Peter Morgan Accuses Tony Blair of Plagiarizing Lines From His Film, The Queen

September 8, 2010

The Telegraph

By: Tim Walker

Tony Blair’s account of what was said when he went to kiss hands with the Queen in 1997 is perhaps the most controversial part of his memoirs because it represents such a flagrant betrayal of the trust that had previously existed between the monarch and her prime minister.

Now, in an intriguing twist to the affair, Peter Morgan, the screenwriter, tells me that he suspects the former prime minister took the line not from his actual conversation with the Queen, but his Oscar- winning film about her which starred Helen Mirren.

In A Journey, Blair claims that the Queen said to him: “You are my 10th prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.” In Morgan’s script to the 2006 film The Queen, Mirren, in the title role, tells Michael Sheen’s Blair: “You are my 10th prime minister, Mr Blair. My first was Winston Churchill.” Morgan tells me: “I wish I could pretend that I had inside knowledge, but I made up those lines. No minutes are taken of meetings between prime ministers and monarchs and the convention is that no one ever speaks about them, so I didn’t even attempt to find out what had been said.

“There are three possibilities. The first is I guessed absolutely perfectly, which is highly unlikely; the second is Blair decided to endorse what I imagined as the official line; and the third is that he had one gin and tonic too many and confused the scene in the film with what had actually happened, and this I find amusing because he always insisted he had never even seen it.”

Stephen Frears, who directed The Queen, laughed when I told him of the coincidence at the premiere of his new film, Tamara Drewe. “Now people will accuse us of bugging them,” he said.

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Hosni Mubarak Left Red Faced Over Doctored Red Carpet Photo

September 16, 2010

The Guardian

By: Jack Shenker

There are those who lead and those who follow, and the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram clearly feels that President Hosni Mubarak fits into the former category.

When he was pictured with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, trailing behind Barack Obama on the red carpet at the White House recently, it was nothing Photoshop could not fix. So, on Tuesday, the state-run daily Al-Ahram published the photo, taken at the launch of the latest Middle East peace talks – but with Mubarak switched to the front of the procession.

The doctored picture was exposed by the Egyptian blogger Wael Khalil and quickly struck a chord with Egypt’s vibrant network of online opposition activists. Spoof versions have since appeared depicting the 82-year-old Mubarak landing on the moon, breaking the 100m world record and hoisting aloft the World Cup.

The controversy comes as the government gears up for parliamentary elections and amid rumours the authoritarian leader, who has ruled Egypt for nearly three decades, is seriously ill.

“I think what’s significant is that Al-Ahram, the regime’s mouthpiece, is clearly very sensitive about the way Mubarak appears to the general public in the current climate,” Khalil said. “People have picked up on the photo because it’s such a good insight into the way the government operates in Egypt; whenever there are problems or failings they simply try and gloss over them – you can see that in this photo, and you can see it in the way they run the country.”

Al-Ahram is the most widely circulated Arabic newspaper in the Middle East and is known for its largely fawning coverage of the Egyptian government.

Its market share has been challenged in recent years by an increasingly bold crop of independent newspapers willing to adopt a more critical tone towards the ruling NDP party, a stance which has landed many independent editors in court.

By contrast Al-Ahram and other state-run publications have a track record of subtly “improving” pictures of Egypt’s political elite, although usually in a less obvious manner than this week’s example.

The scandal will come as a blow to Al-Ahram’s director, Abdel Moneim Said, a former Egyptian senator who was thought to have presided over a slight revival of the 135-year-old newspaper’s fortunes since taking the helm last year, following decades of mismanagement. Al-Ahram has so far failed to issue any response or apology for its actions, although the offending photo has been removed from the paper’s website.

Although the incident has caused plenty of mirth at the president’s expense, some are not amused. The anti-government 6 April Youth Movement said: “This is what the corrupt regime’s media has been reduced to.” It added that the newspaper had “crossed the line from being balanced and honest,” and accused it of unprofessionalism.

The publication of the photograph coincided with the arrival of Abbas and Netanyahu at the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh for the second round of talks under the current peace process.

