Ginger, long used as a folk remedy for soothing tummyaches, helped tame one of the most dreaded side effects of cancer treatment – nausea from chemotherapy, the first large study to test the herb for this has found.

People who started taking ginger capsules several days before a chemo infusion had fewer and less severe bouts of nausea afterward than others who were given dummy capsules, the federally funded study found.

“We were slightly beside ourselves” to see how much it helped, said study leader Julie Ryan of the University of Rochester in New York.

Results were released Thursday by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and will be presented at the group’s annual meeting later this month.

But don’t reach for the ginger ale. Many sodas and cookies contain only flavoring – not real ginger, Ryan said. Her study tested a druglike ginger root extract, and it’s not known if people could get the same benefits from ginger teas or the powdered ginger sold as a spice.

The study involved 644 patients from cancer centers around the nation who had suffered nausea in a previous round of chemotherapy. Two-thirds had breast cancer and the rest, other forms of the disease. They were placed in four groups and given one of three doses of ginger (the equivalent of one-half, 1 or 1 1/2 grams of ginger per day) or dummy capsules in addition to standard anti-sickness medicines.

Patients took the capsules for six days, beginning three days before chemo treatment. They rated their nausea symptoms on a seven-point scale.

Offer is good for a year, with restrictions

Sales of Lipitor hit $12.4 billion for Pfizer Inc. in 2008, making it the company's top-selling prescription drug.

TRENTON, N.J. – Pfizer Inc. says it will provide 70 of its most widely prescribed prescription drugs including Lipitor and Viagra for free to people who have lost their jobs and health insurance.

The world’s biggest drugmaker said Thursday it will give away the medicines for up to a year to Americans who lost jobs since Jan. 1 and have been on the Pfizer drug for three months or more.

The announcement comes amid massive job losses caused by the recession and a campaign in Washington to rein in health care costs and extend coverage. The move could earn Pfizer some goodwill in that debate after long being a target of critics of drug industry prices and sales practices.

The program also likely will help keep those patients loyal to Pfizer brands.

“Everybody knows now a neighbor, a relative who has lost their job and is losing their insurance. People are definitely hurting out there,” Dr. Jorge Puente, Pfizer’s head of pharmaceuticals outside the U.S. and Europe and a champion of the project, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Wednesday. “Our aim is to help people bridge this point.”

The idea for the program came just five weeks ago, at a leadership training meeting, as the workers discussed how many patients are struggling, Puente said.

He said he urged top management to approve the program, presenting a recent Associated Press article about how newly uninsured diabetics are suffering serious complications because they can no longer afford the medicines and testing supplies. Approval came quickly.

“It was my idea,” he said. “I floated it, and the reception it got was so dramatic that it very quickly became our idea.”

Colleagues suggested employees could donate to a fund to help support the effort, Puente said. He said some employees had tears in their eyes when discussing how they could help people who had lost jobs.

Officials for New York-based Pfizer said they don’t know how much the program will cost and haven’t put a cap on spending for it.

Applicants will have to sign a statement that they are suffering financial hardship and provide a “pink slip” or similar employer notice. Applications will be accepted through Dec. 31, with medication provided for up to 12 months after approval, or until the person becomes insured again.

Starting Thursday, patients can call a toll-free number, 866-706-2400, to sign up, and those whose drugs are not included in the program will be referred to other company aid programs. Starting July 1, patients can also apply through the Web site, www.PfizerHelpfulAnswers.com, which has information about the other Pfizer aid programs.

Pfizer and the rest of the drug industry are trying to have a voice in the debate over how to overhaul the U.S. health care system, partly by joining in a pledge this week to help hold down inflation of health costs.

Pfizer’s program comes at a time when many drugmakers, including Pfizer, have been raising prices on their drugs, partly to offset declines in revenue as the global recession reduces the number of prescriptions people can afford to fill.

The 70-plus drugs covered in the program include several diabetes drugs and some of Pfizer’s top money makers, from cholesterol fighter Lipitor and painkiller Celebrex to fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica and Viagra for impotence. Drugs from several other popular classes such as antibiotics, antidepressants, antifungal treatments, heart mediations, contraceptives and smoking cessation products also are included. Cheaper generic versions are available for quite a few of the drugs.

Pfizer said that from 2004 through 2008, its patient assistance programs helped 5.1 million people get 51 million Pfizer prescriptions for free or at reduced cost, with a total value of $4.8 billion.

DETROIT – A day after Chrysler LLC told a quarter of its dealers that it won’t renew their contracts, owners of General Motors Corp. dealerships are awaiting word on whether they will be next.

GM said it will notify 1,100 U.S. dealers on Friday that their franchise agreements will not be renewed. Dealers expect to hear either by telephone or FedEx letters that will begin arriving Friday morning.

GM spokeswoman Susan Garontakos said the company will not make public a list of dealers to be cut, leaving the decision to release information to individual business owners.

The company has scheduled a conference call for noon Friday to explain its dealer reduction strategy.

The cuts will come just a day after crosstown rival Chrysler announced it was dropping 789 of its roughly 3,200 dealerships by around June 9. Both companies have too many dealerships for too few sales are slashing costs as they race to restructure.

Dealers around the country nervously awaited news Friday morning, with some saying they were in the dark about how they would be notified. In Richmond, Va., Royal Chevrolet co-owner Del Mugford was slightly relieved when he sifted through FedEx packages Friday morning and hadn’t received any bad news from General Motors. But he knew his future could be determined by a phone call or a piece of mail.

