"Someone knows something out there, and hopefully this will generate more information for the case," he said.

The city received the second of two threatening letters Friday, but police remained tightlipped about details of the demand, including how much money was involved. They did say the demand called for a "substantial amount."

At a news conference late Friday, Lara said he didn't want to alarm residents but he urged them to watch for any suspicious activity.

"The letter did reference that Las Cruces residents will be shot at random if the city didn't comply with the extortion," Lara said.

The letter -- the second sent to the city in recent weeks -- was hand written with an unusual style of printing.

Authorities were taking the threat seriously, Lara said, but cautioned that officials don't know the intentions of the writer.

"Frankly we still don't know if we are dealing with a hoax or not," Lara said Saturday. "But after the second correspondence we felt it was necessary to go ahead and put the information out there -- with the caveat that people should still go about their daily business."

According to World Bank estimate, a severe flu pandemic among humans could cost the global economy up to about 3.1 to 4.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which is between 1.25 trillion and 2 trillion U.S. dollars of a world GDP.

"Over the last 12 months, the avian influenza has gone global, spreading rapidly beyond its East Asian stronghold to the countries in South Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa. So far, more than 50 countries have reported H5N1 outbreaks, most of them since January 2006, causing an estimate of 220 million bird deaths and significant damage to rural livelihoods, especially in the poorest areas," according to a World Bank's press release.

Nabarro said that they are now concerned that the H5N1 avian influenza virus would mutate to a new kind of virus and the virus would be transmitted from human to human someday.

"The world community has stood up and worked together to fight against the virus," said Jim Adams, Head of the World Bank's Avian Flu Taskforce.

The World Bank is ready to support developing countries to fight avian influenza in animals, while simultaneously preparing for a possible human flu pandemic through a global funding program, he added.

Police were searching for a man believed to have done the shootings, and were investigating whether anyone else was involved. The shootings occurred about 2:15 a.m. as several players were returning from a campus party at the student union and others were sitting on benches outside Vickroy Hall, the dormitory where the shootings took place.

The players most badly injured were 6-foot-7 forward Sam Ashaolu, a transfer from Lake Region State College and a cousin of former Houston Rockets star Hakeem Olajuwon, and Stuard Baldonado, a 6-7 transfer from Miami Dade College who was considered the Dukes' best recruit.

Ashaolu is from Toronto, and his parents were traveling to Pittsburgh on Sunday to be with their son.

Also hospitalized is Kojo Mensah, a guard from Brooklyn, N.Y., who averaged nearly 17 points last season at Siena before transferring, school officials said at a news conference Sunday.

Treated and released from Mercy Hospital were 6-10 Shawn James, the nation's leading shot blocker last season at Northeastern before transferring to Duquesne, and Aaron Jackson, a guard who is one of only two returning players from Duquesne's 3-24 team of last season.

New Duquesne coach Ron Everhart, formerly at Northeastern, had rebuilt the Duquesne program almost from scratch after being hired in March by bringing in 10 recruits - one of the most sweeping upheavals of any Division I program in recent years.

According to police, two players were returning from a campus social function when they encountered a man who apparently had been disruptive at the party. After the players tried to calm the man, the players began walking away, only to be shot. Several other players who were nearby rushed to their aid, also to be shot.

James, expected to be Duquesne's top player when he becomes eligible in the 2007-08 season and an NBA prospect, was shot in the foot but no bones were broken. Mensah was believed to have been shot in the shoulder. Jackson was shot in the hand.

The shooter was not a Duquesne student, police said. Duquesne is located in downtown Pittsburgh.

"First and foremost, we are concerned about our students and are praying that each of them has a full recovery," Duquesne spokeswoman Bridget Fare said in a statement. "We will offer support and services to the victims and their families, as well as to our other students who may have been affected by this tragic incident. This type of situation has never occurred before on Duquesne's campus. The university is cooperating fully with the ongoing investigation."

Several students who were distraught after witnessing the shootings were being counseled Sunday.

The number of Mexican politicians and businessmen involved in child pornography and sex rings "would shock us if we knew the real extent of the phenomenon," said Cacho.

In one of the illegally taped conversations broadcast Tuesday, which apparently date back to 2004, the governor of the state of Veracruz, Fidel Herrera of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and Emilio Gamboa, head of the party's bloc in the lower house of Congress, can be heard talking on friendly terms with textile mogul Kamel Nacif.

Nacif, a Mexican of Lebanese origin, who in the obscenity-laced conversation can be heard asking Gamboa to block a gambling bill to be debated by Congress, is suing Cacho for libel.

In her 2004 book "Los demonios del Edén" (The Demons of Eden), Cacho -- who is a journalist and writer as well as the director of a women's shelter in Cancún -- links Nacif with Jean Succar, a Lebanese-born hotel owner who is in prison facing charges of arranging paedophile parties in that Mexican resort town.

In another of the anonymously recorded conservations leaked to the press and broadcast Tuesday, Nacif can be heard talking with Succar.

Succar, under arrest in Mexico since July, after he was extradited from the United States, can be heard asking Nacif for a seven million dollar loan to purchase a hotel in Cancún, to which Nacif responds in the affirmative.

Later, the two exchange information on "the girl from Miami," who they refer to as "putita" (little whore), and who they say they have paid 2,000 dollars. Succar asks Nacif when it would be best to bring the girl to Cancún, and the latter responds that "next week, you son of a b***h, but you bring her to fornicate."

