The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reported that 19 more children died of the deadly A/H1N1 flu in the current week, bringing the pediatric death toll of the flu confirmed by laboratory to 114 since the new virus breakout in late April.

“Twenty-two flu-related pediatric deaths were reported this week, 19 of these deaths were confirmed 2009 H1N1,” the CDC said Friday on its website, adding altogether it has received reports of 114 laboratory-confirmed pediatric 2009 H1N1 deaths since April 26, 2009.

The latest statistics released by the CDC show that the death rate for U.S. children under 18 years old has rose 20 percent in the past week, from 95 reported on Oct. 23 by the federal health agency.

The H1N1 flu targets young adults and children in greater numbers than other population groups, CDC says.

Health experts say that one of the most unusual things is the higher number of kids who are ill: usually, an average of 66 children die in a flu season; this year, the total pediatric deaths from influenza, including 13 not confirmed as H1N1, rose to127 since April 26, with six months to go.

“This is very unsettling news for parents, particularly when coupled with the shortage of the vaccine,” said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University in New York and a professor of clinical public health and pediatrics at the university’s Mailman School of Public Health.

At least 75 percent of the world population are living in areas with the H1N1 virus and millions have been infected. The new virus has overwhelmed other viruses, and it is the dominant flu in the United States and in the world.

China’s NASDAQ-like bourse, ChiNext, was off to a flying start in Shenzhen on Friday.

So high was the investors’ response that trading in the shares of all the 28 companies had to be halted for 30 minutes at least once after they rose 20 percent over their opening prices, setting off circuit breakers and underscoring massive speculation in the nascent market for start-ups.

Cable TV equipment maker Chengdu Geeya Technology Co’s shares were suspended from trading thrice after they jumped more than 80 percent.

Tianjin Chase Sun Pharmaceutical Co and Beijing Ultrapower Software Co were the most expensive stocks on the first day of trading. Both crossed the 100-yuan ($16) mark, with Tianjin Chase closing at 106.5 yuan and Beijing Ultrapower at 102.9 yuan against their IPO prices of 60 yuan and 58 yuan.

Based on their closing prices, ChiNext companies are trading around 100 times their price-to-earnings ratio.

The long-awaited ChiNext is expected to give small- and medium-sized enterprises access to funds and encourage private equity companies and venture capitalists to back start-ups, with regulators hoping it would help the growth of companies with high potential, especially young ones.

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange has adopted regulations to curb excessive speculation, which say trading in newly listed shares will be suspended for 30 minutes if their values rise or fall 20 percent from their opening prices, and for another 30 minutes if they move 50 percent either way. And if a company’s share moves 80 percent either way from its opening price, it will be suspended from trading until the final 3 minutes of the session.

Though the shares rose sharply on the opening day, some analysts said next week’s trading is very likely to see a correction.

“The average price-to-earnings ratio of the 28 companies’ shares was more than 56 times during their IPOs, already too expensive to deserve purchasing when they started trading on ChiNext,” said Ian Midgley, chief executive of Aries Investment Management (Shanghai), who was discouraged from trading in the high-risk stocks.

Midgley, who manages a private fund investing in the A-share market, said he did not buy any of the 28 stocks because it was not an investment based on true value.

“I’m not surprised to see excessive speculation. The same thing happened to Hong Kong’s GEM (Growth Enterprise Market) before,” said Ben Kwong, head of research at brokerage house KGI Asia.

“The new board is catering upstart companies with a new business concept, which is prone to attract many investors, but the market will cool down after some time,” Kwong said.

Earlier, speaking about ChiNext’s launch, Shang Fulin, chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission, said risk-control should be a priority in the new market.

The sharp rise in prices made it hard for small investors, who had bought new shares of the 28 companies at their IPOs, to hold on to them any longer.

“I sold my shares very early. I should have waited a little longer,” said a Beijing-based investor, surnamed Zhou, who got an allotment of Dayu Water Saving Co’s shares at 14 yuan each and sold them at 25 yuan soon after trading started.

But not all investors are keen to jump into the ChiNext market despite the bourse taking off on a dazzling note.

