AP - Mexico is telling citizens to stay home, urging businesses to close for five days and suspending government services as the World Health Organization warns the swine flu outbreak is on the brink of becoming a global epidemic.

AP - For decades, Arlen Specter was the kind of Republican who would rather fight than switch.

Reuters - The number of new cancer cases diagnosed each year will jump 45 percent in the next two decades to 2.3 million up from 1.6 million in 2010, affecting many more older adults and minorities, U.S. researchers predicted on Wednesday.

Reuters - Mexican President Felipe Calderon told his people to stay home from Friday for a five-day partial shutdown of the economy, after the World Health Organization said a swine flu pandemic was imminent.

AP - An Atlanta attorney at the center of an international health scare when he flew to Europe for his wedding even though he was infected with a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis is suing federal health officials, claiming they invaded his privacy.

AP - He was not yet 2, far from home and dying. The first victim of swine flu in the U.S. was a Mexican toddler who struggled to survive for weeks in Texas hospitals — long before it was known doctors were dealing with an international outbreak.

AP - Mexico's health secretary may have thought he was allaying fears about swine flu when he suggested that the nation's swine flu death rate was 6 or 7 percent. In reality, that would mean a monstrous killer virus — and no experts are close to saying that. The secretary's comment reflects how much remains unknown about the new flu virus — most notably how lethal it is and why it seems so much deadlier in Mexico than anywhere else.

AP - From Egypt's order that all 300,000 pigs in the country be slaughtered to travel bans and putting the kibosh on kissing, the world is taking drastic — and some say debatable — measures to combat swine flu.

AP - Mexico readied a "temporarily closed" sign — taking the drastic step of ordering a suspension of nonessential federal government and private business activity as it tried to squelch a swine flu epidemic. The World Health Organization ratcheted up an alert and warned that "all of humanity" is threatened.