NPR 2009-05-04

From NPR News in Washington, I'm Crag Windham.

 Health officials in the United States and abroad say the expanding swine flu outbreak still appears generally mild, but infections are widespread enough that some may expect the outbreak will soon be declared a pandemic. There have been 226 confirmed cases in the US spread over 30 states. The medium age of people who've gotten the disease in this country is 17. NPR's Richard Knox has more on this story.

 One US official assumes the new virus is circulating throughout the United States, even if cases aren't confirmed everywhere yet. The Official stress the vast majority of cases are no more serious than seasonal 1 flu.  At least 30 Americans are hospitalized with the new flu. Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, said today on CBS's "Face the Nation" that the world is already in a flu pandemic. She predicts the World Health Organization will soon raise the alert level to phase six, an official pandemic.

 "When you talk about Level 6, which they very well could go to this week, all that means it is widespread throughout the world."

 Napolitano stressed that pandemic just meant widespread transmission of a new disease, not necessarily that it's dangerous. Richard Knox, NPR News.

 Union leaders representing workers at the Boston Globe are meeting with negotiators for the newspaper’s owner, the New York Times Company, trying to reach / agreement on a concession 2 package that management says  is needed to keep the Globe operating. The Times company has set a midnight deadline and said unless the union has agreed to twenty million dollars in concessions 3 by then the Globe will be closed down.

 Former Senator and Presidential candidate John Edwards has acknowledged that federal investigators 4 are examining how he handled his campaign funds. More from NPR's Ina Jaffe.

 In a statement first sent to the Raleigh News & Observer, John Edwards said "I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly 5", adding that he had given authorities access to people and information in order to get the issue resolved. In 2006, Edwards's Political Action Committee paid Rielle Hunter 100,000 dollars for video production. Edwards later acknowledged that he and Hunter had had an affair. The next year, Edwards' PAC paid Hunter an additional 14,000 dollars at the time when he had less than 8,000 dollars in the till. On the same day, Edwards' presidential campaign fund paid his PAC about 14,000 dollars. It is a federal crime to use PAC money for personal use. The United States attorney George Holding will neither confirm nor deny that there is an investigation 6 underway. Ina Jaffe, NPR News.

 Italian automaker Fiat 8 says it is in talks with General Motors about buying GM's European operations. Fiat says GM Europe could be combined with assets of Chrysler that it is pushing to acquire to create a new auto 7 company with estimated annual sales of more than $100 million. GM Europe includes Opel, Swedish carmaker Saab and British firm Vauxhall.

 This is NPR News.

 France's navy has captured 11 suspected Somali pirates after they mistook a French naval 9 ship for a commercial vessel 10 and prepared an assault. Eleanor Beardsley reports.

 A navy spokesperson said the pirates were heading for the naval ship in three small boats to attack it. But the naval frigate 11, the Nivose, put its own craft and commandos into water and sent out a helicopter to overpower the pirate vessels 12. The incident took place about 600 miles off the Somali coast in the Indian Ocean. The navy said the pirates were using the two smaller boats for attacks and the third was the mother ship which it used to transport supplies such as gasoline, water and food. Guns and rockets were also found on board. The Nivose has captured pirates in three separate raids in the last two weeks. Naval forces from France, the US, Europe and Asia have been deployed 13 to protect merchant ships from increasingly bold pirate attacks in the Gulf 14 of Aden. For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.

 An avalanche 15 in the Austrian Alps has killed 6 mountain climbers from the Czech Republic. Bruce Konviser has the story from Prague.

 The climbers were at about 10,000 feet when a wall of snow thundered down the mountain side on Saturday. Rescuers spotted 16 the avalanche shortly after it occurred, but poor weather prevented them from reaching the site until today. Dozens of people are killed every year by avalanches 17 in the Alpine 18 mountains. But this year has been especially bad because of heavy snows. One member of the climbing party who chose not to make the climb yesterday has identified the bodies of his compatriots. The climbers were about 1,500 feet from the mountain's summit when the avalanche occurred. For NPR News, I'm Bruce Konviser in Prague.