CNN 2009-05-03

Prosecutors 1 call it a hate crime, but the jury did not agree. Two teenagers are acquitted 2, They were yesterday of murder in a Pennsylvania courtroom and instead Brandon Piekarsky and Derrick Donchak were convicted of simple assault in the beating death last summer of Luis Ramirez. The prosecutors allege 3 the teens and their friends goaded 4 Ramirez into a fight, while an attorney for the Mexican-American Legal Defense 5 and Education Fund very upset with the verdict.

It was a long case and the jury has rendered their verdict and they took a long time to deliberate on the case and we respect their verdict.

Failure to indicate the death of Luis Ramirez has set an extremely dangerous precedent 6. The jurors here sending the message that you can brutally 7 beat a person without regard to their life and get away with it continue with your life uninterrupted, not in this case there wasn't even a slap on the wrist. In this case the message is that a person who may not be popular in society based on their national origin or certain characteristic has less value in our society.

Ramirez died of blunt force trauma 8 two days after the beating. Defense attorneys say the trial was difficult.

It was a long process. We have been fighting this case for lots of months, it was highly charged obviously by all these cameras, the week of trial was very difficult and we are just delighted that it ended the way it did.

The number of the swine flue cases has jumped dramatically overnight. But we are gonna to keep this in perspective for you, here is the latest. The World Health Organization reporting that 615 people infected in 15 countries now that would be a 67% increase from the 365 confirmed cases that were reported just yesterday. However this is not because they are starting to see more new cases however these are just suspected cases that are now confirmed through testing in a lab. Also Hong Kong and South Korea have each confirmed one case about 200 guests and 100 staff members at one Hong Kong hotel had to be quarantined. The government ordered that quarantine after a Mexican man staying in the hotel got sick.

So far the strain in the US has not been nearly as deadly as we have been seeing in Mexico, we do know about 16 people confirmed dead from the swine flu in Mexico, just one child died of the swine flu here in the US, but President Obama says the US will be ready if this virus somehow mutates into something that is worse. This morning in his weekly address, he assured American people that every resource is being used.

As our scientists and researchers learn more information about this virus everyday, the guidance we offer will likely change. What we will not change is the fact that we will be making every recommendation based on the best science possible. We will also continue investing in every resource necessary to treat this virus and prevent a wider outbreak. The good news is that the current strain of H1N1 can be defeated by a course of antiviral treatment that we already have on hand. We began this week with 50 million courses of this treatment in the Strategic National Stockpile. Over the course of the last few days, we've delivered one quarter of that stockpile to states so they are prepared to treat anyone who is infected with this virus, we then purchased an additional thirteen million treatments to refill our strategic stockpiles.