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February 6 , 2001

New, Deadly HIV Strain May Already Be Spreading Worldwide

BBC News

A newly discovered form of HIV may already have been transmitted world-wide, experts have warned. They fear that current treatments and experimental vaccines will prove ineffective against this new form of the deadly virus.

It was first detected in blood samples taken from an Aids patient in Cyprus who died in 1998.

However, a medical team in Seoul, South Korea, has announced that they have detected the same form of the deadly virus in a 33-year-old female with Aids who died in 1997.

Professors Choi Kang-won and Oh Myong-don, of Seoul National University (SNU), said the HIV collected from the blood of the woman had a totally different gene structure than the usual form of HIV. However, it was the same as the samples taken from the patient in Cyprus.

New vaccines needed

Professor Choi said: "The outcome of our research shows that a new variety of HIV exists in the nation.

"We, therefore, need to develop Aids vaccines to cope with new types of HIV."

Professor Choi said the Korean woman had worked as a prostitute in the southern port city of Pusan.

This could mean that other people had already been infected with the new form of the disease.

The US and South Korean teams are expected to give more details of their discovery at the 8th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections being held this week in Chicago.

Professor Choi stressed that new virus was not a mutation of other HIV strains.

He suspects that the new form of the virus may have originated in Africa.

According to the United Nations, 36.1 million people either had the HIV virus or had developed Aids by the end of 2000.

Several experimental vaccines for HIV are currently undergoing tests world-wide. However, there are not effective for all forms of the disease.

There are two recognised forms of HIV, known as HIV-1 and HIV-2.

It is thought that the newly discovered form is a sub-type of HIV-1.

Mutate rapidly

Mark Graver, of the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust Lighthouse, said: "Because of the class of viruses to which it belongs and its rate of reproduction, HIV-1 can mutate particularly rapidly.

"This is one of the reasons why anti-HIV combination therapy can fail if a person is not able to take their medication correctly.

"HIV reproduces in the presence of the drugs and can mutate to become insensitive to them.

"Apart from drug-resistant mutations of HIV-1, there are a number of different variants or strains of HIV-1 known around the world.

"Some of these strains are more common in one country than in another.

"Any vaccine which is developed to give immunity to infection will, of necessity, have to be active against all these possible variations and mutations of HIV-1."

Wednesday April 25 5:25 PM ET
Town Trusts Mississippi Levees

By JAY HUGHES, Associated Press Writer

KEITHSBURG, Ill. (AP) - Water seeped under the town's levee as the flooded Mississippi River crested Wednesday, closing part of downtown but leaving its buildings dry.

``I'm not worried,'' said Mike Wenskunas, who is restoring a riverfront restaurant that would be one of the first buildings flooded if the levee failed. ``If it happens, it happens. It doesn't do any good to stay at home and fret about it.''

The river crested at 20.7 feet Wednesday at the town of about 750 people, and town officials said their levees stood 2 feet above the water and were in good shape.

``The next 48 hours are going to be critical for us,'' Public Works Director Steve Nylan said.

Keithsburg is 35 miles downstream from Davenport, Iowa, where the river crested at 22.30 feet, its third highest on record there. The 1993 record is 22.6 feet.

Davenport residents said they felt the worst was over.

``I got faith in the dikes,'' Ivan McNeff said as a sump pump fought the seepage in his basement. ``I really don't foresee it breaking.''

Between Keithsburg and Davenport, residents of Muscatine, Iowa, were confident of their 8-mile-long levee, which was built after a 1965 flood and has been reinforced and raised since it held back a 25-foot crest in 1993.

``I don't think people are too worried about it,'' said Butch Lange, owner of Lange's Marine, a boat dealership along Mississippi Drive in Muscatine. ``It's not the first time we've been through this.''

The Mississippi, swollen by rapidly melting snow and heavy rain in the upper Midwest, started rising over its banks two weeks ago in Minnesota, then flooded parts of the Wisconsin shore, and this week the flood crest is rolling past Iowa and Illinois.

However, it is not a repeat of the flooding in 1993 that devastated wide areas of the Mississippi Valley.

``The crests that we're looking at today and tomorrow are significantly lower than the '93 levels,'' Illinois Emergency Management agency spokeswoman Chris Tamminga said Wednesday.

Flooding is expected to be confined to the upper Mississippi River, above the points where the Missouri and Illinois rivers join it, Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Charles Camiloo said.

``The river widens out as it comes south,'' he said. ``There's a lot more room for water.''

Upriver at Port Byron, Ill., fire Capt. Mike Poel said the river claimed one house but most of the 1,500 residents live on a bluff out of the flood plain. Even those people who do still live on the riverfront have been through at least one flood and know what precautions to take.

``Occasionally, the river reminds them that they're not in charge,'' he said. ``They learn to live with it, or they sell out.''

Northern Ireland battles spread of foot-and-mouth disease

15.04.2001 5.28 pm - Reuters

BELFAST - Northern Ireland is battling to contain foot-and-mouth disease after authorities confirmed a second outbreak and probed a suspected case.

Agriculture Minister Brid Rodgers today ordered a precautionary cull of more than 4,000 cattle, pigs and sheep and said the outbreak would mean a fresh European Union ban on the province's livestock product exports just a week after they had resumed.

"This development means that Northern Ireland has now lost its regional foot-and-mouth disease (free) status and with it, the ability to export susceptible animals and related products," she told a news conference.

Her department said later that a "hot" suspected oubtreak had been found on a cattle and sheep farm near Cushendall in Country Antrim on the northeast coast.

"Samples have been taken and are on their way to Pirbright (laboratory) and slaughter has already commenced on the farm," Rodgers said in a statement

The confirmed case was found among cattle in the heart of the British-ruled province's farming country, near Cookstown in Country Tyrone - some 80 km from the first case reported on March 1 in South Armagh, close to the border with the Irish republic.

Downcast at the fresh flare-up six weeks after the original outbreak, Rodgers said all efforts would be focused on containing the virus and preventing its spread.

"With that objective in mind, I have authorised the immediate slaughter of all the animals remaining on the (County Tyrone) farm in question and on all the associated out-farms."

Cattle and sheep within a one-km radius of the farm and all pigs within a three-km radius would be destroyed.

"This is a huge setback for the whole of Northern Ireland agriculture industry and comes just at a time when our hopes were high that we might have escaped this dreadful scourge," Rodgers added.

World battens down for the return of El Nino

14.04.2001 - NZ Herald

Governments around the Asia-Pacific region are preparing for the return of El Nino, the mysterious climatic phenomenon that caused devastating floods, forest fires, smog and famines across the world four years ago.

Climate scientists in several countries are predicting the return of El Nino after detecting its earliest signs, a tell-tale warming of the Pacific Ocean. If the warming continues over the next two months, then this autumn could see a repeat of the disasters that brought suffering to millions of people in 1997 and early 1998.

Already, satellite photographs have revealed several forest fires burning on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. A limited number of fires occur every year, but they do not usually begin until later in April, suggesting that El Nino may already be having an effect.

The Indonesian government is making plans to import rice in anticipation of a drought like the one that devastated agriculture in 1997. "All sectors must establish plans to avoid possible calamities, from forest fires to decreasing fish production and farm crops," said Dr Paulus Agus Winarso, from Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency.

The 1997 El Nino was the worst on record, perhaps the worst in history, and its diverse effects are still being felt today. In the coral atolls of Kiribati in the eastern Pacific, torrential rains swept away solid cover and killed the living reefs. Across south-east Asia, there was an extended drought. Coffee, cocoa, sugar, rubber, oil palm and rice crops failed. There were food shortages across south-east Asia and an outright famine in Papua New Guinea.

The unusual dryness led to vast forest fires in Sumatra and Borneo. When the smoke generated by these drifted over the densely populated cities of Malaysia and Singapore, it caused respiratory problems for millions of people and forced the closure of schools, public offices and airports.

In Borneo orang-utans, proboscis monkeys and other protected species were driven from their jungle habitats. Traffic accidents, maritime collisions and at least one plane crash were blamed on the smog, and a state of emergency was declared in several Malaysian and Indonesian cities.

The fires alone burnt 10 million hectares of land in Sumatra and Borneo, and the cost of the catastrophe is incalculable. As well as the physical damage, the hotel and holiday trade was affected because businessmen and tourists stayed away. William Kininmouth of the United Nations World Meteorological Organisation said: "When an El Nino comes, it generally brings drought conditions in Indonesia, also in neighbouring countries such as the Philippines, along the Malay peninsula and in Vietnam.

"In some El Nino events the impact spreads as far north as China and also to the west as far as India." At the Kyoto Climate Conference in December 1997, some scientist suggested El Nino had even contributed to that summer's floods in Germany.

Leoncio Amadore, director of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, said: "There are now more numerical computer models which agree that there will be warming towards the end of the year.

"Of the nine models, five show we will again experience warming. Before, we only had two to three models confirming this, while the rest were neutral."

So far the projections suggest that a new El Nino would be weaker than that of 1997, but the phenomenon is by its nature unpredictable. Mr Kininmouth says: "One of the things about El Nino is that it comes as a surprise. We don't know until it starts to evolve."

Australia's bitter harvests of salt poison best farmlands

12.04.2001 - NZ Herald

Crop-killing salt is gobbling up arable land in Australia at such a rate that an area twice the size of Ireland will be affected in the next 50 years.

Areas potentially affected will grow to 17 million hectares by 2050 from 5.7 million hectares now, a Government-backed report by the National Land and Water Resources Audit shows.

Of that, 13.7 million hectares will be some of Australia's most fertile farmland.

Around 250,000ha of land a year are being eaten alive by salt rising from the earth, corroding roads, railways and pipes and killing crops and biological habitats.

Wheat and wool, of which Australia is respectively the world's third and single biggest exporter, face the gravest risk.

Australia's bitter harvest is a result of European cropping practices which have unlocked ancient salt stores.

European settlement replaced native vegetation with crops with shallower roots and different seasonal growth, affecting water use.

Rising water tables are bringing dissolved salts to the surface, the report says. Hundreds or even thousands of years may be needed to fix the problem.

The 13.7 million hectares of farmland threatened by 2050 would be greater than the area now devoted to wheat, Australia's biggest crop.

This financial year, slightly more than 12 million hectares are being used to grow a wheat crop expected to be around 20 million tonnes.

The study, finished in March, is the first full evaluation to be undertaken of dryland salinity in Australia.

"The key message is ... that we expect a threefold change ... over the next 50 years," said Warwick MacDonald, technical director for the audit.

A spokeswoman for Agriculture Minister Warren Truss said the Government was committed to a $A1.4 ($1.7) billion programme to combat salinity, despite a tight budget.

Management options include maintaining the natural water balance, concentration on high water-use cropping and pasture ventures, and revegetation with trees or agro-forestry.

Engineering options range from simple banks and drains to larger-scale measures such as deep drains, sub-surface drains, pumps, inception and diversion systems.

The report shows that agricultural production from 4.6 million hectares of agricultural land is already potentially at risk.

By 2020, 6.4 million hectares will be affected.

The audit report shows salinity is concentrated around coastal regions, from northern Cape York Peninsula down through prime agricultural areas in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria and into South Australia.

"Much of the area at risk is Australia's most productive land," the report says. This includes the wheat-sheep belt in southwest Western Australia, and crop-pasture zones of NSW, South Australia and Victoria.

Towns are also at risk as bitumen and concrete are vulnerable to salt. So are gas pipelines, wetlands and habitat biodiversity.

Thursday April 12 1:41 PM ET
Shocked S.Africans Mourn Soccer Stampede Victims

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Soccer fan Roy Nation's worst nightmare came true Thursday when he found his 11-year-old son Rosswinn among the victims of the country's worst ever sports accident.

``My son, my son...We tried, we were shouting at them that things were going wrong and everything, but nobody reacted,'' he told reporters at the mortuary after identifying his son's body.

Rosswinn and 13-year-old Sphiwe Mpungose were the youngest of 43 victims of Wednesday's crush when thousands of fans tried to force their way into a packed Ellis Park stadium during a match between South Africa's two most popular soccer clubs.

Paramedics carry an injured soccer fan after a stadium crush at a South African Premier Soccer League match in Johannesburg April 11, 2001. At least 43 people were killed in a stampede at Johannesburg's Ellis Park soccer stadium during a match between the country's two biggest teams. (Juda Ngwenya/Reuters)

South African President Thabo Mbeki Thursday appointed a judicial commission of inquiry into the disaster.