“This is absolutely nerve wracking. It’s like a death sentence. It’s the worst feeling in the world,” said Mugford, 45, who bought the dealership with his younger brother in 2002 after owning an Oldsmobile franchise down the street. GM closed its Oldsmobile line of cars in 2004.

John Rogin, who owns a Buick dealership and GMC truck dealership in the Detroit area, was also awaiting word. But he said he’s not worrying. His Buick store, he said, has been among the top 10 performers in the country for 15 years.

“I’m just selling cars. I’m still a loyalist, and for the most part a purist as far as GM goes,” he said.

Many dealers, though, will fight the cuts in court, he said.

“Most of the dealer body realizes that just because you get a letter doesn’t mean it’s all over,” he said. “This company isn’t in bankruptcy.”

GM’s dealer cuts are part of the company’s plan announced last month to cut more than 2,600 dealers by 2010. The remaining cuts will come from closed Saturn and Hummer dealers, along with 400 dealers that the company expects will close voluntarily. Another 500 would be consolidated into other dealerships.

The GM dealer cuts are likely to have a much greater impact than Chrysler’s. While many Chrysler dealers also sell other brands and will stay open after losing their franchises, a large number of GM dealers sell only GM vehicles. So if their franchises are revoked, they run a greater risk of closing for good.

In both cases, the cuts will cost thousands of jobs, create holes in local tax bases, eliminate community pillars and create economic ripple effects across the country.

Chrysler is operating under bankruptcy protection, so it is likely to have an easier time tearing up its franchise agreements with its dealers than GM. A hearing is scheduled for June 3 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York for the judge to determine whether to approve Chrysler’s motion to fire its dealers.

Chrysler executives said Thursday the company is trying to preserve its best-performing dealers and eliminate ones with the weakest sales. More than half of the dealerships being eliminated sell less than 100 vehicles per year, they said, and account for 14 percent of U.S. sales.

Chrysler has received $4 billion in government aid, while GM has received $15.4 billion. GM is continuing to restructure out of court and faces a government-imposed deadline of May 31 for doing so. Several difficult hurdles remain, and many experts say that it is all but inevitable that it will follow Chrysler into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

To remake itself outside of court, GM must persuade its bondholders to swap $27 billion in debt for 10 percent of its risky stock. In addition, it must work out deals with its union, announce factory closures, cut or sell brands and shutter dealers.

Swapping its bond debt for equity may be its most difficult task. The company is trying to get 90 percent of its bondholders on board for the so-called debt-for-equity swap. A committee representing the bondholders has rejected the swap, saying it unfairly favors the government and the United Auto Workers union. They have counteroffered seeking a 58 percent ownership stake, which the automaker in turn rejected.

On Thursday, GM said that bankruptcy is possible if it doesn’t get enough takers on the exchange. If that happens, it likely would sell most of its assets to a new company and liquidate the rest, the automaker disclosed in a regulatory filing.

The automaker also says it could seek court approval of its reorganization plan even if creditors vote against it.

Shares of GM wobbled between $1.13 and $1.16 in morning trading Friday.

By Tom Krisher, Dan Strumpf

WASHINGTON – Former White House aide Karl Rove faced questions Friday from a special prosecutor weighing whether to bring criminal charges against Bush administration officials for the politically charged firing of U.S. attorneys.

Rove met with prosecutor Nora Dannehy at the office of his lawyer, Robert Luskin. Rove did not speak to reporters as he entered the downtown Washington law office and neither did investigators who arrived about a half hour later.

Rove has said he will cooperate with the investigation, which is being conducted to determine whether Bush administration officials or congressional Republicans should face criminal charges in the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

Rove and other Republican officials refused to be interviewed in an earlier Justice Department inquiry, which concluded that despite Bush administration denials, political considerations played a part in the firings of as many as four prosecutors.

U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, but cannot be fired for improper reasons. Bush administration officials at first claimed the attorneys were let go because of poor performance.

The internal Justice Department investigation recommended a criminal inquiry, saying the lack of cooperation by Rove and other senior administration officials left gaps in their findings that should be investigated further. Then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey responded by naming Dannehy, the acting U.S. attorney in Connecticut, as special prosecutor in September.

Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers also have agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee under oath about the firings in closed depositions. As president, Bush had fought attempts to force them to testify.

In July, U.S. District Judge John Bates rejected Bush’s contention that senior White House advisers were immune from the committee’s subpoenas, siding with Congress’ power to investigate the executive branch. The Bush administration had appealed the decision. The agreement for Rove and Miers to testify ended the lawsuit.

Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

Dem denies ’02 knowledge of waterboarding

WASHINGTON – Congressional Republicans are rushing to defend the CIA after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the spy agency of misleading her and other lawmakers about its use of waterboarding during the Bush administration.

The issue of what did the speaker know about the interrogation method — and when did she know it — has deepened the fault lines between the two political parties. Pelosi was unequivocal about a CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

“We were told that waterboarding was not being used,” the speaker said Thursday. “That’s the only mention, that they were not using it. And we now know that earlier they were.” She suggested the CIA release the briefing material.

Pelosi vehemently disputed Republican charges that she was complicit in the use of waterboarding, and she suggested the GOP was trying to shift the focus of public attention away from the Bush administration’s use of techniques that she and President Barack Obama have described as torture.

On Friday, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee contradicted Pelosi’s claims and questioned her criticism of the nation’s spy operations.

