has decided that its ownership stake in the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. joint venture with Toyota will not be a part of the new GM.

"After extensive analysis, GM and Toyota could not reach an agreement on a future product plan that made sense for all parties," the statement said.

Toyota began producing cars jointly with GM in 1984 as a way to ease the auto trade friction between Japan and the United States.

Production by NUMMI currently accounts for about 20 percent of Toyota's overall car output in North America. The joint venture employs some 4,500 local workers, with about 270,000 vehicles assembled in 2008.

Jackson was murdered

Michael Jackson's sister La Toya has used newspaper interviews to allege the hugely popular singer was killed by a band of greedy hangers-on.

La Toya, 53, spoke about her younger brother's death and its aftermath with Britain's The Mail on Sunday and News of the World weeklies.

"I believe Michael was murdered - I felt that from the start," she said.

"Not just one person was involved, rather it was a conspiracy of people. He was surrounded by a bad circle.

"Michael was a very meek, quiet, loving person - people took advantage of that.

"Less than a month ago, I said I thought Michael was going to die before the London shows because he was surrounded by people who didn't have his best interests at heart."

La Toya says she has ordered a private autopsy into Jackson's death on June 25, at the age of 50.

"Michael was worth more than a billion dollars; when anyone is worth that much money, there are always greedy people around them," he said.

"I said to my family a month ago, 'He's never going to make it to London'. He was worth more dead than alive."

Murder under Californian law can include killings that are not premeditated.

Jackson's comeback 'was forced'

La Toya accuses a "shadowy" group of cutting her sibling off from his family and friends and forcing him to sign up for 50 comeback concerts at London's O2 Arena, shows billed as This Is It.

She says they saw him as a "cash cow" and "got him hooked on drugs - I think it shocked his system so much it killed him."

"I am not going to stop until I find out who is responsible," La Toya said.

"I want justice for Michael. I won't rest until I find out what - and who - killed my brother."

La Toya says Jackson was found in the bedroom of his physician Dr Conrad Murray.

"Michael walked from his room to Dr Murray's room - what happened in there we don't know," she said.

La Toya says she was driving to see Jackson in hospital when her mother screamed 'He's dead!' down the phone.

"I nearly crashed my car - my legs went weak," she said.

"They took me up to the area where Michael had been taken; Mother was crying and Michael's kids were crying."

She also claims jewellery was missing from his house and no cash was found, despite the fact he regularly kept more than a million dollars around.