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Monsanto Contracted Blackwater Spies to Infiltrate Opposition

September 16, 2010

AlterNet

By: Jeremy Scahill

Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater’s work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater’s owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article.

One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the “intel arm” of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.

Governmental recipients of intelligence services and counterterrorism training from Prince’s companies include the Kingdom of Jordan, the Canadian military and the Netherlands police, as well as several US military bases, including Fort Bragg, home of the elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and Fort Huachuca, where military interrogators are trained, according to the documents. In addition, Blackwater worked through the companies for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the US European Command.

On September 3 the New York Times reported that Blackwater had “created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts after the security company came under intense criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq.” The documents obtained by The Nation reveal previously unreported details of several such companies and open a rare window into the sensitive intelligence and security operations Blackwater performs for a range of powerful corporations and government agencies. The new evidence also sheds light on the key roles of several former top CIA officials who went on to work for Blackwater.

The coordinator of Blackwater’s covert CIA business, former CIA paramilitary officer Enrique “Ric” Prado, set up a global network of foreign operatives, offering their “deniability” as a “big plus” for potential Blackwater customers, according to company documents. The CIA has long used proxy forces to carry out extralegal actions or to shield US government involvement in unsavory operations from scrutiny. In some cases, these “deniable” foreign forces don’t even know who they are working for. Prado and Prince built up a network of such foreigners while Blackwater was at the center of the CIA’s assassination program, beginning in 2004. They trained special missions units at one of Prince’s properties in Virginia with the intent of hunting terrorism suspects globally, often working with foreign operatives. A former senior CIA official said the benefit of using Blackwater’s foreign operatives in CIA operations was that “you wouldn’t want to have American fingerprints on it.”

While the network was originally established for use in CIA operations, documents show that Prado viewed it as potentially valuable to other government agencies. In an e-mail in October 2007 with the subject line “Possible Opportunity in DEA—Read and Delete,” Prado wrote to a Total Intelligence executive with a pitch for the Drug Enforcement Administration. That executive was an eighteen-year DEA veteran with extensive government connections who had recently joined the firm. Prado explained that Blackwater had developed “a rapidly growing, worldwide network of folks that can do everything from surveillance to ground truth to disruption operations.” He added, “These are all foreign nationals (except for a few cases where US persons are the conduit but no longer ‘play’ on the street), so deniability is built in and should be a big plus.”

The executive wrote back and suggested there “may be an interest” in those services. The executive suggested that “one of the best places to start may be the Special Operations Division, (SOD) which is located in Chantilly, VA,” telling Prado the name of the special agent in charge. The SOD is a secretive joint command within the Justice Department, run by the DEA. It serves as the command-and-control center for some of the most sensitive counternarcotics and law enforcement operations conducted by federal forces. The executive also told Prado that US attachés in Mexico; Bogotá, Colombia; and Bangkok, Thailand, would potentially be interested in Prado’s network. Whether this network was activated, and for what customers, cannot be confirmed. A former Blackwater employee who worked on the company’s CIA program declined to comment on Prado’s work for the company, citing its classified status.

NYC Adds Subway Cameras

September 20, 2010

CBS New York

As many as 500 cameras have been placed in nearly every corner of three of the busiest transit hubs in New York City – in the stairwells and on the platform.

All of them are keeping a close watch on who and what’s going in and out of our subways.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn’t waste time talking about the subways, “which we know terrorists regard as what they would call high value targets.”

Bloomberg, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Jay Walder announced the city’s newest security initiative on Monday.

Hundreds of MTA subway security cameras placed in Grand Central, Penn Station and Times Square are now directly piped into the NYPD’s security operation center, allowing police eyes in places where they didn’t have them before.

“And seated here in the operation center … we have police officers reviewing this information 24 hours a day,” Kelly told CBS 2′s Scott Rapoport.

It’s part of a plan that was initiated in 2005. The MTA cameras are now joining the more than 1,000 security cameras that are already in place in lower Manhattan, on which the NYPD keeps a watchful eye.