Nation was among many grieving relatives and friends who gathered at the Hillbrow morgue, searching for those missing since last night.

Synthia Peta, whose brother went missing during the stampede, was too frightened to enter the morgue alone.

``I am waiting for my cousin to arrive,'' Peta told the South African Press Association (SAPA).

Stunned South African soccer fans watch as some of the dozens of people killed in a Johannesburg stadium stampede are covered with sheets, April 11, 2001. 43 people were killed and others remain missing after the human crush at Ellis Park soccer stadium during a match between the nation's two biggest teams. (Reuters)

``My brother is still missing. I haven't checked the hospitals yet. I thought I'd start with the worst possibility.'' One man collapsed outside the morgue after identifying his wife as one of the victims. Undertaker Charlotte Langa said the process of identifying the bodies was going very slowly. ``People don't know for sure yet whether their family member died or not,'' she told SAPA, adding that funerals would probably take place next week. Mbeki is expected to attend a memorial service. Deputy President Jacob Zuma toured Johannesburg Hospital with other government officials Thursday to comfort some of the 89 people rushed to city hospitals by helicopter and ambulance. Some 160 people were injured in total. ``There is a lot of emotional trauma...one patient indicated that the people under him had already died when he was rescued,'' provincial health minister Gwen Ramakgopa told reporters. Police set up a 24-hour information center and urged eyewitnesses to come forward with their accounts of the tragedy. Soccer officials said they were flooded with condolence messages from across South Africa and abroad, many of them from heads of state and foreign soccer federations.

South Africa's main labor federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, Thursday launched a disaster fund to aid the victims and their families.

El Salvador hit by another strong quake

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador

InterestAlert.com

(March 29, 2001 11:54 p.m. EST) - El Salvador was struck by another strong earthquake Thursday causing people to flee into the streets. But there were no reports of injuries or serious damage.

Thursday's 5.4-magnitude quake, centered in the central province of La Paz, occurred in the early morning hours and was felt throughout the country, according to the National Emergency Committee.

Two powerful earthquakes, on Jan. 13 and Feb. 13, killed at least 1,246 people and injured another 8,000. The first quake was magnitude 7.6. The second was 6.6.

Since then, the country has been rattled by over 7,000 aftershocks of varying magnitudes.

More than 1,600 in Africa dead from meningitis

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast

InterestAlert.com

(March 29, 2001 11:50 p.m. EST) - Since the beginning of the year, outbreaks of meningitis have claimed 1,606 live across sub-Saharan Africa and will likely kill more people in the coming weeks, a U.N. health official said Thursday.

Separate epidemics in five African countries - Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad, Ethiopia and Niger - have already infected 17,680 people, Max Hardiman said by telephone from the headquarters of the United Nations' World Health Organization in Geneva.

"There have already been five well-documented epidemics in Africa this year," Hardiman said.

"But the epidemics are ongoing. This (death toll) is only the total to date and the numbers will increase over the next few weeks."

Meningitis, an infection of membranes that protect the brain and spinal cord, often appears in Africa during dry seasons, frequently raging throughout a geographic belt stretching from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east.

With treatment, only 1 percent of infected people die.

Africa suffered its worst outbreak in 1996 when more than 150,000 people - most of them children - were infected in several countries and 16,000 died. Another 16,000 suffered brain damage or paralysis.

Sunday April 1 7:49 AM ET
Monster Sunspot Hurls Solar Flares Toward Earth

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four solar flares and a pair of powerful magnetic gas clouds spawned in a monster sunspot were headed for Earth and could affect power systems, satellites and some radio transmissions, a top space weather forecaster said.

They might also provide a dazzling display of the northern lights if they arrived at night, said Gary Heckman, senior forecaster for the U.S. Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado.

``They're headed our way,'' Heckman said in a telephone interview. ``But these still aren't the barnburner events. ... It will tickle some power systems. Satellite operators will notice.''

Four solar flares and a pair of powerful magnetic gas clouds spawned in a monster sunspot were headed for Earth March 30, 2001 and could affect power systems, satellites and some radio transmissions, a top space weather forecaster said. They might also provide a dazzling display of the northern lights if they arrived at night, said Gary Heckman, senior forecaster for the U.S. Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado. (National Science Foundation/Reuters)

The solar flares -- explosions in the sun's atmosphere -- and the fast-moving magnetic gas clouds, known as coronal mass ejections, were hurled at Earth from the biggest sunspot scientists have seen in the past decade.

The sunspot was about 86,800 miles in diameter and had about 13 times the surface area of the Earth, according to the National Science Foundation (news - web sites) (NSF) and the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites) (USGS (news - web sites)). The spot is so big it can be seen unaided as long as filters are used to protect the eyes from damage, the NSF said in a statement.

Sunspots are dark patches on the sun's surface caused by a concentration of distorted magnetic fields. Violent solar activity is believed to be caused by the release of magnetic energy.

The first bit of stormy solar weather left the sun on Wednesday, and the first effects of it were expected to reach Earth late on Friday and continue through the weekend, Heckman said.

The USGS, which monitors solar weather at a network of magnetic observatories around the world, said Earth's geomagnetic field ``is expected to become quite disturbed'' by this solar activity.

``While geomagnetic storms give rise to the beautiful northern lights, they can also pose a serious threat for commercial and military satellite operators, power companies, astronauts, and they can even shorten the life of oil pipelines in Alaska by increasing pipeline corrosion,'' a USGS statement said.

Heckman said it takes about two days from the time the sun fires off flares or throws out a coronal mass ejection until its effects can be felt on Earth, when a hot ionized gas of charged solar particles hits the Earth's magnetic field, causing fluctuations in it.

The big sunspot has another week to go before it rotates away from Earth, but that could be plenty of time to cause mischief, Heckman said.

``The monster sunspot's still there,'' he said on Friday afternoon. ``That region (of the sun) has been storing energy for more than 24 hours. It's just building it up, so when it's released, there is the potential for a really large event there. ... It's rather ominous just sitting there for the last 24 hours.''

An image of Thursday's coronal mass ejections can be seen online at http://www.spaceweather.com.

Friday March 30 5:59 PM ET
Monster Sunspot Hurls Solar Flares Toward Earth

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four solar flares and a pair of powerful magnetic gas clouds spawned in a monster sunspot were headed for Earth on Friday and could affect power systems, satellites and some radio transmissions, a top space weather forecaster said.

They might also provide a dazzling display of the northern lights if they arrived at night, said Gary Heckman, senior forecaster for the U.S. Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colorado.

``They're headed our way,'' Heckman said in a telephone interview. ``But these still aren't the barnburner events. ... It will tickle some power systems. Satellite operators will notice.''

The solar flares -- explosions in the sun's atmosphere -- and the fast-moving magnetic gas clouds, known as coronal mass ejections, were hurled at Earth from the biggest sunspot scientists have seen in the past decade.

The sunspot was about 86,800 miles in diameter and had about 13 times the surface area of the Earth, according to the National Science Foundation (news - web sites) (NSF) and the U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites) (USGS (news - web sites)). The spot is so big it can be seen unaided as long as filters are used to protect the eyes from damage, the NSF said in a statement.

Sunspots are dark patches on the sun's surface caused by a concentration of distorted magnetic fields. Violent solar activity is believed to be caused by the release of magnetic energy.

The first bit of stormy solar weather left the sun on Wednesday, and the first effects of it were expected to reach Earth late on Friday and continue through the weekend, Heckman said.

The USGS, which monitors solar weather at a network of magnetic observatories around the world, said Earth's geomagnetic field ``is expected to become quite disturbed'' by this solar activity.

``While geomagnetic storms give rise to the beautiful northern lights, they can also pose a serious threat for commercial and military satellite operators, power companies, astronauts, and they can even shorten the life of oil pipelines in Alaska by increasing pipeline corrosion,'' a USGS statement said.

Heckman said it takes about two days from the time the sun fires off flares or throws out a coronal mass ejection until its effects can be felt on Earth, when a hot ionized gas of charged solar particles hits the Earth's magnetic field, causing fluctuations in it.

The big sunspot has another week to go before it rotates away from Earth, but that could be plenty of time to cause mischief, Heckman said.

``The monster sunspot's still there,'' he said on Friday afternoon. ``That region (of the sun) has been storing energy for more than 24 hours. It's just building it up, so when it's released, there is the potential for a really large event there. ... It's rather ominous just sitting there for the last 24 hours.''

An image of Thursday's coronal mass ejections can be seen online at http://www.spaceweather.com.

Thursday March 29 2:18 PM ET
New Tremor Shakes El Salvador, No Damage Reported

SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - A tremor with magnitude of 5.4 rattled quake-prone El Salvador (news - web sites) early on Thursday, jolting residents awake but causing no known damage or injuries, authorities said.

The quake struck at 0054 local time (1:54 a.m. EST) with the epicenter located in the Pacific Ocean some 62 miles southeast of the capital San Salvador (news - web sites) and at a depth of 38 miles, according to the Center for Geological Investigation.

In January and February the Central American nation was devastated by two major quakes within 31 days that killed more than 1,150 people and caused an estimated $1.6 billion in damage.

The country has since coped with nearly constant tremors.

Thursday March 29 11:15 AM ET
Livestock Plague Ravages Britain, Netherlands

By Giles Elgood

LONDON (Reuters) - Foot-and-mouth (news - web sites) raged across Britain on Thursday and new cases in the Netherlands raised fears that the disease was no longer confined to a single tight cluster.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) gave interviews to American television networks to ram home his message that the country was ''not in quarantine.''

As the number of infected sites in Britain passed 750, Dutch authorities confirmed three new cases in an outbreak that Prime Minister Wim Kok has called a ``national disaster'' for the Netherlands.

Apart from Britain and the Netherlands, the disease has also hit Ireland and France, prompting European Union (news - web sites) bans on meat and livestock exports.

Foot-and-mouth disease continued to plague Britain March 29, 2001 and new cases in the Netherlands raised concerns that the disease was not confined to a single tight cluster. Agriculture officials carry the remains of a culled animal to a burial site at the center of the Cooley Peninsula, close to a farm which had the first confirmed case of foot-and-mouth in County Louth, Republic of Ireland. (Paul Mcerlane/Reuters)

British farmers' leaders called on the government to make up its mind over whether to start vaccinating livestock to try to halt the foot-and-mouth epidemic.

So far, hundreds of thousands of slaughtered cows, pigs and sheep have either been burned on massive outdoor pyres on farms the length of the country or shoveled by bulldozers into giant burial pits.

Tight Cluster

One of the three latest cases in the Netherlands was close to the village of Kootwijkerbroek, some distance from the tight cluster that contains the remaining outbreaks, suggesting that the disease was spreading further afield.

``All the cases are worrying, but this one in Kootwijkerbroek even more so,'' a spokesman for the farm ministry told Reuters.

``Our tracing tests are not yet finding relationships between the cases,'' he added.

Dutch farmers have attacked their government's response to the outbreak.

``Almost every day another village is infected,'' said Dirk Duijzer, director general of the main farmers' organization.

``Almost every day the minister says he still has it under control. I suppose that's right but meanwhile foot-and-mouth continues to spread.''

In Britain, the crisis has been as big a financial disaster for the tourist trade as it has for the farmers.

Blair has been anxious to tell the world that the country is still open for business despite the blazing heaps of animal carcasses that have appeared nightly on television screens.

Blair's spokesman said his message in interviews with U.S. networks would be: ``The United Kingdom is not in quarantine, the country is not closed. The vast majority of the UK is unaffected.''

At home, the epidemic has prompted calls from opposition politicians and farmers for Blair to cancel his plans for national elections on May 3.

But an opinion poll, which put Blair a strong 19 points ahead of the Conservatives, suggested he should forget any worries about a voter backlash if he calls an election while the countryside is ravaged by the livestock disease.

Opposition Conservative Party leader William Hague declared that Blair should delay and put all his efforts into getting on top of the disease, which threatens to ruin farmers, tourism operators and other rural businesses.

Out Of Control

``I would not call a general election with disease still clearly out of control,'' said Hague, who visited farmers in northern England and Scotland. ``I would not put party before country in this time of national crisis.''

After meeting Blair, the National Farmers' Union said a policy of allowing no more than 24 hours to elapse between diagnosis and slaughter had reduced a huge backlog of animals to be culled, but a speedy decision was needed on vaccination.

