Hugo Chavez died of massive heart attack: top general - CBS News

CARACAS, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering and inaudibly mouthed his desire to live, the head of Venezuela's presidential guard said late Wednesday.

"He couldn't speak but he said it with his lips ... 'I don't want to die. Please don't let me die,' because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country," Gen. Jose Ornella told The Associated Press.

The general said he spent the last two years with Chavez, including his final moments, as Venezuela's president of 14 years battled an unspecified cancer in the pelvic region.

Ornella spoke to the AP outside the military academy where Chavez's body lay in state. He said Chavez's cancer was very advanced when death came but gave no details.

Ornella did not respond when asked if the cancer had spread to Chavez's lungs.

The government announced on the eve of Chavez's death that he had suffered a severe new respiratory infection. It was the second such infection reported by officials after Chavez underwent his fourth cancer surgery in Cuba on Dec. 11.

Venezuelan authorities have not said what kind of cancer Chavez had or specified exactly where tumors were removed.

During the first lung infection, near the end of December, doctors implanted a tracheal tube to ease Chavez's breathing, but breathing insufficiency persisted and worsened, the government said.

Ornella said Chavez had "the best" doctors from all over the world but that they never discussed the president's condition in front of him.

The general said he didn't know precisely what kind of cancer afflicted Chavez, but added: "He suffered a lot."

He said Chavez knew when he spoke to Venezuelans on Dec. 8, three days before his final surgery in Cuba, that "there was very little hope he would make it out of that operation."

It was Chavez's fourth cancer surgery and previous interventions had been followed by chemotherapy and radiation.

Ornella echoed the concern of Vice President Nicolas Maduro that some sort of foul play was involved in Chavez's cancer.

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Hugo Chavez: The 60 Minutes interview

"I think it will be 50 years before they declassify a document (that) I think (will show) the hand of the enemy is involved," he said.

The general didn't identify who he was talking about, but Maduro suggested possible U.S. involvement on Tuesday. The U.S. State Department called the allegation absurd.

Maduro, Chavez's self-anointed successor, said Chavez died Tuesday afternoon in a Caracas military hospital.

The government said Chavez, 58, had been there since returning from Cuba on Feb. 18.

Chavez was carried back Wednesday to the military academy where he started his army career, his flag-draped coffin lying in state in the echoing halls until Friday's funeral.

As a band played the hymn from his first battalion, a long ribbon of tearful mourners numbering in the hundreds of thousands bid farewell to the larger-than-life leader after a procession carried his casket through Caracas.

With the entire government, including Maduro, caught up in the seven-hour procession, there were few answers to the most pressing question facing the country -- the timing of a presidential election that must be called within a month.

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Hugo Chavez: 1954-2013

Generations of Venezuelans, many dressed in the red of Chavez's socialist party, filled the capital's streets to remember the man who dominated their country for 14 years before succumbing to cancer Tuesday afternoon.

Chavez's coffin made its way through the crowds atop an open hearse on a five-mile journey that wound through the city's north and southeast, into many of the poorer neighborhoods where Chavez drew his political strength.

At the academy, Chavez's family and close advisers, as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, attended a funeral Mass around the president's glass-topped casket. The public then began filing past to peer at their longtime president, many of them coming closer to him than they had ever been while he was alive. Some placed their hand over their heart, others saluting or raising a fist in solidarity. The viewing lasted far into the night.

Set against the outpouring of grief was near-total official silence on where Venezuela is heading next, including when the election will take place. Even the exact time and place of Chavez's funeral Friday has not been announced, nor has it been revealed where he will be laid to rest.

Opponents already have been stepping up criticism of the government's questionable moves after Chavez's death, including naming Maduro, the vice president, as interim president in apparent violation of the constitution, and the military's eagerness to choose political sides.

For a day, at least, Chavez's heartbroken supporters immersed themselves in emotion and sad farewells.

