Tokyo - Japan will set up fever clinics across the nation to treat patients with swine flu if the disease reaches Japan, a ministry official said Thursday.

The government's plan to designate some medical facilities as fever clinics was intended to prevent in-hospital spread of flu infections, according to the Health, Welfare and Labour Ministry.

Beijing - China has launched a campaign to educate all schoolchildren in the symptoms and prevention of swine flu, the government said on Thursday.

Schools nationwide should educate children about swine flu as soon as possible to raise awareness and "avoid causing unnecessary panic among teachers and students," the education and health ministries said in a joint notice published on their websites.

The schools should teach children about good hygiene and the avoidance of contact with flu-infected people, the notice said.

Mexico City - The number of confirmed swine flu infections in Mexico climbed from 49 to 91, with eights deaths caused by the new strain, Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said Wednesday night.

The latest figures came shortly after the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva raised the pandemic alert for swine flu by one level to phase 5.

Tokyo - Japanese smokers bent on

Sydney - Female circumcision is called female genital mutilation (FGM) in Australia and it's a crime.

Those performing it face a possible seven-year prison term and those who don't report it risk a stiff fine.

In Sydney's outer suburb of Auburn, there's a specialist FGM clinic that has been in operation for over 10 years and sees around 40 women a year.

The typical patient is in her 20s, is about to wed, and was operated on by a village midwife in an African or Middle Eastern country when she was young.

Hamburg - Many people yearn for a firm body, particularly in warm weather when everyone flocks to beaches and outdoor swimming pools and expose all their flabby parts.

A look at internet forums shows that emancipation from this yearning prevails, and men apparently worry about their figures only slightly less than women. It seems that the term "firm" is in fact subjective. For some, it means muscles so well defined they could have been carved by a knife; for others it means no flab at all.