``There are some encouraging signs but we are still in a very, very serious situation and there are still major problems in Cumbria (northwest England) which must be tackled urgently,'' NFU President Ben Gill said.

``No firm decision has yet been taken on whether limited use of vaccination should be made but we are pressing for a decision to be taken as soon as possible so that farmers know where they stand.''

Many farming experts have criticized the government's tactics, saying delays in culling and then in dealing with carcasses have allowed the virus to spread like wildfire.

Wednesday March 28 10:35 PM ET
Britain Looks at Vaccine to Fight Foot-And-Mouth

By Ralph Gowling

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) will meet farmers' leaders on Thursday to discuss the possibility of launching a major vaccination program to try to halt Britain's financially crippling foot-and-mouth epidemic.

With an eye on winning a possible general election on May 3, Blair is now in charge of his Labor government's efforts to stamp out the highly infectious livestock disease, which has also taken root in the Netherlands, France and Ireland.

Britain has more than 700 infected sites and Blair has acknowledged that the scale of the epidemic threatens financial ruin for many farmers, tourism operators and other businesses.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said March 28, 2001 that while he could not be sure if a devastating outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was under control, Britain was still open and welcome to tourists. Construction equipment is used to move dead sheep into a pit as others wait to be slaughtered at the unused airfield at Great Orton near Carlisle, March 28. (Dan Chung/Reuters)

In the Netherlands, two more cases were reported on Wednesday taking the Dutch total to seven. Prime Minister Wim Kok called the outbreak a ``national disaster'' and said he would set up an emergency fund to help those affected by the disease.

Blair and the farmers' leaders would discuss preparations to vaccinate 180,000 cattle in two of the worst-hit foot-and-mouth areas in England -- the northwest region of Cumbria and Devon in the southwest, the BBC said.

A decision on whether to go ahead would be made within 48 hours, it said.

In Brussels on Wednesday, European Union (news - web sites) veterinary experts cleared Britain to use the option of vaccination in badly affected areas, EU diplomats said.

With the number of animals either burned on huge funeral pyres in fields across the land or buried in massive pits rising to over 480,000, the British government has said it is ready to consider vaccinating animals against foot-and-mouth.

Many countries refuse to import meat or meat products from regions or countries that vaccinate against foot-and-mouth as it means they lose their ``disease-free'' status on world markets.

Shock Waves Round The World

The foot-and-mouth outbreaks in Europe have sent shock waves round the world, and the United States, Japan and Russia are among major countries to have banned meat and other related imports linked with the disease.

Blair insisted on Wednesday that Britain was open for business despite the devastating epidemic that has hit the tourist trade as badly as the farmers.

But he could not be sure whether Britain was in control of the disease, which afflicts livestock such as sheep, pigs and cattle by causing severe weight loss. There was no sign of a slowdown on the horizon with the number of outbreaks in Britain rising by 36 to 729.

Tourism has been hard hit by television pictures flashed around the world showing ``keep out'' notices plastered across swathes of rural Britain and giant pyres burning day and night to dispose of tens of thousands of animals slaughtered because of foot-and-mouth.

Tourism chiefs have been warning Blair that the industry is losing $140 million a week and that this could rise to $350 million in the normally lucrative summer months that are now just weeks away.

Farmers in northwest England, worst hit by the crisis, took the fight to the politicians, vowing to blockade farms and roads in the region to stop slaughtermen killing healthy animals in a desperate attempt to halt the spread of the disease.

They are being led by a group that brought much of Britain to a standstill during fuel price protests last year.

Opinion Poll Boost For Blair

Blair received a boost from an opinion poll on Thursday that showed his Labor Party 19 points ahead of the opposition Conservatives, effectively giving him the thumbs up to call a general election for May 3.

The MORI poll for the London Times suggested Blair could forget any worries he might have had about a voter backlash if he calls an election while the epidemic rages on.

Farmers and the Conservatives have accused Blair of doing too little too late to combat the wildfire spread of foot-and-mouth across Britain.

They say that holding an election would be insensitive when people in rural Britain are facing financial ruin and much of the countryside is a quarantined ``no go'' area.

President Bush (news - web sites)'s U.S. administration on Wednesday rejected a European Union request to scale back a ban on the import of EU livestock and raw meat, saying Europe had not yet controlled foot-and-mouth.

The EU had hoped Washington would lift its ban against most of the 15-member bloc, leaving it in place only for Britain, Ireland, France and the Netherlands where the disease has been found.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said after talks in Washington with EU Food Safety Commissioner David Byrne that the European outbreak was ``not under control yet.''

Tuesday March 27 3:46 PM ET
Britain's Foot-And-Mouth Outbreak Unprecedented

By Susan Cornwell

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's outbreak of hundreds of cases of foot-and-mouth disease is unprecedented internationally and has yet to reach its peak, Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said Tuesday.

Speaking to parliament, Brown proposed a ban on the use of swill feeding of pigs in Britain, a possible cause of the outbreak that has seen at least 669 cases confirmed so far in Britain and established footholds in the Netherlands, France and Ireland.

Brown also suggested a 20-day ``standstill period'' after sale for sheep, goats and cattle, saying this would slow down transmission of the highly contagious livestock disease that has devastated Britain's rural economy.

He added that the Labor government was considering whether to use vaccination against foot-and-mouth.

``Experts agree that the current outbreak is unprecedented internationally,'' Brown told parliament, adding that it ``has not yet reached its peak.''

Authorities have identified the likely ``source farm'' from which the outbreak spread at Heddon-on-the-Wall in northern England, and investigations are continuing there, he said.

The farm was one of the few in Britain licensed to feed swill to pigs. The virus, which causes blisters in farm animals but is thought not to be harmful to humans, was detected there last month and spread like wildfire across Britain.

Brown said the disease may have been introduced into Britain through illegal commercial or personal imports of meat.

But he did not say where the smuggled meat might have come from. The Times newspaper said infected meat, probably smuggled from the Middle or Far East and served in a restaurant before ending up as pig swill, was the likely source of the outbreak.

Industry experts said Britain has long been a number one destination for dodgy meat traders hoping to sell cheap meat smuggled from countries where foot-and-mouth disease is endemic.

Vaccination Considered

Britain's Labor government was considering whether to use vaccination against the disease and had sought permission from the European Union (news - web sites) Standing Veterinary Committee should it be decided that this was the right way forward, Brown said.

The government previously shied away from vaccination because it can have long-term implications for export markets.

But Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) also said the government could change policy as Britain's epidemic goes into a sixth week.

``As you track the disease and see how it spreads, things that may have seemed utterly unpalatable a short time ago have to be on the agenda,'' Blair told BBC radio.

Blair's long-held hopes of calling a general election for May 3 have now become linked to his success or failure in fighting the disease.

Out of a total livestock population of more than 55 million, 697,500 cases had been authorized for slaughter, and 423,000 of these had been culled. Blair sent in the army with bulldozers on Monday to dig a mass grave for animals.

One farmer went to court Tuesday to challenge the slaughter of healthy animals in areas next to infected farms.

Pig Swill Too Risky

Brown told parliament that the disease could not be transmitted through pig swill if it is boiled. But he concluded that the risk of swill feeding was greater than any benefit to the farms -- less than 100 -- still using the practice.

He also suggested applying to sheep, goats and cattle the trading restrictions that already applied to pigs, which cannot be sold and then re-sold within 21 days.

Brown said the virus may have gone undetected up to three weeks before it was diagnosed, during which time sheep were ''criss-crossing the country in hundreds of separate movements'' apparently spreading the disease.

The Times said the strain of virus in British livestock was common in China, Cambodia, Vietnam and South-East Asia and had probably come from the Middle or Far East.

Brown said only that the strain of the virus did not manifest itself clearly in sheep, making detection difficult. ''Apparently healthy animals may be disease carriers,'' he said.

Ireland Postpones Census

Ireland said Tuesday it had postponed its national population census, scheduled for the end of April 2001, because of fears officials roaming around the countryside could spread foot-and-mouth disease.

``The government has taken this decision with regret but views it as a necessary part of the national effort to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease,'' the government chief whip Seamus Brennan said in a statement.

In the British province of Northern Ireland, where foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed at a single site four weeks ago, officials said livestock exports would resume next week following a decision of the EU's top veterinary advisers.

Exports were still banned from the immediate area where the disease was discovered.

France will not rule out vaccinating livestock against foot-and-mouth disease, but such a move would be catastrophic for exports, farm minister Jean Glavany said Tuesday.

Chinese restaurant pinpointed as source of outbreak

Ron MacKenna

WEDNESDAY 28 MARCH 2001 - The Scotsman

Smuggled meat served in a Chinese restaurant in Newcastle was confirmed as the most likely cause of the foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Agriculture minister Nick Brown confirmed meat illegally imported from China and used by a restaurant in the North East was the likely source of the 649 cases which have blighted the country.

The Scotsman reported four weeks ago that waste meat collected from the restaurant, one of 12 in the city’s Stowell Street, is believed to have been fed to pigs on a farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumbria, where the foot-and-mouth outbreak started.

Bins full of food waste were collected every Tuesday morning by farmer Jimmy Brown who turned it into pig swill at a small boiling unit on his farm outside Newcastle.

Mr Brown shares the use of the pig swill unit with his neighbour Bobby Waugh. It was to Mr Waugh’s farm that the first case of foot-and-mouth was traced earlier this year after he sold infected pigs at a market.

Mr Waugh has denied that he and Mr Brown ever shared the processed pig swill, but officials have been suspicious about how sterile the process was and whether swill from different sources was kept separate. Waste food for pig swill is supposed to be collected in sealed containers and transported in a sealed vehicle to the processing unit.

But sources in Newcastle’s food hygiene unit said there were suspicions that lids were rarely tightly fitted on the 90 litre galvanised bins used to take the food away. It is also suspected that the lorry used to transport the waste was not a sealed unit either.

"The city was split up into four areas by licensed pig swill collectors of which Mr Brown was one," the source said.

"But he was the only person collecting from the Chinese restaurant area as far as we know. Even if food was contaminated with foot-and-mouth, the disease should have been killed by processing. That begs the question was it being carried out properly on the farm?"

Pig swill is supposed to be boiled to 100 degrees to kill off any bacteria. Mr Brown had a licence to process pig swill. It is thought his neighbour Mr Waugh did not. Mr Waugh has confirmed MAFF officials had suggested to him the outbreak began in pigswill.

Army prepares for apocalypse as 500,000 animals face death

WEDNESDAY 28 MARCH 2001 - The Scotsman

David Montgomery Science Correspondent

THE word wasn’t used lightly, and the huge mounds of earth piling up by the side of the disused runway lent it a gloomy resonance.

"Apocalyptic" was how the man in charge of the first mass grave for hundreds of thousands of culled livestock in the foot-and-mouth crisis described his task.

And just to make sure there was no mistaking the threat posed by the virus, the army officer in charge of the burial operation said his troops would be carrying out the job with suits and chemicals normally reserved for biological warfare.

Whether the pits - each 150 metres long, 15 metres wide and four metres deep - represent a more horrific sight than cattle and sheep being burnt on massive funeral pyres is a moot point.

But the fact that the burial site at a disused airfield in Great Orton, near Carlisle, can hold up to 500,000 animal carcasses gives a clear indication of the sheer scale of the problem facing Britain’s farmers.

As the death toll from the epidemic continued to rise, Brigadier Alex Birtwistle, who is commanding the army’s operation in Cumbria, said five other sites in the county were being inspected to see if they were suitable venues for mass slaughter pits.

More than 584,000 animals have already been earmarked for destruction and the number of cases in the UK rose to 586 last night.

In Scotland, one further case of the disease was confirmed in Dumfries and Galloway yesterday taking the total to 79. Another eight suspected cases are still awaiting the results of tests, including one in Dunbar.

It also emerged yesterday that sheep on a farm in East Lothian were slaughtered as a precautionary measure, raising fears that the virus had spread outside Dumfries and Galloway.

A spokesman for the Scottish executive said last night that vets ordered the slaughter of 182 animals and took samples for testing after signs of the disease were detected on Sunnyside farm, near Haddington.

While mass graves have so far not been necessary in Scotland, the grim task of transporting carcasses to Great Orton airfield, many which have been dead for days, in covered lorries could begin as early as today .