“I think it’s a tragedy that we are seeing this massive attack on our intelligence community,” Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.

Bond said he reviewed the CIA’s material and it was clear that Pelosi had been informed about the enhanced interrogation method, although Bond said he was not with Pelosi when the spy agency briefed her.

The CIA was widely criticized for its intelligence gathering prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and faced questions about its information on suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the start of the war in March 2003. The weapons were never found.

CIA spokesman George Little said it is not the policy of the agency to mislead Congress, although he refused to answer directly questions about Pelosi’s accusation.

Pelosi has been the target of a campaign orchestrated in recent days by the House Republican leadership, which is eager to assign Democrats partial responsibility for the use of waterboarding — a kind of simulated drowning — in the Bush administration.

GOP officials secured the release of an unclassified chart by the CIA that describes a total of 40 briefings for lawmakers over a period of several years. Pelosi’s name appears once, as having attended a session on Sept. 4, 2002, when she was the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Former Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who at the time was the chairman of the committee and later became CIA director, also was present.

The notation says the briefing was on “enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah … and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.”

Little, responding to Pelosi for the CIA, said the chart “is true to the language in the agency’s records.” But he did not say whether the information was accurate.

Instead, he pointed to a recent letter from CIA Director Leon Panetta to lawmakers saying it would be up to Congress to determine whether notes made by agency personnel at the time they briefed lawmakers were accurate.

Coincidentally, Pelosi spoke as the CIA rejected former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request to release secret memos judging whether waterboarding and other harsh techniques had succeeded in securing valuable intelligence information.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the request was turned down because the documents are the subject of pending litigation, which makes them not subject to declassification.

Police vehicles guard the site where a woman was found dead inside a car, two blocks away from a police station in Tijuana, Mexico, on Thursday.

TIJUANA, Mexico – The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The victims, ages 19 to 23, were found tied up on Saturday, but their deaths were not reported earlier because they were under investigation, said Fermin Gomez, an assistant state prosecutor in Baja California.

U.S. consular officials in Tijuana said the victims – two men and two women from the San Diego and Chula Vista areas – were U.S. citizens. The state attorney general’s office in Baja California said one of the women was Mexican.

Their deaths are the latest in a string of violence in Tijuana that authorities blame on a bloody turf war between drug cartels.

“I just don’t think kids should be going to Tijuana right now,” Chula Vista police Lt. Scott Arsenault told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “They ran into the wrong people, obviously.”

Bernard Gonzales, a spokesman for the Chula Vista Police Department, said a friend told the women’s parents they were headed to nightclubs in Tijuana on Thursday night. They were reported missing the next day when they did not answer their cell phones.

A plainclothes police officer, wearing a face mask, stands near a house where a methamphetamine lab was found on the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico, on Wednesday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – A team of specialized American sailors apprehended 17 suspected pirates who attacked an Egyptian merchant ship in the dangerous waters off Yemen, the U.S. Navy said Thursday.

The sailors from the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg also seized eight assault rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher when they boarded the pirates’ vessel Wednesday in the Gulf of Aden, said the Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet.

The Gettysburg launched the operation with the help of the Korean Destroyer ROKS Munmu the Great after the pirates fired at the Egyptian-flagged Motor Vessel Amira about 75 miles south of Yemen’s al-Mukalla port, the Navy said. Both ships dispatched helicopters during the mission.

The Gulf of Aden is one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, connecting Europe and Asia via the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. It is used by 20,000 ships a year and has become the world’s hot spot for pirate attacks.

The 17 pirates seized were taken aboard the Gettysburg for further questioning, said the Navy. They were operating from a “mothership” — a larger vessel pirates often use to resupply the small speedboats that attack ships far offshore. The Navy did not say what happened to the mothership after the operation.

Also Thursday, Iranian state television said the country will send two warships to join an international flotilla protecting cargo ships from pirates off the Somali coast.

Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaei, made the commitment in a letter he sent to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday, according to a report on the Web site of Iran’s press TV.

The ships will leave within the next two days for a five-month assignment and will join vessels from the U.S., Denmark, Italy, Russia, China and other countries.

Somali pirates have significantly stepped up their attacks in recent years. They hijacked a cargo ship operated by Iran off the Somali coast in November, the second in the past six months.

At least 19 ships and over 250 sailors are now being held hostage by Somali pirates. Last year, 42 ships were seized and pirates earned an estimated $1 million or more in ransom each time they freed a ship.

The pirates operate freely because Somalia has had no effective central government in nearly 20 years. Nearly every public institution has crumbled, and the U.N.-backed government controls only limited territory and is fighting an Islamic insurgency.

NEW YORK – New York City has closed three schools in response to a swine flu outbreak that has left an assistant principal in critical condition and sent hundreds of kids home with flu symptoms, in a flare-up of the virus that sent shock waves through the world last month.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that four students and the assistant principal have documented cases of swine flu at a Queens middle school. More than 50 students have gone home sick with flulike symptoms at the school, he said. At another middle school in Queens, 241 students were absent Thursday. Dozens more were sick at an elementary school.

The Health Department said the assistant principal from the Susan B. Anthony middle school is on a ventilator, marking the most severe illness in the city from swine flu to date. The students who have fallen ill in this latest surge of illness appear to be experiencing mild symptoms, similar to routine flu.

The assistant principal, identified by colleagues as Mitch Weiner, may have had pre-existing health problems, the mayor said. In many other swine flu cases that turned critical, patients had pre-existing conditions.

