After a year of obfuscation, the authorities on Thursday released the first official tally of student deaths from the earthquake last May, saying that 5,335 children either were dead or remained missing. An additional 546 were left disabled, they said.

The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed rules to limit emissions of climate-changing gases from the manufacture of ethanol, a step that would probably curtail the expansion of corn ethanol production.

GREENWOOD, Miss.

President Obama asked Congress on Tuesday to spend $63 billion over the next six years on a new, broader global health strategy that would reshape one of the signature foreign policy efforts of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

The first American has died after contracting the swine flu virus, Texas health officials said Tuesday. Officials did not identify the 33-year-old Texas woman but added that she suffered from an unnamed pre-existing medical condition.

As the world was focusing on swine flu, or H1N1, this past week, there were worrisome developments with respect to bird flu, H5N1

EVERY business traveler is routinely asked,

To the Editor:

Re

Closing schools once a student falls ill with swine flu may no longer be worth the toll on students and families, because the illness will soon be present almost everywhere in the country and few cases have been severe, federal health authorities said Monday.

Medical experts are calling the new influenza virus A(H1N1), but for many Mexicans it is simply a scarlet A.

From Chile, where sports officials declined to host Mexican soccer teams, to China, where the authorities forced even healthy resident Mexicans and Mexican travelers into quarantine, Mexicans say they have been typecast as disease carriers and subjected to humiliating treatment.