Free Republic

China Announces New SARS Deaths, Asian Leaders MeetBy Scott Hillis and Nopporn Wong-Anan BEIJING/BANGKOK (Reuters) - China reported nine more SARS deaths and more than 200 new cases on Tuesday as Asian heads of government gathered to fight an outbreak that has killed hundreds, curbed travel and threatened economic growth. The Chinese Health Ministry said seven of the new deaths were in Beijing, the hardest hit place in the world, along with 152 of the latest cases. The WHO's chief of communicable diseases, David Heymann, in Bangkok to brief and advise the Asian leaders, told Reuters on the eve of...

U.S. Virus Experts Slam SARS Panic Monday, April 28, 4:54 PM ETBy Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People around the world are overreacting to SARS (news - web sites), creating a sense of panic that could overwhelm common-sense measures for containing the virus, top AIDS (news - web sites) experts said on Monday.   Sensational media coverage of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has killed 326 people worldwide, has fanned the flames, said David Baltimore, who won the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on how viruses cause disease. "I think there has been...

Iraqi Information Minister Reports on SARS Outbreak Thursday, April 24, 2003Baghdad, Iraq-Baghdad Bob is back and he is speaking about SARS and the effects it is causing on the war. The Iraqi News Service has a pirated feed from an undisclosed location that is jamming regular broadcasts. The Iraqis are scrambling to buy face masks and vinegar. Saddam's small circle of supporters have begun disinfecting everything. Quarantines have been put into action to control the outbreak from spreading further through the bomb shelter. Click here to see the report.

3.15pm update Sars death toll rises to 235 Staff and agenciesTuesday April 22, 2003 A further 17 people across Asia died of severe acute respiratory syndrome today, as officials in China, which has been accused of underreporting cases of the flu-like virus, were ordered to step up efforts to fight the disease. Eleven of today's Sars deaths came from China, where it is believed the deadly virus originated. Today, schoolchildren in Hong Kong returned to class wearing surgical masks, following a three-week closure in response to the outbreak.Worldwide, the death toll rose to 235 and the number of infections...

Panic grips Beijing as leaders admit tenfold rise in Sars infection rates By Jasper Becker in Beijing 21 April 2003 China sacked its Health Minister and the mayor of Beijing yesterday and cancelled a week-long May Day holiday after suddenly increasing the figure for Sars cases in the capital.Beijing has more than 700 confirmed and unconfirmed cases, ten times more than initially admitted, putting it among the communities hit hardest in the world, behind only Guangdong province and Hong Kong. Even now there are doubts whether all the figures in China have been revealed.The government's actions come after an emergency...

Severe bird flu hits EuropeLONDON - Europe is becoming rattled by a severe Dutch outbreak of bird flu that is infecting humans and prompting fears that a mutated version of the virus could spark a flu epidemic in people. The Dutch Agriculture Ministry said there was a danger that bird and human flu could mix in pigs and produce a mutation that humans have no resistance against. World Health Organisation spokesman Iain Simpson said: 'It is possible. Up to now avian flu has never acquired the ability to transmit from one person to another - if it does... it could...

NITED NATIONS, April 15 — Monkeys experimentally infected with a new coronavirus have developed an illness similar to the mysterious human respiratory disease SARS, and it is now almost certain that the coronavirus causes the disease, a World Health Organization official said here today. Dr. David L. Heymann, executive director in charge of communicable diseases for W.H.O., said the agency "is 99 percent sure" that SARS is caused by the new coronavirus based on the monkey experiments in the Netherlands. Experiments on animals are necessary because the lack of an effective treatment for SARS and the relatively high death rate...

Marine Fired After Being Called To Active DutyThe pregnant wife of a California Marine reservist says she is considering legal action against her husband's former bosses, 10News reported. Shari Moffitt says Hyundai fired her husband, Sgt. Clifford Moffitt, after he was called to active duty. Clifford Moffitt is a Marine Corps reservist who thought his job at Hyundai was secure. "Instead he received a letter on the battle field, saying that Hyundai decided to terminate his employment two months after he left," Shari Moffitt said. Shari Moffitt is also employed at Hyundai. She is talking with civil rights attorney Gloria...

A sharp turn in US perceptions of war Recent successes in war buoy Americans, typifying how 24/7 coverage abruptly changes the national mood. Youths welcome a marine with the 3rd Civil Affairs Group, a task force whose mission is to build relationships with Iraqis in towns occupied by the US. Pfc. Jessica Lynch is rescued in a daring midnight raid in Nasiriyah. In Najaf, US forces are greeted by jubilant crowds in a scene one battalion commander compared with "the liberation of Paris." Outside Baghdad, Army and Marine divisions have punched through Iraqi Republican Guards and are preparing to take...

