FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.

The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.

Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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Dumped Christmas trees are a gift for Lake Havasu fish

The ghosts of Christmas past can be found in some unusual places. The bottom of Lake Havasu, for instance.

There, thousands of Christmas trees sunk by wildlife biologists have found a second life as fish habitat in an ecosystem damaged by the damming of the Colorado River decades ago.

What nature once provided — a steady source of organic material such as brush and uprooted trees — disappeared when the once wild and muddy river was tamed.

By the late 1980s, Lake Havasu's now crystal clear waters harbored few places where newly spawned fish could find shelter from predators. Fish populations were a fraction of what they had been a generation before.

"There was no place for the young fish to hide until they matured," said Kirk Koch, a fisheries program manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "Instead, they would be consumed by bigger fish."

The solution was a gift that keeps on giving: Christmas trees.

More than 30 million farm-harvested trees are sold nationwide each year. No matter how pretty they're decorated, they all meet the same ignoble fate: ground up as mulch or buried in landfills.

When it began in 1992, the effort at Lake Havasu was the largest fresh-water habitat recovery program in the nation, Koch said.

Over the next decade, $16 million and countless hours of work by volunteers created 875 acres of artificial reefs.

Structures were formed by sinking PVC pipe, concrete sewer pipe and cinder blocks in 42 coves. Then, discarded Christmas trees were lashed together, weighted down and dumped around the structures. Piles of brush were added.

As the trees and brush decomposed, the pipe and concrete structure grew a biological skin of mosses and algae that was then colonized by insects. In addition to providing shelter, the Christmas tree structures also became a source of fish food.

Scuba divers check sites annually and have found that fish are drawn to Christmas trees as much as Santa is.

"When they started, they could count all of the fish at any spot on their fingers," Koch said. "Progressively, they found more fish — way, way more fish — than they can count."

The project turned Lake Havasu into a popular sport fishing destination.

"Before this, the lake was basically dead," said Arnold Vignoni, president of the local chapter of Anglers United, whose members help maintain the reefs. "The bass tournament guys — and we have lots of bass tournaments here now — say the fishing is just outstanding."

It takes a Christmas tree five to six years to decompose under water. So each year, volunteers toss in as many as 500 additional trees and a thousand brush piles to replenish the reefs.

Part of the benefit of creating habitat with Christmas trees is that it's cheap — trash haulers are happy to unload onto others what they pick up at the curb.

This year, Riverside County supervisors approved a plan to transfer 2 tons of trees collected at county landfills to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which will dump them into two lakes that badly need them.

The load will make Quinn Granfors' job much easier.

Granfors, a state fisheries biologist, has been tossing trees into Lake Elsinore and Lake Perris since 2006. Working under budget constraints, he was left to scrounge around on his own after Christmas in search of trees. Now they'll be coming to him.

In the coming weeks, he and volunteers will send hundreds of weighted trees to the bottom of the lakes.

"I kind of joke with the guys that they're now qualified to get a job with the mob," Granfors said. "Because they know how to make organic material disappear."

mike.anton@latimes.com

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Seizures of Illegal Ivory Are Rising in Hong Kong

Kin Cheung/Associated Press

The smuggled ivory shipment confiscated by custom officials in Hong Kong was valued at around $1.4 million.

HONG KONG — Customs officials in Hong Kong announced on Friday their third large seizure of smuggled ivory in less than three months, saying they had intercepted 779 elephant tusks weighing 2,900 pounds in a container originating from Kenya.

The shipment was valued at around $1.4 million.

In October, 1,209 tusks weighing 3.8 tons and worth about $3.5 million were seized from two containers shipped from Tanzania and Kenya. The following month, 1.6 tons were discovered in a container originating from Tanzania.

Large seizures also have been made in other countries recently, notably in Port Klang, Malaysia, last month.

Demand from an increasingly affluent Asia and improved international trade and transport links have caused the trade in ivory and other wildlife products to soar in recent years, pushing many species to the brink. Meanwhile, in many countries enforcement and penalties remain weak and constitute little deterrent to smugglers and poachers, conservationists say.