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Chavez's breathing problems worsen, has severe new infection - Reuters

1 of 6. People hold lit candles during a praying ceremony for the health of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Caracas February 22, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jorge Silva

By Daniel Wallis

CARACAS | Tue Mar 5, 2013 1:26am EST

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's breathing problems have worsened and he is suffering from a "severe" new respiratory infection as he struggles to recover from cancer surgery, the government said in a somber medical update on Monday.

The 58-year-old socialist leader has not been seen in public nor heard from in almost three months since undergoing the operation in Cuba. It was his fourth surgery since the disease was detected in mid-2011.

"Today there is a worsening of his respiratory function, related to his depressed immune system. There is now a new, severe infection," Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said, reading the latest brief statement on Chavez's condition.

Chavez made a surprise pre-dawn homecoming two weeks ago with none of the fanfare and celebration that had accompanied previous returns from treatment in Havana. The government said he is now fighting for his life at a Caracas military hospital. Armed guards are providing heavy security outside.

"The president has been receiving high-impact chemotherapy, along with other complementary treatments ... his general condition continues to be very delicate," Villegas said.

Chavez suffered multiple complications after the December 11 surgery, including unexpected bleeding and an earlier severe respiratory infection that officials said had been controlled.

The government said he had trouble speaking because he was breathing through a tracheal tube, but that he was giving orders to ministers by writing them down.

"The commander-president remains clinging to Christ and to life, conscious of the difficulties that he is facing, and complying strictly with the program designed by his medical team," Villegas said.

Chavez had undergone several grueling rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, which at times left him bald and bloated. He twice wrongly declared himself cured.

The only sight of the former soldier since his latest operation were four photos published by the government while he was still in Havana, showing him lying in a hospital bed.

Following an emotional Mass at the military hospital on Friday, Vice President Nicolas Maduro - Chavez's preferred successor if he is unable to carry on as president - said the president had decided for himself several days earlier that he would return to Venezuela from Cuba.

Chavez was going to begin a "tougher and more intense" phase of his treatment, Maduro said, and he wanted to be in Caracas.

CHAVEZ'S HOMECOMING

Maduro said that included chemotherapy - prompting some in the opposition to question whether chemotherapy can be successfully given to patients in such a delicate state.

The government is furious at rumors in recent days that Chavez might have died, blaming them on an opposition plot by "far-right fascists" to destabilize the OPEC nation, which boasts the world's biggest oil reserves.

"We call on all our people to stay alert, untouched by the psychological war deployed by foreign laboratories with the corrupt Venezuelan right, seeking to generate violence as a pretext for a foreign intervention," Villegas said.

"At this time, unity and discipline are the bases to guarantee political stability," he said, adding that the government was accompanying Chavez's children and other relatives in "this battle full of love and spirituality."

Opposition leaders have accused Maduro of repeatedly lying about the president's real condition. Several dozen anti-government student protesters have chained themselves up in public to demand proof that Chavez is alive and in Venezuela.

"I can't even imagine the party they're going to have tomorrow with this news," pro-Chavez commentator Mario Silva said on state TV on Monday night. "But we all have to keep faith."

Should the Venezuelan leader step down or die, an election would be held within 30 days and would probably pit Maduro against opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chavez in a presidential election in October.

The stakes are also high for the rest of Latin America. Chavez has been the most vocal critic of Washington in the region and has funded hefty aid programs for leftist governments from Bolivia to Cuba.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Velez; Editing by Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson)

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China Said to Back New Sanctions Against North Korea - New York Times

HONG KONG — China has agreed to support a new round of United Nations sanctions against North Korea to punish it for the nuclear test it conducted in February, diplomats said late Monday.

The Chinese, North Korea's main ally, have reached agreement with the United States on the wording of a sanctions resolution, diplomats told The Associated Press, although no details were available on the proposed measures. The United Nations Security Council plans to hold a meeting on the issue on Tuesday.