The rotting bodies will be taken from the farms and sealed in trucks to stop the disease spreading on their way to the airfield, and the wagons will be disinfected before leaving by troops in protective clothing.

Many more thousands of animals are destined for burial sites as the foot-and-mouth cull was stepped up yesterday.

All animals on farms neighbouring infected sites were being prepared for slaughter as part of the nationwide "contiguous cull" strategy announced on Saturday by Nick Brown, the agriculture minister, and the chief vet in England, Jim Scudamore.

It will run alongside the wider 3km "firebreak" cull zones around foot-and-mouth hotspots in southern Scotland and Cumbria. The introduction of 3km slaughter zones around every infected farm in Britain is still being considered by the government.

The culls will involve slaughter of all animals susceptible to the virus, including sheep, cattle and pigs. The definition of which farms are "neighbouring" will take local conditions into account.

A total of 200,000 apparently healthy sheep in Scotland, of which 130,000 are in Dumfries and Galloway, are being slaughtered as vets try to contain the disease.

Dumfries and Galloway council said slaughter and disinfection had been completed at 71 of the infected farms and 16 farms under the culling programme.

Earlier, Brig Birtwistle said live sheep earmarked for slaughter as part of the three-kilometre pre-emptive cull were due to be killed at the airfield later in the week.

"In the first part of the cull we have about 500,000 sheep to take out of farms live and bring to be slaughtered in the most humane way - it is an apocalyptic task, this is a mass problem," he said.

The airfield would be scattered with lime to alter the soil’s acidity to destroy the disease.

Foot-and-mouth was causing a great deal of suffering to the farming community in Cumbria, he said, adding: "I can’t tell you how much - I have had farmers in tears."

Plans were already being laid yesterday to prevent a repeat of the disaster.

Rapid movements of sheep around the country are to be blocked by a ban on sales within 21 days of purchase.

The government will also launch a review later this week expected to lead to a nationwide ban on pig swill, which is suspected of fostering the spread of diseases.

Pig swill - the slops from school dinners, restaurants and cafes - is already banned in some European countries, such as Portugal and Luxembourg.

And Britain bans the use of uneaten airline dinners in swill, because they may contain food sourced from abroad which could bring disease into the

country.

Suppliers and users of swill containing meat are currently required to be licensed, to submit to quarterly MAFF inspections and to heat-treat the slops to 100C or more to kill off bugs.

But in the wake of the present epidemic and last year’s classical swine fever outbreak in East Anglia, these precautions are no longer considered adequate.

A government source said: "It is basically a risk that is simply not worth taking. The government cannot be there every time this stuff is boiled up, so it makes sense to look at banning it."

Just 82,000 pigs - about 1.4 per cent of the national herd - are thought still to be fed on swill, and a MAFF spokesman stressed that there was as yet no proof that pig swill was to blame for the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

Monday March 26 10:45 AM ET
Mass Grave Awaits British Livestock

By Giles Elgood

LONDON (Reuters) - The British army sent in bulldozers Monday to dig a mass grave the length of a football pitch for up to 500,000 farm animals in the latest attempt to bring a foot-and-mouth epidemic under control.

Britain now has 617 confirmed outbreaks of foot-and-mouth and has slaughtered 406,000 animals, most of which have been incinerated, the agriculture ministry said.

A Herdwick sheep grazes in the Wrynose Pass as reports of a farm in the pass has contracted foot and mouth disease, Sunday March 25, 2001. The farm at the heart of the mountainous Lake District has a herd of sheep that roam wild over the peaks . The sheep, called Herdwick's, are native to the area and would be almost impossible to replace. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

The virus has spread to The Netherlands and Ireland as well as to France, where authorities were Monday trying to track down animals infected by the disease. The three countries account for the eight cases in the rest of Europe.

China banned imports of Dutch and Irish livestock at risk from foot-and-mouth.

With Britain's livestock and rural tourism industries in crisis, time was running out for Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s hope of holding a general election in May.

Blair must make his announcement next week if he is to go ahead with his preferred election date of May 3.

Critics say he would appear insensitive to the plight of victims of the crisis if he presses ahead with those plans without being seen to be on top of the epidemic.

Pyres Of Carcasses

Since the outbreak began in Britain a month ago, pyres of animal carcasses have been burning on farms across the land.

In an attempt to speed up the disposal of dead animals, huge pits were being dug at a former air force base in northwest England, where the disease is at its worst, to bury up to 500,000 slaughtered sheep, officials said.

Blair said the fight against highly infectious foot-and-mouth was a ``huge logistical operation.''

``This is like tracking a common cold in the human population,'' he told parliament.

He said the priority was to reduce the gap between animals being diagnosed with the disease and being slaughtered to 24 hours.

A senior member of the opposition Conservative Party called for vaccination to help build up immunity in British flocks.

``Tourists do not want to come and see the deathly pall of smoke hanging like some painting of Dante's Inferno across the hills and valleys,'' said Conservative MP John Redwood.

Blair said he was keeping the possibility of vaccination under review.

``Vaccination is not an easy solution to this problem either. I believe that most people recognize that the policy of containment, containment by culling, is the right policy, at any rate at the present time.'' Agriculture Minister Nick Brown will make a statement to parliament Tuesday on a possible ban on pig swill and proposals to limit sheep trading, which have both been blamed for spreading the disease.

Europeans Nervous

European political leaders have shown they are nervous about the disease, which threatens the livelihoods of farmers, tourism operators and other businesses.

French Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany warned Sunday that foot-and-mouth could spread through France unless people across the country worked together and observed draconian government measures against the disease.

France announced Friday that a second case of the infection had been found on a farm near Paris, 10 days after the first case was located. It believes the virus jumped across country because of an illegal movement of livestock.

``I will do everything to prevent other cases, I hope that there won't be other cases. I fear that there will be other cases if people hide things from us,'' Glavany said in a radio interview. The traders and farmers involved deny wrongdoing.

Blair's spokesman said the government had been forced to upgrade its response to the crisis.

``The advice at the start was that it would not accelerate as quickly as it has,'' the spokesman said.

Ireland is culling thousands of animals and France has mounted huge slaughter missions to try to stamp out the disease.

In Britain, government sources have admitted they underestimated the scale of the outbreak, prompting opposition leaders to urge Blair to delay plans for a national election.

Clive Soley, chairman of the parliamentary Labor Party, said about 70 percent of the party's legislators favored going ahead with a May 3 poll. ``There is a clear majority in favor of going for the elections on that day,'' he said.

Monday March 26 5:27 AM ET
Quake Aftershocks Hit Japan

By CHIKAKO MOGI, Associated Press Writer

TOKYO (AP) - More aftershocks hit southwestern Japan on Monday two days after a strong earthquake killed two people, injured nearly 200 and disrupted industry.

The Meteorological Agency advised officials to remain vigilant for strong aftershocks like the one of magnitude 5.2 that struck early Monday, one of 22 aftershocks recorded since Saturday.

People were still clearing rubble from falling roof tiles and broken fences after the magnitude-6.4 temblor hit Hiroshima and surrounding areas Saturday afternoon. Hiroshima is about 430 miles southwest of Tokyo.

Elderly couple receive the plastic tarpaulin at Kure City Hall Sunday, March 25, 2001, a day after the magnitude-6.4 temblor rocked wide area in western Japan, killing two people. (AP Photo/Naokazu Oinuma)

A total of 7,122 buildings in southwestern Japan had sustained some damage, the Home Affairs Ministry in Tokyo said. Thirteen were completely destroyed. The ministry said it has received reports of 183 injuries, but no more reports of deaths since the two.

In and around Hiroshima, 114 people were still living away from their homes.

The economic impact to Hiroshima industries was estimated at about $2.8 million, said Hiroshima municipal official Maiko Kawagoe. Production facilities at major companies such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Oji Paper, however, were running normally Monday and train services, which were temporarily disrupted by aftershocks, had resumed, she said.

Hiroshima-based Mazda Motor Corp. (news - web sites) said production facilities weren't affected, though there were some broken windows. Assembly lines, however, were halted for about 90 minutes Monday morning when workers arrived late due to train delays.

But Idemitsu Kosan said it suspended operations at its oil refinery in Tokuyama, just west of Hiroshima, and couldn't say when they would start up again. The company reported no damage, but was checking the quake's impact. Supply to customers wasn't disrupted, however, because of adequate stockpiling, the company said.

Mitsubishi Electric said at its plant in Saijo, south of Hiroshima, that large-scale integrated circuit production has been suspended since Saturday and would resume in a few days. Another of its plants restarted operation on Sunday after a temporary suspension.

People clean up debris of a partially collapsed apartment building caused by a strong earthquake while neighbors look on in Imabari, Japan, Sunday, March 25, 2001. The quake rocked southwestern Japan March 24, which caused the cancellation of trains, damaged houses and water pipes. Two people died and over a hundred others injured. (AP Photo/Naokazu Oinuma)

As for private residences, about 10,000 households on islands off Hiroshima remain without water, Kawagoe said.

In October last year, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck a largely rural area in Tottori state, northwest of Hiroshima. No one died, though at least 120 people were hurt. More than 6,000 people died when an earthquake devastated the western port city of Kobe in 1995.

Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone nations as it sits atop four tectonic plates, slabs of land that move across the earth's surface.

FCC raises concern over foot and mouth disease
Monday March 26, 2001

The Fiji Chamber of Commerce is concerned with the spread of the Foot and Mouth disease which is reeking havoc in the livestock industry overseas.

It is seeking assurance from the ministry of agriculture that the disease will not reach our shores. Former president of the Chamber Joseph Singh said they discussed "adequate safe guards" being put in place to keep the disease at bay during the Chambers on Saturday.

"We as a small island country with an economy which is dependent on agricultural exports for survival and if the disease comes into existence here it will be devastating," Mr Singh said. He said the Fiji economy was still recovering from the aftermath of the May 19 coup with low sugar import and tourism revenue.

"Extra vigilance on the part of the quarantine department is our only line of defense, keeping in mind illegal introductions of the disease could also be made here." Mr Singh also said although the issue was an international one, our dependence on livestock was high with many farmers using cattle to plough the lands.

However, acting Director of Animal Health in the Ministry of Agriculture, Doctor Joeli Vakabua said late last week there has been no report of the Foot and Mouth disease in the livestock industry in Fiji and he feels there is nothing to worry about.

Dr Vakabua also said with the quarantine systems placed in Fiji, there is no possibility of the disease coming in and no importation of animals or animal products are done from countries which are stricken with the disease.

Fiji's Daily Post

Saturday March 24 2:09 PM ET
UK's Blair Races Home to Tackle Foot-And-Mouth

by Anna Baker

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) left a European Union (news - web sites) summit early on Saturday to race home to tackle his country's growing foot-and-mouth crisis.

Reflecting a new urgency in his battle against the highly infectious livestock disease, Blair flew home from Stockholm as his EU partners were still crafting their final declaration.

A communique issued at the end of the summit expressed EU leaders' confidence that measures being taken would eradicate the disease, which has now begun affecting Ireland, France and the Netherlands despite frantic efforts to build a firewall against it.

A fourth case of foot-and-mouth was confirmed by the Dutch Agriculture Ministry on Saturday, just south of three other cases.

France reported late on Friday that it had discovered a second case on a farm near Paris.

In Britain, where the number of confirmed cases has reached 524, the government announced that its diagnosis, slaughter and incineration process had speeded up, after warnings that delays could cause the loss of half the nation's 62 million livestock.

``The essence of this is to make sure that as soon as we identify the disease we're immediately slaughtering the animals and taking the actions necessary in the surrounding areas,'' Blair said between talks with farmers' leaders in Devon, one of Britain's hardest hit counties.

Britain has destroyed hundreds of thousands of farm animals since the outbreak began just over a month ago. Ireland, which has called in the army to help contain the crisis, is also culling thousands of animals.

European Union veterinary experts authorised limited use of vaccines to help the Netherlands fight foot-and-mouth disease but a widespread inoculation policy was ruled out.

Dutch Trace To France

The Dutch outbreak has been traced to animals that traveled from Ireland through Mayenne, northwest France, where the first continental case of the disease was found.

``They still have a link to Mayenne. It means that we can still trace back every case to France,'' ministry spokesman Bruno Bruggink said.

There were no further details on the latest Dutch case at the town of Nijbroek.

