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When she's not cutting hair at her hair salon, Hair Masters 2000, Owner Estela Farjardo's attention is turned to the news, but some recent developments haven't settled well with her. "Everything we do is wrong basically. You're doing this, taking the jobs; I mean basically everything, any way you look at it. We're never good for the community," she said.

A herd of pigs in Canada has tested positive for swine flu, apparently after being infected by a farm worker recently returned from Mexico. The herd, in the western province of Alberta, has been quarantined. Officials said there was no risk of contracting the illness by consuming pork, and chances of a human getting infected by a pig were remote. Meanwhile a spate of new cases among humans were confirmed in Canada, raising the total number from 35 to 85. The largest number of cases was in Nova Scotia. Many of them were at a school in the town of...

In Mexico, an Unusual Flu Season Was a Sign of Something Ominous By Joshua Partlow and William Booth Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, May 3, 2009 MEXICO CITY, May 2 -- For seven tense days, the nation's top epidemiologist, Miguel Ángel Lezana, waited for the answer to a deadly mystery. When the news finally came April 23, it was as bad as he had feared. That afternoon, Lezana learned in a conference call with his counterparts in the United States and Canada that 26 of the roughly 50 saliva swabs and lung samples sent to Winnipeg, Manitoba, had tested positive...

Editors Note : During a recent presidential address, President Obama was confronted with a barrage of questions about closing the border between the U.S. and Mexico. While the president remains confident that closing the border is not the solution, Swine Flu is exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiment. We asked several young Latinos if they felt the Swine Flu scare was changing the way they were being treated on a daily basis. The authors are interns for The Beat Within. The Swine Flu is a sickness discovered in Mexico, not in Mexican Americans! While Listening to President Obama give an address on MSNBC...

Jay Severin, the fiery right wing talk show host on Boston's WTKK-FM radio station, was suspended yesterday after calling Mexican immigrants "criminaliens," "primitives," "leeches," and exporters of "women with mustaches and VD," among other incendiary comments. Heidi Raphael, a spokeswoman for the station, said Severin had been suspended indefinitely from his afternoon drive-time show. She declined to say which of his comments - made since an outbreak of swine flu was linked to Mexico in recent days - sparked the suspension.

Things have gotten so bad for the vice president following his disastrous Today Show appearance that he’s been exiled? No. It’s just coincidental that the day after he strayed way off message on how to deal with the flu virus that his office announced he’s going on an overseas trip. The veep is headed for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Kosovo beginning on May 18. “During the visit, the Vice President will meet with the political leadership in all three countries, as well as U.S. officials and military personnel stationed in the region,” the vice president’s office announced. Yesterday That’s...

Mexico flu strikes wrestlers to politicians Thu Apr 30, 2009 8:52am EDT MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Roberto Mendoza was a brawny masked wrestler, aged 29, who ate heartily, pumped iron at the gym and loved football. Then he caught a vicious strain of flu, checked into hospital and nine days later he was dead. "It was very quick. He got worse and worse, they put tubes in him, then he died," said his red-eyed sister Belen, 32, who works in a small Mexico City eatery that is being scrubbed with bleach as she speaks. In the grindingly poor city district...

Doctors tracking swine flu in California are investigating a new theory: What if it didn't originate in Mexico but instead had been floating around the border region for months? Growing evidence in California suggests that early flu cases had no apparent origin in Mexico. Many of the early California victims — including the first two cases — say they hadn't traveled to Mexico and had no contact with pigs. Some may have fallen ill before the first Mexicans did.

00:55 humor samples in the epidemic are increasingly now the influenza A/H1N1 has pet: a small blue teddy bear virus, called Achufy! "Achufy! Is a cute plush 15 centimeters in size, which will be a memory for life" to remember that the epidemic "put a head of Mexico," said the announcement.

Conservative WTKK radio host Jay Severin was suspended indefinitely today after making offensive remarks about illegal aliens and the swine flu, sources tell the Herald. Severin was shocked to learn about the suspension, the sources said, as the station had been using those same remarks in on-air promos. Heidi Raphael, a spokeswoman for station owner Greater Media, confirmed Severin’s suspension saying the station would have no further comment. {Cut} Spanish-language daily newspaper El Diario la Prensa in New York City, reported earlier this week that Severin was using the flu to attack Mexicans and immigrants. “For Severin, Mexicans are ‘criminaliens’...

ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) - Montgomery County Public School officials say they're closing Rockville High School until further notice due to a probable swine flu case involving a student. School officials say the school will be closed on Friday under the order of state and county health officials. Deputy Secretary for Public Health Frances Phillips says the student represents the ninth probable case of swine flu in the state, but there are no confirmed cases yet. Montgomery County's health director Dr. Ulmer Tillman says the student last attended school on Monday. School officials were alerted to the case around 6:30 p.m....

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY -- Responding to the spread of swine flu to the United States, university officials have temporarily evicted residents of one of Georgetown’s two university-designated quarantine houses to make space for any students who may contract the virus. Wednesday morning, residents of 3517 Prospect St. were told that they have 24 hours to vacate their residence. According to Mark Valtierra (SFS ’10), one of three residents at 3517 Prospect, Patrick Lukingbeal, hall director of Alumni Square and university townhouses, notified Valtierra of the eviction at 10:30 a.m. Valtierra and his housemates were given several boxes and told they must...

Swine flu will carry the name "pandemic" even if the new virus turns out to cause mainly mild symptoms as it sweeps the world, raising questions about how serious the global alert actually is. Although it has been deadly in the disease epicenter, Mexico, and caused the death of one Mexican infant in the United States, in other countries people infected with swine flu have fared well, with diarrhea the biggest complaint. The World Health Organization is expected to move quickly to designate a full pandemic -- at level 6 of its 6-point scale -- within days to reflect the...

Another suspected swine flu case emerged in Israel on Friday morning, when a 26-year-old woman was reported to be hospitalized in Haifa after feeling unwell following contact with a youngster who had recently returned from Mexico. The woman was being kept in isolation at the city's Bnei Zion Hospital and the Health Ministry was working to track down the young man. It marks the first suspected case of the virus in the North. Meanwhile, Tomer Vajim, the first of two Israelis diagnosed with the virus, was discharged from Netanya's Laniado Hospital after fully recovering.

The Virginia Department of Health has received confirmation of the state’s first two cases of swine flu. State Health Commissioner Karen Remley said tonight that the patients are an adult male from eastern Virginia and an adult female from central Virginia. Each had traveled to Mexico, both had mild illnesses and are recovering well, and neither required hospitalization. Neither is a student. Remley said additional cases in Virginia are likely, given the size of the state’s population, seasonal travel patterns and the ease with which the flu virus is spread.

Janet Napolitano strikes again! Time to call for her resignation. Our Border patrol agents are NOT permitted to protect their health because DHS doesn't like how it looks to the public and does not want commerce to be effected at the risk of American lives. "We are now calling for Janet Napolitano's immediate resignation!" William Gheen, President of ALIPAC Agents want to wear the N-95 respirator masks.

Pigs can’t fly yet, but the swine flu is still a reason to stay out of the sky. At least, that is, if you ask Vice President Joe Biden. And most Southwest Floridians aren’t. Nor are their travel agents. Or their airlines. Or the rest of the federal government. “I would tell members of my family — and I have — that I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” Biden said on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday morning. Only problem is, Biden’s advice is not in line with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official message, which is...

A member of the U.S. delegation that traveled to Mexico City as part of the advance security team for Energy Secretary Steven Chu exhibited swine flu-like symptoms upon his return, and three members of his family have tested positive for the A H1N1 virus, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced on Thursday. The unnamed staffer tested negative himself, but Gibbs attributed that to the amount of time that had elapsed since the onset of his own symptoms. The staffer felt ill three days after his arrival in Mexico City, which was April 13th. On the following day (April 17th),...

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s first confirmed swine flu case is a 30-year-old Kentucky woman who first felt ill vacationing in Mexico and was hospitalized a week later after attending a wedding, state health officials said Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday it has not told agents at U.S. airports and border checkpoints that they cannot wear masks to protect from exposure to swine flu. "The Department of Homeland Security has not issued an order saying our employees cannot wear masks. The health of our employees is of utmost importance to us. And today we are issuing department-wide guidance to our workforce," DHS spokeswoman Sara Kuban told FOX News. Kuban was responding to a claim made Thursday that The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security issued a guideline banning...