The support of China, with its Security Council veto power and economic ties to North Korea, is considered vital in terms of building international support for actions against North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. China provides all of North Korea's fuel and remains its biggest trading partner, but analysts believe that its influence on Pyongyang is nevertheless limited.

The sanctions, if approved, would be the latest U.N. action in response to North Korea's weapons development. After the U.N. approved a round of sanctions in January in response to a North Korean rocket launch the month before, an increasingly belligerent Pyongyang threatened both the United States and South Korea militarily, and just weeks later detonated its third nuclear device.

Previous rounds of sanctions have tried to curtail North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions by blacklisting trading and financial firms believed to be involved with such programs. The sanctions have also restricted the importation of luxury goods, an effort directed at the country's ruling elite.

Diplomats have said that future rounds of sanctions could expand the number of entities that come under the sanctions umbrella and heighten enforcement, perhaps even through cargo inspections.

On Monday, the Russian U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, whose country currently holds the rotating Security Council presidency, said that the Council could approve a sanctions resolution this month.

South Korean officials said Tuesday that while U.N. officials were moving forward in punishing Pyongyang for the February nuclear test, details still needed to be worked out.

"Significant progress has been made, but no final agreement has been reached yet," said Cho Tai-young, a foreign ministry spokesman.

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EPA, Energy Picks Set for Second Term - Wall Street Journal

BY KEITH JOHNSON

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama presented his second-term team to handle environmental and energy issues, nominating on Monday a pair of Washington veterans in hopes of avoiding some of the rancor of his first term.

Gina McCarthy was picked to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, where she is currently in charge of air quality programs, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Ernest Moniz was named to head the Department of Energy, where he served as undersecretary during the Clinton administration.

Both likely will face tough questions in the Senate, but major roadblocks to their confirmation weren't immediately apparent. The nominations ...

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Early Tally Shows Kenyatta Ahead in Kenya Vote - New York Times

NAIROBI, Kenya — Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kenyan politician who has been charged by the International Criminal Court with crimes against humanity, was leading by a wide margin in the Kenya election on Tuesday, with more than a third of the votes counted.

Mr. Kenyatta, who is one of the richest men in Africa and a deputy prime minister and has been accused of bankrolling death squads that killed women and children, was ahead 55 percent to 41 percent over the second-place candidate, Raila Odinga, Kenya's prime minister.

Preliminary results showed that voters, who poured into the polls on Monday, some waiting for 10 hours, voted overwhelmingly along ethnic lines, with some areas voting 98 percent for the leader from their ethnic group. Many shops in Nairobi remained shuttered, with people worried about riots once the final results are declared and a clear winner and loser become apparent.

Police officers were everywhere, some wearing helmets and padded riot suits. Kenya's election commission has been steadily tabulating the votes and expects a preliminary result by Wednesday. Kenya's police chief, ‪ David Kimaiyo, said that several suspects had been arrested in connection with a spate of attacks on Monday, in which at least four police officers were murdered with machetes. He said more suspects were on the loose and added, "We will catch them."

Kisumu, a city in western Kenya and Mr. Odinga's ethnic stronghold, which exploded in riots in 2007 and 2008 during the last presidential election, was quiet on Tuesday.

"We're just waiting," said Christine Ololo Atieno, a seller of secondhand shoes and a passionate Odinga supporter. "People are still hoping that more votes will come in and things will change."

Mr. Odinga says he was cheated out of winning the last election, and many analysts say that Kisumu could erupt again if there is vote rigging and Mr. Odinga loses again.

Millions of Kenyans poured into polling stations on Monday to cast their ballots in a crucial, anxiously awaited presidential election, and as the voting proceeded relatively smoothly a real chance emerged that a candidate charged with financing death squads could win the race, raising an array of complex challenges for Kenya's international relationships and with the court itself.

The United States and other Western allies of Kenya have warned of "consequences" if Mr. Kenyatta wins, though few Western officials have been willing to discuss exactly what kind of repercussions or sanctions this could bring.

