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Wife Hopes China SARS Hero Will Be Freed-Source BEIJING (Reuters) - The wife of the military doctor who exposed China's SARS (news - web sites) cover-up last year has been released from custody and hopes her husband will also be freed, a source close to the family said Wednesday. Hua Zhongwei returned to their Beijing home late on Tuesday, two weeks after she and her outspoken husband, Jiang Yanyong, disappeared just days before the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, said the source who asked not to be identified. Jiang had upset the authorities after writing to China's top...

22 May 2003 08:02:53 GMT Chinese doctor gagged for revealing SARS cover-up By Benjamin Kang Lim BEIJING, May 22 (Reuters) - China has gagged the military doctor whose revelation of the government's SARS cover-up led to dismissal of the health minister and open reporting of the spread of the deadly virus, his daughter said on Thursday. Jiang Yanyong, 71, former chief surgeon at a military hospital in Beijing and a 50-year Communist Party veteran, had been told by the government not to give interviews to foreign media, Jiang Rui said. "He is still free to move around, but has no...

Beijing's cover-up efforts arecontinuingBy Wang Dan Friday, May 16, 2003,Page 8 The dismissal of China's former health minister and Beijing's mayor for concealing the spread of SARS filled outside observers with expectations of Chinese policy transparency and openness. Leaders such as President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have stressed that there is no way they will allow officials at any level to conceal the extent of the epidemic. But are the daily reports by Chinese officials really offering a true view of the actual situation? No. The first person to expose the cover-up, thus setting off the SARS scare, was Jiang...

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...

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 politburo meeting on Thursday ended weeks of lies and evasions by top officials who tried to deceive World...

BEIJING - May "golden week" is a holiday that shuts down official China. Millions head for trains, planes, and automobiles to visit family and head for regional resorts. Last year, 87 million Chinese, many in the new middle class, hit the road during golden week, Beijing tourism officials say. But this spring, fears over the epidemic known as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) has cast a hemispheric-sized wet blanket over a traditional time of travel and spending along the Pacific rim - one now racking up a sizable economic toll across Asia.Diagnosed SARS cases are rising slowly, but popular worries...

Airborne, mutating and deadly, the Sars virus is spreading panic across the world. As quarantine camps are set up here, Health Editor Sarah-Kate Templeton reports on how it can be stopped The mystery illness which has so far claimed 120 lives and infected more than 3100 people in 21 countries around the globe was last week formally identified as a new form of the same virus that causes the common cold. It was described in a medical journal as a 'novel coronavirus', but is to be named the Urbani virus, after a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert who died investigating...

It's time I went to my favorite shopping district, Manhattan's Chinatown, and picked up some "donta" (Chinese egg custard), fresh seafood, and roast duck for my family. But going there could potentially kill us all. Since I don't live in China, Hanoi, Toronto or Singapore, I may sound paranoid. And yet, I'll take that chance. The majority of Chinatown's inhabitants hail from China's Guangdong Province, which is Ground Zero for "SARS" – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, often erroneously described as "pneumonia" or "atypical pneumonia." Illegal Chinese immigrants constantly arrive in Chinatown, largely from Guangdong Province. People also constantly travel...

Beijing's SARS AttackDoctor and party member insists there are many more cases than officials will admit   BY SUSAN JAKES / BEIJING GUANG NIU/REUTERS A facemask-wearing couple pass a billboard in Beijing. How many cases are unreported? SARS: Battling the Bug Graphic: How the Virus Spreads Tuesday, April 8, 2003 A physician at Beijing's Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital (No. 301) in a signed statement provided to TIME, says that at one Beijing hospital alone, 60 SARS patients have been admitted of whom seven have died. That indicates the number of patients infected with SARS in Beijing may be...

A SENIOR Chinese physician accused his government yesterday of covering up details of the spread of the SARS virus in Beijing, raising fears that the crisis may be worse than previously thought. The state media repeated the government’s insistence that the outbreak was under control. However, health officials from throughout China have been summoned to the capital to discuss the spread of SARS - severe acute respiratory syndrome. The accusations of a cover-up came from Dr Jiang Yanyong, a retired chief of surgery at a Beijing military hospital. He said doctors and nurses at two other military-run institutions had told...