In Paris, the Agriculture Ministry blamed its second case on ``fraudulent practices,'' saying the animals on the farm in Seine-et-Marne had come into contact with British sheep illegally transported from Mayenne.

The farmer, whose 100 cows and 200 sheep were immediately slaughtered, angrily denied any illegal practices.

The ministry said it was banning the export of all French meat, dairy and animal produce, including leather, that had not been specially treated against the disease.

The ban, which came into force at 0700 GMT, will remain until at least March 27, when EU veterinary officials discuss the outbreak.

Eu Call For Greener Farming

At the EU summit, Blair appealed to his European partners to send vets to reinforce Britain's over-stretched veterinary service.

Vast funeral pyres are burning day and night across the country to incinerate the carcasses of culled animals.

But in their communique issued earlier on Saturday, EU leaders struck an upbeat note.

``(The European Council) is confident that these measures will contain and ultimately eradicate foot-and-mouth disease and BSE (news - web sites),'' it said.

They made no new promises of compensation to farmers for animals destroyed because of foot-and-mouth and mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE).

The communique demonstrated that German-led calls for more environmentally friendly farming methods were now broadly accepted by all EU leaders.

Britain Nearly ``Out Of Control''

The British epidemic has prompted movement bans on livestock, closed down much of the countryside to the public and brought tourism to its knees.

About 300,000 animals have been killed so far and scientists have warned that the crisis could get 10 times worse.

British Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said it was now taking about 12 hours between cases being confirmed and animals being slaughtered. Media reports had suggested that previously it took double that time.

The government's chief scientist Professor David King warned on Friday that processes must be speeded up to stop the disease going out of control.

``If we proceed as we are at the moment, the epidemic is out of control, and in the worst case scenario out of control means that we might even lose 50 percent of the livestock of Great Britain,'' he told BBC radio.

Saturday March 24, 10:25 PM

Neither man nor beast spared from terror in Hiroshima quake

HIROSHIMA, Japan, March 24 (AFP) -

Man's closest relative shared in the terror felt by thousands in the Hiroshima region of western Japan Saturday when a powerful earthquake struck, leaving two women dead.

Monkeys shrieked and hurtled around their fake mountain home at the city's Asa Zoo when the tremor -- measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale -- hit in the afternoon.

One woman visiting the zoo screamed and ran around in circles, unable to decide where to head for shelter.

Planks forming a stage at the beautiful Itsukushima Shrine, a UNESCO world heritage site set in the sea, were ruptured and fissures appeared in walls at the Shinto monument, established in 593 AD.

One building was razed and nine others had partially collapsed, according to police.

"The shaking was so strong. Roof tiles flew away. Mirrors and glasses were all broken," Hisako Ishii, a 63-year-old housewife in Hiroshima, told AFP.

"In all my years, I have never experienced such a strong earthquake. It was beyond terror," she said. "I could neither move nor speak. The quake chilled me to the bone."

A powerful earthquake occurs roughly every five decades around Hiroshima, which was razed by a US atom bomb towards the end of World War II in August 1945.

The tremor revived memories of the Kobe disaster in 1995, when 6,432 people were killed in a catastrophic quake.

Kazunori Masawaki, a civil servant in Kure City near Hiroshima where one woman was killed in her collapsing house, said he was driving when disaster struck.

"I was stopping at a red light. All of a sudden, my car started shaking violently," the 45-year-old told Jiji Press.

"I thought at first that my car had broken down. Then I saw power lines swaying and I realised it was an earthquake."

Aftershocks intensified the terror, with minor tremors continuing late into the night.

"I have never experienced such a powerful quake in my life," a man in his late 30s, who owns a pottery shop in downtown Hiroshima, told NHK television as he cleared the debris of broken china with a broom.

"I was yelling at my customers to go outside. It was incredible," he said.

The travel plans of about 25,000 passengers were thrown into chaos after the quake forced the day-long suspension of bullet train services around Hiroshima.

"We have suspended the trains because the quake strained rails at some points and bent some utility poles," said Takashi Ohyama, a spokesman for Japan Railways West.

"The damage has not been so severe, but we are not sure at the moment if we can reopen the line tomorrow morning," he said.

The frequency of tremors and volcanic activity in Japan has increased markedly in recent months, leading the Meteorological Agency last month to launch a study on whether Mount Fuji could erupt for the first time since 1707.

An average of about 10 tremors are recorded a year under "Fuji-san," as the Japanese reverently call their national icon, but there were 497 in the last three months of 2000 alone, according to the agency.

Saturday March 24 3:32 PM ET
Two Dead, 148 Hurt in Strong Japan Quake

By Teruaki Ueno

TOKYO (Reuters) - At least two people were killed and more than 148 injured when a strong earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale hit the city of Hiroshima in western Japan on Saturday.

Trains Halted

Railway officials suspended service in the area for all of Saturday on the ``bullet'' trains which serve most of Japan's major cities to check for possible distortions to the railbeds.

The quake struck at about 3:28 p.m., the Meteorological Agency said. It was centerd about 38 miles below the seabed at a point in Hiroshima Bay.

There was no ``tsunami'' or tidal wave triggered by the earthquake.

Television pictures showed smashed glass strewn across the pavement and street and shop floors littered with fallen goods.

Seiji Desaki, a local government official in Hiroshima, said the quake knocked tiles off the roofs of homes near his office. He said it did not cause any power outage.

``It is calm now. But the earthquake shook our office building radically for a brief while,'' he said.

There appeared to be no structural damage to major buildings.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori (news - web sites), in Russia for a summit with President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), quickly issued a statement saying: ``I have directed the government will make every effort to determine the extent of the damage to keep in contact with the appropriate local authorities.''

Mori had been sharply criticized over his handling earlier this year of the sinking of a Japanese fishing boat by a U.S. submarine when he finished his golf game before returning to Tokyo.

Long prone to killer quakes, Japan has strict building codes that mean there is typically little major damage from all but the most serious tremors, such as the massive quake that hit the city of Kobe in western Japan in 1995, killing more than 6,000 people.

The tremor did not affect the operations of two nuclear plants in the area, according to the plants' operators.

Shikoku Electric Power Co said its Ikata Nuclear Power Plant in Ikata, Ehime Prefecture, about 40 miles south of the center of the quake, was unaffected.

Chugoku Electric Power Co said its plant in Kashima, Shimane Prefecture, about 100 miles north of the epicenter, was operating normally.

The world of hunger
Monday March 26, 2001

WHEN you talk about world hunger the first thing that comes to mind are pictures of ragged, thin children in impoverished countries that very so often flash across your television screen during the evening news or as a world headline in the newspaper.

We are always quick to commend the country that comes to the aid of these hungry little ones and can only mutter heartfelt sympathies and nothing more.

There is very little time spent in the deliberation of how such could happen and how much money one should folk out of that bank account to help them.

World hunger is an international problem, and as much as the responsibility for the cause and solution lies in the hands of the wealthy members of the international community, the obligation is often shunned.

So what causes such huge destruction of land are the losses of innocent lives? The first and most responsible is the environment.
When a natural disaster strikes a country with inadequate industry and agricultural base the economy is most certain to suffer as a consequence.

A farmer who is growing perhaps for his family on a subsistence basis or to cash in and make a living will be forced to slaughter his breeding stock and eat the seeds kept for his next harvest. As a result the farmer and his family and the entire country in the long run will have inadequate food supply. When such happens there is a large loss of human lives and it is most certain that the weakest of the lot, the innocent children, will be the first to go.

Many countries build their economy on exports of agricultural produce and livestock, these countries are susceptible to the invasion of disease. That attack can accelerate the deterioration of the very fabric and infrastructure that a country survives on. This is the case in much of Europe - through the spread of the Foot and Mouth disease and earlier on, its Mad Cow cousin. However, because of the wealth and the availability of surplus resources in such countries outbreaks can be contained even though it means the slaughter of thousands of heads of livestock. This is not the case for smaller developing countries which are unable to cope with such huge losses and therefore cripple their barely surviving economy.

For such atrocities mankind is much more responsible then the visiting virus or the fatal tsunami. We have played a huge part in the degradation of our environment, we produce new gases release them into the atmosphere. We pollute our seas and continue to warm our planet to the point that we melt our polar caps, and possibly drown future generations in the possible event of a complete water world.

We wage useless wars with each other and suffocate the natural environment with nuclear tests. If anything the human race is certainly paying the price of folly for playing God.

The changes that we bring to the environment cause changes to weather patterns....the desert regions are suffering deluges, the polar regions are getting warmer, and the areas that do not usually suffer from natural disasters are now bombarded with frequent hurricanes, storms and as of late major earthquakes.

In good stead however, one should not ask the question of who is responsible for all these, but rather what one can do to rectify the problems.

Wealthy nations though at most times do not cause the problem but they are to some extent responsible for the continued suffering of these stricken countries and its people.

When poor nations are experiencing hunger and its masses continue to die in the fight for food and survival, the wealthy ones have to be goaded into lending a hand.

Often political correctness and international reputation weighs heavily in the decision of granting aid.
A more surprising fact is the refusal of help because of the possible consequences on the countries' economy and its international trade relations.

The convoluted scenario is that countries that produce surplus do not give it as aid to poorer countries or make it available at affordable rates. Doing this will lower the market price on the countries' exported goods and thus they will have a lower revenue income.

This is a possible reason that a planet which produces much more then it could use is still suffering from inadequate supplies.
As much as the hunger problem may encompass catastrophic famine and starvation a more persisting and serious problem is chronic food shortage.

This is the inadequate supply of needed nutrition that should be composed in a diet that will contribute towards a healthy and vibrant individual.

The seriousness of the problem can be seen in the difference of statistics where in the 1980's approximately one million people are said to have died in the sub-Saharan Africa because of a drought related famine. By contrast however twenty times that number and most often more die from the effects of chronic undernutrition and malnutrition. Most of these are children and not only in poor needy countries but in larger wealthy nations as well.

Aid workers have often seen that although there is a large provision of aid and supplies some people get access to others still yet go hungry.

In recent years policy makers have shifted their attention from total food availability to food security, this is the capability to obtain food on a day to day basis.

In the 1970's efforts were directed to family food security in assisting poor families to improve their lot.
However, it was seen that in family situations when there was plenty the women and children did not get enough, as the men spend the money on themselves.

Programmes for the 1990's changed to securing money and aid for the weaker members of a society and call for new approaches to aid and government directing instead towards individual food security.

How many people can the world feed? Studies have shown that the number of people that world food production can feed, considering all variables such as fertilizers, arable crop and other factors of agricultural production is at a minimum of 5.8 billion people. This however, is to no doubt increase should major hurdles be crossed in genetic food production for bigger and better crops. As yet the world population can be adequately fed by the goods that are so far being produced.

However, like all other organisms the Homo Sapien species when supplied with adequate resources is apt to increase exponentially in size.

So the problem does not indeed lie in whether the world can produce more and more but in whether they can effectively distribute what it has in order that everyone has sufficient sustenance to suffice.

Fiji's Daily Post

Saturday March 24, 5:44 PM

Strong Quake Hits Japan, Two Dead

By KENJI HALL, Associated Press Writer

TOKYO (AP) - A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 struck a wide area in southwestern Japan on Saturday afternoon, killing at least two people and injuring more than a dozen others.

One woman was killed under a collapsing concrete wall, said Yoshinobu Tanimoto, a fire department official in Hiroshima state. He said there were another 16 reports of casualties, including one person who was seriously injured.

In neighboring Ehime state, a woman fleeing her home died after roof tiles crashed onto her head, said national Police Agency official Tsuyoshi Iwashita.

The quake, centered about 38 miles below ground, struck at 3:28 p.m. local time near Hiroshima state, about 430 miles southwest of Tokyo, the Meteorological Agency said.

The agency said there was no danger of tsunami, the waves caused by undersea disturbances such as earthquakes and volcanic activity.

``There was a terrible shaking and some products fell on to the floor,'' said Takuya Ueda, a cashier at a convenience store in Hiroshima. ``It lasted a long time, about 30 seconds, but there was no panic inside the store.''

The quake was also powerful enough to shatter windows. Train service was stopped, and the airport in Hiroshima closed for inspection. Telephone service was also disrupted, but there was no report of electrical blackouts.

Smoke could be seen rising from at least two places in Hiroshima, but officials could not immediately confirm whether it was from fires caused by the quake.

