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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 14, 2003)
AGGIELIF! THE BATTALIO WORLD THE BATTALION 5 Monday, April 14, 2003 T-fu Asia takes measures to contain SARS x abouts of Li Zhone Vine, a 33-year-old region to report cases. )undar) 4 advertise "Better! i-American youth. By Yeoh En-Lai THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SINGAPORE — Singapore authorities stepped up efforts to contain a deadly new virus this weekend, including issuing elec tronic wrist tags to keep track of those under quarantine. Reports Saturday of nine more deaths worldwide brought the death toll from severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS to at least 125 in 20 countries. The virus, which has sickened over 2,700, has no known cure. Symptoms include shortness of breath, fever, coughing and body aches. In Singapore, where 558 people are under home quarantine, the government issued its first electronic wrist tags, which jsound an alarm and issue an alert to a mon itoring station if a person breaks the bracelet ior leaves the house. The measures were taken as police appealed for information on the where- Zhong Ying, a 33-year-old Chinese immigrant showing symptoms of SARS who escaped four days ago while she was under quarantine in Singapore. In Canada, site of the largest outbreak of SARS outside of Asia, three more people were killed. The new death reports, all in the Toronto area, brought the Canadian death toll to 13, health officials said Saturday. Canada has recorded a total of 274 probable and suspected cases of SARS. Also Saturday, officials reported a British Columbia laboratory became the first to complete the genetic sequencing of the coronavirus believed to be causing severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. WHO spokesman Dick Thompson in Geneva called the achievement “an extraor dinary step,” the Canadian Press reported. In China, two more people died, raising the country’s death toll to 60. The official Xinhua News Agency said the two died Friday and were among 10 cases of SARS in Inner Mongolia, the latest Chinese ly violent pretl ght. They get .‘havior, selling ying guns, gam popularity wh 1 of their lives. ?r. potential investJ n thought the race! ick’s” character s| alive enough tote )\-office receipts. I : really liked thescrj /ere like, 'Oh. Hal Culkin, maybe we| th an all-white s writer-di rector ii nted it to have thisjf ' Asian-AmericansT make a movie will angaroo that maif ion, they're gome e of them,” he con ally, "Kangaroo!; almost $66 r 1 States.) “If , they will green! ian-American Miranda Kuo • KRT CAMPUS Li Dong (wearing face mask), a 42-year-old government worker, purchases herbs that are claimed to prevent the contraction of SARS at Tong Ren Tang, a Chinese medicinal pharmacy in Bejing, )hina. The store sold more than 30,000 orders in a single day for the herbal prescription. region to report cases. In Hong Kong, authorities on Saturday said three more people died, raising its death toll to 35, while officials in Vietnam said a 69-year-old French doctor succumbed to the illness, bringing the death toll there to five. Authorities throughout Asia were trying to stop the disease from taking a further toll on their economies. But their efforts may have come too late. Foreign buyers, uneasy about SARS, were canceling plans to attend China’s biggest trade fair this month in the southern city of Guangzhou in Guangdong, where the disease is believed to have originated. Last year, the Chinese Export Commodities Fair drew more than 120,000 visitors who signed deals totaling nearly $17 billion, according to organizers. But the World Health Organization and foreign gov ernments are warning travelers to avoid Guangzhou. “It’s really tragic. Cancellation faxes on my desk are now piled up above my shoul der,” said a travel agent in Guangzhou, adding that the cancellations have come from “almost every country in the world.” Hong Kong and China have reported the highest number of deaths and cases. To fight the perception that Hong Kong is spreading the disease to other countries, authorities were discussing how to take the temperature of every passenger on departing flights , Health Department spokeswoman Eva Wong said. Some 1,108 people in Hong Kong have fallen ill with the disease. About a million people departed from Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok airport in January, the latest figures available. In Singapore, meanwhile, authorities have moved SuperStar Virgo, a luxury cruise line owned by Malaysia’s Star Cruises with 13 quarantined crew on board to a designated dock on Sisters’ Island, a few miles south of the city-state. No passen gers were aboard. In Singapore, nine people have died and 147 have been sickened from the disease. Vietnam, Canada, Malaysia and Thailand have also reported deaths. ill get to represeni perspectives of | y” NEWS IN BRIEF Vho would you : )uld you drive? He< ne has now hit laymash.com, and icult. gories are: nameo imber of children, r. Under each cates! in, choose a favor# do all the work, sing Web site. It person a chance to zed and easier to scrap sheet of note ke a step back in