This is Kenya's first presidential vote since 2007, when a dubious election, marred by widespread evidence of vote rigging, set off ethnic clashes that swept the country and left more than a thousand people dead. Many Kenyans have worried that history could repeat itself, and in the past week, the atmosphere in Nairobi has been almost like a hurricane about to hit.

Flour, rice, bread and other staples were stripped from supermarket shelves as families stocked up on supplies, in case riots break out. Many people have fled ethnically mixed urban areas, fearing reprisal killings should the vote go awry.

"We must keep the peace," said William Ruto, after voting early Monday.

Mr. Ruto was running for deputy president as Mr. Kenyatta's running mate, and he has also been charged by the International Criminal Court with crimes against humanity, accused of orchestrating widespread violence. After the last botched election, Mr. Ruto's supporters killed scores of Kikuyus, the ethnic group of Mr. Kenyatta and Kenya's president, Mwai Kibaki, who is stepping down because of term limits. Many of Mr. Ruto's supporters had backed Mr. Odinga at the time and claimed that the Kikuyus had historically oppressed them and rigged that election.

But in a sign of how pliable political alliances can be, analysts said, Mr. Ruto and Mr. Kenyatta decided to team up this time to improve their chances of beating the charges in the International Criminal Court. Kenya is of the most industrialized and democratic countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a beachhead for Western interests and a close American ally, but its history has been haunted by intense, often violent ethnically charged politics. Mr. Odinga says he was cheated out of winning the election in 2007.

Before Monday, many analysts predicted that neither Mr. Odinga nor Mr. Kenyatta, a deputy prime minister and the son of Kenya's first president, would win more than 50 percent of the vote, mandating a runoff in April. There is also a requirement that the winner receive 25 percent of the vote in the majority of Kenya's counties, which, in a country crisscrossed by stubborn ethnic fault lines, could be difficult.

This election is the most complicated Kenya has ever held. A host of new positions has been created, like governorships, Senate seats and county women representatives, in an attempt to change the winner-take-all nature of Kenyan politics. And Kenyan civic groups have tried mightily to make this an election about issues, not about ethnicity, with countless public service advertisements telling voters to pick candidates based on their integrity and plans.

Still, many Kenyans vote along ethnic lines, picking a candidate from their ethnic group.

Terry Wamaitha, a vegetable seller and a Kikuyu, boasted of how she had voted for Mr. Kenyatta.

When asked if this was for ethnic reasons, she smiled.

"No way," she said. "It's just that he's our boy."

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UPDATE 2-Palm refineries in Malaysia's Sabah slow operations as military ... - Reuters

Tue Mar 5, 2013 3:37am EST

* Sabah is country's top palm oil growing region

* Supply concerns could buoy prices slightly -traders (Recasts, adds minister comment)

By Anuradha Raghu and Niluksi Koswanage

KUALA LUMPUR, March 5 (Reuters) - Several palm oil refineries have slowed operations and some plan to halt output if a Malaysian military attack on an armed Filipino group on Borneo island drags on, potentially disrupting supply of the edible oil to China.

Malaysia's military launched a dawn attack on the group on Tuesday, trying to end a standoff after violence that killed at least 27 people and sparked fears of broader insecurity in Sabah -- the country's top oil palm growing state.

Any disruptions to supply could help buoy prices for the oil, although traders said that climbs would probably be limited as high stock levels in the country continue to drag.

Authorities imposed a curfew in the surrounding areas after the Filipino gunmen shot and killed police officers on Friday, forcing oil palm estates and refineries to curb operations.

These include Singapore's Wilmar International and Malaysia's KL Kepong and Kwantas Corp -- with a combined 1.8 million tonnes of processing capacity.

"The three companies owning these refineries are looking to cease operations if it becomes worse and there is a high chance it will happen," said a refinery official with direct knowledge of the matter.

Company officials declined to comment.