Michiyo Koniki, a police spokesman in neighboring Tottori state, said the quake caused a slow rocking motion that lasted around 15-20 seconds.

He said there were no reports of injuries, damage to buildings or fires in Tottori. The quake wasn't strong enough to cause books or other objects to fall from shelves there.

In Hiroshima city, buildings swayed violently and people had trouble standing.

Television footage taken from inside NHK's Hiroshima office showed hanging lights shaking and employees leaving their desks to head for the exits. Telephone service in the area was also interrupted briefly.

The quake was felt as far away as South Korea, where windows shook in towns along the nation's eastern and southern coasts.

Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and straddles three tectonic plates, the huge slabs of land that cover the surface of the Earth.

A magnitude 6 quake can seriously damage houses and buildings in a populated area. Saturday's quake was located offshore and relatively deep, which may have lightened its impact.

In October, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck a largely rural area in Tottori prefecture. Though at least 120 people were hurt in that quake, no one died. Some 2,000 homes were damaged, but only two were destroyed.

Some 6,000 people died when a powerful quake devastated the western Japan port of Kobe in 1995.

Friday March 23 7:12 PM ET
Britain's Farm Crisis 'Could Spiral Out of Control'

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - With a second outbreak of food-and-mouth disease in France adding to farmers' woes, the British government's chief scientific adviser warned that the epidemic could wipe out half of Britain's livestock.

The dire prediction of the disease going out of control was made by Professor David King who said the highly infectious epidemic could get 10 times worse.

The vision of increasing swathes of Britain becoming no-go areas, its farms further devastated and tourism crippled, is posing a problem for Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) on whether to press ahead with a general election he was expected to call for May 3.

Farmers round up sheep for an inspection of possible foot and mouth disease on a farm in Michaelchurch Escley, Herefordshire March 23, 2001. The British government have warned that the epidemic is spreading at an alarming rate and that the predicted number of infected sites across the country could rise 10-fold and exceed 4,000 by June. (Ian Hodgson/Reuters)

At the European Union (news - web sites) summit in Stockholm, he was caught on camera being asked by European Commission (news - web sites) President Romano Prodi how long he had before having to make a decision on the timing.

``It's about 10 days,'' Blair said before spotting that the cameras were rolling.

Blair is said to be eager to make the most of a so-called ''feel-good factor'' engendered by a buoyant economy. But he risks accusations of insensitivity if he goes ahead with the vote when the countryside is being ravaged by foot-and-mouth.

``In the worst case scenario, out of control means that we might even lose 50 percent of the livestock of Great Britain,'' Professor King said on Friday, offering the gloomiest forecast since the outbreak erupted.

Call For 'Firewall Cull'

King called for draconian measures, stressing it was vital to kill infected animals within 24 hours and strike speedily with a ''firewall cull'' -- slaughtering even healthy animals in neighboring farms.

Veterinary officials confirmed a second case in France and ramped up preventative measures against the livestock plague. The fresh case was found on a farm in the Seine-et-Marne department, 30 miles northeast of Paris. All the farm's 100 cows and 200 sheep would be slaughtered and their carcasses destroyed, the agriculture ministry said.

The ministry said after the outbreak was confirmed on Friday evening that it would now widen its ban and prevent all meat, dairy and animal produce -- including leather -- from leaving France unless specially treated against the disease.

And the argument still raged on the best way to combat the highly contagious disease.

Sheep from within a six-mile area in County Louth arrive at a processing factory for slaughter following the first confirmed case of foot-and-mouth in Jenkinstown, Republic of Ireland, March 23, 2001. Irish Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh ordered the suspension of animal product exports and extended a ban on the export of live animals as soon as the outbreak in Ireland was confirmed. (Paul McErlane/Reuters)

European Union veterinary experts authorized limited use of vaccines to help the Netherlands fight foot-and-mouth disease but a widespread inoculation policy was ruled out.

Officials said the cause of the Dutch outbreak had yet to be pinpointed but there were suspicions it may have been carried by calves from Ireland that had passed through the French department of Mayenne.

The fall-out from the disease spread around the world.

Japan's ban on EU meat sent hog and pork prices soaring on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. EU member Denmark supplies about one-third of Japan's pork imports, and traders expect U.S. markets will capture some of that business.

A decision by Dutch officials to relax a ban on transporting animal feed helped prices of feed ingredients like corn and soybean meal to recover slightly at the Chicago Board of Trade. The ban had brought feed trade in Rotterdam to a standstill and helped spook an already vulnerable Chicago market.

Foot-and-mouth outbreak spreads to Ireland

ABC Australia News - March 23 2001

Foot-and-mouth disease has spread to Ireland for the first time in 60 years after an outbreak in Britain, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern says.

Following outbreaks in France and the Netherlands, Ireland became the fourth European country hit by the highly contagious livestock virus since it first struck in Britain just over a month ago.

"This is a major disappointment, given the intensity of the efforts by all sectors of society to keep the disease out of Ireland," Mr Ahern told Parliament in a statement.

He says two samples taken from a flock of sheep near Jenkinstown in County Louth, close to the border with Northern Ireland, tested positive for the livestock virus.

The Louth infection is believed to have been transmitted from a farm just over the border in Northern Ireland, where the province's only confirmed case of foot-and-mouth was confirmed three weeks ago.

In a separate statement to Parliament, Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh said an "aggressive strategic slaughtering" program was being put into place.

But he also suggested there was "a realistic hope" that the disease may be contained as the farm is situated on a peninsula.

The Louth farm is within the 10-kilometre surveillance zone from the Northern Irish case.


Harsh restrictions

Ireland put draconian restrictions in place after the outbreak in Britain, cancelling hundreds of events, including international sporting fixtures.

Agribusiness is a major export industry and accounts for about 10 per cent of Ireland's gross domestic product.

Sheep with suspicious symptoms were found on the farm during an inspection two days ago, although there were no signs during checks last week.

It had been hoped that the mouth blisters might have been caused by nitrate fertiliser spread on fields, but 138 sheep were culled as a precaution.

Irish Farmers Association leader Tom Parlon said it was a major blow to the whole country.

"There have been very, very stringent controls in that area, and if we can find something positive, it is that the vets had been doing a very intensive check in that area."

He said the infection was brought over in sheep imported from Carlisle, in north-west England, at the start of the British outbreak.

"We are going to have an immediate slaughter of all of the sheep and all of the stock in that area," Mr Parlon said.


Netherlands

The European Union (EU) has banned livestock exports from the Netherlands, following the confirmation of foot-and-mouth disease.

The EU has also banned the sale of untreated milk, meat and meat products from the four Dutch provinces around the affected farms.

The disease was confirmed at three farms in the east of the Netherlands and a suspected fourth case is being investigated at a slaughterhouse in the south.

The Netherlands was the second country on mainland Europe after France to report the disease.

The disease has been discovered in cattle and goats near the Dutch town of Olst.

No-one knows how the virus got there, but the all too familiar exclusion zone has now been established. All the livestock inside will be put down.

The only difference is that unlike the British, the carcasses will be buried, not burnt.

Thursday March 22 4:17 PM ET
Irish Troops Battle Livestock Plague

By Kevin Smith

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland sent in troops to fight an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease Thursday after it became the fourth country in Europe to be hit by the devastating livestock plague.

Confirmation of the highly contagious disease by Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was a body blow to a country heavily dependent on farm exports. Tests on tissue samples from two sheep on a farm in north County Louth, near the border with British-ruled Northern Ireland, proved positive for the disease.

Ireland had prayed to be spared the ravages of foot-and-mouth, which has been confirmed in France and the Netherlands and, according to a top British government scientific adviser, is now out of control in Britain.

German health officials said they were investigating suspected foot-and-mouth disease at a pig farm in the state of Lower Saxony.

Belgian authorities destroyed about 1,000 pigs at a farm in the south of the country, which imported 80 animals from the affected area in the Netherlands on March 7, a Farm Ministry spokeswoman said.

In northern Luxembourg, agricultural officials were testing a flock of sheep that had also come from the Netherlands for suspected traces of the disease.

In Rome, an expert from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (news - web sites) said Britain should consider vaccination of farm animals to stem the spread of the virus.

Worst Scenario

Yves Cheneau said Britain could face disaster if the virus reached high-density pig production areas. ``The worst scenario is if the virus goes to the highly dense pig-production areas of Britain,'' he said. ``If this is the case, my God, it will be a very, very serious disaster.''

The foot-and-mouth crisis was also concerning European leaders gathering on the eve of Friday's EU summit in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.

European Commission (news - web sites) President Romano Prodi said it was up to EU veterinarians to decide if a livestock vaccination program was needed.

``In case they should recommend it, we should do it immediately. (But) they have not recommended it, so we stick on what they say,'' he said.

He also said there was little room in the EU budget to compensate farmers.

Meanwhile, the United States said Thursday it would not review its EU import ban until the outbreak was under control.

Irish Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh ordered the suspension of animal product exports and extended a ban on the export of live animals.

Ahern told parliament, ``This is a major disappointment given the intensity of our efforts to keep the disease out of the country.''

Some 1,300 soldiers were sent to Dublin's main shipping port to monitor incoming vessels and supply disinfectant.

While troops were already manning checkpoints along the border with Northern Ireland, army brigades nationwide were ready to supply response teams, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.

Irish food and animal exports were valued at about $5.65 billion last year -- about 10 percent of the country's export receipts. An estimated 60,000 jobs in agriculture and tourism are now at risk in the country of about 3.8 million people.

Blair Heckled

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) was heckled by angry farmers when he visited Carlisle in northwestern England, one of the worst-hit areas, for talks with farmers' leaders and tourism officials.

In continental Europe, the Dutch launched investigations of four new suspected cases after announcing Wednesday that foot-and-mouth, which affects cows, sheep, pigs and goats, had already hit three farms.

In Britain, a top scientific adviser to the government said the foot-and-mouth epidemic there was out of control and could rage on for many more months.

``I think everybody is in agreement ... that this epidemic is not under control at the current point of time,'' said Professor Roy Anderson, an epidemiologist monitoring the crisis. He told BBC television the epidemic could continue until August.

Twenty-five new infected sites were found in Britain Thursday, bringing the total to 460.

British figures showed more than 270,000 animals had been slaughtered and a further 130,000 were to be killed.

Wednesday March 21 5:16 PM ET
U.S. Sheep Seized in Mad Cow Scare

By WILSON RING, Associated Press Writer

GREENSBORO, Vt. (AP) - Federal agents seized a Vermont farmer's flock of 234 sheep Wednesday for fear they are infected with a version of mad cow disease - the first such action ever taken against livestock in the United States.

The U.S. Agriculture Department ``has no choice but to take this decisive action based on the threat the sheep pose to the health of America's livestock nationwide,'' said Craig Reed, administrator of USDA's animal and plant health inspection service.

A team of federal agents and agriculture officials arrived at Houghton Freeman's farm at daybreak. Two cattle trucks were loaded up by 11 a.m. and will take the sheep to Iowa, where they will be tested and destroyed.

Freeman and another farmer had waged a court battle to save their sheep after the Agriculture Department ordered the flocks seized last July.

A sheep on the Faillace Farm in East Warren, Vermont, waits to be checked by appraisers working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in this July 19, 2000 file photo. USDA agents seized one of two flocks of dairy sheep suspected of having an ailment related to mad cow disease, a lawyer for one of the shepherds said March 21, 2001. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

The flocks consisted of sheep that were either imported from Belgium in 1996 or were descendants of those animals.

The seizure went peacefully, but Thomas Amidon, a lawyer for Freeman, called it ``sad, depressing and a rushed judgment.''

``This is so unnecessary,'' he said.

USDA spokesman Ed Curlett said the seizure was the first of any cow or sheep in the United States under suspicion of having an illness related to mad cow disease.

The USDA has said four sheep from Freeman's flock showed signs of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, a class of neurological diseases that includes both bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, and scrapie, a sheep disease not harmful to humans. The government said the sheep may have been exposed through contaminated European feed.

However, the USDA tests could not confirm whether the sheep have BSE (news - web sites). The animals will undergo further testing at a USDA lab in Ames, Iowa.

There have been no confirmed cases of mad cow disease in the United States. Scrapie has been in the United States since at least 1947.

The sheep are highly unusual and valuable East Friesians. They were not being raised for their wool or their meat, but for their rich milk, used in making exotic cheeses.

