Free Republic

JANUARY 30, 2005 - The music was from Mexico; the food was from Mexico; but the location was definitely not Mexico. “We need to take steps to ensure the safety of our legislators,” says State Senator Eddie Lucio. The dinner in Brownsville was arranged in less than 24 hours, after a delegation of state legislators scrapped plans to cross into Matamoros. The reason? Organizers say it was a warning from the FBI that members of the Gulf Cartel were out to kidnap two of its agents. “If you go to a bad place, bad things will happen to you. We...

MEXICO CITY - A U.S. warning about violence along the border in Mexico created unexpected friction with a crucial neighbor Thursday, just as new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) and other new members of President Bush (news - web sites)'s team are starting to take office. The blunt warning was issued because of an upswing of killings and kidnappings linked to battles between drug gangs in towns along the Mexican side of the border, but Mexico's top Cabinet officer, Interior Secretary Santiago Creel, insisted that the warning "went too far." -- snip -- U.S. State Department...

For China's capital, normality beckons. The lifting of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) warning against travel to Beijing has been met by the city's people with enormous relief. Beijing residents hope life will return to normal now And the city's removal from the WHO list of Sars-affected areas is restoring the capital's battered confidence. "I'm really excited," one girl on the street told me. "I can see my friends again, go out, travel." "Tonight," said one distinguished professor, "I intend to have a meal in a restaurant for the first time in two months." As the WHO made the announcement...

ABILENE, Texas— Nine people in the Abilene area are quarantined at home as a precaution for the SARS virus, officials said Thursday. A group of military personnel passed through the Toronto Airport recently, and some reported mild to moderate respiratory problems earlier this week after returning to Texas, said Capt. David May of Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene. None have been hospitalized, he said. Only one person fits the definition of being a suspect case of SARS, but the entire group and some people they've come in contact with are now under quarantine, nine people in all, May said....

GENEVA (CP) - The World Health Organization removed Toronto from its list of areas with recent local transmission of SARS on Wednesday. "This is a great achievement for public health in what we hope is the final phase of the global emergency," David Heymann, the WHO Executive Director for communicable diseases, said in a release. "Toronto faced an especially challenging outbreak. As we have learned, SARS is a difficult disease that produces many surprises and setbacks." The last probable case was detected on June 12 and immediately isolated. When 20 days, or twice the incubation period, have passed without detection...

Hong Kong declared Sars-free China has seen thousands recover from the disease Hong Kong has been declared free of Sars, 20 days after the last confirmed case of the disease in the territory. The World Health Organization called the development a "very significant achievement in the history of Sars control", following 296 deaths from the disease in Hong Kong. "The whole world can now feel safer from the Sars threat," said David Heymann, the WHO's executive director of communicable diseases. But officials are warning that the territory must remain vigilant if it is to avoid the kind of recurrence of...

GENEVA - The World Health Organization (news - web sites) on Friday downgraded its assessment of SARS (news - web sites)-prevention efforts in Canada after a U.S. visitor to Toronto returned home with the virus. But the U.N. agency said it had no plans to issue another travel advisory for the city. WHO officials also dropped some parts of China from its list of places under the SARS travel warning but retained its advice that people avoid nonessential travel to Beijing and Taiwan. On Saturday, Taiwan reported two SARS deaths, breaking a period of 16 successive days without new fatalities....

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (news - web sites) may renew a warning against travel to Toronto if a feared upsurge in SARS (news - web sites) was confirmed in Canada's largest city and business capital, a WHO spokesman said on Wednesday. But there was "nothing automatic" about issuing a call to avoid unnecessary travel to Toronto, even if the suspected outbreak could push it further above some WHO trigger points for such alerts, spokesman Iain Simpson added. Canadian health officials said on Tuesday they were investigating 12 pneumonia patients at a Toronto clinic who had developed symptoms...

<p>TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) Taiwan was angry Wednesday about a World Health Organization decision not to lift a SARS travel advisory for the island as it has done for Canada, where despite the WHO vote of confidence a recent U.S. visitor caught the virus before returning home.</p>

GENEVA (CP) -- Toronto made its case to the World Health Organization's highest ranking official Tuesday as it tried to persuade the United Nations agency to lift its SARS travel advisory, but the future of the warning was still in the air after the meeting. As he left his hour- long meeting with WHO chief Gro Harlem Brundtland, Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement was non-committal over the possibility the world health body could reconsider its travel warning on Toronto. "I'm certainly not jumping to any conclusions," he said. "I believe that regardless of what that decision is, you are seeing...