A Malaysian government minister said the military operations would not hurt the country's palm oil sector -- the world's second largest after Indonesia in terms of output

"What is happening in Sabah is not big enough to affect supply and demand in the palm oil industry," Commodities Minister Bernard Dompok told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

"I do not think refiners are in anyway affected as they are mostly in town areas."

Much of the palm oil from Sabah is shipped to China -- the world's second largest consumer of the oil used mostly in cooking.

Benchmark Malaysian palm oil futures <0#FCPO:> slipped on Tuesday in thin volumes after gains in the previous session lifted prices from near two-month lows. Traders said prices could recover a little on concerns over the possible supply disruptions in Sabah, which accounts for a quarter of national production.

ROADBLOCKS

Police roadblocks in the Lahad Datu area -- close to where the military operations are taking place, have slowed transportation of palm oil to mills, refineries and ports.

CIMB Investment Bank said in a note that Genting Plantations had suspended deliveries from two of its five mills to Lahad Datu.

The Filipino gunmen landed in a coastal village three weeks ago, staking a historic claim on Sabah. The village was surrounded by oil palm estates that supply the edible oil to Felda Global Ventures.

Malaysian security forces have cleared the surrounding plantations and villages of people since the first clash began on Friday.

"Our check with Felda Global Ventures revealed that it was unable to access 1,000 hectares of estates earlier but it is unclear if the area affected has expanded since Friday's clashes," CIMB said.

Felda Global Ventures President Sabri Ahmad declined to comment, saying security operations were still ongoing.

Traders said any interference in supply from Sabah might provide an opportunity to further draw down Malaysian palm oil stocks, which hovered near a record high in January.

"Prices will get support from this but not much. We are still struggling with high stocks in Malaysia," said a trader with a foreign commodities firm based in the Malaysian capital. (Additional reporting by Chew Yee Kiat; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Joseph Radford)

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GOP seeks to smooth roughest cuts, avert shutdown - STLtoday.com

Republicans controlling the House are moving to take the roughest edges off across-the-board spending cuts that are just starting to take effect.

Even as the military would bear a $43 billion cut over just seven months, the new GOP measure released Monday would give the Pentagon much-needed funding for readiness. It would also ease the pain felt by critical agencies like the FBI and the Border Patrol.

The effort is part of a huge spending measure released Monday that would fund day-to-day federal operations through September _ and head off a potential government shutdown later this month.

The measure would leave in place automatic cuts of 5 percent to domestic agencies and 7.8 percent to the Pentagon ordered Friday by President Barack Obama after months of battling with Republicans over the budget. But the House Republicans' legislation would award the Defense Department its detailed 2013 budget while other agencies would be frozen in place at 2012 levels.

The unprecedented across-the-board cuts would then be applied to the day-to-day budgets of every federal agency except Veterans Affairs, which is exempt from them.

The GOP funding measure is set to advance through the House on Thursday in hopes of preventing a government shutdown when a six-month spending bill passed last September runs out March 27. The latest measure blends updated 2013 budget measures for the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments _ giving much-sought increases for military operations and maintenance efforts and veterans' health programs _ but puts most the rest of the government on autopilot.

Senate Democrats want to add more detailed budgets for domestic Cabinet agencies but it will take GOP help to do so. The House measure also denies money sought by Obama and his Democratic allies to implement the signature 2010 laws overhauling the health care system and financial regulation.

After accounting for the across-the-board cuts, domestic agencies would face cuts exceeding 5 percent when compared with last year. But Republicans carved out a host of exemptions seeking to protect especially important functions, such as federal prisons and firefighting efforts in the West, as well as new funding for embassy security and modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The FBI and the Border Patrol would be able to maintain current staffing levels and would not have to furlough employees.

The legislation would provide about $2 billion more than the current level to beef up security at U.S. embassies and diplomatic missions worldwide. Last September, a terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

A project to repair the iconic Capitol Dome could stay on track and NASA would be protected from the harshest effects of the automatic cuts, known in Washington-speak as a sequester.