The mayor said that the sick assistant principal may have had pre-existing health problems. In many other swine flu cases that turned critical, patients had pre-existing conditions.

Bloomberg said that three schools — with more than 4,000 students altogether — would be closed for at least a week because “there are an unusually high level of flulike illnesses at those schools.”

“There are documented cases of H1N1 flu at one of them,” the mayor said, using the formal name for swine flu.

New York City’s first known cases of swine flu appeared in late April, when hundreds of teenagers at a Roman Catholic high school in Queens began falling ill following the return of several students from vacations in Mexico, where the outbreak began.

At first, the virus appeared to be moving at breakneck speed. An estimated 1,000 students, their relatives and staff at the St. Francis Preparatory School fell ill in a matter of days. A limited number of kids had confirmed cases of swine flu because the Health Department tested only a small amount of students.

City health officials became aware of the outbreak on April 24. The school closed and health officials began bracing for more illnesses throughout the city.

But the outbreak then seemed to subside. Additional sporadic cases continued to be diagnosed, but the symptoms were nearly all mild. The sick children recovered in short order. St. Francis reopened after being closed for a week.

The middle school with the confirmed cases is two miles from St. Francis.

People at the school said students started going home sick on Tuesday and Wednesday, alarming parents.

“I’m worried,” said Dino Dilchande, whose sixth-grade son goes to the school. “The city should have taken more precautions. We should have been notified earlier.”

At the Susan B. Anthony, administrators posted a sign on the door from the Health Department informing students and teachers that the school would be closed for a week. The school is in the Hollis section of Queens, a neighborhood known for producing several rappers including the group Run-DMC.

A knock on the door of an address for a Mitch Weiner in the neighborhood of the school went unanswered.

Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, a deputy commissioner of the health department, said investigators are trying to learn more about why the disease has spread erratically, moving quickly through a few schools but slowly everywhere else.

“We’re trying to answer some of those questions,” he said.

Schools are a good incubator for illness in general, he said, because space is tight and youngsters often don’t practice the best hygiene.

Across the country, most of the people getting the illness have been young. Some experts have speculated that older people might have some immunity to the virus because of genetic similarities to more common types of flu.

At the start of the flu outbreak in the United States, government health officials recommended that schools shut down for two weeks if there were students with swine flu. But when the virus turned out to be milder than initially feared, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dropped that advice but urged parents to keep children with flu symptoms home for a week.

So far, the virus has not proved to be more infectious or deadly than the seasonal flu.

CDC officials said schools may decide to close if there is a cluster that’s affecting attendance and staffing.

WASHINGTON – Despite Democrats’ rising anxiety about Afghanistan, the House on Thursday easily passed a $96.7 billion measure filling President Obama’s request for war spending and foreign aid efforts there and in Iraq.

Some 51 Democrats broke with Obama, who is sending thousands more troops into Afghanistan, but all but a handful of Republicans stood behind the president to produce a 368-60 tally. Republicans supported the measure even though majority Democrats added almost $12 billion to Obama’s $85 billion request.

The measure would boost total funding provided by Congress for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars above $900 billion.

Across Capitol Hill, a key Senate committee approved a companion $91.3 billion bill that sticks closely to Obama’s war request – including $50 million for the Pentagon to begin the promised closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The issue of closing Guantanamo is addressed in the House measure as well – not with funding but with a promise that detainees from the prison will not be released on U.S. soil. A new provision, however, anticipates some of the 241 detainees at Guantanamo will be transferred to the United States to stand trial or serve their sentences.

A separate conflict over the war-funding measure concerns whether it should provide a $108 billion U.S. contribution to the International Monetary Fund as part of an expanded $500 billion IMF loan fund, a cornerstone of last month’s Group of 20 nations summit in London to assist poor countries struggling through the global economic downturn.

Obama officially requested the IMF funding late Tuesday, and the request was immediately incorporated into the Senate version by Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. The IMF funds would cost U.S. taxpayers about $5 billion since the government is issued interest-bearing assets in return for the contribution.

House Republicans oppose adding the IMF funds to the war-funding measure, and their votes will be needed to pass the final House-Senate compromise bill, given the opposition of anti-war Democrats.

As for the military spending, during the Bush administration many Democrats stressed their opposition to the war in Iraq while supporting efforts against al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But an increasing number of party liberals are skeptical of success in Afghanistan.

Chief among them is Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., author of the House legislation as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. But for now he’s giving Obama a chance to demonstrate greater progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“This is a bill that I have very little confidence in,” Obey said. “I think we have a responsibility to give a new president – who did not get us into this mess – the best possible opportunity to get out of it.”

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., is opposing the infusion of war funds. He’s not impressed with Obama’s plans on Afghanistan.

“Sometimes great presidents make mistakes, and sometimes great presidents make even great mistakes. I hope that doesn’t happen here,” McGovern said. “As the mission has grown bigger, the policy has grown even more vague.”

Both the House and Senate measures largely follow Obama’s military request for the wars. But the House version adds $11.8 billion, including almost $4 billion for new weapons and military equipment such as cargo planes, mine-resistant vehicles, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Stryker armored vehicles. The measure also adds $2.2 billion to Obama’s request for foreign aid — much of which appears to be designed to get around spending limits for 2010.

The $91.3 billion Senate measure includes Obama’s $1.5 billion emergency request to fight a potential flu pandemic, while the House would add about $500 million to the request – even as the recent swine flu scare appears to be abating.