It’s a significant move in the wake of May’s failed Times Square bombing and the plot of Najibullah Zazi year ago to bomb subway trains.

“We are also beginning to use software that identifies potentially suspicious objects or behaviors,” Kelly said.

Earlier this year, Mayor Bloomberg went to London on a fact-finding trip involving that city’s vast network of 12,000 cameras monitoring the train system.

It’s something MTA chief Walder is familiar with and something he said makes sense for New York.

“We’ve taken on the unwanted distinction as one of the leading terror targets in the world,” Walder said.

News of the move was greeted fondly by a lot of subway riders.

“I think it’s a very good idea quite honestly,” one person said.

“Absolutely. Why not? Like, it’s our protection,” added Blake Clendenin of Hell’s Kitchen.

“It’s an invasion of privacy, but if I’m in the subway I like the cops looking over my shoulder,” added Barry Zimmerman.

And the mayor and the police commissioner said they’re not done yet, with more camera hook-ups coming soon.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said it has questions about the surveillance program regarding privacy issues and who has access to the information gathered.

It said it has previously sued the NYPD and Department of Homeland Security for access to that information and that both of those suits are ongoing.

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US MIlitary Launches Secret Spy Satellite

September 21, 2010

Yahoo! News

A rocket carrying classified satellite cargo has been successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California’s central coast.

A release from the base says the Atlas 5 rocket carrying a national security payload for the National Reconnaissance Office was launched Monday shortly after 9 p.m.

No details about the satellite’s orbit or capabilities were released.

The launch was a project three years in the making by Vandenberg’s 30th Space Wing, the United Launch Alliance and the NRO, which oversees the nation’s constellation of spy satellites.

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US Falling Behind In The Markets

September 20, 2010

Bloomberg

By: Mike Dorning

The U.S. has fallen behind emerging markets in Brazil, China and India as the preferred place to invest, a Bloomberg survey shows, though the world’s largest economy still ranks highest of all major developed countries.

The U.S. ranked first three months ago in the last quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll. Along with the slipping perceptions of the U.S. markets in the most recent survey, conducted Sept. 16-17, poll respondents say the Federal Reserve is likely to take further steps to try to bolster the economy.

In the September poll of 1,408 investors, analysts and traders who are Bloomberg subscribers, respondents rate the U.S. fourth for potential returns over the next year, behind Brazil and China, tied for first, and India, in third place.

The U.S. economic situation “is obviously unsustainable, and the concerted attempt to suspend disbelief is playing increasingly poorly abroad,” says poll respondent Eric Kraus, chief strategist for Otkritie Brokerage House in Moscow. “One can delay, but no one can forestall the unwind of a multidecade credit bubble.”

Economic reports released since the June poll show U.S. GDP growth slowed to 1.6 percent in the second quarter from 3.7 percent in the first quarter. In the final quarter of last year, GDP grew at a 5.0 percent annual rate.

Expectations for U.S. GDP growth next year have dropped to a median forecast of 2.5 percent in September from 2.9 percent in June, according to Bloomberg’s monthly survey of economists.

S&P Rise

Since the June survey, U.S. stock markets have been on the rise. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen 3.62 percent since the last investor poll was completed June 3. That’s not as much as Brazil’s Bovespa Index, which is up 10.56 percent and India’s Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index, which is up 10.44 percent. The U.S. stocks still did better than China’s Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index, which has risen 1.41 percent since June 3.

“I think the U.S. will get back on track, but not in the next 6-12 months,” says poll respondent Thomas Knudsen, a senior trader with OW Supply & Trading in Copenhagen.

Two-thirds of investors say they believe Federal Reserve policy makers, who meet today, will ease monetary policy through bond purchases by the end of the year. A similar 65 percent majority say the Fed bond purchases won’t boost U.S. economic growth.

Overall, investors give the central bank favorable marks, with a 57 percent majority believing its monetary policy is “about right.” More say it has been too aggressive, the view of 26 percent, than say it has been too timid, a view held by 14 percent.