A total of about 10 tons of ivory was seized by customs officials around the world in 2007, according to Traffic, an organization that monitors wildlife trade. By 2011, that figure had jumped to nearly 40 tons — a record. Much of that ivory came from large hauls — weighing 1,600 pounds or more — indicating the rising involvement of organized criminal gangs, Traffic said.

Official records for 2012 are not yet complete, but the quantity of raw ivory already reported seized in the past year totals nearly 27.5 tons, according to Traffic.

“2011 still reigns supreme as the ‘annus horribilis’, but last December’s Malaysia seizure pushes 2012 into the top four years of highest ivory seizures by weight, indicating the illegal ivory trade is still running rampant,” Tom Milliken, Traffic’s elephant expert, wrote in an e-mail.

No arrests have been made in connection with Friday’s seizure in Hong Kong. Customs officials said Friday that a fictitious address in Hong Kong had been listed at the shipment’s destination, and that their investigations were continuing.

There were no indications that Hong Kong was becoming a more important transshipment point for ivory smuggling, they said, adding that the three recent hauls were “isolated” events.

The smugglers, said Vincent Wong, a senior official in the Hong Kong customs department, were adopting new approaches all the time, diversifying routes and using different concealment measures.

Friday’s batch of ivory contained some whole tusks, but also many that had been cut into two or three pieces, allowing them to fit into five wooden crates transported among a shipment declared as containing “architectural stones.”

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Kelly Clarkson: 'I've Never Been Truly Loved' Until Now

By Aaron Parsley

01/04/2013 at 09:45 AM EST

As she prepares to walk down the aisle, Kelly Clarkson has no doubts about her groom-to-be, Nashville-based talent manager Brandon Blackstock.

"Brandon's totally the one," Clarkson, 30, tells Cosmopolitan for its February issue. "I've never been so happy."

After dating for a year, Blackstock, whose father Narvel Blackstock is Clarkson's manager (and Reba McEntire's husband), popped the question in December on what she called the "happiest night of my life."

But romance was a long time coming for the pair.

Julianne Hough covers the February issue of Cosmopolitan

Courtesy Cosmopolitan

"We've known each other for years, but we didn't start talking until the Super Bowl last February," Clarkson says in the issue, which hits newsstands Tuesday.

Though she's thrilled to be engaged, Clarkson wasn't sure when they first went out together. "This is the funniest/worst thing ever: One of my superhero idols is Whitney Houston, and the day she died was our first date," she says. "I was like 'This is a bad omen.' "

That turned out not to be true, but it seems that one thing is: love is worth waiting for: "Six years I was single before this," Clarkson says. "I've never been truly loved like I am right now."

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Indian court to rule on generic drug industry

NEW DELHI (AP) — From Africa's crowded AIDS clinics to the malarial jungles of Southeast Asia, the lives of millions of ill people in the developing world are hanging in the balance ahead of a legal ruling that will determine whether India's drug companies can continue to provide cheap versions of many life-saving medicines.

The case — involving Swiss drug maker Novartis AG's cancer drug Glivec — pits aid groups that argue India plays a vital role as the pharmacy to the poor against drug companies that insist they need strong patents to make drug development profitable. A ruling by India's Supreme Court is expected in early 2013.

"The implications of this case reach far beyond India, and far beyond this particular cancer drug," said Leena Menghaney, from the aid group Doctors Without Borders. "Across the world, there is a heavy dependence on India to supply affordable versions of expensive patented medicines."

With no costs for developing new drugs or conducting expensive trials, India's $26 billion generics industry is able to sell medicine for as little as one-tenth the price of the companies that developed them, making India the second-largest source of medicines distributed by UNICEF in its global programs.

Indian pharmaceutical companies such as Cipla, Cadila Laboratories and Lupin have emerged over the past decade as major sources of generic cancer, malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS drugs for poor countries that can't afford to pay Western prices.

The 6-year-old case that just wrapped up in the Supreme Court revolves around a legal provision in India's 2005 patent law that is aimed at preventing companies from getting fresh patents for making only minor changes to existing medicines — a practice known as "evergreening."