On Guantanamo, the Senate measure includes $50 million to begin closing the prison but directs that it can’t be used to transfer any of the detainees into the United States. The House bill, which does not include such money, sets a policy forbidding release of Guantanamo detainees within the United States. It would allow them to be shipped to the U.S. to stand trial or to serve their sentences.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday voted unanimously in favor of its version of the spending bill.

Most of that money, about $73 billion, would go to the Defense Department to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the extra 21,000 troops being sent to Afghanistan.

The measure is $1.3 billion more than the president requested.

An internally displaced Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil woman tends to an injured boy at a makeshift hospital in Mullivaikal, Sri Lanka, Wednesday.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Artillery shells tore through a hospital packed with wounded civilians in Sri Lanka’s war zone for a second day Wednesday, killing at least 50 people, setting an ambulance ablaze and forcing the medical staff to huddle in bunkers for safety, doctors said.

Health workers at the makeshift medical facility said they were so overwhelmed by the crush of the wounded and the unrelenting shelling of the area they could do little but give gauze and bandages to the roughly 1,000 patients waiting for treatment.

The strike on the hospital came as the government marched on with its offensive to destroy the reeling Tamil Tiger rebels and end their quarter-century quest for a separate homeland.

There has been a wave of artillery bombardments across the war zone that began over the weekend and has barely let up in five days, health workers said. The weekend attacks alone may have killed as many as 1,000 people, doctors said.

The government says its troops are not responsible for the shelling and that the military has not fired heavy weapons in the area in weeks.

But Human Rights Watch says satellite images and witness testimony contradict that claim and has accused both sides of using the estimated 50,000 civilians packed into the tiny coastal strip controlled by the rebels as “cannon fodder.”

The shelling was so intense Wednesday that a Red Cross ferry waiting off the coast to deliver food aid and evacuate the wounded had to turn back for a second day, the agency said.

Two artillery shells hit the medical facility about 1 p.m., slamming into an administrative office and a ward filled with patients already wounded by previous shell attacks, Dr. V. Shanmugarajah told The Associated Press by telephone.

Dr. Thurairaja Varatharajah, the top health official in the war zone, said the attack killed at least 50 people, including patients, relatives and a health aide, and wounded about 60 others.

Heavy shelling of the war zone continued throughout the day, he said.

“We are unable to treat the people properly because a lot of aides have fled the hospital. We go into bunkers when there is shelling and try to treat them as much as we can when there is a lull,” he said by telephone.

One shell that struck the compound set an ambulance on fire, according to video footage of the aftermath of the attack. Scores of people crowded beneath tarps outside the hospital building waited for care as someone wailed in the background.

More than 1,000 civilians — many with amputations or chest wounds — had been waiting for treatment at the hospital when it was struck, and every 10 minutes or so another one or two died from lack of care, said a third hospital official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the government had not authorized him to speak to the media.

Overwhelmed doctors have been reduced to handing out bandages to the seriously wounded, the official said. More than 100 dead bodies have been left inside the compound because no one will risk burying them amid the constant shelling, he said. The strike was the third to hit the hospital this month.

A Red Cross worker and his mother were also killed in shelling, the third Red Cross staff member killed by shrapnel in the war zone in the past two months, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

“This latest tragic incident shows how dangerous it is for everyone in the area,” said Paul Castella, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Colombo.

Rebel spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan said shells also hit a home for mentally handicapped women, killing 38 and wounding more than 40.

Reports of the fighting are difficult to verify because the government has barred journalists and aid workers from the war zone.

The government has come under heavy international criticism for the large civilian toll of its offensive against the rebels, who are cornered in a two square-mile (five square-kilometer) strip of land.

The military said it pressed ahead with its offensive into that strip Wednesday, capturing one of the rebels’ heavy guns and fending off a suicide attack by four rebel boats laden with explosives.

The U.N. Security Council demanded Wednesday that the Tamil Tigers stop fighting and allow tens of thousands of civilians being used as human shields to leave the war zone. It also called on the government to stop firing heavy weapons, help trapped civilians evacuate and allow for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid.

The council press statement — which is not legally binding — expressed grave concern at the worsening humanitarian crisis.

An unidentified survivor of a boat sinking, upper left, is helped off by U.S. Coast Guard personnel as the Coast Guard vessel pulls up to a dock in Phil Foster Park Wednesday.

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – At least 10 people are dead after an overloaded boat apparently carrying Haitian migrants sank off the Florida coast, the Coast Guard said Wednesday.

Coast Guard Capt. James Fitton said 17 people had been rescued, but a search was under way for more and expected to last through the night. Authorities weren’t sure how many were aboard the boat, but they believed around 30 were dumped into the sea.

The sinking fits the profile of migrant smuggling, officials said, but they were not sure if the boat capsized or crashed into something. The boat has not been found, and is thought to have sunk because it hasn’t been spotted from the air.

“The boat was obviously overloaded,” Fitton said. “It’s a tragedy that someone would be so callous with human life.”

The boat apparently left Bimini in the Bahamas on Tuesday night. It was believed to have flipped at about 2 a.m. but officials didn’t learn about it until another boater called more than 10 hours later. The boater reported pulling three people from the water and said about 25 others were awaiting rescue.

Fitton said all those rescued were expected to recover. Children and women were among those aboard, including a pregnant woman.

Two helicopters, a jet and three boats were helping in the rescue effort about 15 miles off the shore of Miami Beach where water temperatures by the afternoon were in the high 70s.

