Barcelona outshine Man United in final

Agence France Presse
ROME: Barcelona outplayed holders Manchester United to win their third Champions League crown with a 2-0 victory here on Wednesday.Goals from star forwards Samuel Eto’o and Lionel Messi gave the Catalans a deserved victory and denied United from becoming the first team to retain the title since the European Cup became the Champions League in 1993. It gave the Spaniards a unique treble having already won their domestic league and cup and meant they repeated a feat United achieved in 1999, which Red Devils boss Sir Alex Ferguson had then claimed would never be matched.It crowned a marvellous debut season for his Barcelona counterpart Pep Guardiola, who at 38 becomes the youngest coach to take European club football’s greatest prize. For Thierry Henry it ended years of frustration especially when his then team Arsenal lost to Barcelona in the 2006 final. Barca overcame early jitters to dominate large parts of the game as the English club never managed to get their usual high tempo game into gear. In a clash billed as the match of the century pitting the best two teams in the world — with each one boasting one of the best two players in the world — only one played to their full potential.And Ferguson may be questioning his team selection having left Dimitar Berbatov and Carlos Tevez on bench as Ryan Giggs played off lone striker Cristiano Ronaldo with Wayne Rooney and Park Ji-Sung confined to disciplined roles on the flanks. Both sides made a nervy start with Barca goalkeeper Victor Valdes and United’s Park — the first ever Asian player to play in a Champions League final — playing passes straight into touch. But United settled quickest and Ronaldo had a purple patch in which he terrorised the Spaniards for 10 minutes. He hit a 25-yard free-kick that Valdes couldn’t hold and former United defender Gerard Pique had to dive in to deflect Park’s follow-up away for a corner.Ronaldo then lashed a fierce long range drive wide and later, after controlling the ball on his chest, he hit a left-foot volley that sailed agonisingly inches past the post. The reigning champions were enjoying all the ball and chances but out of the blue Barca took the lead. Andres Iniesta played in Eto’o who beat Nemanja Vidic inside the box and although Michael Carrick slid in to try to block his shot, he succeeded only in helping it past Edwin van der Sar.That goal settled Barca into their usual stride and they started to weave the pretty patterns that have been mesmerising opponents all season, carrying them to the remarkable feat of scoring more than 150 goals. As the half wore on United gradually lost their shape and rhythm with Ferguson responding late on by pushing Rooney up alongside Ronaldo and Giggs out to the left. Xavi tried his luck from a free-kick which, like Giggs’s earlier, was too high but by now Barca had wrested control of the game and were keeping the ball with alarming ease. Ferguson wasted no time in switching tactics, bringing on Tevez for Anderson at the break and reverting to a more regular 4-4-2, the Argentine playing alongside Ronaldo and Giggs dropping back into a deeper role.But just as the tide seemed to be turning, Barca extended their lead from the most unlikely source as Xavi picked out Messi at the back post on the edge of the six yard box, the Argentine wizard’s looping header arcing into the top corner on 70 minutes.