Popular Bernanke

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is viewed favorably by 71 percent of respondents, up from 67 percent in June. He ranks highest in a list of eight global leaders and policy makers that includes President Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet.

Only 1 out of 6 investors believes the U.S. economy is currently improving, though a 45 percent plurality considers the U.S. “stable.” Another 37 percent believe the U.S. is deteriorating.

The poll also shows that confidence in the dollar has slipped since June, when 63 percent of investors believed the U.S. currency would rise against the euro during the following three months. Forecasts are now evenly divided: 34 percent now expect a stronger dollar in three months; 32 percent expect little change; and 30 percent a weaker dollar.

The Bloomberg Global Poll was conducted by Selzer & Co., of Des Moines, Iowa, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

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Four Al-Qaeda-Linked Prisoners Escape US Custody In Iraq

September 10, 2010

Washington Post

By: Janine Zacharia

In an embarrassing and potentially dangerous foul-up, four Iraqi detainees with alleged links to the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq escaped from U.S. custody at a Baghdad detention facility late Wednesday.

The escape was an example of the challenges the United States faces as it scales back its military force and redefines its mission in Iraq.

The identities of the four escapees and the guards who were overseeing their detention were not immediately known. The U.S. military released no details on how the four escaped.

Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, an Iraqi military spokesman, told the Associated Press that the four were linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq and were facing the death penalty.

They were part of a group of about 200 detainees who were considered too dangerous to hand over to Iraqi control when the U.S. military transferred responsibility for the detention facility at Camp Cropper – renamed Karkh Prison – and its 1,500 detainees to the Iraqi government in July.

A week after the transfer, four prisoners with alleged links to al-Qaeda in Iraq escaped from the Iraqi side of the prison. The new Iraqi warden of the prison, who had been appointed at the urging of U.S. officials, vanished shortly after that earlier jailbreak.

Wednesday’s escape follows President Obama’s Aug. 31 announcement of the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq. The U.S. military has reduced its forces to 50,000 troops who remain largely in an advisory role.

The absence of the four prisoners was discovered Wednesday night after two other detainees were caught trying to escape.

U.S. and Iraqi forces and the Iraqi Justice Ministry “are working to apprehend these individuals,” said Maj. Gen. Jerry Cannon, the deputy commanding general for detainee operations. “This event is under investigation.”

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Tea Party Picks Up Steam Nationwide

September 21, 2010

Washington Post

By: Amy Gardner

Fresh off big primary wins in Delaware and Alaska, national “tea party” groups are redirecting the energy of the movement toward the November midterm elections, raising millions of dollars, expanding their advocacy into dozens of congressional races and building voter turnout operations nationwide.

Leaders of the Atlanta-based Tea Party Patriots announced a $1 million donation Tuesday, from an anonymous single contributor, that the organization will pour into local tea party groups and get-out-the-vote efforts in some of the most competitive congressional races.

FreedomWorks, which is headquartered in Washington and endorsed 25 House and Senate candidates during the primary season, said it will expand that list to more than 80. The Tea Party Express, based in Sacramento, is planning its largest national bus tour at the end of October to get conservatives to the polls.

The goal is to keep alive the momentum the movement has generated and to use it to target vulnerable Democratic candidates.

“People are starting to realize that the tea party represents a powerful get-out-the-vote machine,” said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks. “We’ve got the most energized voting constituency in the country. This movement has been organizing since before April 2009, and all of that community is energizing and driving public opinion. The establishment is taking us more seriously. There’s nothing like turning out votes in an election that matters.”

The new push illustratesthe movement’s transformation since the primaries from a disorganized coalition of fiscally conservative activists to a measurable political force. But the tea party’s rapid growth – along with the influx of cash and political professionals – has led some followers to worry that it risks losing its rebel spirit.

“Many of the grass-roots activists who started this movement 18 months ago, myself included, may look and ask the question ‘Dude, where’s my movement?’ ” said Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, which held the movement’s first large-scale convention this spring. (Another scheduled to be held in Nevada next month has been cancelled.) “There is no question the movement has changed. The evolution of ‘Big Tea’ is the logical result of where this movement must go.”

