With the swine flu having already spread to at least six other countries besides Mexico, authorities around the globe are like firefighters battling a blaze without knowing how far it extends.

“At this time, containment is not a feasible option,” said Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general of the World Health Organization, which raised its alert level on Monday.

New Zealand reported Tuesday that 11 people who recently returned from Mexico contracted the virus. Tests conducted at a World Health Organization laboratory in Australia had confirmed three cases of swine flu among 11 members of the group who were showing symptoms, New Zealand Health Minister Tony Ryall said.

Officials decided that was evidence enough to assume the whole group was infected, he said.

Those infected had suffered only “mild illness” and were expected to recover, Public Health Director Mark Jacobs said. There are 43 more suspected cases in the country, officials said.

The Israeli Health Ministry on Tuesday confirmed the region’s first case of swine flu in the city of Netanya. The 26-year-old patient recently returned from Mexico and had contracted the same strain, Health Ministry spokeswoman Einav Shimron.

Dr. Avinoam Skolnik, Laniado Hospital’s medical director, said the patient has fully recovered and is in “excellent condition” but will remain hospitalized until the Health Ministry approves his release.

Another suspected case has been tested at another Israeli hospital but results are not in, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, a second case was confirmed Tuesday in Spain, Health Minister Trinidad Jimenez said, a day after the country reported its first case. The 23-year-old student, one of 26 patients under observation, was not in serious condition, Jimenez said.

With the virus spreading, the U.S. prepared for the worst even as President Barack Obama tried to reassure Americans.

At the White House, a swine flu update was added to Obama’s daily intelligence briefing. Obama said the outbreak is “not a cause for alarm,” even as the U.S. stepped up checks of people entering the country and warned U.S. citizens to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico.

“We are proceeding as if we are preparatory to a full pandemic,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The European Union health commissioner suggested that Europeans avoid nonessential travel both to Mexico and parts of the United States. Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the virus.

Mexico, where the number of deaths believed caused by swine flu rose by 50 percent on Monday to 152, is suspected to be ground zero of the outbreak. But Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova late Monday said no one knows where the outbreak began, and implied it may have started in the U.S.

“I think it is very risky to say, or want to say, what the point of origin or dissemination of it is, given that there had already been cases reported in southern California and Texas,” Cordova told a press conference.

It’s still not clear when the first case occurred, making it impossible thus far to determine where the breakout started.

Dr. Nancy Cox of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said she believes the earliest onset of swine flu in the United States happened on March 28. Cordova said a sample taken from a 4-year-old boy in Mexico’s Veracruz state in early April tested positive for swine flu. However, it is not known when the boy, who later recovered, became infected.

The World Health Organization raised the alert level to Phase 4, meaning there is sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus causing outbreaks in at least one country. Monday was the first time it has ever been raised above Phase 3.

Putting an alert at Phases 4 or 5 signals that the virus is becoming increasingly adept at spreading among humans. Phase 6 is for a full-blown pandemic, characterized by outbreaks in at least two regions of the world.

Fifty cases — none fatal and most of them mild — were confirmed in the United States. Including the New Zealand, Israeli and new Spanish reports, there were 92 confirmed cases worldwide on Tuesday. That included six in Canada, one in Spain and two in Scotland.

Symptoms include a fever of more than 100, coughing, joint aches, severe headache and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhea.

Amid the alarm, there was a spot of good news. The number of new cases reported by Mexico’s largest government hospitals has been declining the past three days, Cordova said, from 141 on Saturday to 119 on Sunday and 110 Monday.

In a bid to prevent mass contagion, Mexico canceled school nationwide until May 6, and the Mexico City government is considering a complete shutdown, including all public transportation. The Cinco de Mayo parade celebrating Mexico’s defeat of a French army on May 5, 1862 and Mexico City’s traditional May 1 parade were canceled. More than 100 museums nationwide were closed.

At Mexico City’s international airport, families grimly waited for flights out of the capital or country, determined to keep their masks on until they touched ground somewhere else.

Three games involving Mexico City soccer clubs were played with no spectators over the weekend. Decio de Maria, secretary general of the Mexican soccer federation, said plans for future matches would be announced on Wednesday.

“The idea is to look for the fewest number of games that have to be played behind closed doors,” he said. “If it’s necessary, we’ll play all the matches behind closed doors. We don’t foresee canceling any games.”