Since October, the Coast Guard says that it had stopped 1,377 Haitians, up from 972 during the same seven-month period last year.

The Rev. Luke Harrigan, a Fort Lauderdale pastor who ministers to the Haitian-American community, was working with the Coast Guard to help the victims. He said Haitians, who live in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, are known to pay $2,000 to $4,000 to be smuggled into the U.S.

Four tropical storms and hurricanes battered the country during last year’s harvest season, killing 793 people, crippling agriculture and causing $1 billion in damage to irrigation, bridges and roads.

In January, United Nations-sponsored groups said more aid was urgently needed to stave off famine in several areas of the country.

“The economic conditions in Haiti are deplorable, and I don’t see them getting any better any time soon,” said Andy Gomez, a University of Miami expert on Caribbean migration. “And the Haitian-American community has developed a pretty good network here in the last five or 10 years, just as the Cuban-Americans have done, so there’s more of a reason to come.”

The Coast Guard said it was not known whether the boat’s captain and any crew members were among those found and survivors haven’t indicated who may have organized the trip.

“We haven’t even asked those questions yet,” Fitton said.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – A new round of dry, windy weather could cause a week’s delay in full containment of the Santa Barbara wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes, firefighters said Wednesday.

Wind gusts reached 45 mph in the Montecito hills Wednesday evening and humidity dropped, forecasters said. Wind warnings were in effect until Thursday morning, with temperatures to reach the 80s in the foothills.

The wind could push flames into areas where about 45 homes are still threatened, said Harry Hagen, a Santa Barbara County emergency operations center spokesman. Those homes were evacuated last week and more than 100 residents have not been allowed to return.

“We are on full alert, expecting that the disaster and our preparedness will continue,” Hagen said.

Crews were able to contain about 80 percent of the fire before the forecast of unfavorable weather led them to move the estimated date of full containment back to May 20.

The blaze has been essentially static through days of cooler, humid weather marked by morning coastal fog.

The fire started on May 5 and blackened more than 13 square miles, destroyed 80 homes, damaged 15 and injured 29 firefighters. Investigators said it may have been caused by someone clearing brush with a power tool.

The fire has been contained in the most populated areas. About 30,000 people were forced out of their homes during the firefight and thousands more were warned to be ready to go. Most evacuation orders were lifted late last week.

“The area that’s left to contain is the most difficult … extremely steep and very tall brush,” Sadecki said. “The crews that are in there are having a very difficult time.”

Meanwhile, a wildfire near Homer, Alaska, blackened about half a square mile Wednesday after being sparked the night before by a downed power line. The fire, which was fanned by a steady breeze, forced about 40 people from their homes.

Homer is about 150 miles southwest of Anchorage.

LOS ANGELES – A high-speed police chase through suburban Los Angeles County on Wednesday ended with a foot pursuit and a police officer kicking a suspect in the head after he gave up and lay facedown on the ground.

Video from TV news helicopters showed the driver speeding the wrong way down a street in an eastern area of the county. He then crashed into an oncoming vehicle, got out of the car and ran into a residential backyard.

Surrounded by high garden walls and apparently realizing he had nowhere to go, the suspect got face down on the grass with his arms outstretched.

Moments later, an officer from the El Monte Police Department ran up to the suspect and delivered what appeared to be one sharp kick to the head or neck, a scene that was broadcast by KNBC-TV and KTTV. A second officer arrived soon after and used what appeared to be a baton or a flashlight to deliver several blows to the suspect’s side.

After the suspect was handcuffed, the officer who kicked him high-fived a colleague who was tending to a police dog. It was not clear whether the colleague had seen the kick.

El Monte police Chief Tom Armstrong said he had not yet seen the video and could not comment.

“Before coming to any conclusion, I want to look at all the facts,” Armstrong said. “I don’t know what was in the mind of the officer.”

Police identified the suspect as Richard Rodriguez, 23, of El Monte. Rodriguez, a member of a street gang, was on parole, Lt. Chuck Carlson said. He was booked for parole violation and for investigation of felony evading and obstructing a police officer in the performance of his duties. He was taken to a county jail.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California called for the immediate suspension of the officer and urged the Los Angeles County district attorney to conduct an investigation.

“That kick served no law enforcement purpose,” said Ramona Ripston, the group’s executive director. “It was unlawful punishment, apparently for leading the police on a pursuit.”

Sandi Gibbons, a district attorney spokeswoman, had not seen the video and did not know if her office would conduct an independent review.

The foot pursuit followed a high-speed car chase that lasted more than 30 minutes and saw the suspect lead a chaotic drive through El Monte, Whittier and other parts of eastern Los Angeles County.

The car sped through several intersections without stopping and at one point drove along a short stretch of sidewalk when it was hemmed in at a junction.

Carlson said the occupants of the car flashed gang signs at pursuing officers.

The chase started in El Monte around 1:30 p.m. after the driver failed to stop for an officer, he said. The sedan drove away at speeds of up to 80 mph in a 30 mph zone.

The car had two passengers, Carlson said. One was detained after leaping out when the car stopped in traffic, and the other was arrested after the crash, he said.

No one was seriously injured, Carlson said.

MEXICO CITY – Swine flu has infected Mexico’s relations with China and other countries that have canceled airline flights and halted some trade. But its most prickly neighbor — the United States — now seems like the country’s most loyal friend.

Mexico is smarting from what it considers discriminatory actions by countries it had considered friendly, insisting the world should be grateful for its open and aggressive efforts to stem the spread of swine flu. The shutdown of public life cost Mexico $2.2 billion in the first 10 days after the epidemic was announced.