Equally uncertain is whether the movement’s success with activist primary voters will play as well with the broader general electorate in November. Most polls show that at least as many registered voters view the tea party unfavorably as favorably.

Perhaps no group is more aware of the divisions within the movement than FreedomWorks, a tea party organizer headed by Richard K. Armey, a former corporate lobbyist and congressman from Texas who was once House majority leader. FreedomWorks has taken a politically pragmatic approach in deciding which candidates to endorse. In last week’s Senate primary in Delaware, Tea Party Express spent more than $200,000 on behalf of Christine O’Donnell, who was challenging Rep. Michael N. Castle, the establishment GOP choice. But FreedomWorks’ leaders declined to back O’Donnell because they didn’t think she could win the general election in November.

Yet FreedomWorks, which focuses primarily on training volunteers and helping them organize phone banks, door-knocking campaigns and other voting-related efforts, is eager to take advantage of the momentum from O’Donnell’s victory – and also from that of Joe Miller, who beat incumbent Lisa Murkowksi in Alaska’s Republican Senate primary last month. FreedomWorks endorsed O’Donnell the day after her win, and, this week, the group plans to announce that it will back the Senate campaigns of Linda McMahon in Connecticut, Carly Fiorina in California and John Raese in West Virginia.

FreedomWorks and other tea party groups are expanding their lists of approved candidates to include more establishment-backed Republicans. The intention is to rally tea party activists behind all Republicans this fall and not just those who identify with the movement.

“We’ve gone through the primary process,” Kibbe said. “I think the tea party has had a tremendous impact on the quality of the candidates coming out of the primaries. But here we are in the race to November 2, and November 2 is all about holding Democrats accountable.”

Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express, distanced her organization from that general-election strategy, noting that the group identified its “heroes” and “targets” on April 15 – and that it is not wavering from the list.

“There may be some groups that need to reevaluate where they are, but we’re not doing that,” she said. “We’ve helped Joe Miller in Alaska and Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware come across the victory lines, and we’re behind them 100 percent going into November.”

Both national political parties are struggling to adjust to the tea party’s continued prominence. Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said the party welcomes the nomination of tea-party-backed candidates in Senate races nationwide. He noted that in most of the states holding those elections, notably Kentucky, Nevada and Delaware, those candidates have helped Democrats remain competitive in races in which they were expected to struggle.

“We are more competitive in these races because they nominated candidates who are extremists,” Schultz said.

Still, Democrats must contend with perhaps the biggest strength of the tea party movement, which is its ability to get conservatives to vote. GOP leaders have bristled at the tea party’s willingness to overthrow establishment candidates, but no one doubts the boost that the movement will give Republicans in November.

“That’s not a bad trade-off, considering that we have this tremendous energy and enthusiasm moving into the fall,” said Brian Walsh, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “I would take any one of our candidates over a candidate on the Democratic side who voted for the stimulus bill, who voted for the health-care bill, and whose message is ‘If you vote for me, I’m going to vote for the status quo in Washington.’ ”

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Study Finds Nearly 1 Million Kids Misdiagnosed with ADHD

August 17, 2010

Science Daily

Nearly 1 million children in the United States are potentially misdiagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder simply because they are the youngest — and most immature — in their kindergarten class, according to new research by a Michigan State University economist.

These children are significantly more likely than their older classmates to be prescribed behavior-modifying stimulants such as Ritalin, said Todd Elder, whose study will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Health Economics.

Such inappropriate treatment is particularly worrisome because of the unknown impacts of long-term stimulant use on children’s health, Elder said. It also wastes an estimated $320 million-$500 million a year on unnecessary medication — some $80 million-$90 million of it paid by Medicaid, he said.

Elder said the “smoking gun” of the study is that ADHD diagnoses depend on a child’s age relative to classmates and the teacher’s perceptions of whether the child has symptoms.

“If a child is behaving poorly, if he’s inattentive, if he can’t sit still, it may simply be because he’s 5 and the other kids are 6,” said Elder, assistant professor of economics. “There’s a big difference between a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old, and teachers and medical practitioners need to take that into account when evaluating whether children have ADHD.”