Boyle poised for fairytale finale

AFP
LONDON: Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle faces her biggest challenge yet in Saturday's "Britain's Got Talent" final but, win or lose, she has already lived her dream, becoming a global star along the way.
Boyle, a frumpy, 48-year-old spinster who has never been kissed, went from obscurity to international stardom with a soaring version of "I Dreamed A Dream" from musical Les Miserables in the show's auditions.
That clip has attracted some 100 million hits on YouTube, brought her celebrity fans including actress Demi Moore and rock star Jon Bon Jovi, and seen her feted in the media from the US to China, Japan and Australia.
"I think the sky's the limit for Susan," Britain's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan told top US chat show host Larry King last month.
"She wants to be a professional singer. The whole world is going crazy for her. I think at the very least she will achieve that aim."
After a shaky performance of "Memory" in the show's semi-finals, when she was occasionally out of tune and out of time, some fans on YouTube have questioned whether she can handle the weight of expectation.
But Boyle, whose world has turned upside down in just over a month, insists she will keep her feet firmly rooted to the ground.
Asked by King if fame would alter her, she demanded: "Why should I change?" adding her celebrity meant "I certainly won't be lonely any more."
Despite her newfound fame, unemployed Boyle still lives in social housing outside Edinburgh with only her cat, Pebbles, for company.
She had auditioned for television talent shows and sung karaoke before "Britain's Got Talent" but Boyle never got a break and all but gave up on singing after the death of her mother, who she nursed to the end, two years ago.
Boyle was reportedly starved of oxygen at birth and bullied at school. When she first stepped up to the microphone on ITV's "Britain's Got Talent", it looked like the jibes would continue as audience and judges laughed at her frizzy, greying hair and thick eyebrows.
But the woman dubbed the "Hairy Angel" by Britain's press silenced them all when she opened her mouth to sing -- and has not looked back since.
As well as an endless round of talk show appearances -- particularly in the US, where Oprah Winfrey was among those jostling to speak to her -- Boyle has been namechecked by TV shows like "The Simpsons" and "South Park".
Meanwhile, her humble home in Blackburn, central Scotland, has been besieged by journalists and photographers recording her every move -- including a makeover when she had her hair dyed and eyebrows plucked last month.
Part of the reason for her success is the Internet. Her army of international fans would have struggled to hear of her without YouTube, where her "I Dreamed A Dream" clip is reportedly poised to become the most popular of all time.
Twitter has also helped -- when Moore wrote that Boyle's performance had "made me teary" soon after her first appearance, it got picked up by hundreds of media outlets.
But Boyle's quiet determination to succeed against the odds and refusal to let success turn her head has also tapped into something far more powerful than mere technology.
"Susan Boyle is the ugly duckling who didn't need to turn into a swan; she has fulfilled the dreams of millions... downtrodden by the cruelty of a culture that judges them on their appearance," commentator Melanie Reid wrote in Britain's Times newspaper last month.
Morgan has highlighted her emergence "out of nowhere... (to become) the world's champion" as central to her appeal.
"What Susan Boyle has single-handedly done is give us all something to smile about and feel optimistic by and inspired by," he told King on CNN.
"It's a fantastic achievement to make the whole world grin and talk to each other and say, 'have you seen that clip?'"
Boyle is the bookmakers' hot favourite to win the "Britain's Got Talent" final, when she will face nine others including urban dance troupe Diversity and 17-year-old singer Shaun Smith.
The winner gets to perform for Queen Elizabeth II, plus a cheque for 100,000 pounds (115,000 euros, 160,000 dollars).
Whether or not she triumphs, the future looks bright for Boyle. She is reportedly set to sign a record deal, cut an album of show tunes and could even land a role in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in London's West End.

Preity Zinta gets choosy

BOLLYWOOD: Priety Zinta dimpled her way into the hearts of millions of fans with the Perk commercial directed by Shekhar Kapoor more than a decade back. Today she considered amongst the most respected actress of Bollywood as she has made a place for herself as one of the best actresses today. With films like Dil Se, Kya Kehna (her first full fledged performance as a complete actress) Armaan, Dil Chahta Hai, Koi Mil Gaya, Kal Ho Naa Ho and Heroes, the actress has proved that she is not just a pretty face but a talented actress too. With films like Veer Zaara and now Videsh, Preity showed her detractors that she was not her to just run around trees but also give powerful performances.
A source close to the talented beauty tells us, “Right now Preity may not have signed many films apart from Yash Chopra’s forthcoming venture and Sohail Khan’s Main Aur Mrs Khanna but the actress is playing it pretty safe and accepting only roles which can do justice to the talent that she is blessed with. Since she has come to a stage where she knows that she has had a long and outstanding innings to play. She has now moved on to IPL and made a mark there is no looking back for the actress. Preity is looking forward to doing quality work and is here to stay.”
Indeed, from the chirpy bubbly youngster we saw in Soldier and Dil Se, she has now matured into a fine actress