The Vermont Health Department asked the sheep owners to stop selling the cheese last July. In Europe, there has been no evidence that mad cow disase can be spread through milk.

The second disputed flock of about 140 sheep is owned by Larry and Linda Faillace of East Warren. No date has been set to take their sheep.

Linda Faillace said Wednesday she felt ``anger, frustration, disbelief'' and accused the USDA of failing to heed science.

``That's what makes us so angry. USDA builds up public hysteria over a species that doesn't get the disease,'' she said.

The human version of BSE, which like the animal version has a long incubation period, has killed almost 100 people in Britain and other European countries since 1995. The scare has virtually wiped out the British beef industry.

After losing their case in U.S. District Court in February, the Faillaces and Freeman appealed and asked that the seizure order be put on hold until the case had worked its way through the courts. An appeals court refused to stay the seizure but said it would hear the case.

The farmers also sought help from the Vermont's congressional delegation, but all three members stood by the USDA.

``Too little is yet known about this disease, but we do know that it is deadly and that it has the potential to spread quickly, widely and insidiously if not handled early,'' Sens. Patrick Leahy and James Jeffords and Rep. Bernard Sanders (news - bio - voting record) said in a statement.

The Vermont Farm Bureau also supported the animals' destruction.

``The more you look into it, the more you realize it's not a perfect world, and the science isn't perfect, the risk isn't worth it, and you move on,'' said the bureau's president, Clark Hinsdale.

The USDA offered the farmers up to $2.4 million for their flocks last year, but they refused, deciding instead to continue their court fight. USDA veterinarian Dr. Linda Detwiler said the farmers will be compensated for the fair market value of their sheep.

While the seizure was a first, a flock of 21 sheep from the same family of sheep was voluntarily turned over to government officials last summer by their Vermont owner and were destroyed.

Wednesday March 21 5:18 PM ET
Dutch Find Third Foot-And-Mouth Case

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Netherlands has discovered a third case of foot-and-mouth disease, Agriculture Minister Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst said Wednesday.

Health officials look at slaughtered sheep and cows in a field near a farm in Ellonby, Cumbria, March 21, 2001. Britain has showed no signs of being able to get on top of the financially devastating foot-and-mouth epidemic, and two farms in the Netherlands reported outbreaks of the disease. (Jeff J Mitchell/Reuters)

Earlier the ministry said the highly infectious disease had hit the Netherlands with confirmed cases at two farms in the eastern villages of Oene and Olst. This third outbreak was discovered at a farm in nearby Welsum which belonged to the brother of the owner of the Olst farm, Brinkhorst told Dutch current affairs program Nova.

Welsum is situated between Oene and Olst.

Wednesday March 21 6:22 AM ET
Dutch 1st Confirmed Cases of Disease

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - The Dutch government said Wednesday it had confirmed the first cases of foot-and-mouth disease in the Netherlands, making it the second country on the European continent to detect the livestock ailment.

Tests concluded that four cows had contracted the disease on a farm near Olst, in the eastern part of the country.

The government swiftly reinstated a nationwide ban on transporting livestock that had been lifted just two days earlier.

In France, site of the only confirmed case on mainland Europe, the Agriculture Ministry said Tuesday that tests of 224 herds had not revealed any further cases and just six farms remained under quarantine.

Britain, where the disease was first detected a month ago, battled to prove it had the crisis under control, as opposition politicians urged officials to postpone elections scheduled for May.

Forty-five new cases were confirmed Tuesday, by far the highest one-day tally to date, and the European Union (news - web sites) extended its ban on exports of British livestock and meat until April 4.

Prince Charles, himself a gentleman farmer, canceled an Austrian skiing holiday to show solidarity with farmers hit by the disease.

``He doesn't want to go on that kind of holiday at the moment, given everything that is going on with foot-and-mouth,'' said a spokeswoman for the prince's St. James's Palace office.

Conservative leader William Hague, who had been supporting the Labor Party government's strategy against the epidemic, called Tuesday for Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) to consider postponing local council elections on May 3 - the date Blair is eyeing for a national election as well. He will have to decide by the end of this month.

``I don't think it would be right to call an election at a time when there is a national crisis out of control, as there is today,'' Hague said.

Labor lawmaker Margaret Beckett responded that ``it would send the worst possible signal to the outside world to call off these elections - that Britain was effectively unable to function.''

In a survey conducted by polling firm ICM for The Guardian newspaper, 52 percent of respondents felt the election should be postponed, with 40 percent saying it should go ahead. Previous polls had shown a majority in favor of maintaining the election date.

So far 223,000 animals have been killed in the United Kingdom, and about 125,000 others marked for destruction, the Ministry of Agriculture said.

The epidemic has shut British livestock out of markets worldwide, and put its European trading partners on alert.

Pollution fear as oil rig sinks
By Ben Fenton

The Telegraph UK - Wednesday 21 March 2001

AN oil rig with more than 300,000 gallons of diesel oil stored on board toppled over and sank into the Atlantic off the coast of Rio de Janeiro yesterday, five days after a series of explosions killed 10 of its workers

It emerged yesterday that two British engineers were among those who escaped death when the P-36 rig was crippled by powerful blasts last Thursday. Environmentalists warned of a huge natural disaster after the rig, one of the world's largest, finally lost its battle with gravity and sank into the sea in 10 minutes.

But a spokesman for the owners, the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras, said that they were not concerned and had ships and workers in place to contain any pollution. Yesterday the families of Paul Raine, 43, and Andy Stayman, 32, both from Teesside and working on the P-36, were waiting for the men to return.

Both were sleeping when an explosion tore through the Platform, which stood 120 miles north-east of Rio. They ran into a corridor where they were knocked down by the force of a second blast. Mr Raine and Mr Stayman then spent more than three hours along with 160 others waiting to be rescued as flames and smoke billowed around them.

New York is next for blackouts, warns Bush
By Simon Davis in Los Angeles and Ben Fenton in Washington

The Telegraph UK - Wednesday 21 March 2001

NEW York could be the next American city to experience electricity cuts, the White House said yesterday, as the power crisis spreads outwards from California.

Boston and other cities in New England may be affected, but local power managers said they believed they could keep the lights burning through the summer unless particularly hot weather forced customers to turn up their air conditioners.

As blackouts in California were announced last night for the second day in succession, President Bush gave warning of critical shortages of gas, petrol and electricity this summer. On Monday, cars crashed when traffic lights failed, office workers were trapped in stalled lifts and thousands of homes were plunged into darkness as California suffered a string of blackouts.

Unlike the power cuts eight weeks ago that affected a relatively small section of northern California, this week's blackouts hit communities in the more populous areas, from Silicon Valley to Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. San Diego and the state capital, Sacramento, were also affected.

The California energy crisis led Mr Bush and Spencer Abraham, his Energy Secretary, to say they believed blackouts would spread. Mr Bush said: "One thing is for certain: there are no short-term fixes. The solution for our energy shortage requires long-term thinking and a plan that we'll implement that will take time to bring to fruition."

Mr Abraham told leaders of small businesses that America was facing its worst energy crisis since the Seventies and predicted that, unless radical restructuring was brought in rapidly, the whole economy could falter as it did then.

He said: "The good news, I think, is that America's energy problems can be solved. The bad news is that the situation in California is not isolated, it is not temporary, and it will not fix itself. America faces a major energy supply crisis over the next two decades. The nation's last three recessions have all been tied to rising energy prices and there is strong evidence that the latest crisis is already having a negative effect."

The new administration's energy strategy will focus on conservation but also on a controversial expansion of exploration for oil, gas and coal as well as developing existing energy sources. It is not likely to solve California's immediate problem.

About a million people suffered from blackouts that lasted up to four hours last week after an unusually hot spell prompted Californians to switch on their air conditioners. There are growing fears that this Sunday's Oscars ceremony could be affected by blackouts.

Office workers trapped in a lift at a 22-storey block in San Diego had to clamber through escape hatches on to the roof and then take the stairs, guided by candlelight. Power plant managers ordered the blackouts after reserves fell to almost nothing because of high demand and trickling supplies from suppliers who cannot afford to buy the natural gas they need to operate.

Gray Davis, the state's Democratic governor, has consistently blocked the construction of new power plants as demand has grown. The state's 1996 deregulation of its electricity services, the brainchild of Mr Davis's Republican predecessor, is regarded as having been botched, forcing the Davis administration to spend billions of dollars on buying power from other states.

So far the state has committed about $45 million (£31 million) a day.

Tuesday March 20 6:32 PM ET
USDA: No Foot-And-Mouth Disease in North America

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Europe braced itself on Tuesday for the possibility that foot-and-mouth disease was spreading to the Netherlands, U.S. officials refuted commodity market speculation that the dreaded livestock illness had hit the United States.

``There is no foot-and-mouth disease in North America,'' U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman declared flatly to reporters.

Her statement backed up remarks earlier Tuesday by another U.S. Agriculture Department official, who told Reuters that no cases of foot-and-mouth disease had been detected during stepped-up monitoring for the disease -- a move taken by USDA in response to outbreaks in Europe and Argentina.

Slaughtered sheep lie in a field near the village of Unthank in Cumbria, northern England March 19, 2001. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said March 20 that no cases of foot-and-mouth disease have been found. (Jeff J Mitchell/Reuters)

The USDA remarks came as commodities traders in Chicago speculated, apparently wrongly, that the federal government was on the verge of announcing that foot-and-mouth disease had permeated the United States, in a herd of cattle in Idaho.

Foot-and-mouth (news - web sites) disease cripples pigs, cattle, sheep and goats for months, and sharply reduces milk and meat production. The virus, which rarely endangers humans, is easily spread by shoes, farm equipment and even the wind.

American officials have said that an outbreak in the United States -- which has been free of foot-and-mouth since the 1920s -- could cause billions of dollars worth of losses to farmers.

Foot-And-Mouth Fears In Netherlands

But in Europe, there were growing concerns that the Netherlands could be the third country afflicted by the disease, following recent outbreaks in the UK and France.

The United States temporarily banned imports of livestock and fresh meat, mainly pork ribs, from the entire EU on March 13 after the disease was confirmed in France.

USDA said the ban would last for at least 15 days.

The ban affects some $278 million in annual European meat shipments, according to U.S. estimates, but European officials said more than $400 million is potentially at risk.

Now, with the suspicion of foot-and-mouth disease among Dutch goats at a farm in Oene, located about 65 miles (100 km) east of Amsterdam, that apparently had no contact with either British or French livestock, it was even more uncertain whether USDA will be able to scale back its EU ban at the end of this month.

A preliminary test on some goats on the farm revealed antibodies, increasing the chance of infection, Dutch spokesman Benno Bruggink, a Dutch official, told Reuters. An initial test was negative.

But in one encouraging development for the EU, Veneman said that even if foot-and-mouth disease spreads further in Europe, the USDA does not plan to expand its import ban to other EU products, such as grains.

Veneman, who gets daily briefings on the disease situation in Europe, said USDA was continuing to ``closely look at the situation'' and ``continuously reviewing'' the U.S. import ban.

While USDA is feeling pressure to scale back the import ban to only EU countries that have confirmed cases of the disease, the agency is being pressured in the opposite direction by domestic interests who want to keep the full ban in place.

A letter sent to Veneman by Sen. Craig Thomas (news - bio - voting record), a Wyoming Republican, who urged her to make the ban permanent ``until the situation (in Europe) is resolved,'' is indicative of the pressure to maintain a more complete ban.

Thomas, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said ''a permanent ban is needed to safeguard'' U.S. livestock.

Nervous Livestock Traders

Europe's difficulty in containing foot-and-mouth disease is being closely watched by U.S. commodity markets, which would be rocked if the livestock disease ever hit the United States.

Rumors circulated Tuesday in U.S. livestock cash markets and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that two cases of foot-and-mouth disease had been found in Idaho.

``The market is riding the tide of rumors and stories concerning foot-and-mouth disease,'' said Chuck Levitt, senior livestock analyst with Alaron Trading Corp. ``In the absence of anything confirmed, one way or the other, the market is going to show a high degree of volatility like it did today.''

Futures prices for hogs and pork bellies traded in Chicago seesawed throughout the day. Hog futures for April delivery closed lower at 64.100 cents per pound, off 1.600 cents.

The rumor mill slowed by mid-morning Tuesday, after an official in the emergency operations center of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) said there were no suspected cases in the nation. ``No shipments are on hold. There is nothing going on, not even an investigation'' of any suspected cases in the United States, said the source.