ADHD is the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder for kids in the United States, with at least 4.5 million diagnoses among children under age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, there are no neurological markers for ADHD (such as a blood test), and experts disagree on its prevalence, fueling intense public debate about whether ADHD is under-diagnosed or over-diagnosed, Elder said.

Using a sample of nearly 12,000 children, Elder examined the difference in ADHD diagnosis and medication rates between the youngest and oldest children in a grade. The data is from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort, which is funded by the National Center for Education Statistics.

According to Elder’s study, the youngest kindergartners were 60 percent more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than the oldest children in the same grade. Similarly, when that group of classmates reached the fifth and eighth grades, the youngest were more than twice as likely to be prescribed stimulants.

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Drug-Resistant Superbugs Found in 3 States

September 14, 2010

AOL Health

An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: Bacteria that have been made resistant to nearly all antibiotics by an alarming new gene have sickened people in three states and are popping up all over the world, health officials reported Monday.

The U.S. cases and two others in Canada all involve people who had recently received medical care in India, where the problem is widespread. A British medical journal revealed the risk last month in an article describing dozens of cases in Britain in people who had gone to India for medical procedures.

How many deaths the gene may have caused is unknown; there is no central tracking of such cases. So far, the gene has mostly been found in bacteria that cause gut or urinary infections.

Scientists have long feared this – a very adaptable gene that hitches onto many types of common germs and confers broad drug resistance, creating dangerous “superbugs.”

“It’s a great concern,” because drug resistance has been rising and few new antibiotics are in development, said Dr. M. Lindsay Grayson, director of infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “It’s just a matter of time” until the gene spreads more widely person-to-person, he said.

Grayson heads an American Society for Microbiology conference in Boston, which was buzzing with reports of the gene, called NDM-1 and named for New Delhi.

The U.S. cases occurred this year in people from California, Massachusetts and Illinois, said Brandi Limbago, a lab chief at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three types of bacteria were involved, and three different mechanisms let the gene become part of them.

“We want physicians to look for it,” especially in patients who have traveled recently to India or Pakistan, she said.

What can people do?

Don’t add to the drug resistance problem, experts say. Don’t pressure your doctors for antibiotics if they say they aren’t needed, use the ones you are given properly, and try to avoid infections by washing your hands.

The gene is carried by bacteria that can spread hand-to-mouth, which makes good hygiene very important.

It’s also why health officials are so concerned about where the threat is coming from, said Dr. Patrice Nordmann, a microbiology professor at South-Paris Medical School. India is an overpopulated country that overuses antibiotics and has widespread diarrheal disease and many people without clean water.

“The ingredients are there” for widespread transmission, he said. “It’s going to spread by plane all over the world.”

The U.S. patients were not related. The California woman needed hospital care after being in a car accident in India. The Illinois man had pre-existing medical problems and a urinary catheter, and is thought to have contracted an infection with the gene while traveling in India. The case from Massachusetts involved a woman from India who had surgery and chemotherapy for cancer there and then traveled to the U.S.

Lab tests showed their germs were not killed by the types of drugs normally used to treat drug-resistant infections, including “the last-resort class of antibiotics that physicians go to,” Limbago said.

She did not know how the three patients were treated, but all survived.

Doctors have tried treating some of these cases with combinations of antibiotics, hoping that will be more effective than individual ones are. Some have resorted to using polymyxins – antibiotics used in the 1950s and ’60s that were unpopular because they can harm the kidneys.

The two Canadian cases were treated with a combination of antibiotics, said Dr. Johann Pitout of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. One case was in Alberta, the other in British Columbia.

Both patients had medical emergencies while traveling in India. They developed urinary infections that were discovered to have the resistance gene once they returned home to Canada, Pitout said.

The CDC advises any hospitals that find such cases to put the patient in medical isolation, check the patient’s close contacts for possible infection, and look for more infections in the hospital.

Any case “should raise an alarm,” Limbago said.

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