Ways to green your home

It’s high time that we all start doing something to combat global warming. All it takes are a few smart, fuss-free choices to make the change you wish to see in the world, while rejuvenating your body, home, and planet at the same time. Choosing green might even save you some green in the process. Our list is by no means exhaustive
Build it green
Trees, in a word, rock. They absorb heat-trapping carbon dioxide, hold soil together to prevent landslides, and provide a rich habitat for diverse plants and animals. Choose furniture made from eco-friendly sources such as sustainably managed forests, bamboo, and reclaimed wood. Buying vintage wherever possible, rather than adding something new into the waste stream, is always in style. Also, look for furniture that is durable and likely long-lived-you'll save money on replacements in the future and prevent more wasted materials from winding up in the landfill. And, if for some reason, that dresser or dining table no longer suits your needs, something in fine shape will always have takers via Craig's List, eBay, or Freecycle.Go Au NaturalOur chemical arsenal may be able to exterminate creepy crawlies and polish our countertops, but they're slowly killing us, too. The man-made chemicals we favor are like the obnoxious houseguest who overstays his welcome-an average of 200 industrial compounds, pollutants and other chemicals, for instance, were recently discovered in the umbilical-cord blood of newborns. (These included seven dangerous pesticides, some of which were banned in the U.S. more than 30 years ago.) We're serving our kids potent chemical cocktails even before they're born-not quite the head start they may have been hoping to get. Pesticides have also been implicated in Parkinson's disease, infertility, brain damage, and cancer. So ditch the poisons and choose natural, non-toxic, and equally effective methods of cleaning and corralling pests. You probably already have what you need in your kitchen to get started. Chowing down on organically grown food will cut out pesticides from your diet, as well.Slay Energy VampiresYou may not know it, but households across the globe are infested with vampires. Energy vampires, that is. Cleverly disguised as innocuous household appliances (psst, your television is one of them), their nasty pointed teeth plunge deep into your wall socket, draining power all hours of the day and night, even after you've switched them off. (Americans pay $1 billion a year to power our televisions and VCRs while they're turned off.) Other sleeper agents of the electric undead that consume 1,000 kilowatt hours a year per household, while in standby mode: your toaster, coffeemaker, hair dryer, PC, printer, cable box, and cell phone charger. You don't have to live in a constant state of fear, however, forever checking behind your back for that one appliance you forgot to pull the plug of. Just plug adjacent equipment into power strips with surge protectors, and before you crawl under the safety of your covers-or head out to work-simply flip the switch.Get Off the GridOpt for clean, renewable energy if it's offered in your area. Low-impact sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power reduce our dependence on coal-burning power plants, a major source of greenhouse-gas emissions. And because harnessing the power of renewable "fuels" such as sun and wind are free, your electric bill is likely to scale down because of the reduced price of wholesale electricity.The 3 RsStart rolling those Rs: Reduce, reuse, and recycle-and in that order. Let's face it, we're mired deep in ecological debt because we're consuming more resources than nature can replenish. By gorging on more than our fair share of the world's resources, we're also diverting essentials such as food, clothing, and water from communities in greater need. So let's recap: It's better to reduce your personal consumption than it is to reuse something, and it's less environmentally taxing to reuse a product than to have it recycled. Separating recyclables from your regular trash, which barely takes any effort, is a no-brainer, of course; recycling aluminum, for instance, takes as little as 5 percent of the energy we'd need to manufacture virgin aluminum.Get Better MileageWho knew cauliflower were such globe-trotters? Or that jet-setting tomatoes racked up frequent-flier miles? But it's true: North American produce typically travels a minimum of 1,500 miles. Grapes can clock 2,143 miles cruising from vineyards in Napa Valley to supermarket aisles in Chicago, gobbling up barrels of crude oil and spewing pollutants and green-house gas emissions in their wake. By buying your produce locally, whether it's through the farmers' market or a community-assisted agriculture program, you can reduce your "food miles," otherwise known as the distance your food has to travel to get from the farm to your plate. Now that's fresh.No SolicitingDeforestation is responsible for 25 percent of all carbon emissions released into the atmosphere, through the burning and cutting of 34 million acres of trees annually. Save some virgin and old-growth forests by opting out of paper catalogs and browsing online, instead. Why did you think Al Gore invented the Internet? Shed those extra 41 pounds of junk mail the average American packs on each year by removing yourself from direct-mail mailing lists; if you need a tad more help, companies such as GreenDimes and 41pounds.org have got your back.Paper nor plasticEschew plastic bags by bringing your own reusable canvas totes the next time you're at the supermarket or store. Because petroleum-based plastic isn't biodegradables, it's certain to outlive you-by about a millennium or so. Each year, thousands of marine animals, including the endangered leatherback turtle, choke to death on plastic trash they mistake for snackable morsels. Our unholy love for plastic disposables has also bred a swirling vortex of plastic trash the size of Texas in the North Pacific Ocean-not surprising when you consider that Americans run through about 100 billion plastic bags annually, using up an estimated 12 million barrels of oil.Seeing StarsThe average home can pump out twice as much greenhouse-gas emissions as the average car. Purchasing energy-saving Energy Star-rated appliances, electronics, and lighting can help mitigate that, while slashing a third of your electric bill, (A power guzzler is nobody's friend.) Improving the energy efficiency of your home could even earn you tax credits from Uncle Sam.One Bright IdeaIf you're going to do just one thing for the planet, make it the switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Although they cost several times more upfront than regular incandescent light bulbs, they also last about 10 times longer, which means that for every CFL you screw in, you'll be saving eight incandescent light bulbs from landfill purgatory. Plus, you'll save some serious cash in the long run. Because CFLs use 75 percent less energy, swapping one incandescent bulb for a CFL reduces carbon dioxide by 500 pounds a year; replacing 17 has the equivalent effect of taking one car off the road for a year. Just remember to recycle spent bulbs responsibly - CFLs contain trace amounts of mercury, which although isn't enough to be hazardous to you, could pose a problem in landfills when mercury from multiple bulbs leaches into the ground.