The across-the-board cuts would carve $85 billion in spending from the government's $3.6 trillion budget for this year, concentrating the cuts in the approximately $1 trillion allocated to the day-to-day agency operating budgets set by Congress each year. Those so-called discretionary accounts received big boosts in the first two years of Obama's presidency, when Democrats controlled Congress, but have borne the brunt of the cuts approved as Obama and Republicans have grappled over the budget.

Both Democrats and Republicans for months have warned the cuts are draconian and would slow the growth of the economy, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, for instance, says they would slow the economy by 0.6 percent and cost about 750,000 jobs.

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DC Veteran to Be Tapped for OMB Post - Wall Street Journal

BY DAMIAN PALETTA

President Barack Obama on Monday will announce his intent to nominate Clinton administration veteran Sylvia Mathews Burwell to be his new budget chief, a senior administration official said.

Ms. Burwell is a veteran of budget battles, having worked in top posts inside the Clinton administration's White House, ...

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Baby Cured of HIV for the First Time, Researchers Say - Wall Street Journal

By RON WINSLOW

A Mississippi baby born with the AIDS virus appears to have been cured after being treated with an aggressive regimen of drugs just after her birth 2½ years ago, an unusual case that could trigger changes in care for hundreds of thousands of babies born globally each year with HIV.

The findings, reported Sunday by researchers, mark only the second documented case of a patient being cured of infection with the human immune-deficiency virus. The first, an adult man known as the Berlin patient, was cured as a result of a 2007 bone-marrow transplant.

Johns Hopkins Medicine

Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins Children's Center called it 'really unheard of' that after the treatment ended, there was no detectable virus.

The new case was discovered after the baby girl's mother stopped treatment on her, and doctors realized that the virus was undetectable even without drugs, which HIV patients normally must take for the rest of their lives.

Researchers cautioned that the report on the baby girl involves just one patient, and the findings appear to have little immediate relevance to people who contract HIV as adults or adolescents and are almost always diagnosed and treated long after their initial infection. But if further study confirms that very early treatment can cure HIV-infected newborns, it could spur widespread use of such an aggressive regimen in babies born with HIV, nearly all of them in low- and middle-income countries.

World Health Organization guidelines now call for treating infants born to an HIV-infected mother with a modest daily dose of antiretroviral treatment for four to six weeks—or until testing determines the baby's own HIV status. If the baby tests positive, a more aggressive treatment is begun.

But WHO doesn't address use of a more intense medication approach right after birth, in part because few studies have examined the issue. In addition, it is difficult to determine with certainty that early whether a baby is HIV-positive, and overtreatment would risk wasting scarce medications that offer a better chance of helping other patients.

In this case, researchers believe that a doctor's decision to start an aggressive antiretroviral treatment within 31 hours of the infant's birth led to the cure. They theorize that the drugs prevented the formation of so-called viral reservoirs that harbor the virus. These reservoirs have been the key stumbling block to a cure because even though AIDS drugs stop HIV from replicating, the virus lurks in the reservoirs, ready to come surging back when treatment is stopped.

In this case, "the child got therapy and then went off therapy, and now there's no detectable virus," said Deborah Persaud, a pediatrician and AIDS researcher at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore and lead author of a study reporting the cure. "That's really unheard of. If people go off therapy, most of them rebound…within a few weeks."

She described the findings at a news conference Sunday in advance of their presentation Monday at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.

"This is a very important proof of concept" said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an arm of the National Institutes of Health. Further research is required "to see if you can generalize this to children who are born into situations where their risk of infection is very high."

The chance an infected pregnant woman will transmit the virus to her baby during gestation, birth or breast-feeding ranges from 15% to 45%, according to WHO. But treatment with antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy and especially around the time of birth cuts the risk of mother-to-child transmission to below 2%. Still, estimates are that between 300,000 and 400,000 infants are born globally each year with the infection, about 90% of them in resource-poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the U.S., high compliance with prenatal care and routine HIV testing during pregnancy has all but eliminated HIV-positive newborns. From a peak of 1,650 cases in 1991, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the number is now down to fewer than 200 a year.