Many residents of Mexico City wore blue surgical masks, though the CDC said most masks offer little protection. Many victims have been in their 30s and 40s — not the very old or young who typically succumb to the flu. So far, no deaths from the new virus have been reported outside Mexico.

It could take four to six months before the first batch of vaccines are available, WHO officials said. Some antiflu drugs do work once someone is sick.

Napolitano, the U.S. Homeland Security chief, said Washington is dispatching people and equipment to affected areas and stepping up information-sharing at all levels of government and with other nations.

Richard Besser, the CDC’s acting director, said his agency is aggressively looking for evidence of the disease spreading and probing for ways to control and prevent it.

Flu deaths are nothing new in the United States. The CDC estimates that about 36,000 people died of flu-related causes each year, on average, during the 1990s in the United States. But the new flu strain is a combination of pig, bird and human viruses that humans may have no natural immunity to.

Besser said that so far the virus in the United States seems less severe than in Mexico. Only one person has been hospitalized in the U.S.

“I wouldn’t be overly reassured by that,” Besser told reporters at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, sounding a cautionary note.

The best way to keep the disease from spreading, Besser said, is by taking everyday precautions such as frequent handwashing, covering up coughs and sneezes, and staying away from work or school if not feeling well.

WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley singled out air travel as an easy way the virus could spread, noting that the WHO estimates that up to 500,000 people are on planes at any time.

Governments in Asia — with memories of previous flu outbreaks — were especially cautious. Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines dusted off thermal scanners used in the 2003 SARS crisis and were checking for signs of fever among passengers from North America. South Korea, India and Indonesia also announced screening.

Teams of doctors, nurses and government officials boarded flights arriving in Japan from Mexico, the U.S. and Canada to check passengers for signs of the flu, Japanese Health Ministry official Akimori Mizuguchi said.

World stock markets fell Tuesday as investors worried that any swine flu pandemic could derail a global economic recovery.

AP writers Mark Stevenson in Mexico City, Mike Stobbe in Atlanta, Ray Lilley in Wellington, New Zealand, Aron Heller in Jerusalem and Pan Pylas in London contributed to this report.

HAVANA – Fidel Castro wrote in an essay published yesterday that President Obama had “misinterpreted” his brother Raul’s seeming conciliatory remarks regarding the United States, and he bristled at the suggestion that Cuba should free political prisoners or cut taxes on dollars that Cuban Americans send to the island.

His comments put into doubt the true meaning of his brother’s statements and raised questions about Cuba’s position on detente with the United States.

Although he surrendered the presidency to Raul in February 2008, Fidel Castro retains enormous influence and remains head of Cuba’s Communist Party.

Raul Castro touched off speculation last week that the United States and Cuba could be headed toward a thaw after nearly a half-century of chilly relations. He said his government would be willing to sit down with its U.S. counterparts and discuss “everything, everything, everything,” including human rights, freedom of the press and expression, and political prisoners.

Obama responded at the Summit of the Americas by saying Washington was seeking a new beginning with Cuba. But as he prepared to leave the summit Sunday, Obama also called on Cuba to release political prisoners and reduce taxes on remittances from the United States.

That appeared to enrage Fidel Castro, 82, who wrote that Obama “without a doubt misinterpreted Raul’s declarations.”

“When the president of Cuba said he was ready to discuss any topic with the U.S. president, he meant he was not afraid of addressing any issue,” Fidel Castro wrote.

“That shows his courage and confidence in the principles of the revolution,” he wrote.

The former president appeared to be throwing a dose of cold water on growing expectations for improved bilateral relations, suggesting Obama had no right to dare suggest that Cuba make even small concessions.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered a different perspective while discussing Cuba policy yesterday with the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She said that while Fidel Castro had “contradicted” his brother’s statements about Cuba’s willingness to discuss a whole range of issues, that showed “there is beginning to be a debate” in Cuba about how to move forward with U.S. relations.

Raul Castro, 77, has not clarified the confusion and is unlikely to, out of respect for his older brother.

Clinton said the Obama administration needs to be ready to engage with Cuba, even though its government is “very difficult to move.”

The different tones, if not policy positions, that the Castro brothers have clearly adopted could mean there is a division in Cuba’s collective communist leadership over whether detente is moving too fast. Or the leaders could be trying to create an appearance of friction that keeps Cuba in the news and may become a bargaining chip in any negotiations.