NASA'S most dangerous mission yet

Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL: The Hubble Space Telescope is about to get one last house call. And never before have the risks been higher.
On Monday, astronauts will rocket away to the most famous telescope of modern times. They'll be taking up new scientific instruments, replacement parts for broken cameras and fresh batteries that should keep Hubble running for five to 10 years.
This cosmic-scale grand finale — stalled seven months by a telescope breakdown — will be NASA's most daring overhaul yet of the 19-year-old orbiting observatory, a captivating, twinkling jewel in the sky representing $10 billion of investment.
Never before have spacewalking astronauts attempted to fix dead science instruments on the Hubble, equipment that was never meant to be handled in orbit. Before they've just swapped out the whole thing at the telescope, which started out life shockingly nearsighted.
In all, five spacewalks will be performed in as many days by two repair teams. Two of the repairmen have visited Hubble before and, because of that, were chosen for this extraordinarily difficult job, on a par with operating-room surgery.
"Hubble needs a hug," said the chief repairman, John Grunsfeld, who will be making his third trip to the telescope.
Space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven will face increased danger from space junk because of Hubble's extremely high and littered orbit 350 miles up. They will need someone to come and get them — fast — if their ship sustains serious Columbia-type damage during launch or later in flight. They will not have the luxury of camping out at the international space station while awaiting rescue. The space station will be in another orbit and impossible to reach.
The mission, once canceled because it was considered too perilous, has an unprecedented safety net: another space shuttle on the launch pad. There is no guarantee, though, that NASA could pull off a rescue in time to save the Hubble crew. It would take three to seven days, at least, to launch a second shuttle.
All seven astronauts agree Hubble is worth risking their lives for.
"I'm only going to do that if I think it's for something really important, and I think Hubble is really important," said Grunsfeld, an astronaut-astrophysicist. Hubble is "worth bringing up to date and extending its vision even farther."
"It's showing us the way" to distant galaxies and, indeed, the actual edge of the universe, said the mission's commander, Scott Altman. "The next step is for us to try and go there."
Altman and his crew were just two weeks away from liftoff last fall when Hubble broke down and stopped sending pictures. NASA got the telescope working again with a backup channel on the failed command and data-handling unit, but the shuttle flight took a seven-month hit as engineers scrambled to get an old spare unit ready for launch.
The final cost for the entire mission, including all the new tools and parts, is just over $1 billion.
No telescope ever has received as much hoo-ha or been on such a seesaw as Hubble, which has circled Earth more than 100,000 times and logged nearly 3 billion miles.
Launched aboard the space shuttle in 1990, Hubble went "from the top of Mount Everest to the bottom of the Dead Sea" in two months flat, observed NASA's science chief, Ed Weiler. The orbiting telescope had blurred vision; its primary mirror had been improperly ground.
Astronauts fixed everything in 1993 by installing corrective lenses and returned three more times — in 1997, 1999 and 2002 — to install better cameras and make other improvements.
In the meantime, Hubble was churning out breathtaking vistas of the cosmos, including the celebrated image of Eagle Nebula, a star-forming region 6,500 light years away. The picture is often referred to as "Pillars of Creation."