Novartis' argued that a new version of Glivec — marketed in the U.S. as Gleevec — was a significant change from the earlier version because it was more easily absorbed by the body.

India's Patent Controller turned down the application, saying the change was an obvious development, and the new medicine was not sufficiently distinct from the earlier version to warrant a patent extension.

Patient advocacy groups hailed the decision as a blow to "evergreening."

But Western companies argued that India's generic manufacturers were cutting the incentive for major drug makers to invest in research and innovation if they were not going to be able to reap the exclusive profits that patents bring.

"This case is about safeguarding incentives for better medicines so that patients' needs will be met in the future," says Eric Althoff, a Novartis spokesman.

International drug companies have accused India of disregarding intellectual property rights, and have pushed for stronger patent protection that would weaken India's generics industry.

Earlier this year, an Indian manufacturer was allowed to produce a far cheaper version of the kidney and liver cancer treatment sorefinib, manufactured by Bayer Corp.

Bayer was selling the drug for about $5,600 a month. Natco, the Indian company, said its generic version would cost $175 a month, less than 1/30th as much. Natco was ordered to pay 6 percent in royalties to Bayer.

Novartis says the outcome of the new case will not affect the availability of generic versions of Glivec because it is covered by a grandfather clause in India's patent law. Only the more easily absorbed drug would be affected, Althoff said, adding that its own generic business, Sandoz, produces cheap versions of its drugs for millions across the globe.

Public health activists say the question goes beyond Glivec to whether drug companies should get special protection for minor tweaks to medicines that others could easily have uncovered.

"We're looking to the Supreme Court to tell Novartis it won't open the floodgates and allow abusive patenting practices," said Eldred Tellis, of the Sankalp Rehabilitation Centre, a private group working with HIV patients.

The court's decision is expected to be a landmark that will influence future drug accessibility and price across the developing world.

"We're already paying very high prices for some of the new drugs that are patented in India," said Petros Isaakidis, an epidemiologist with Doctors Without Borders. "If Novartis' wins, even older medicines could be subject to patenting again, and it will become much more difficult for us in future to provide medicines to our patients being treated for HIV, hepatitis and drug resistant TB."

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Legislators want Army Corps to explain habitat removal decision

Two state senators on Thursday called on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to explain its decision to plow under 43 acres of lush wildlife habitat at the Sepulveda Basin without prior notice or coordination with community leaders and environmentalists.

Sens. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) and Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) asked for details about what led to the agency's declaration in August that its "vegetation management plan" for the area did not require an environmental impact report because it would not significantly disturb wildlife and habitat.

On Dec. 10, Army Corps bulldozers, mowers and mulching machines stripped nearly all the greenery from the swath of Los Angeles River flood plain just west of Interstate 405 and north of Burbank Boulevard, wiping out habitat for mammals, reptiles and hundreds of species of birds.

"When a clunky federal bureaucracy doesn't collaborate with state and local officials and community leaders, you create a real mess, which is what we have right now at the Sepulveda Basin," De Leon said in an interview.

He noted that although the corps is not subject to state environmental laws, protections from the federal National Environmental Policy Act may apply.

"If the Army Corps doesn't cooperate, the next step is to engage members of Congress to exercise their powers, or have the state attorney general notify the U.S. district attorney's office," De Leon said.

Pavley, whose district includes the Sepulveda Basin, said she wants to know the extent of damage caused to trails, markers and signs funded with "state and local park monies" and installed and maintained "by thousands of hours of volunteer work."

Army Corps of Engineers District Cmdr. Col. Mark Toy was unavailable for comment. But corps spokesman Jay Field said the agency will cooperate fully with the senators.

The area existed as a wildlife preserve adjacent to the Sepulveda Dam for more than three decades. In 2010, it was reclassified as a corps "vegetation management area" with a new five-year mission of replacing trees and shrubs with native grasses as part of an effort to improve access for corps staffers, increase public safety and discourage crime, lewd activity, drug abuse and homeless camps.

Environmental groups led by the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society interpreted the plan to suggest the agency would avoid removal of native willow and cotton groves, elderberries, coyote brush and mule fat. Much of that vegetation was planted decades ago under a corps program to create the wildlife preserve.

