HHS, DHS and CDC Webcast on Swine Flu
Today at 1pm EST HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and acting Director of the CDC Richard Besser will be webcast answering questions about Swine Flu from the American people. The webcast will be available at www.hhs.gov and questions can be emailed to hhsstudio@hhs.gov.
The World Health Oraganization has now raised the Pandemic Alert Level to Phase 5 meaning that they believe there is a “strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.” There currently have been 109 confirmed cases of Swine Flu in the US and one death. Continually updated information on the situation and statistics as well as fact sheets and interim guidance documents can be found on the CDC Swine Flu page at www.cdc.gov/swineflu.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.