“The prices are outrageously high now and there is a strong speculative sentiment in the market. I’ll wait and see how it develops,” said Chen Xiangxing, a Beijing-based investor.

Taking a diet high in fructose boosts the risk of hypertension, a new study suggests.

The conclusion was based on analysis of 4,528 adults without a history of high blood pressure, according to the study presented at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual meeting, held between Oct. 27 and Nov. 1 in San Diego, Southern California.

In the study, researchers at the University of Colorado Denver Health Sciences Center examined the participants’ fructose intake and found that those who consumed more than 74 grams of fructose per day — that’s the equivalent of the amount in 2.5 sweetened soft drinks — boosted their risk of high blood pressure by 28 percent to 87 percent, depending on the level of hypertension.

“These results indicate that high fructose intake in the form of added sugars is significantly and independently associated with higher blood pressure levels in the U.S. adult population with no previous history of hypertension,” the study authors wrote.

Future research is needed to determine if lowering fructose intake will also lower blood pressure, said the researchers.

High-fructose corn syrup is found in many processed foods and beverages. Americans consume 30 percent more fructose now than 20 years ago, and researchers have linked higher fructose consumption to the growing obesity epidemic. But scientists weren’t sure if a connection existed between fructose consumption and high blood pressure.

Famous American director Francis Ford Coppola, who is here for the Panorama of European Cinema Film Festival, received the Medal of the City of Athens on Friday morning from the Greek capital’s mayor, Nikitas Kaklamanis.

“Coppola’s presence in Athens illuminates our city. We award him this medal in recognition of his long contribution to art. Coppola chose a path off Hollywood’s limits. He is a critic of the American Dream. He described it and he exposed its dark side, its sweet and sour taste,” Kaklamanis stressed in his address.

Responding at a press conference at Athens City Hall, Coppola said: “I never dreamed of becoming rich and famous. Since I was young I wasn’t interested in the Hollywood industry machine that produces films with the aim of making money. I was always interested in the kind of cinema that moves people without a strictly commercial purpose.”

The American director, who has won five Oscars and various other awards for films such as “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now”, is a special guest at the film festival, which ends Sunday evening, when he will present his latest movie “Tetro”.

It has a few autobiographical clues, he said.

“A few years ago, I decided that I want to proceed my career filming more personal movies, based on my own stories. At my age, it’s a great pleasure to learn new things. We learn most things through family. So, I wrote a script based on my memories from my family,” Coppola said. He wrote the script of Tetro 30 years ago.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reported 619 more deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) in the past week, bringing the total deaths to 3,446 since Aug. 30.

Both figures show remarkable increases when compared to 507 P&I deaths in the previous week and 2,827 between Aug. 30 and Oct. 17.

On its website, the CDC said on Friday that from Aug. 30 to Oct.24, there had been 12,466 laboratory-confirmed influenza associated hospitalizations, 530 laboratory-confirmed influenza associated deaths, 25,985 pneumonia and influenza syndrome — the P&I related hospitalizations, and 2,916 pneumonia and influenza syndrome-based deaths across the country.

These statistics mean the total number of the P&I related deaths has reached 3,446 while the total P&I linked hospitalizations rose to 38,451 during the roughly three-month period.

The latest death numbers, both for last week and past three months, are the highest since Aug. 30 when the CDC developed new case definitions for influenza-associated hospitalizations and deaths to be applied for the 2009-2010 influenza season.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Friday that he will not raise any more conditions for his signature on the Lisbon Treaty.

The president stressed he is satisfied with an opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights for the Czech Republic that was negotiated on Thursday, adding that he demanded this opt-out because of fear that ethnic Germans might claim the property confiscated from them under decrees of former Czechoslovak president Eduard Benes after World War Two.

“I see this result as the maximum possible and I am not going to raise any further conditions for the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty,” he said.

Czech Republic is the last remaining country to give the green light to the treaty, which will mean a step further in unifying European Union.

But Klaus has to wait with much awaited signature, till Constitutional Court, whose ruling is expected on November 3, approves the treaty.

While Klaus’s move was applauded by many majority of Czech media and by the Civic Democratic Party, Social Democratic Party chairman Jiri Paroubek criticized the government the wording of the opt-out. In his opinion, Czech citizens were deprived of some new social rights the EU Charter could give them. Trade unions speaker Vit Samek even threatened to stage demonstrations or a nationwide strike against it.

A group of Czech lawyers accused Klaus of circumventing parliament during the negotiations. They claim opt-out may not be legitimate. Social Democrat Jan Hamacek said that opt-out was superfluous and Klaus just wanted to score a victory in his fight against EU administration.

BRUSSELS, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) — European Union leaders removed one of the last hurdles facing the reformed Lisbon Treaty after giving the Czech Republic an opt-out in relation to the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The summit agreed to grant the Czechs the exemption in a manner that was acceptable to neighboring countries, EU presidency Sweden’s Prime Minsiter Fredrik Reinfeldt told reporters after the first session of the two-day summit.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell will visit Myanmar next week, U.S. State Department announced on Friday.

“Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell and Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Marciel are scheduled to travel to Burma Nov. 3 and 4,” said State Department spokesman Robert Wood.

“They expect to meet with senior government officials and with members of the opposition, including Aung San Suu Kyi as well as representatives of ethnic groups,” said the spokesman.

Campbell’s visit came one month after the Obama administration held a senior-level dialogue with representatives of the Myanmar’s leadership in New York on Sept. 29.

According to Wood, the visit’s aim is to “continue this dialogue.”

Citing Myanmar’s military junta of crackdown on democracy, the United States has downgraded its level of representation in Myanmar from ambassador to charge d’Affaires and has imposed broad sanctions since the 1988 military coup.

Following months of policy-reviewing, the Obama administration wants to begin a direct dialogue with Myanmar in order to “lay out the path to better relations,” said Campbell in a recent speech relating to U.S. policy toward Myanmar.

A group of industry leaders, researchers and analysts gathered at a U.S. university on Thursday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the birth of Internet.

The daylong celebration and forum at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) was lead by Leonard Kleinrock, a computer science professor of the university who on Oct. 29, 1969 headed a team to send the first message over the ARPANET, which later became the Internet.

That event was recognized as “the moment the Internet was born, ushered in a technological revolution that has transformed communications, education, culture, business and entertainment across the globe, leading to dramatic changes in our social, political and economic lives,” the UCLA said in a press release.

In addition to the UCLA event, a series of activities are also scheduled to be held at Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, to celebrate the historic moment.

“The 1969 connection was not just a symbolic milestone in the project that led to the Internet, but in the whole idea of connecting computers — and eventually billions of people — to each other,” Marc Weber, founding curator of the museum’s Internet History Program, said in a statement.

“In the 1960s, as many as a few hundred users could have accounts on a single large computer using terminals, and exchange messages and files between them. But each of those little communities was an island, isolated from others,” Weber noted. “Byreliably connecting different kinds of computers to each other, the ARPANET took a crucial step toward the online world that links nearly a third of the world’s population today.”

Four decades after its birth, the Internet is seen by some to have encountered some kind of middle-age crisis. But others argue that it is still in the early stage of innovations.

At a symposium hosted this month by market research firm Gartner, Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Internet search giant Google, said he envisions a radically changed Internet five years from now.

In the next five years, the Internet is expected to be dominated by social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time, he predicted.

“It’s because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that is the great challenge of the age,” Schmidt said.

Footage leaked from “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ reveals that players of the upcoming video game can shoot innocent civilians in an airport in a realistic rendering of a terrorist attack.

The game, which has an “M” rating for mature audiences, comes out next month in what its publisher hopes may be the most lucrative launch in the history of entertainment, not just for games but counting music and movies too.

In a statement, game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. said Wednesday the footage was taken illegally and is not representative of the game’s overall experience. Instead, the scene is designed to evoke the “atrocities of terrorism,” Activision said in an e-mailed statement.

The game follows players as they “face off against a terrorist threat dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse,” the Santa Monica, Calif. company said. This includes a plot line in which the player infiltrates a Russian villain’s inner circle to defeat him. Presumably the airport attack is one of the scenes in which the player acts as part of the villain’s group.

In an interview before the footage was leaked, Vince Zampella, head of the game’s developer, Infinity Ward, said studio intended for its game to startle players.