The government sent a plane to pick up 70 of its citizens quarantined in China. It rebuked Cuba, Ecuador, Argentina and Peru for banning flights to Mexico, saying they were acting “incongruously with our traditional ties of friendship.”

France tried — and failed — to win a European Union-wide ban on flights to Mexico.

Particularly insulting for Mexico: Haiti rejected a Mexican ship last week carrying 77 tons of much-needed food aid because of swine flu fears.

All of that put the U.S. response in a very favorable light. Neither the United States nor Canada banned flights or restricted trade with Mexico. The three countries are partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

President Obama forcefully rejected the idea of closing the border, despite arguments from conservative talk show hosts that swine flu showed immigration from Mexico was a threat.

The Obama administration cast the decision as a recognition of reality: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said sealing the border would be extremely costly and pointless since the virus was already in the United States. Obama likened the idea to “closing the barn door after the horses are out.”

Even so, it was symbolically significant in Mexico, which protested when the U.S. began building a border fence under former President George W. Bush.

While Obama has also beefed up border security, he has pledged to renew efforts to push through immigration reforms that eluded the Bush administration, including extending a citizenship path for illegal immigrants. His emphasis on open borders during the swine flu outbreak could help set the tone.

“There was a very explicit recognition that the U.S. and Mexico cannot close their borders,” said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center. “Maybe that tells you that Mexico is really more integrated with its neighbors to the north than the rest of Latin America.”

Mexico took note. The Foreign Relations Department held a special ceremony to thank the U.S. government both for keeping the border open and for providing aid and medical expertise.

“The way in which the border between Mexico and the United States stayed not only open but alive in the past days has been exemplary,” said Carlos Rico, Mexico’s deputy secretary for North American relations. “The open border is something that has not been recognized enough.”

Even members of the opposition leftist Democratic Revolution Party — long known for its nationalistic wariness of the United States — were impressed.

“I thought the reaction and response from the three countries — Mexico, the United States and Canada — was definitely laudable,” said Alfonso Suarez de Real, a lawmaker from the party. “It contrasted with the reaction that other countries have had.”

The experience added momentum to increasingly warming relations, coming on the heels of Obama’s April 16 visit to Mexico and his acknowledgment that Americans share the blame for violence south of border because of drug consumption and gun trafficking. Mexico, for its part, has set aside traditional sovereignty concerns in welcoming increased U.S. border security and even U.S. training for Mexico’s navy.

In contrast, relations with China have been frayed, threatening to undermine trade and investment between the two countries just as it has been picking up, said Hector Cuellar, president of the recently formed Mexico-China Chamber of Commerce.

Prominent Mexican companies have started opening operations in China in the last three years, while Mexican exports to China have jumped ninefold over the past decade to some $2 billion.

But Mexicans were angered when China banned the direct flights that leading Mexican airline Aeromexico started offering in October, and then quarantined Mexican travelers. Mexico canceled its participation at a Shanghai trade fair where it had meant to showcase its pork products — now banned in China and at least four other nations even though health experts say people can’t catch swine flu from meat.

The epidemic also set back Mexico’s efforts to improve ties with Cuba, which soured during the 2000-06 presidency of Vicente Fox, when Mexico voted at the U.N. in favor of monitoring human rights on the communist island.

Fox’s successor, Felipe Calderón, had planned a conciliatory trip to Cuba this year. That’s up in the air after Calderon said he may have to cancel because Cuba grounded flights to and from Mexico.

Mexican officials also didn’t take kindly to Fidel Castro lashing out after Cuba confirmed its first swine flu case, accusing Mexico of waiting to disclose the epidemic until after Obama visited, even though Canadian and U.S. scientists did not identify the virus in Mexican patients until a week later.

In Europe for a summit Tuesday, Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa told Cuba’s foreign relations minister, Bruno Rodriguez, that such remarks “hurt bilateral relations.”

Deputy Health Secretary Mauricio Hernandez said Wednesday that Mexico would support a global compensation fund for countries that suffer from epidemics, and warned that the threat of trade and travel restrictions could provoke governments to hide future outbreaks.

“We were responsible, and we ended up with trade sanctions — we were discriminated against,” Hernandez said at an academic forum on swine flu. “So, the question is: What is the incentive (for countries to be open)?”

Burst of gunfire from U.S. soldier touches varied lives

ABOVE: A family photo shows Pfc. Michael Edward Yates Jr. and his son Kamren. BELOW: Licensed clinical social worker Cmdr. Charles Keith Springle

Keith Springle, who grew up swimming and fishing off the North Carolina coast and seemed destined as a boy to join the Navy, was in Iraq because it was his duty as a military psychologist. Dr. Matthew Houseal, a 54-year-old Army reservist and psychiatrist, was there because he felt he needed to be.

Regardless of how they came to be there, both made it their mission to help their fellow service members cope with the stress of life in the combat zone. Soldiers like the Maryland rebel who liked tinkering with guns and despised “pencil pushers”; or the Peru native who, whether he was walking the streets of New Jersey or the dirt roads of Iraq, was a magnet for candy-seeking kids; or the shy video gamer from Missouri whose refusal to back down probably cost him his life.

Stress brought the five together earlier this week at a Baghdad clinic, the emotionally wounded and the healers. And stress is what killed them.

Authorities say Sgt. John M. Russell, who was nearing the end of his third tour in Iraq, was deeply angry at the military when he walked into the combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty on Monday and opened fire.