Kris Ohlenkamp, conservation chairman of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, said the corps' management plan was vague. "But this much is clear: What the corps actually did to that land is not represented anywhere in the plan."

Army Corps Deputy District Cmdr. Alexander Deraney has said his agency's actions were "more or less in line with the plan." He said the corps wanted to preserve the native vegetation but discovered that "the native brush was so grown into non-native brush that it would be impossible to separate them."

The corps has ceased operations on the property pending consultations and meetings with environmental and community groups.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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U.S. Drone Strike Kills a Top Pakistani Militant

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An American drone strike killed a top Pakistani militant commander in a northwestern tribal region, security officials said on Thursday. The death of the commander, Maulvi Nazir, was seen as a serious blow to Taliban fighters who attack United States and allied forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

S.K Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Maulvi Nazir in South Waziristan in 2007.

The drone strike took place on Wednesday night and targeted Mr. Nazir’s vehicle in the Angoor Adda area in South Waziristan. Five other people were also killed, including one of his key aides, officials said.

“He has been killed. It is confirmed,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The vehicle he was traveling in was hit.”

Mr. Nazir was traveling from Birmal to Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, when his vehicle was struck by the drone.

In a separate drone strike in North Waziristan on Thursday morning, at least four people were killed when a vehicle was targeted. The identities of those killed were not immediately known.

Mr. Nazir, believed to be in his 30s, was based in the western part of the South Waziristan tribal region. He led the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe, and his loyalists regularly joined attacks on American forces across the porous border with Afghanistan. Unlike other Taliban factions, Mr. Nazir’s fighters did not attack Pakistani military or government targets, instead focusing on the war inside Afghanistan. He was believed to have signed a peace pact with the Pakistani military.

Mr. Nazir was allied with Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a leading warlord in North Waziristan. The nonconfrontational posture of the two commanders toward the Pakistani military often led to them being labeled here as “good Taliban.”

Asad Munir, a former Pakistan Army brigadier and the intelligence chief in Peshawar, said the killing of Mr. Nazir could lead to a spurt in violence.

“A dangerous scenario for Pakistani military would be joining of hands of Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir supporters with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.”

Mr. Munir said the area controlled by Mr. Nazir’s forces had been “relatively peaceful” but his death increased the chances of attacks on military targets. Mr. Nazir had survived two earlier drone strikes. In November, he survived a suicide attack, which was blamed on Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or T.T.P., the Pakistani Taliban who conduct attacks inside Pakistan. After the suicide attack, he expelled rival Mehsud tribesmen from territory controlled by his fighters.

Mr. Nazir also opposed the presence of Uzbek fighters inside Pakistan and, with the help of the Pakistani military, pushed Uzbeks out of his region several years ago.

Some analysts said that militants like Mr. Nazir could be troublesome for the Pakistani military once the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan begins in 2014.

“Maulvi Nazir would probably have posed a problem for the Pakistan Army if and when a political settlement is reached in Afghanistan in 2014. But in the interim, the killing of Nazir and his deputies likely hurts the Pakistan Army’s efforts against the T.T.P. in South Waziristan,” said Arif Rafiq, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, based in Washington.

“Nazir would probably have wanted to hold on to his local jihadist fiefdom, making him a long-term threat for the Pakistani state,” said Mr. Rafiq.

The suspicion that the Pakistani military gave a nod to Mr. Nazir’s killing could result in attacks on Pakistani troops in some areas in South Waziristan, analysts said.

Pakistani officials publicly denounce American drone strikes but have privately acknowledged the effectiveness of the campaign.

Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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Fake John le Carré Twitter Account Fakes J.K. Rowling’s Fake Twitter Death

We’ve seen “Cormac McCarthy” Tweet apocalyptic non sequiturs. “Philip Roth” promised us a bite-sized short story. Now a fake Twitter account for British spy novelist John le Carré is spreading bizarre death rumors about J.K. Rowling. After a few days of Tweeting harmless missives, the week-old handle @JLecarre dropped this would-be bombshell on its nearly 2,500 followers Wednesday morning: 

A terrible news. My publisher phones me announcing that J.K. Rowling dies by accident. Few minutes ago. No words!