“It’s a game of political strategy,” said Elizardo Sanchez, the island’s leading rights activist and head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Fidel Castro, in his essay, defended Cuba’s right to levy a 10 percent fee on every U.S. dollar sent to relatives on the island by Cuban Americans, saying that if the money arriving from abroad “is in dollars, all the more reason we should do it because it is the currency of the country that blockades us.”

All top Cuban leaders routinely call the 47-year-old trade embargo against their country a blockade.

“Not all Cubans have family members overseas that send remittances,” Fidel Castro wrote. He said Cuba used the revenue from fees on exchanging dollars to provide free health care, education and subsidized food to its population.

Fidel Castro has previously expressed admiration for Obama, but he blasted the new U.S. president in the essay for showing signs of “superficiality” and called on him to wait no longer before lifting the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

“We are living in a new era. Changes are unavoidable,” he wrote. “Leaders just pass through; peoples prevail.”

Still, some Cubans were irritated yesterday by his insistence that Obama misinterpreted Raul Castro’s sentiments.

Wilfredo O’Farril, 59, a construction worker, said: “I’m not afraid to say it. We are a people without a future.” Fidel Castro “first says one thing, then says another. We’ve been this way for 50 years.” By: Will Weissert (AP)

Police in Boston and Warwick, R.I., say Philip Markoff, 23, may have preyed on other women he found on the website, where people can post most ads for free, says Jake Wark, a spokesman for the district attorney in Suffolk County, Mass., who brought the charges. A judge ordered Markoff jailed without bail.

R.I. POLICE: Case similar to Boston Craigslist slaying

He is charged with murdering one woman and robbing and kidnapping another. Both had posted ads under the website’s “erotic services” section, police say.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, in a statement posted on his blog Tuesday, urged website users to take “the same common-sense precautions online as they would offline,” such as choosing a public place or bringing a friend along when meeting people encountered online. About 50 million Americans use Craigslist to place online classified ads each month, he wrote.

“We are horrified and deeply saddened that our community services have been associated in any way whatsoever with a crime of violence,” he wrote. “We are evaluating this incident closely to see if there are any additional things (Craigslist) could be doing to further improve safety for our uses and the general public.”

Defense attorney John Salsberg said Markoff is not guilty and “has his family’s support.”

“There are a lot of people out there, and not all of them are good,” says Parry Aftab, a privacy and security lawyer who founded wiredsafety.org to promote online safety, including on popular sites such as Craigslist, Facebook and MySpace. “Many of us are vulnerable because we’re not as careful in the online world as we would normally be.”

This is not the first time someone allegedly has used Craigslist to find a victim. Michael John Anderson, 20, of Savage, Minn., was sentenced this month to life in prison for killing Katherine Ann Olson, 24, whom he lured to his home when she responded to an ad for a nanny he put on the site.

Craigslist signed an agreement Nov. 6 with 40 state attorneys general in which it promised to enact safeguards to restrict prostitution postings on its site. It requires people who post in the erotic ads section, which includes such services as fantasy role-playing and lap dances, to provide valid identification and pay a $5 or $10 fee by credit card.

Despite that agreement, Cook County, Ill., Sheriff Thomas Dart last month sued Craigslist for facilitating prostitution. The suit, filed in Chicago, asks a judge to outlaw the “erotic services” section. Dart said in the lawsuit that his department had made hundreds of arrests based on ads on the site, including for child endangerment and human trafficking.

Markoff is accused of contacting a 29-year-old woman who advertised massage services in the erotic services section of Craigslist, Wark says. He arranged to meet her April 10 at the Westin Copley Place hotel in Boston, Wark says. Once in her hotel room, Wark says, he pointed a gun at her, bound her hands and demanded money. Markoff is charged in that case with armed robbery and kidnapping.

Markoff replied to another Craigslist ad April 14 and made an appointment to meet Julissa Brisman, 26, of New York, at the Boston Marriott Copley Place, Wark says. Brisman was beaten and shot three times at close range, he says. One bullet struck her heart, killing her. Markoff is charged with murder and carrying a firearm without a license.

“The evidence suggests an armed robbery that escalated to violence,” Wark says. He says police traced an Internet address used to set up the date with Brisman to Markoff’s apartment in Quincy, Mass.

Police also are investigating whether Markoff is linked to a similar armed robbery in Warwick, R.I., Wark says. Contributing: The Associated Press By: Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY