The World Health Organization (WHO) credited SARS for helping Asia prepare for a flu that has killed millions of chickens and at least three people, while governments struggled yesterday to contain the virus with further curbs on poultry imports and culls of sick birds.
A minister in Thailand angrily denied that his government was covering up a major outbreak of the avian flu there, while WHO officials worked to figure out how the disease jumped to people in Vietnam -- where at least three have been killed.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has hit poultry farms hardest in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, sparking slaughters of millions of chickens.
Asian governments have worked quickly to try to curb the virus, and the WHO's Vietnam representative Pascale Brudon attributed that in part to last year's major outbreak of SARS.
"I can see there is increased awareness of the need for good surveillance, the need for acting urgently when we have a problem. I think this is a ... positive aspect and a lesson learned from SARS, which has helped us in this new crisis," Brudon said in Hanoi.
In Taiwan, health workers donned surgical masks and blue suits yesterday to dispose of 20,000 chickens infected with a milder variant of the virus hitting the other Asian countries. Officials on the island said the H5N2 strain poses little threat but that they wanted to avoid possible mutations and other risks.
Not taking any chances, Hong Kong moved to bar poultry imports from Taiwan.
Taiwan, China and Cambodia already have halted poultry imports from Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. Indonesia barred poultry imports from those three countries yesterday.
The H5N1 virus is the same one that jumped to people in Hong Kong in 1997, killing six.
The deadly virus -- highly contagious among chickens -- has not shown any human-to-human transmission, and is believed to spread to humans through contact with infected birds. Health officials say if it mutates and mixes genetic material with a human flu virus it could become contagious in humans, sparking a major health crisis.
Government officials have sought to calm any fears about eating poultry products, saying there is no danger if the public properly cooks the meat and eggs of chickens.
In Taiwan, a Changhwa County official went on ETTV news to spread that message, cracking an egg and slurping the yolk.
"It tastes good and it's very nutritious," he said.
In Thailand, farmers and a consumer group have charged for several days that millions of chickens have been infected by the bird flu and that the government is covering it up. But the government insists the outbreak is bird cholera -- not bird flu.
"Irresponsible media and some groups of people are trying to spread this rumor," Deputy Agriculture Minister Newin Chidchob said yesterday. "There is no bird flu here."
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the