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Thursday,
April 3, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Sars toll
75, China invites probe team
Bahrain
expels Iraqi envoy Ex-double
of Saddam’s son detained Two jailed
for Al-Qaida links 13
pilgrims drowned |
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Sars toll 75, China invites probe team
Beijing, April 2 In Beijing, WHO spokesman Chris Powell said China’s central government had invited an investigation team to visit Guangdong. He said the team was waiting for a follow-up invitation in writing. “We have so far had a verbal invitation to go,” Mr Powell said. “The team is delighted that it is going to be able to go to Guangdong. This will give it a tremendous opportunity to look at what appears to be the source of the outbreak firsthand,” he said. The illness has spread, apparently from China’s southern province, to more than 12 other countries and prompted quarantines as far away as Singapore and Canada. The first cases were reported in Guangdong in November. There is no known cure for SARS, which has affected more than 1,800 worldwide. The USA said it would increase pressure on China’s communist government to be more forthcoming with information about the illness, now known as SARS. The permission to the WHO came as international criticism of China’s reaction to SARS grew, and as China released more information on the disease’s path in the south last month. In a statement faxed to news organisations, the Guangdong provincial government said it had 361 new cases in March of the illness known as SARS. The statement said 507 persons who had contracted the illness earlier were released from hospitals last month. Yesterday, the US State Department authorised the departure of nonessential employees and family members from Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong province, as a precautionary measure. US Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said more pressure would be applied on China, where the disease first unfolded, but was kept quiet for months. A spokesman for the Chinese Health Ministry confirmed that it had received a request for Health Minister Zhang Wenkang to talk on telephone to US Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson. The spokesman, who would give only his surname, Wu, said US officials asked for the call to take place at 12 noon GMT (5:30 pm ISI) today. Across the Pacific Rim, cultural practices involving human contact were being reviewed, and in some cases, scrapped for now. In New Zealand, health officials urged indigenous Maori tribesmen to forgo their traditional “hongi” nose-rubbing greeting for the visiting Chinese at a convention. In Hong Kong, the Roman Catholic Church ordered priests to wear masks during the Communion and put wafers in the hands of the faithful rather than directly on the tongue. The break-up of casualties so far, in addition to the 43 in mainland China — sixteen in Hong Kong, six in Canada, four each in Vietnam and Singapore and two in Thailand. Though there is no cure, health officials say the majority of sufferers recover with proper hospital care. Symptoms of the disease’s onset include high fever, aches, dry cough and shortness of breath. In Indonesia, officials said three suspected cases — including one fatality — had been ruled out as SARS, and that the country still had no confirmed cases. In Malaysia, health authorities denied a report in the New Straits Times about a SARS fatality there, saying the country had no confirmed cases yet.
AP |
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Bahrain
expels Iraqi envoy Manama, April 2 Iraq's charge d'affaires Abdullah Jaburi was called to the Foreign Ministry and informed of the order asking Nazem Jawad to leave, the state-run Bahrain News Agency said, quoting a ministry spokesman. CAIRO: Egypt has denied that it had forced the First Secretary at Iraq's embassy to leave Cairo.
AFP |
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Ex-double of Saddam’s son detained
London, April 2 Latif Yahai, a former soldier described as ''the spitting image'' of Saddam's eldest son, was spotted by security officials at the airport yesterday while trying to enter Great Britain. He was on his way from Germany to appear on a television show in the northern Irish capital Belfast. ''They were very suspicious of me because I have an Iraqi passport and, as I have no credit card, I was carrying 20,000 euros in cash,'' Yahai told the newspaper. ''I tried to explain to them that I had sought asylum in Ireland and that I was going to Northern Ireland and not northern England, but this just seemed to annoy them even more. Eventually, they rang the TV station, but by that time it was too late for me to make the show,'' he said.
DPA |
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Two jailed for Al-Qaida links
London, April 2 Sentencing 31-year-old Brahim Benmerzouga and 38-year-old Baghdad Meziane in the Leicester Crown Court yesterday, Mr Justice Curtis said: “You have not directly taken life or seriously injured anyone. But the terrorists, in order to carry out their terrible killings and maimings, need money, false papers and military-style material... You both provided terrorists with the vital support and ran a well-organised and secretive cell.” The two men, who were living in Leicester, about 100 km from here, and worked together in a factory in Corby, used numerous false identities. They were secretly part of an intricate network of terror cells across Europe which exchanged coded Internet messages. The duo, part of an international credit card fraud aimed at raising funds for terror organisations such as Al-Qaida, collected the names and credit card details of almost 200 bank accounts on CDs and envelopes found littered around their homes and cars. The actual cards were sent to associates across Europe, allowing them fraudulently to amass more than £ 200,000 for terrorist causes.
PTI |
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13 pilgrims drowned Dhaka, April 2 The state-run Radio Bangladesh said the accident happened overnight in Chapai-Nawabganj district near the common border with India, 340 km west of the capital Dhaka. Local divers salvaged 13 bodies, including those of three women and two children, from the river. Most of the survivors swam to the riverbank while others were rescued from the water by passing fishing boats, the radio report said.
DPA |
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