Cancer Rates Could Rise 50 Percent by 2020, Report SaysGlobal rates of cancer could rise 50 percent to 15 million new cases a year by 2020, but one-third can be cured and one-third prevented by curbing infections and through lifestyle changes, experts said Thursday.   Once considered a "western" disease, cancer now affects and kills more people in the developing world than in industrialized nations. In many countries it accounts for more than one-quarter of all deaths. But according to the World Cancer Report, a comprehensive review of the disease, with existing knowledge it is possible to prevent at least...

New Disease Scary, but Not as Bad as Flu -- Yet WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It jumped from ducks to farmers in the densely populated southern provinces of China, spreading via jet to the whole world within a year and killing half a million people. SARS? No -- just ordinary influenza.   As world health officials scramble to identify and contain the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, they are drawing constant parallels with flu, a much more familiar -- and so far deadlier -- foe. SARS has killed an estimated 78 people and made 2,151 ill, the World Health Organization...

HEALTH: Pneumonia bug poses global threat By Chris Hogg It is a disease that has killed at least 17 people since the beginning of February and infected hundreds more. In Singapore it has led to the confinement of more than 700 people to their homes, simply because they had close contact with someone who fell ill with it. In Hong Kong schools have been closed with some sending home their students for a week. We still do not know what causes it, how you catch it, or how you treat it. There may be no cure. Yet with the eyes...

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Scientists in Hong Kong said on Thursday they had identified the virus behind a mystery pneumonia that has killed more than 50 people worldwide as the government ordered schools in the city to close. Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa also said the government had invoked a quarantine law not used for decades, and anyone breaking it would be fined or jailed for up to six months. A day after Singapore took similar action, Tung said schools would shut for a week from March 29 to try to contain a rapidly spreading pneumonia that has infected...

FRANCE THREATENS NEW UN VETO France would block any UN resolution giving the US and Britain the power of administration in Iraq, French President Jacques Chirac has declared. He said France would still not support a resolution backing war at this stage and would also oppose a resolution giving Washington and London administrative power in Iraq. "This idea of a resolution seems to me to be a way of authorising military intervention after the event, and so is not, in my point of view, fitting in the current situation," Mr Chirac said at a news conference in Brussels. "France would...

Sky news reporting: "AP: US Forces Seize Western Iraqi Airfields"

We're not all peaceniks - but you wouldn't know it David AaronovitchTuesday March 18, 2003The Guardian The cherry blossoms are out and the B52 bombers are on their way. So whose side are you on, the bombs or the blossoms? That, at least, is the way I interpreted yesterday morning's Thought for the Day on Radio 4 as delivered by Elaine Storkey. A seemingly Edenic existing order was about to be shattered by ordnance dropped (one assumes, almost capriciously) on the innocents of Baghdad. By the afternoon, following Robin Cook's resignation, a senior BBC political correspondent asked the seemingly rhetorical...

I received an e-mail today titled "signature against the war" with the following message: The US is about to dictate that a war take place. We are currently undergoing a worldwide imbalance that could [at worst] lead to a third world war. If you are also against this threat, the UN is now collecting signatures to try to prevent this tragedy. Please copy this e-mail into a new one, add your name to the end, and send it to everyone you know. If you receive the list with more than 600 names please send a copy to: unicwash@unicwash.org I don't...

Labour mutiny leaves Blair out on a limb By Philip Webster, Political Editor Case for Iraq war rejected in biggest-ever government rebellion A MASS mutiny by more than 120 Labour MPs over war with Iraq left Tony Blair facing a perilous moment in his premiership last night. The rebels were among 199 MPs — almost a third of the Commons — who voted against early military action to disarm President Saddam Hussein. It was the biggest revolt against any governing party in parliamentary history and it served notice on the Prime Minister that he will have to win a second...

  Song Stuck in Your Head? You're Not AloneBy Alison McCookNEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The vast majority of people say they have been mentally tortured at one point in their lives by a song that keeps repeating itself over and over in their heads.And new research shows that people most frequently plagued by this phenomenon are those with slightly neurotic tendencies , and people who enjoy and listen to music often. These mental broken records are also more likely to play the first or last song we hear in different situations, such as the first song that comes on...

A more than 20-mile stretch of I-75 is shutdown as an explosion at a southern Kentucky factory Thursday morning left two workers unaccounted for and 22 others injured. A Corbin hospital reports 11 critically injured. Large scale evacuations are reportedly underway as there are reports of a hydrogen cyanide chemical release, which is a toxic chemical. The blast at CTA Acoustics occurred at 8:02 EDT, according to Ray Bowman, a spokesman with the state Division of Emergency Management. About 22 people were taken to hospitals, Bowman said. A low-hanging cloud was visible near the Knox County plant, Bowman said, and...