— John le Carré (@JLecarre) January 2, 2013

OK, there are at least three dead-giveaways that this is a fake account. One: If J.K. Rowling had died, does anyone credibly think John le Carré would be the one breaking the news? Rowling and le Carré don’t even share a publisher—he’s with Penguin and she’s printed by Little, Brown and Company—making this story even more implausible. Two: As noted by le Carré’s literary agent Jonny Geller, the “L” in the author’s name shouldn’t be capitalized, as it is in the handle of this hoax account. Three: Phrases like “a terrible news” and “my publisher phones me” sound more like snippets from an ESL workbook than lines from an author praised for his chilly, controlled prose style. This could again be the work of Italian media troll Tommaso De Benedetti, who copped to creating a fake Philip Roth account recently. “Twitter works well for deaths,” he told The Guardian‘s Tom Kington, describing his M.O. for spreading misinformation about the deaths of public figures like Fidel Castro and Pedro Almodóvar. 

RELATED: Pippa’s Sales Figures Are Nothing to ‘Celebrate’; Salman Rushdie and John le Carré Call Truce

Too bad John le Carrè isn’t actually on Twitter, though. Imagine the flame wars he would get into with longtime adversary Salman Rushdie—who most certainly is on Twitter, and loves using it to throw literate shade. And too bad this isn’t the handiwork of someone with more imagination—someone like the unpublished Scottish novelist behind @cormaccmccarthy. Outed right here on The Atlantic Wire, Michael Crossan at least had the chops to fool Margaret Atwood and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey with dead-on spoofs of McCarthy’s writing: 

RELATED: Salman Rushdie’s Video Speech Gets Spiked; The World’s Priciest Books

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Fourth Child on the Way for Amar'e Stoudemire

Amarestoudemire.com

It was certainly a big year for Amar’e Stoudemire and wife Alexis, but 2013 may just prove to be their slam dunk.

The couple, who were engaged in Paris in June and tied the knot on Dec. 12 (12-12-12) on their N.Y.C. apartment roof deck, reveal that they’re expecting their fourth child together late this spring.

“We’re blessed that we were able to extend our family,” the New York Knicks forward, 30, tells PEOPLE exclusively.

“We’re both huge on having a nice size family. It was something we’ve been talking about for a while. It happened naturally and at the right time so it all worked out.”

“It was just perfect timing,” adds Alexis, 29, who says she’s had some morning sickness but overall, “can’t complain!”

The duo, who already have three children together — Ar’e, 7, Amar’e Jr., 6, and Assata, 4 — say everyone is thrilled for the impending arrival.

“They’re very, very excited,” says Alexis. “They just keep guessing if it’s a boy or a girl.” And it won’t be long before the sex is revealed, “I can’t wait to know what it is,” says Amar’e.

“As soon as Amar’e walks into the door those kids are all over him,” says Alexis with a laugh. “He’s like a big kid. He’s a great dad.”

And as for mom, who mans the house while Amar’e is on the road, “she does it all,” says Amar’e. “She does such a phenomenal job with the kids. I’m just here to be the big teddy bear.”

After marrying in December, the couple will hold another wedding celebration this summer. “We’re planning a big, extravagant Cinderella wedding for Alexis!” says Amar’e.

“It was beautiful to have a private ceremony with close family and friends,” says the star of their December nuptials. “I planned it; I wanted to have something that was more spiritual where we could really understand what being married means. It was a great way to end 2012.”

And, says Alexis, “We included the children in our ceremony as well. That was very important to us. It’s something they’ll always remember.”

Amar’e will be honoring his brother Hazel, who passed away last year in a car accident, this weekend by inviting 30 kids from his Florida hometown to the upcoming Orlando Magic vs Knicks game. “I just want them to get away for a little bit and enjoy.”

Looking forward to the new year and a new baby, “Hopefully we’ll bring home a championship and we’ll celebrate with a wedding after that!” adds Amar’e.

– Jennifer Garcia

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Flu? Malaria? Disease forecasters look to the sky

NEW YORK (AP) — Only a 10 percent chance of showers today, but a 70 percent chance of flu next month.