In 2010, the number was 174. One of them, born in a rural Mississippi hospital that fall, is now the first case of a child considered cured of the disease.

The baby was born to a mother who hadn't had prenatal care and didn't know her HIV status. A rapid HIV test after the birth revealed that she was infected, prompting doctors to transfer the baby to University of Mississippi Medical Center more than 100 miles away.

There, Hannah Gay, a pediatrician and infectious-disease expert, ordered an HIV test for the infant. She didn't wait for the result. Figuring this was an especially high-risk case, Dr. Gay started the baby on three standard antiretroviral drugs at higher, treatment-level doses. A few days later, the test came back positive, she said, and she kept the infant on the treatment-level doses.

Over the next few weeks, the baby's viral levels gradually declined, and by day 29, HIV couldn't be detected with standard testing. That remained the case for more than a year.

"I saw her once a month; her viral load was undetectable, and her immune system was healthy—what we expect with a baby taking the medicines regularly," Dr. Gay said.

But at about 18 months, for reasons that aren't clear, the mother stopped bringing the baby in for the checks. Dr. Gay summoned health-department and child-protection workers, who found her last August, and she returned to the clinic. The baby had been off therapy for at least five months, Dr. Gay said.

Before resuming treatment, Dr. Gay ordered a test to make sure the baby's virus hadn't developed resistance to any of the drugs. To her astonishment, technicians couldn't find any virus to test.

At first, Dr. Gay worried that she had been treating an uninfected baby for more than a year. But a quick check of her records verified that five different tests had detected the virus in the days and weeks following her birth.

When she was convinced last August, she called a longtime friend and colleague, Katherine Luzuriaga, a researcher at University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Luzuriaga had been working with Dr. Persaud on a study of a group of teenagers who had been born with the virus and treated since infancy and who now had no evidence of virus that could replicate. The pair had set up a network of labs to study whether they could consider taking the teenagers off the drugs.

With that lab network, established with a grant from the Foundation for AIDS Research, a New York-based philanthropy, samples from the baby have been subjected to a variety of the most advanced tests to detect and monitor the AIDS virus.

While the tests have detected an occasional "signal" of the virus, the various analyses from several labs using different techniques "confirms to us that this is a case of 'functional cure,' meaning that the virus hasn't rebounded and that…we can't detect virus activity in this child," Dr. Persaud said. The work also was supported by the NIH.

Write to Ron Winslow at ron.winslow@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared March 4, 2013, on page A3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Baby Cured of HIV for the First Time, Researchers Say.

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Washington's walking dead: From sequester to debt ceiling - Washington Times

Jim Picht

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 4, 2013 — The White House has begun to walk back its predictions of disaster for the sequester. Gene Sperling, President Obama's top economic advisor, said on Sunday that the cuts won't hurt much immediately, but they will hurt over the long run.

Sperling said on NBC's "Meet the Press," "Nobody ever suggested that this was going to have all its impact in the first few days. It is a slow grind."

In its attempts to incite panic among voters and GOP lawmakers, the administration had indeed suggested immediate, disastrous impact. Obama had spoken of thousands of teachers, firefighters, air traffic controllers and TSA agents laid off immediately. The deployment of a Navy aircraft carrier, the Nimitz-class USS Harry S. Truman, has been delayed to emphasize the collapse of American military readiness, and thousands of illegal immigrants detained prior to deportation were released to emphasize the collapse of border security that will presumably be caused by the sequester.

The fiscal cliff and the sequester have both taken their toll on voter and business confidence. The threat of impasse over the debt ceiling at the end of the month will likewise keep markets unsettled. It has become increasingly apparent that Congress and the White House are governing by crisis; we lurch from crisis to crisis, the government resembling nothing so much as a mob of zombies shambling in search of its next meal of brains.