Travellers warned to stay away from Hong Kong By Jeremy Laurance in Hong Kong 03 April 2003 For the first time in its history the World Health Organisation has advised travellers not to visit a territory because of the danger from disease. The WHO warned yesterday that the outbreak of atypical pneumonia caused by a mystery virus which has spread around the world was still uncontrolled in Hong Kong and the neighbouring Chinese province of Guangdong. The Foreign Office also said yesterday that it "strongly advised" people not to enter Hong Kong and Guangdong and urged people to "defer travel...

GENEVA (AP) World Health Organization advises travelers to avoid Hong Kong and Chinese province of Guangdong because of outbreak of mystery illness.

TORONTO--Hospital workers here once again strapped on masks and gowns Saturday to confront a new SARS threat that an official warned could involve 33 people or more, weeks after Canada proclaimed itself free of the deadly virus. Up to 1,000 people are being quarantined after a case spread undetected through a hospital. The reports of a possible new outbreak in Toronto came on a day of rare good news out of Asia, where severe acute respiratory syndrome originated. For the first time since late March, no new cases were reported in Hong Kong on Saturday. Taiwan had no new deaths...

<p>TORONTO -- An increasing number of SARS cases in Canada's largest city is worrying the World Health Organization, which discussed the possibility of re-imposing a travel advisory on Toronto, a spokeswoman said today.</p> <p>Health officials have reported 62 probable cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome in a new cluster that became known after the initial outbreak in March and April was believed under control.</p>

New fears in Toronto amid jump in SARS cases WHO considers re-imposing travel advisory to Canada's largest city The Associated Press Originally published June 3, 2003, 11:48 AM EDT TORONTO -- An increasing number of SARS cases in Canada's largest city is worrying the World Health Organization, which discussed the possibility of re-imposing a travel advisory on Toronto, a spokeswoman said today. Health officials have reported 62 probable cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome in a new cluster that became known after the initial outbreak in March and April was believed under control. The biggest outbreak of SARS outside Asia...

WASHINGTON: US health officials have expanded a travel warning advisory to all of China and Singapore after a mysterious airborne disease spreading across the world claimed the life of the researcher who detected it. Carlo Urbani, a Hanoi-based Italian epidemiologist with the World Health Organisation who first identified the dangerous new microbe that is going round the globe causing a new kind of pneumonia, died in a Bangkok hospital on Saturday of the same disease. The pneumonia, now known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, is poised to trigger a worldwide health emergency following reports of airborne transmission that...

TORONTO - The day after Toronto first learned it was home to a puzzling new virus, a public health nurse walked through the front door of an east-end apartment wearing a pair of goggles, a protective gown and a respirator mask. Two of the tenants, 78-year-old Sui-Chu Kwan, and her son, 43-year-old Chi Kwai Tse, had already fallen victim, and four of their relatives were seriously ill. The strange sickness had generated extensive media coverage, which health officials had hoped would unearth anyone who had knowingly crossed paths with Canada's first casualties of what would come to be called severe...

The World Health Organization lifted its travel advisory against Toronto Tuesday after a week of anger by Toronto politicians and lobbying efforts by Canadian health officials. Lifting the advisory comes with several conditions, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, director- general of the WHO, said at a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday. The removal comes after Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement led a delegation of federal and provincial health- care experts to Geneva on Tuesday to provide documentation the warning was unnecessary. “We will be lifting the travel advice for Toronto, Canada, effective tomorrow [Wednesday],” Dr. Brundtland said. Factors included in...

CTV.ca News Staff The World Health Organization is lifting a travel advisory to Toronto, effective Wednesday. The advisory was imposed last week over the SARS outbreak that has killed 21 in the city in the last two months. The change in the advisory comes just hours after a delegation, led by Ontario's Health Minister Tony Clement, met with WHO Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland. Clement and his team were in Geneva to try and convince the WHO to lift the three-week advisory, slapped on Toronto last Wednesday. Following the hour-long meeting, Clement said he was hopeful there would be a...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has agreed to lift the controversial travel advisory it imposed on Toronto, Canada's top diplomat in Geneva, Sergio Marchi, says. Marchi said that the WHO director general Gro Harlem Brundtland told him in a meeting this morning that she would be making a formal announcement at 1 p.m. (7 p.m. in Geneva) of the decision to lift the advisory, which had advised travellers to avoid all non-essential travel to Toronto. "As a Canadian from Toronto I'm absolutely delighted and relieved at this decision,'' Marchi said in an interview. "The strong medical evidence did our talking...