Reuters reported that strains of the virus that resist one or more drugs from the very start are spreading. That means that the minute some people get infected, there will be some drugs that are probably a waste of time. Doctors attending the Sixth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Chicago were debating this even as they grappled with the frightening prospect of a "super" HIV virus that resists all known drugs. No one has found one of these yet. But the trend is clear.

What is worse is that it is becoming clear that people are passing on these resistant forms of the virus. Based on studies presented at the conference, 5 to 15 percent of all HIV patients have strains that are resistant to the newest class of drugs, the non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), according to Dr. John Mellors of the University of Pittsburgh.

A wave of influenza hit hundreds of thousands of people from the Czech Republic to Russia's Pacific coast, Reuers reported. Russian extreme nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky deemed the situation so serious that he demanded restricted access to the State Duma lower house of parliament. In Romania, warm weather blamed for the outbreak was turning into a weekend blizzard.

In the Siberian region of Kemerevo, RIA news agency said all secondary schools closed down. Nearly 400 people suffering from flu visited one local hospital in the past three days alone. The Russian Far East and the Siberian city of Irkutsk, near to Lake Baikal, were also reportedly badly hit by the epidemic. Russia's southern neighbor Ukraine registered 100,000 cases, more than twice last year's figure. Three hundred schools were shut in eastern Donetsk region alone. A further 54,000 cases were reported in ex-Soviet Belarus, a country of only 10 million sandwiched between Russia and Poland, but authorities said that was no different from normal and were ready for worse.

Officials in the Czech Republic proclaimed a country-wide epidemic with two of every 100 people hit by a flu virus. Schools were closed in some regions and hospital visits barred. Officials said inoculations had proved ineffective as more and more people were suffering from respiratory problems.

Similar problems were reported in the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia, where an epidemiologist admitted that one in three people who underwent inoculation might still catch flu.

People living in remote villages of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest are suffering from an unusual debilitating disease caused by mercury poisoning, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday. The illness, a result of contamination from a toxic form of mercury called methyl mercury, attacks the immune system and causes deformities in children. Victims suffer uncontrollable shaking and muscle wasting.

Researchers believe millions of miners in Brazil, who use mercury to purify gold, release about 250 tons of the metal into the Amazon region each year, contaminating rivers and fish. However, Donna Mergler of the University of Quebec, who also studied the Brazilian victims, thinks deforestation is the problem.

Hoof-and-mouth disease has crippled at least 1 million sheep and cattle in Iraq and the lack of vaccines for the highly contagious disease threatens the country's livestock, AP said. The implications of the disease are catastrophic, the official said: Farmers could be ruined, and meat and milk could become even more scarce in a country where 81/2 years of U.N. economic sanctions have already made shortages commonplace. At least 50,000 animals - mostly lambs, kids and calves - have died from the viral disease.

Almost all of Iraq's 18 provinces have suffered outbreaks of the sickness, known also as foot-and-mouth disease, said Amir Khalil, the representative of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Iraq. Iraq's remaining 7 million farm animals are likely to become infected: The virus is so contagious that once an animal is infected, there is no escape for its companions in the herd.

Health authorities fear a plague epidemic in the Ugandan capital Kampala, where rats outnumber humans by four to one, Reuters quoted the state-owned New Vision newspaper. "There is plague in West Nile" in northwestern Uganda, said Tom Mwebesa, assistant commissioner for health services. "The fear is that if we got a rat from West Nile with its fleas, and it infects those other rats in Kampala, there can be an epidemic." At least four million rats live in the hilly East African city, compared to a human population estimated at around one million, the paper quoted health officials as saying. The plague virus is carried by fleas on rats. The disease can lead to internal bleeding and in extreme cases can be fatal.

Tuberculosis is spreading rapidly throughout Russia and threatens to spill over into major cities around the world. Already, the disease is running rampant in 20 of the 27 nations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The epidemic is worst within Russia's jails, where the situation is aggravated by incomplete treatment; more than 20,000 prisoners have reportedly died of TB within the past two years, and 100,000 more have been contaminated with the bacteria.

Estimates say that as many as 200 million people around the world could be infected with TB by the year 2020, mostly in common holiday and business destinations in poorer countries, such as South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico. Even within the more affluent nation of Britain, reported TB cases have seen a 100 percent increase over the past 10 years, and statisticians are predicting 6,000 new cases to surface in 1999. (Source: Economist--The World in 1999 )