“We push the story,” he said. “We want the player to be emotionally attached. We want them to be emotionally shocked.”

Gamers are warned that the scene may be disturbing, and they can choose not to play through the part. It’s unclear, though, how many gamers will heed the warning for fear of missing part of the game’s intricate story. Activision says the game is designed so the part can be skipped over without losing any of the story.

The game’s makers said before the leak that they strive for “real world” authenticity in weapon types, military tactics and locations, but the plot is more James Bond action movie than ripped-from-the-headlines.

“As far as the story goes, Makarov is this super villain and you are this task force,” Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling said in a recent interview. “And it’s good versus evil. So we really like to be cinematic but also not let that ruin the fun.”

Infinity Ward hasn’t shied away from disturbing imagery in the past. “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” begins with a character being driven through an occupied city, dragged out of the car, tied to a pole and then executed — all from the victim’s point of view. The player controls other characters throughout that game, including one who perishes in a nuclear blast.

But what’s different in the upcoming game is that people can play from the perspective of someone inside a terrorist group, similar to how gamers can play criminal in the “Grand Theft Auto” titles. The gamer can play a CIA agent who infiltrates a rogue group and appears to be a double agent.

“It’s a very cinematic experience,” Bowling said of “Modern Warfare 2″ in the interview. “You get to play from multiple perspectives and get a broader picture of what this conflict is, and see that it’s much more than just winning a war with a bullet.”

In the last six months, the country mourned the loss of the King of Pop, the last of the Camelot brothers and the most trusted man in America. But what was flippantly termed the “summer of death” became a parade of news and attention that helped feed a starving media beast.

Commemorative magazine issues, television specials and social media soapboxes provided an outlet for the public’s grief and curiosity. The rise of Internet news sites and streaming television paused as the public devoted its increasingly fragmented attention to print media and broadcast television.

The most significant death in terms of coverage was Michael Jackson’s on June 25.

According to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, the pop star’s passing consumed 18% of the news the week of his death, and 17% for the two weeks thereafter. The Magazine Information Network estimates that Michael Jackson’s death amounted to $55 million in additional revenue for the magazine industry in the two months following the event thanks to special issues and book-a-zines dedicated to memorializing the gloved one’s life.

Jackson’s three-hour memorial was shown live on 18 cable and broadcast networks, pulling in 31.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research, and representing what was likely millions of dollars in airtime. ABC and CNN attracted the largest audiences with 5.3 million viewers, while NBC pulled in 5.1 million, CBS earned 3.9 million, Fox News drew 2.2 million and MSNBC had 1.4 million.

Jackson’s death also showed the value of new media’s relevancy. On June 25, the day of Jackson’s death, Google traffic was so high that the company was concerned that hackers were tinkering inside their servers. According to Mashable.com, a third of all messages on Twitter referenced the pop star. In the week following Jackson’s death, the top 10 most visited sites, including Time Warner’s TMZ, Yahoo!’s omg and Wenner Media’s USMagazine.com, collectively registered nearly 30 million unique users–nearly double the previous week’s traffic according to comScore.

Though smaller in comparison, other celebrity deaths reverberated in the media. News of Farrah Fawcett’s cancer battle raised Entertainment Tonight’s ratings 17% the week of May 12. A week later, Fawcett’s documentary attracted 8.9 million viewers on NBC. Vanity Fair’s August Heath Ledger cover sold 485,000 copies on the newsstand, the top for the year and more than the Jackson/Fawcett split cover, which posted newsstand sales of 437,000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s Rapid Report.

The media’s coverage of famous deaths is nothing new. Time magazine memorialized John Lennon with the headline “The Day the Music Died,” and nearly 33 million tuned in to Princess Diana’s 1997 funeral. But, as tabloid and newsweekly magazine covers dedicated to Patrick Swayze, Ted Kennedy and Natasha Richardson piled up, the coverage this year became ripe for parody.

In what likely means the media’s coverage of celebrity deaths has run its course, South Park recently brought Billie Mays, DJ AM and Ed McMahon back from the dead to torture Eric Cartman and the rest of the small Colorado town’s cadre of young misfits.