The problem with zombies is that they beget zombies. The economy is in a fragile recovery, not rising up with renewed vigor from its sick bed, not lapsing into death, but reanimating with little direction and no clear path to a healthy future. The true unemployment rate remains locked firmly in the double digits, and business profits are creating no enthusiasm for business hiring. Zombie politics is creating a zombie economy.

A serious problem in the economy now is uncertainty. Republicans, looking to the supply side, believe that cutting taxes will give businesses the confidence and incentives to start hiring. The problem as they see it is a tax code that punishes hard work and investment, so the way to fix investment is to fix the tax code.

Businesses don't hire because they are profitable; they hire because adding employees will make them more profitable, and because over the foreseeable future, profitable employees won't turn suddenly into a liability. Cutting taxes to push up profits won't create greater business certainty unless other, more fundamental problems are addressed.

The Democrats come at this from the demand side, assuming that if only the government can spend more, it can put more money in consumer pockets and stimulate demand for goods, thus giving businesses a reason to hire more workers to produce them. The problem as they see it is insufficient demand due to a government that is too stingy with spending.

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READ MORE: Obama and sequestration: The lone horseman of the apocalypse

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People don't buy houses and cars just because they have money in their pockets. They buy them if they have money and if they aren't worried that their jobs won't disappear tomorrow. Major purchases are a vote of confidence in a family's economic future, and until more fundamental problems are addressed, there will be no surge in consumer demand for big-ticket items.

None of this means that cutting taxes or boosting government spending won't result in some production and consumption, but they will act at the edges of the economy, producing anemic hiring and output gains.

The more fundamental problem and a huge source of uncertainty is the enormous overhang of unfunded liabilities in our economy - that is, entitlements and pensions. The national debt is a bit over $16 trillion, about 100 percent of GDP. Last year's budget deficit was over $1 trillion, or 7 percent of GDP.

Unfunded liabilities of the federal government are in excess of $87 trillion - 550 percent of GDP.

In order to make those liabilities fully funded, the government would have to raise about $8 trillion per year in taxes. Anything less, and the combined current year deficit and growth of unfunded liabilities will put us deeper in the hole. If we taxed every corporation and individual earning more than $70,000 at a 100 percent rate, we would raise only $6.7 trillion.

Unfunded liabilities - Social Security, Medicare, federal employee pensions - are sucking the life out of the American economy. Tax reform is essential to improving our economic environment, but it isn't what makes the future almost absurdly horrible to contemplate. It will greatly improve confidence that our problems can be fixed, but at some point it will be imperative that entitlements be addressed directly.

The fiscal cliff, sequestration, and even the debt ceiling are manufactured crises involving arbitrary and artificial deadlines. As we stagger from one to the next, we do it blind to how bad things really are. We're zombies who think we're still fully alive.

Our political leaders are shambling around blindly. Unable to fix anything, they're good only at instilling terror in those who watch on. Like zombies, they wander in search of more to devour with no apparent concern about the devastation they're leaving in their wake. Unlike "real" zombies, our political and economic zombies can be cured - we don't need to shoot them in the brain and start over. We do need to look at them realistically.

Closing tax loopholes isn't enough. Cutting taxes isn't enough. We're in desperate need of entitlement reform, and if we don't try to get it, the debt ceiling talks will be a fraud. The smart money, though, is on Congress and the president punting - again. That's zombies for you - no sense of responsibility and no serious solutions to anything, just irresponsible appetite and more zombies.

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READ MORE of Jim Picht in Stimulus That!

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James Picht is the Senior Editor for Communities Politics and teaches economics at the Louisiana Scholars' College in Natchitoches, La., where he went to take a break from working in Moscow and Washington. But he fell in love with the town and with the professor of Romance languages, so there he stayed. Now he teaches, annoys his children, and makes jalapeno lemonade. After watching Congress in action, he thinks it should be rated TV-MA. He tweets, hangs out on Facebook, and has a blog he totally neglects at pichtblog.blogspot.com. 

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