In Cacho's book, Succar is identified as the head of a ring of adults who subjected underage girls to sexual abuse in Cancún, in which Nacif allegedly took part.

Succar was arrested in February 2004 in the United States on child abuse charges and was extradited to Mexico in July, where he also faces charges for money laundering and organised crime.

"Los demonios del Edén" contains the personal accounts of minors who talk about the sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of a ring in which prominent figures were allegedly involved. The youngsters describe how the hotel owner sexually abused them himself, set up a prostitution ring to allow others to abuse them, and photographed them in order to sell the pornographic images on the Internet.

A 2004 study by researcher Elena Azaola, which estimated that some 17,000 children under the age of 18 are victims of the sex trade in Mexico, is also based on interviews with minors who managed to escape, as well as visits to establishments where underage girls and boys are forced to work as prostitutes.

The two PRI politicians, Herrera and Gamboa, denied having any illegal ties with Nacif, and said they did not even know Succar. From their point of view, the airing of the tapped phone conversations was a low political blow aimed at their party.

The PRI, which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, came in third in the Jul. 2 presidential and legislative elections.

Gamboa is one of the lawmakers who have approached Felipe Calderón of the conservative governing National Action Party (PAN) over the last few days, since he was confirmed as president-elect by the electoral court.

Javier González, a leader of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) legislators, said the leaked conversations between Nacif and the PRI politicians showed that the political system "is rotten."

The PRD argues that its candidate, Andrés López Obrador, lost the elections to Calderón because of fraud.

Cacho agrees that corruption is rife. "Many businessmen like Nacif have amassed huge fortunes in exchange for dark favours to politicians."

So far, no direct link between politicians or prominent businessmen and child porn or sex rings has been proven. But there are suspicions, which are fuelled by Nacif and his web of contacts.

Cacho, who has been under police protection since last year, when she began to receive death threats, was referred to in earlier leaked conversations, between Nacif and Mario Marín, governor of the state of Puebla, near the capital.

In the tapped conversations, Marín, a member of the PRI, can be heard telling Nacif that "I just gave a bump on the head to that old witch."

The two men also discussed how they had the activist arrested and thrown into a cell with "nutcases and dykes (lesbians)," so that she would be raped -- something that did not occur, because in the prison, "the prisoners themselves and the guards protected me," the writer said in an earlier conversation with IPS.

The tapes, which were sent to the press anonymously and broadcast in February, were apparently recorded in December 2005, after Cacho was thrown into jail for 30 hours, after a grueling 20-hour drive from her home in Cancún to Puebla.

The activist was arrested in connection with the libel suit brought against her by Nacif.

But when the news of her arrest broke, the rights watchdog Amnesty International, the World Organisation Against Torture, the Inter-American Press Association and other international groups raised an outcry, and Cacho was released on bail.

After the scandal triggered by the leaked phone conversations in February, in which the governor of Puebla and Nacif -- who owns factories in that state -- are heard discussing actions to teach Cacho a lesson, the Supreme Court initiated an investigation to determine whether or not Marín had engaged in criminal activity.

RFID stands for "radio-frequency identification." Passports with RFID chips store an electronic copy of the passport information: your name, a digitized picture, etc. And in the future, the chip might store fingerprints or digital visas from various countries.

By itself, this is no problem. But RFID chips don't have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship.

At first the State Department belittled those risks, but in response to criticism from experts it has implemented some security features. Passports will come with a shielded cover, making it much harder to read the chip when the passport is closed. And there are now access-control and encryption mechanisms, making it much harder for an unauthorized reader to collect, understand and alter the data.

Although those measures help, they don't go far enough. The shielding does no good when the passport is open. Travel abroad and you'll notice how often you have to show your passport: at hotels, banks, Internet cafes. Anyone intent on harvesting passport data could set up a reader at one of those places. And although the State Department insists that the chip can be read only by a reader that is inches away, the chips have been read from many feet away.

The other security mechanisms are also vulnerable, and several security researchers have already discovered flaws. One found that he could identify individual chips via unique characteristics of the radio transmissions. Another successfully cloned a chip. The State Department called this a "meaningless stunt," pointing out that the researcher could not read or change the data. But the researcher spent only two weeks trying; the security of your passport has to be strong enough to last 10 years.

This is perhaps the greatest risk. The security mechanisms on your passport chip have to last the lifetime of your passport. It is as ridiculous to think that passport security will remain secure for that long as it would be to think that you won't see another security update for Microsoft Windows in that time. Improvements in antenna technology will certainly increase the distance at which they can be read and might even allow unauthorized readers to penetrate the shielding.

Whatever happens, if you have a passport with an RFID chip, you're stuck. Although popping your passport in the microwave will disable the chip, the shielding will cause all kinds of sparking. And although the United States has said that a nonworking chip will not invalidate a passport, it is unclear if one with a deliberately damaged chip will be honored.

The Colorado passport office is already issuing RFID passports, and the State Department expects all U.S. passport offices to be doing so by the end of the year. Many other countries are in the process of changing over. So get a passport before it's too late. With your new passport you can wait another 10 years for an RFID passport, when the technology will be more mature, when we will have a better understanding of the security risks and when there will be other technologies we can use to cut the risks. You don't want to be a guinea pig on this one.