uture holds. Venezuelan peace pact site bombed, destroyed CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A pre dawn bomb blast ripped through the building where Venezuela's govern ment and opposition have been negoti- ting a peace agreement, destroying hree floors but injuring no one. The attack at about 2:45 a.m. Saturday came one day after the Organization of American States bro kered a deal between the government and opposition to work toward a ref erendum on President Hugo Chavez's rule. An opposition negotiator said the blast was intended to intimidate his delegation at the talks, while the gov ernment blamed "coup-plotting" sec tors of the opposition. The explosion destroyed the first three floors of the Teleport building in central Caracas. A night watchman and a technician, the only two people inside the building when the blast hit, were unharmed. Malaysian journalists kidnapped in Baghdad KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - Gunmen ambushed and kidnapped three Malaysian journalists in Baghdad, killing their Iraqi interpreter, officials aid Sunday. Two Malaysian doctors ere wounded in the attack. The Malaysians were attacked while raveling in two vans early Saturday Torn the Sheraton Hotel in the Iraqi apital to a hospital, said Acting Prime inister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Baghdad has been swept by waves of doting and lawlessness since U.S. drees moved in and Iraqi President addam Hussein's hold on the capital was shattered. Abdullah identified the three kid napped journalists as Terence Fernandez, a reporter for The Sun newspaper; Anuar Hashim, a New Straits Times photographer; and Omar Salleh, a cameraman with the state-run Radio Television Malaysia. Nigeria’s first civilian-run elections end in fighting, two dozen deaths By Glenn McKenzie THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LAGOS, Nigeria Fighting between tribal and political rivals disrupted leg islative elections in Nigeria’s oil-producing south for a sec ond day Sunday. At least two dozen people were killed in the voting and hundreds were forced to flee their homes, wit nesses and election monitors said. The vote for 469 seats is a key gauge of civil tensions a week ahead of presidential elections and an important test for democracy in the Africa’s most populous nation. Military coups have scuttled Nigeria’s previous attempts to hold democratic, civilian-run elections. The voting began on Saturday but was extended to Sunday in several areas where the balloting was marred, particularly the Niger Delta. The oil-rich region has been the scene of numerous clashes in recent weeks between Ijaw militants and government troops over vot ing districts the Ijaws say favor their ethnic rivals, the Itsekiris. More than 100 people have been killed in the vio lence, which has shut down 40 percent of the country’s oil production. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of U.S. oil imports. On Sunday, sustained automatic weapons fire delayed a second attempt to hold a vote in the oil port of Warri. Witnesses said navy sol diers and Ijaw fighters were shooting at each other and spoke of between five and 10 people killed. Grace Akpete, a market vendor who fled the fighting, said she saw five bod ies floating in the water. The shooting died down after half an hour. By late afternoon, three elections stations opened, but most remained closed. “I can’t understand why one tribe can hold everyone else to ransom,” said Johnson Atake, an Itsekiri waiting to vote Sunday in the port city. Elsewhere in the Niger Delta, clashes between rul ing party and opposition supporters killed 10 people in the town of Nembe, sent hundreds fleeing and left dozens of homes burned, human rights official Azibaola Roberts said, citing witnesses. Five people were killed Saturday in an ambush on an opposition politician in east ern Enugu state. Gangs of “government thugs” travel ing in state vehicles stole ballot boxes at gunpoint, said Ifeanyi Enwerem, direc tor of the Justice, Development and Peace Center. The center has deployed thousands of observers to monitor the voting. There wete also reports of deadly violence in the southeastern city of Onitsha, the southern city of Benin and the eastern city of Port Harcourt. Still, election commis sion chairman Abel Guobadia said the voting Saturday went well overall. In early results from Nigeria’s electoral commis sion, six ruling party incum bents in the northern Kano state — including House Speaker Ghali Na’Abba — were upset by rivals. Some opposition members from the southwestern Ondo and Osun states were, in turn, unseated. Officials have indicated a high turnout across the country of 126 million peo ple. Sixty-one million voters were registered for the bal lot, which featured 3,000 candidates. The vote preceded a pres idential election scheduled for April 19. President Olusegun Obasanjo — a for mer military ruler turned civilian leader — is running against 19 opposition candi dates, including three former army generals. The legislative elections are the first since Obasanjo was elected in 1999, ending 15 years of brutal military rule. 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