Hubble has shed light on the age of the universe (13.7 billion years) and shown that the universe may be expanding quicker than ever, and proved the existence of supermassive black holes, among other things. The telescope has peered back in time to within 800 million years of the first moments of the universe. The new instruments going up will take astronomers to within 500 million to 600 million years of creation.
Ground-based telescopes might see better than Hubble "over a very, very tiny field of view," Weiler said. "But you don't see Eagle Nebulas on the cover of Time magazine taken from the ground. You see them from Hubble. Hubble still has a unique niche."
The 2003 Columbia disaster put the fifth and final Hubble servicing mission that had been scheduled for 2004 on indefinite hold and, one year later, completely knocked it off the shuttle lineup.
With the public outraged over the abandonment of Hubble, NASA considered the idea of sending up a robot to replace the batteries and gyroscopes, plug in the latest wide-field camera, and perform some other jobs. But the robot plan never jelled, and the NASA administrator at the time, Michael Griffin, nixed it. Instead, Griffin approved one last Hubble tuneup by astronauts. He left NASA in January with the change in the White House.
Grunsfeld disagreed about the robot mission.
"I have absolutely no doubt it would have worked," Grunsfeld told The Associated Press. "I do think that we got a little too greedy and tried to propose that (a Hubble robot mission) would do a lot more than it really could."
Grunsfeld is quick to note that no robot could have tackled some chores they'll undertake — installing the new cosmic origins spectrograph for detecting faint light from faraway quasars and repairing two failed science instruments.
The spacewalkers will have to undo 117 fasteners to get to a bad electronics board inside an old imaging spectrograph, and deal with a hard-to-get-around corner to replace burned-out power supply cards in an advanced camera for surveys.
"It's right at the edge of what I think people can do, period," Grunsfeld said of the repairs.
In addition to all that, the astronauts will put in a new fine guidance sensor, part of Hubble's pointing system, add some steel skin to the telescope's blistered exterior. And they will hook up an improved capture ring so a future robot-guided craft can latch onto the Hubble and steer the observatory into a Pacific grave sometime in the early 2020s.
"I think of Hubble as a roller coaster," Weiler said late last month, referring to all its ups and downs. But the bottom line is, "Everybody loves Hubble now."
It's even won over the Twittering crowd. Astronaut Michael Massimino has been filing training updates viaTwitter for the past month; he hopes to post from orbit, but is uncertain whether he'll have time.
Before tragedy struck with Columbia, Weiler envisioned a space shuttle bringing Hubble back to Earth and the telescope — "the great American comeback story" — being displayed at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.
He imagined "little school kids going up to this huge four-story telescope and being able to say, 'That's what filled your textbook with pictures and traveled billions of miles in orbit.' "
Instead, the world will eventually watch as Hubble plunges from the sky.
Grunsfeld — who will have spent more time working on Hubble in space than any other human — said he will have no remorse when it comes time to leave the telescope near the end of the 11-day shuttle mission.
"The increase in Hubble's capability and the life extension is going to be so phenomenal that I'm just going to be thrilled to see it as it recedes onto the horizon as just another bright star," he said.
He's already planning a huge party for when Hubble plummets out of the sky in another decade or so, on a cruise ship somewhere in the Pacific.

