theSun | THURSDAY APRIL 2 2009 9

news without borders

Drug-resistant TB a ‘time bomb’: WHO

BEIJING: Health officials
gathered in Beijing yesterday
warned against deadly drug-
resistant strains of tuberculosis,
which are spreading fastest in
developing countries that lack
the infrastructure to tackle the
disease. Over half of new cases
of tuberculosis are resistant to
multiple drugs right from the
start, and not as a direct result
of substandard treatment, the
head of the World Health Or-
ganisation (WHO) warned.
“This is the true alarm bell.
This tells us that resistant
strains are now circulating in
the general population, spread-
ing widely and largely silently in
a growing pool of latent infec-
tion,” director-general Margaret
Chan said.
“Obviously this is a situation
set to spiral out of control. Call it
what you want, a time bomb or
a powder keg, any
way you look at it
this is a potentially
explosive situa-
tion.”
According to
WHO, of nine million
new TB cases annu-
ally, about 490,000
are multiple-drug
resistant TB (MDR-
TB) and about 40,000
are extensively drug
resistant (XDR-TB)
based on 2006 data.
People with XDR-TB, which
has cropped up in 55 countries,
have few treatment options and
death rates are high.
The spread of those strains
could compromise the global
fight against tuberculosis,
which relies on drugs developed
decades ago. “The situation is al-
ready alarming, and is poised to
ks the
A doctor chec
patient with
progress of a
rculos is in Beijing.
tube
grow much worse very quickly,”
Chan said. China announced
steps to provide health coverage
for people suffering from drug-
resistant tuberculosis, helping
to close a gap that has allowed
the more deadly strain of the
disease to take hold.
China’s measures are funded
by a US$33 million (RM122 mil-
lion) grant from the Bill & Melinda
Gates foundation. – Reuters

Conficker worm digs

in around the world
SAN FRANCISCO: Computer security top
guns around the world watched warily as the
dreaded Conficker worm squirmed deeper
into infected machines with the arrival of an
April 1st trigger date. The malicious software
evolved, as expected, from East to West,
beginning in time zones first to greet April
Fool’s Day.
“Planes are not going to fall out of the sky
and the internet is not going to melt down,”
said threat analyst Paul Ferguson of Trend
Micro computer security firm in Northern
California.
“The big mystery is what those behind
Conficker are going to do. When they have
this many machines under their control it is
kind of scary. With a click of a mouse they
could get thousands of machines to do what-
ever they want.”
A task force assembled by Microsoft
has been working to stamp out the worm,
referred to as Conficker or DownAdUP, and
the US software colossus has placed a bounty
of US$250,000 (RM925,000) on the heads of
those responsible for the threat.
The worm was programmed to modify
itself yesterday to become harder to stop and
began doing that when infected machines
got cues, some from websites with Green-
wich Mean Time and others based on local
clocks. Conficker task force members track-
ing internet traffic in Asia and Europe after
clocks struck April 1st there said there was
no sign that the worm was doing anything
other than modifying itself to be harder to
exterminate.
Conficker had been programmed to
reach out to 250 websites daily to download
commands from its masters, they said, but
yesterday it began generating daily lists of
50,000 websites and reaching randomly to
500 of those.
The hackers behind the worm have yet
to give it any specific orders. An estimated
one to two million computers worldwide are
infected with Conficker.
Computer security specialists warn that
the Conficker threat will remain even if April
1st passes without it causing trouble.
“It doesn’t seem to be doing anything right
now,” Ferguson said as Conficker made its
way to the western United States.
“I hope April 1st comes and goes with no
trouble. But, there is this loaded pistol loom-
ing large out there even if no one has pulled
the trigger.”
The FBI said on Tuesday it is working with
the Department of Homeland Security and
other US agencies to “identify and mitigate”
the Conficker threat. – AFP

Judge freezes assets of

Madoff’s sons, executives
NEW YORK: A judge froze the assets of dis-
graced Wall Street legend Bernard Madoff’s two
sons and five executives who ran hedge fund
portfolios that funnelled money into his Ponzi
scheme. The order by Connecticut Superior
Court Judge Arthur Hiller, issued on Monday and
made public on Tuesday, prohibits them from
selling homes or moving money, and marks the
first time their assets have been frozen.
“This is an important step,” said David Golub,
a lawyer representing the town of Fairfield,
Connecticut, in a lawsuit against Madoff and
the so-called feeder funds run by Tremont
Group Holdings, Maxam Capital Management
and Fairfield Greenwich Group.
The town’s pension funds charged in a law-
suit that the funds “knew – or wilfully refused
to know – that Madoff’s investment returns
were not actually produced by his purported
split-strike conversion strategy.”
Separately, a judge in New York denied an
appeal by Madoff’s brother, Peter, to lift a freeze
on his assets in a civil lawsuit. Peter Madoff
had reached an agreement with US authorities
in December on an asset freeze, according to
court papers. Lawyers for Madoff could not be
reached immediately for comment.
Authorities have charged the 70-year-old
Madoff, a former Nasdaq stock market chair-
man, with operating the biggest investment
fraud on Wall Street, cheating private investors,
charities and pension funds out of an estimated
US$65 billion (RM240 billion).
On Monday, Hiller ruled that Madoff’s sons,
the last immediate family members whose as-
sets had not yet been frozen, could have limited
access to their money.
The order, effective until April 13, also
covers the assets of hedge fund executives
Walter Noel and Jeffrey Tucker, who together
founded Fairfield Greenwich; Andres Piedrahita,
a managing director at Fairfield Greenwich;
Sandra Manzke, who ran Maxam Capital; and
Robert Schulman, who once ran Tremont Group
Holdings. Maxam, an investment adviser based
in Darien, Connecticut, was one of many funds
that invested with Madoff. Tremont’s Rye In-
vestment Management unit lost roughly US$3
billion (RM11 billion), virtually all of its assets to
Madoff. – Reuters