That's the kind of forecasting health scientists are trying to move toward, as they increasingly include weather data in their attempts to predict disease outbreaks.

In one recent study, two scientists reported they could predict — more than seven weeks in advance — when flu season was going to peak in New York City. Theirs was just the latest in a growing wave of computer models that factor in rainfall, temperature or other weather conditions to forecast disease.

Health officials are excited by this kind of work and the idea that it could be used to fine-tune vaccination campaigns or other disease prevention efforts.

At the same time, experts note that outbreaks are influenced as much, or more, by human behavior and other factors as by the weather. Some argue weather-based outbreak predictions still have a long way to go. And when government health officials warned in early December that flu season seemed to be off to an early start, they said there was no evidence it was driven by the weather.

This disease-forecasting concept is not new: Scientists have been working on mathematical models to predict outbreaks for decades and have long factored in the weather. They have known, for example, that temperature and rainfall affect the breeding of mosquitoes that carry malaria, West Nile virus and other dangerous diseases.

Recent improvements in weather-tracking have helped, including satellite technology and more sophisticated computer data processing.

As a result, "in the last five years or so, there's been quite an improvement and acceleration" in weather-focused disease modeling, said Ira Longini, a University of Florida biostatistician who's worked on outbreak prediction projects.

Some models have been labeled successes.

In the United States, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of New Mexico tried to predict outbreaks of hantavirus in the late 1990s. They used rain and snow data and other information to study patterns of plant growth that attract rodents. People catch the disease from the droppings of infected rodents.

"We predicted what would happen later that year," said Gregory Glass, a Johns Hopkins researcher who worked on the project.

More recently, in east Africa, satellites have been used to predict rainfall by measuring sea-surface temperatures and cloud density. That's been used to generate "risk maps" for Rift Valley fever — a virus that spreads from animals to people and in severe cases can cause blindness or death. Researchers have said the system in some cases has given two to six weeks advance warning.

Last year, other researchers using satellite data in east Africa said they found that a small change in average temperature was a warning sign cholera cases would double within four months.

"We are getting very close to developing a viable forecasting system" against cholera that can help health officials in African countries ramp up emergency vaccinations and other efforts, said a statement by one of the authors, Rita Reyburn of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea.

Some diseases are hard to forecast, such as West Nile virus. Last year, the U.S. suffered one of its worst years since the virus arrived in 1999. There were more than 2,600 serious illnesses and nearly 240 deaths.

Officials said the mild winter, early spring and very hot summer helped spur mosquito breeding and the spread of the virus. But the danger wasn't spread uniformly. In Texas, the Dallas area was particularly hard-hit, while other places, including some with similar weather patterns and the same type of mosquitoes, were not as affected.

"Why Dallas, and not areas with similar ecological conditions? We don't really know," said Roger Nasci of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is chief of the CDC branch that tracks insect-borne viruses.

Some think flu lends itself to outbreak forecasting — there's already a predictability to the annual winter flu season. But that's been tricky, too.

Seasonal flu reports come from doctors' offices, but those show the disease when it's already spreading. Some researchers have studied tweets on Twitter and searches on Google, but their work has offered a jump of only a week or two on traditional methods.

In the study of New York City flu cases published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors said they could forecast, by up to seven weeks, the peak of flu season.

They designed a model based on weather and flu data from past years, 2003-09. In part, their design was based on earlier studies that found flu virus spreads better when the air is dry and turns colder. They made calculations based on humidity readings and on Google Flu Trends, which tracks how many people are searching each day for information on flu-related topics (often because they're beginning to feel ill).

Using that model, they hope to try real-time predictions as early as next year, said Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University, who led the work.

"It's certainly exciting," said Lyn Finelli, the CDC's flu surveillance chief. She said the CDC supports Shaman's work, but agency officials are eager to see follow-up studies showing the model can predict flu trends in places different from New York, like Miami.

Despite the optimism by some, Dr. Edward Ryan, a Harvard University professor of immunology and infectious diseases, is cautious about weather-based prediction models. "I'm not sure any of them are ready for prime time," he said.

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