Daily Briefing: Tues.

Tue, Apr 28 2009 at 9:35 AM EST

FLU AROUND THE WORLD: Swine flu has now reached Asia, with cases confirmed in Israel and New Zealand. The World Health Organization on Monday raised its pandemic threat level from phase 3 to 4, two levels below a full-blown pandemic, although a WHO official cautioned against overreacting, saying a pandemic is "not considered inevitable." Today's Science Times examines the WHO's Catch-22 of trying to simultaneously prepare the world for a pandemic while staying cool enough not to spark a panic. Mexico remains the hardest hit country — by the flu and by a 5.6-magnitude earthquake that struck Monday afternoon — with nearly 2,000 suspected cases and 149 suspected deaths, although only 20 deaths have been confirmed. Despite the virus's spread around the world, it's still deadliest in Mexico, which is baffling scientists. (Sources: Washington Post, New York Times, Scientific American)

HOG WILD: Meanwhile, more evidence is trickling in about the swine flu's birth. Today's Times of London reports that the first known case of the flu was in a 4-year-old boy who lives in the Mexican state of Veracruz — the same place where about 1 million hogs were packed into the Granjas Carroll de Mexico factory farm. The boy has made a full recovery, but many others haven't been so lucky. Neighbors of the Granjas Carroll hog farm have long complained about clouds of flies that frequent its manure lagoons, and when a powerful respiratory disease broke out there in February, the Mexican government first treated it by sealing off the town and spraying chemicals to kill the flies. It doesn't appear to have worked. (Source: Times of London)

MOUNTAINTOP APPROVAL: Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar asked a federal court on Monday to overturn a Bush-era rule that allows coal-mining companies to dump waste from mountaintop removal onto rivers and streams. The rule, passed in December, says companies should honor the previous 100-foot buffer zone if they could, but may disregard it "if avoidance is not possible." (Source: Washington Post)

RESEARCH ENGINE: President Obama hailed his commitment to rebuilding American science in a speech Monday to the National Academy of Sciences that also laid out his vision for its resurgence. He described the need to boost research funding for medicine and energy, as well as beef up the nation's entire assembly line of scientists, from grade school through research labs. Overall he called his plan "the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history," and called on Americans "to create, build and invent — to be makers of things, not just consumers of things." (Source: NY Times)

SALAMANDER SAVE: A concerned citizen who's never seen a Tehachapi slender salamander has nonetheless convinced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to study whether it should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Having read in a book about the amphibian — which lives only in two canyons, 13 miles apart, separated by a freeway — he wrote a petition in 2006 asking the FWS to list it as an endangered species, citing threats such as nearby development plans, mining, livestock grazing and road construction. Now the FWS has agreed to "take an in-depth look" at the salamander's situation, saying the man's petition offered "substantial scientific or commercial information." (Source: Los Angeles Times)

SOMETHING'S NOT FISHY: Of Maine's 6,000 or so lakes, the vast majority are populated with fish. The others — about 100 — make up a rare and shrinking type of aquatic ecosystem where amphibians and insects brazenly strut around in the absence of predators, although their overall ecological importance is unknown. These fishless lakes were being stocked with fish as recently as 1999, but scientists are now scrambling to study them while they still exist. (Source: NY Times)

LOAD OF CARP: Speaking of fishless lakes, Utah biologists are pushing for 5 million pounds of carp to be removed from Utah Lake each year in an effort to save the endangered June sucker — a native fish that lives only in the lake and its tributaries. The carp were introduced to the lake in the 1880s as a food source for local residents, but quickly began crowding out the natives. If the plan is successful, 30 million pounds of carp would be removed from Utah Lake in just six years. (Source: Associated Press)

BEARS BACK: Arkansas was once known as the Bear State, but nearly lost its titular carnivores in the early 20th century to overhunting and timber clearing. Only 25 black bears remained by 1928, but in the 1950s state officials began a novel program to trap bears in Minnesota and Manitoba using baited, 50-gallon drums, then drove them down to Arkansas via pickup. The experiment is a success, the AP reports today, as more than 4,000 bears now roam the Ozarks, even spilling into neighboring Missouri and Oklahoma. (Source: AP)

— Russell McLendon

(Photo: ZUMA Press)