Killed were Springle, 52, a Navy commander from Beaufort, N.C.; Houseal of Amarillo, Texas; Army Sgt. Christian E. Bueno-Galdos, 25, of Paterson, N.J.; Spc. Jacob D. Barton, 20, of Lenox, Mo.; and Pfc. Michael E. Yates Jr., 19, of Federalsburg, Md., who had met Russell shortly before the shootings.

The paths that brought these six men together traced a grid across the globe, from South America to rural Missouri, from the islands of Alaska to deepest Antarctica, before intersecting so tragically in an Army clinic.

Family and teachers said Jacob Barton was a quiet student who loved graphic novels and science fiction. Growing up with his grandmother in the house, he sometimes had trouble relating to kids his own age.

“His grandmother was foremost on his mind at all times,” said Rod Waldrip, Barton’s high school English teacher at Rolla High School, where Barton graduated last year. “He sometimes wouldn’t do after-school activities because he had to see if she was OK. She was his main concern.”

Rose Coleman said her grandson was adjusting to life in the Army and that he “seemed to like it.”

Although he was reserved, he wasn’t afraid. Waldrip remembers seeing Barton come to the rescue of somebody who was getting bullied.

“He wouldn’t say much unless there was some injustice being done, and then he would speak up.”

Coleman said the Army told the family that Barton died trying to shield another man from the shooting.

“And he tried to talk the guy with the gun to put his gun down,” she said.

Springle knew mental health issues in the past weren’t being addressed and wanted to be proactive in treating the issues faced by soldiers and their families, said Staff Sgt. Robert Mullis of the Boone-based 1451st Transportation Company of the N.C. National Guard, who was part of a civilian outreach program with Springle.

“He saw it as preventive maintenance,” Mullis said of Springle. “They’ve just been through some tough experiences. He was reaching out trying to try and stop a big beast before it got started.”

Springle grew up in the little fishing village of Lewiston, N.C., just east of Beaufort. Cousin Alton Dudley said the pair were a kind of saltwater Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

“It was a carefree life,” said Dudley, a fishing boat captain who was nine years older than Springle. “I am sure that he joined the Navy so that he could be at sea or close to it.”

All who knew him talked about Springle’s sense of humor and upbeat attitude. But Springle, whose son and son-in-law have each done a tour in Iraq, took the issue of combat stress very seriously. While deploying to Iraq was his duty, his work on the homefront with the Citizen-Soldier Support Program was a labor of love.

“This was volunteer work,” said Bob Goodale, director of behavioral mental health for the Chapel Hill-based program. “He was doing this because it was the right thing to do: training civilian providers so they were better equipped to serve the families and the service members.”

At 54, Houseal, a major in the Army Reserves, was under no obligation to go to Iraq. But he was already something of an adventurer.

For 11 months in 1991, the University of Michigan graduate served as the physician for about 20 people working at the Amundsen-Scott Station near the South Pole in a climate research project funded by the National Science Foundation, said Mike O’Neill who was the group’s electronics technician.

“He came in at the last minute not knowing anybody,” said O’Neill, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Colorado. “That’s one of the reasons I really respected him.”

The Amarillo man had worked for a dozen years at the Texas Panhandle Mental Health and Mental Retardation clinic, said executive director Bud Schertler. He left Texas for Iraq in late January and was assigned to the 55th Medical Company in Indianapolis, which ran the clinic where the shootings occurred.

Bueno-Galdos couldn’t wait to serve his adopted country and did so exceptionally, earning three Army Commendation Medals.

He was 7 when his family emigrated from Mollendo, Peru, for better economic opportunities. The youngest of four children, Chinito – a term of endearment that literally means “little Chinaman” – became a U.S. citizen in high school and joined the Army as soon as he graduated.

Back home in Paterson, he never made a trip to the corner bodega without a group of neighborhood children tailing behind, knowing he would buy them candy or a soda, his family recalled. It was the same in Iraq, where he was on his second tour.

Yates displayed zeal for serving in the Army, but perhaps not the locale where he was serving, as evidenced by his MySpace page.

His profile lists his location as “(expletive), Iraq.”

Yates’ mother, Shawna Machlinski, said her son joined the Army, not out of a sense of duty, but because he didn’t see many other options. Besides, his stepfather and two stepbrothers were all military men.

Yates liked the military, especially going out on what he called “stealth missions.” His problems started when he went back after spending nearly the entire month of April at home. His son, Kamren Mister, celebrated his first birthday on April 7.

But the visit left him anxious. He wasn’t home long enough, but he’d still been away from “my military family” too long. Once back in Iraq, his mother said, he began to think about things he wished he’d done while visiting Maryland.

When the strong emotions began surfacing, she said, he was transferred to headquarters company “so he could stay out of combat.”

“He didn’t like headquarters at all,” said Machlinski. “He said they’re stupid pencil pushers.”

Despite the stigma, Yates volunteered to go to the stress clinic.

“I need help dealing with this,” he told his mom.

Yates had been at the clinic nearly a week when he called home Sunday for Mother’s Day.

Sometime during that time, he bumped into Russell.

Yates told his mother that Russell seemed like a nice enough guy, but after three tours, he clearly hated the Army.

“Man, this guy’s got issues,” she remembers him telling her.

Russell, 44, who was a little more than a month shy of finishing his third tour, told his family that the clinic was hurting him more than helping.

Now, he faces charges of murder and aggravated assault.