Madonna adoption case heard

Agencies
Madonna
AP
BLANTYRE: Malawi's highest court began deliberating on Madonna's bid to adopt a 3-year-old girl from the southern African country, as a dispute erupted over whether a man trying to stop the proceedings is the girl's father.
Madonna was not at Monday's closed-door hearing at the Malawi Supreme Court of Appeal, and a ruling may not be announced for several days.
The 50-year-old pop star is fighting a lower court's decision that she cannot adopt Chifundo "Mercy" James because she had not been screened over time by Malawi authorities. The court said the rules were bent when Madonna adopted her son David from Malawi last year.
Madonna's Malawian lawyer Alan Chinula said he was "hopeful" the appeal would succeed, and argued the lower court had relied on outdated law to block the girl's adoption.
Madonna found the girl in 2006 at Kondanani Children's Village, an orphanage in the southern town of Bvumbwe just south of the commercial capital of Blantyre. It was the same year she adopted David, whom she found at another orphanage in the central Mchinji district.
On Sunday, a man told The Associated Press he was the girl's father, and has sought help from the Malawi Law Society to stop the adoption.
James Kambewa, a 24-year-old a security guard, acknowledged he has never seen the child, who according to court documents was placed in the orphanage when her 14-year-old mother died a few weeks after giving birth to her.
But Kambewa said he now wanted to claim custody of Chifundo.
"I may be poor, but I think I have what it takes to raise a daughter," he said. "I will fight the adoption."
The brother of the girl's mother told the AP the family does not know Kambewa.
"How can he claim he is the father when he hasn't been around all this time?" said Peter Baneti, who explained that the girl was put in the orphanage because there was no one to breast-feed the baby.
Baneti said he had agreed to the adoption on behalf of the family, and that Kambewa was "just an opportunist."
Madonna spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg said in an e-mail message she doesn't know if Kambewa is the father.
"All I know is that Mercy has been in an orphanage since the day she was born," Rosenberg said.
Kambewa, in an interview to be aired Monday on CBS' "The Early Show," said he has only seen the girl "in newspapers and TV — not face to face." But he told CBS the girl "is a Malawian — so (I) need her to grow as a Malawian as well with our culture."
On the show, Kambewa wore a necklace bearing the girl's name.
Madonna has founded a charity, Raising Malawi, that helps feed, educate and provide medical care for some of Malawi's more than 1 million orphans, half of whom have lost parents to AIDS.

More schools close in US

Agencies
AP
WASHINGTON: Scores more schools shut down around the country because of the swine flu virus at week's end and Education Secretary Arne Duncan offered tips to teachers and students on how to deal with classroom interruptions.Federal officials closely watched developments as at least two dozen new cases of swine flu were reported.President Barack Obama, whose administration has taken a high profile to offer reassurances and advice about the threat, expressed hopes the swine flu will run its course "like ordinary flus." Health officials suggested the virus now appears less ominous than it did at first."I'm optimistic that we're going to be able to manage this effectively," Obama said Friday. But he said the federal government is preparing as if the worst is still to come so that it won't be caught flat-footed.Obama said it wasn't clear whether the flu would be more severe than others before it, and he said the swine flu is a cause for special concern because it is a new strain and people have not developed an immunity to it.The government issued new guidance for schools with confirmed cases, saying they should close for at least 14 days because children can be contagious for seven to 10 days from when they get sick. That means parents can expect to have children at home for longer than previously thought.The Education Department said that more than 430 schools had closed, affecting about 245,000 children in 18 states. That was about 100 more schools reported closed than reported on Thursday.The latest developments in the flu scare — more intense in neighboring Mexico than in the United States — came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the virus had been confirmed in more U.S. states.Confirmed cases had risen from 109 on Thursday to 161 Friday, the CDC said, with the flu reported in about double the number of states as the 11 reported Thursday. The U.S. death toll remained at one — the Mexican toddler who visited Texas with his family and died there.Mexico has confirmed more than 300 swine flu cases and has 16 confirmed deaths, although reports have indicated that roughly 120 may have died from it.Worldwide, the total confirmed cases numbered close to 600, although officials believe there are many more.The CDC said that the virus was continuing to spread, though no faster than the rate of the regular winter flu."We think the cases do continue to occur," said CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat. But CDC also said the new swine flu virus lacks genes that made the 1918 pandemic strain so deadly.While emphasizing at a news conference that the closures to date represent a tiny fraction of the almost 100,000 schools in the country, Duncan instructed teachers, parents and students to be prepared if their school does close.To teachers, Duncan said: "Think about reworking upcoming lesson plans so students can do their schoolwork at home if necessary."To parents: "Learn about what they're learning at school. Keep them on task."And to students: "Don't fall behind your peers at other schools that are still in session. Keep working hard."Major U.S. airlines announced plans to curtail flights into Mexico. Many travelers have become increasingly concerned about going to Mexico, though authorities there said new cases were leveling off. U.S. travelers have been advised to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico. Continental Airlines Inc., the biggest U.S. carrier to Mexico, said Friday it would halve the number of seats it sells to fly there. Delta Air Lines Inc. and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines also announced plans for reduced flights to Mexico, while smaller carriers were following suit. Though most U.S. cases have been relatively mild and have not required a doctor's visit, U.S. precautions include shipping millions of doses of anti-flu drugs to states in case they're needed, replenishing the U.S. strategic stockpile with millions more treatment courses, and shipping 400,000 treatment courses to Mexico.