Chuck Lambert, a senior economist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (news - web sites), said the outbreak of the disease in Europe has nudged USDA to be more aggressive in guarding against foot-and-mouth disease.

``In some ways this has provided an opportunity for us to double check the system, to get APHIS on red alert, and to make sure all the port inspectors are in place,'' said Lambert.

With more U.S. testing for foot-and-mouth disease apparently comes more chances of erroneous reports of its arrival here.

Idaho officials found themselves having to put the word out denying any cases of the highly contagious disease.

Dr. Bob Hillman, Idaho state veterinarian, said officials routinely receive telephone calls about suspected cases of foot-and-mouth and investigate all reports. ``We have recently received two such calls. One involved calves, and the other a horse,'' he said in a statement. ``Test results confirm that the calf case is negative for foot-and-mouth disease. Horses are not susceptible to the disease.''

Tuesday March 20 7:09 PM ET
WHO Launches Plan to Stem Tuberculosis Spread

By Patricia Reaney

LONDON (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (news - web sites) launched a new drugs facility on Tuesday to improve access to life-saving tuberculosis treatments in developing countries over the next five years.

Although a TB cure has been available for more than 50 years, more people are dying from it then ever before and it is now the world's most-lethal curable infectious disease.

Every year an estimated 8.5 million new cases occur and nearly 2 million people die from the illness, caused by an airborne bacterium.

The Global TB Drug Facility, which will be financed by donations, will act as a procurement agency to provide the most effective drugs to qualifying countries and organizations that enter into agreement with it. The hope is that it will increase and improve the treatment of TB worldwide.

Twenty-three countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, have 80 percent of the world's TB cases.

``It will be a mechanism for ensuring increasing access to high-quality drugs,'' WHO's Dr. Ian Smith said in a telephone interview from Geneva.

Up to 200,000 TB patients in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe will be treated in the first year through the facility, which will be managed by Stop TB -- a global partnership of agencies working together to fight the disease.

``What has become clear in recent years is that drug shortages are one of the very significant reasons why people don't get effective treatment. Only about one in four patients worldwide is treated in the DOTS program,'' he added.

DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course) is a program to control TB that involves government co-operation, drug therapy and patient surveillance to make sure sufferers can complete a course of treatment.

Not finishing a course of drugs is one of the main causes behind the increase of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR TB), which threatens to make TB untreatable in the future, Smith said.

The facility aims to increase the number of patients being treated under the DOTS program by nearly 50 percent.

Until now, drugs for the DOTS program have been bought by participating governments or funded through the World Bank (news - web sites), grants or loans to developing countries.

Past Efforts ``A Bit Piecemeal''

``It has all been a bit piecemeal. What the drug facility can also provide is an opportunity for donors and countries to do their procurement through a mechanism that will insure both the quality and affordability of drugs,'' Smith added.

Tuberculosis seemed to have disappeared in many industrialized countries from the 1980s, but Smith said it remained in the developing world.

``Although it was off the radar screens for a while it has never gone away completely and it is now an even bigger problem than it was in the past. There are more people dying from TB than ever before,'' he added.

Population growth, worldwide travel and MDR TB have contributed to the increase in TB. But most of the growth is due to the impact of HIV (news - web sites). Tuberculosis is one of the main opportunistic infections that kills AIDS (news - web sites) sufferers, and people with HIV are more susceptible to TB.

In Washington, lawmakers announced plans for legislation in Congress to increase greatly the sum spent by the United States to fight tuberculosis globally, as well backing more research.

``TB not just preys on the poor, it creates the poor,'' said Rep. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat. ``It's a disease that we have the tools to do something about.''

One bill would increase U.S. funding for international efforts to $200 million next year from $60 million this year, with a portion going to the new WHO facility. Brown said the goal was to generate $1 billion a year globally for 10 years -- an expenditure he predicted would halve the TB death rate.

A second bill would expand U.S. research into TB and improve U.S. efforts to control the disease among prison inmates and in border states.

Tuesday March 20 7:13 PM ET
World's Biggest Offshore Oil Rig Sinks; Oil Leaks

By Shasta Darlington

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - The world's largest offshore oil rig sank on Tuesday despite desperate rescue efforts and began spewing oil off the coast of Brazil five days after powerful blasts ripped through the platform killing 10 people.

Rough seas forced Brazil's state oil giant Petrobras (news - web sites) to abandon salvage operations early on Tuesday.

A rescue ship is seen alongside an oil slick left from the P-36 oil rig owned by Brazilian oil giant Petrobras after it sank off the coast of Rio de Janeiro on March 20, 2001. Petrobras authorities announced the world's largest offshore oil rig sank in a matter of minutes, five days after powerful blasts rocked the rig and killed 10 of the 175 workers. (AE/Tasso Marcelo via Reuters)

Less than an hour after divers had fled the scene, the 40-story structure tipped sideways and sank below the waterline within 10 minutes. Diesel oil bubbled to the surface creating an extensive but very fine slick and Petrobras said all 395,000 gallons (1.5 million liters) of crude and diesel stored on and under the rig are likely to spill into the ocean as pipelines rupture and tanks explode. ``We lost the platform, it sank,'' said Petrobras president Henri Philippe Reichstul, visibly worn-out after five tense days of rescue work. ``Without a doubt, the sea conditions accelerated the process.'' Television showed survivors working on the rescue boats break down in tears as they watched their rig quietly slip into the turquoise sea. The giant green helicopter pad was the last part of the platform to disappear. Three explosions ripped through the rig off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state last week, killing 10 of the 175 workers aboard. One worker remains in critical condition with burns on 98 percent of his body. On Tuesday, 1,580 gallons of diesel stored in tanks leaked out of the rig as it headed to the ocean floor almost a mile below. ``It is inevitable that almost all of the crude that is in the pipelines and the diesel in the tanks will leak,'' said Carlos Eduardo Bellot, a local Petrobras manager. The company said it is applying chemicals to break up the slicks and lining up absorption barriers. More barriers and boats are standing by to contain bigger spills, though high seas have made it difficult to use them.

``A Sad Day For Brazil''

Some 79,000 gallons of crude in underwater pipelines and 316,000 gallons of diesel could burst into the sea due to water pressure. But Petrobras reiterated that deep-ocean well heads were well sealed, thus preventing a larger disaster.

The potential damage would just be a fraction of the world's worst oil environmental disaster when the Exxon Valdez supertanker dumped 11 million gallons of oil into the Alaskan seas in 1989.

Non-governmental environmentalists were also not overly alarmed. ``It is not a biodiverse area, it is almost off the continental shelf,'' said Garo Batmanian, secretary general of World Wildlife Fund for Nature in Brazil. ``The current is also not bringing it to the coast.''

If the winds changed direction, however, oil could reach the Rio coast and contaminate precious mangroves.

``It's a sad day for Brazil,'' Energy and Mines Minister Jose Jorge Vasconcelos said in a television interview. ``All Brazilians are sad about what happened, about the human impact and about the environmental losses.''

Rio's vice-governor, who was with the families of Petrobras workers when the news came out, declared two days of official mourning. ``It was a moment of desperation for the wives, mothers and children who were there,'' Benedita da Silva said.

Engineers have determined it would be virtually impossible to salvage the rig or the nine missing bodies if it sinks to the ocean floor. It will also be difficult to determine the cause of the blasts.

``Since last Thursday I knew in my heart that that iron box would be my husband's coffin,'' said Ivani Peixoto, a distraught widow who has been waiting for her husband's body in Macae, the headquarters for oil operations off Rio's coast.

Oil union leaders have called for a work slowdown on Thursday to protest poor working conditions and to remember the accident. Including the 10 latest victims, 91 Petrobras workers have died over the last three years in accidents.

Petrobras is creating a commission to investigate the cause of the accident and publish results in 30 days. An independent expert will be on the board to ensure transparency. The platform was in the Roncador oil field 78 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state in the Campos Basin, which provides 80 percent of Brazil's total oil.

The rig, which started operating last year, was pumping out 80,000 barrels per day of crude, or 5 percent of Brazil's total, and was expected to be producing at full capacity of 180,000 bpd by 2004. It was the biggest offshore rig in the world in terms of capacity.

Reichstul said that Petrobras would still manage to boost total output this year as it works to become self-sufficient in oil by 2005, but that it would fall short of initial targets of 1.42 million bpd.

The company said its fiscal 2001 earnings could be hurt by as much as $450 million because of the rig's sinking.

Petrobras shares closed down 2.3 percent at 49.90 reais ($23.80) after the company announced the rig had sunk. The P-36 rig cost $350 million and is insured for $500 million. The firm should receive the insurance payment in the next six months.

Tuesday March 20 6:09 PM ET
Blackouts Sweep Calif. for 2nd Day

By AUDREY COOPER, Associated Press Writer

A firefighter walks near the scene of an accident involving a car and a small truck in El Monte, Calif., Tuesday, March 20, 2001, that occurred after the traffic signal at the intersection stopped working during a rolling blackout. Four people were injured in the wreck, according to police. Power managers ordered rolling blackouts across California for a second straight day Tuesday, planning to cut electricity to more than a million residential and business customers by day's end. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

Roughly 1 million customers lost power Monday

The blackouts this week were the first to hit California since January. This time, though, the blackouts hit the entire length of the state. The earlier blackouts affected Northern and Central California.

Most of those affected were customers of the state's two biggest utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (news - web sites) and Southern California Edison (news - web sites). The utilities say they have lost more than $13 billion since June because of soaring wholesale electricity prices and because California's 1996 deregulation law prevents them from passing the costs on to customers.

The state has committed itself to spending billions of dollars over the next 10 years to buy power on behalf of the two utilities because their credit is next to worthless.

John Harrison of the Northwest Power Planning Council, a consortium that monitors power usage in several Western states, said blackouts on the first day of spring are an ominous sign of what lies ahead this summer.

``We're in trouble,'' he said. ``We will likely be able to meet our needs this summer, but there won't be much to send to California.''

In San Francisco's Chinatown, the blackouts closed souvenir shops normally packed with tourists. Nearby, customers waited with irritation for a bank to reopen.

Jenny Sequeira, owner of Country Elegance Residential Care in Elk Grove, near Sacramento, said everything from laundry machines to telephones were shut down. ``Thank God I have a cell phone. If there was an emergency I'd have really been in a pickle,'' she said.

Sequeira said she fears more blackouts in the summer, when she will be caring for up to six patients.

Village lives in fear of flood

By Charles Chambers

Fiji Times - March 20 2001

KOROTOGO villagers on the Coral Coast want the Government to assist them relocate before a major flooding disaster happens.

Village spokesman, retired teacher Isaia Gonewai, said a disaster could bring loss of life if nothing is done. The reality of a major disaster waiting to happen emerged after the tidal wave that hit the Coral Coast during Cyclone Paula earlier this month.

The village along with many others in the area was swamped by huge waves that caused destruction to houses, structures and rootcrops.

At Korotogo, Mr. Gonewai said the culverts installed under the new bypass to help take water out of the village during flooding from rain could be the cause for the impending disaster.

The disaster, according to Mr. Gonewai, could happen if a tidal wave strikes at the same time the village is being flooded by inland water.

"Luckily only the tidal wave came last time and not both,'' he said. Mr. Gonewai said houses that were never flooded before were deluged by the big wave that forced water through the four culverts.

"We will ask the Government to assist us relocate before somebody is killed or some major disaster happens.''

Commissioner Western Rupeni Nacewa said this was a major request because the bypass was to have been constructed through the hills at the back of the village. The villagers requested that the bypass run on the current site. "I cannot comment much further because we have not been approached by villagers,'' Mr. Nacewa said.

Monday March 19 10:12 PM ET
California Hit with Blackouts As Power Crunch Bites

By Andrew Quinn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Californians from Beverly Hills to Silicon Valley were brought face-to-face with their state's escalating power crisis Monday as an unexpected electricity crunch forced officials to temporarily pull the plug on almost one million homes and businesses.

With a blacked-out traffic signal behind him, San Francisco Traffic Officer Erwin Tjon directs traffic on California Highway 1 in San Francisco during a rolling power blackout which hit the state March 19, 2001. More than 800,000 customers throughout the state were without power for part of the day in the first rolling blackout to hit California in more than a month. (Susan Ragan/Reuters)

In swank restaurants and roadside pizza parlors, high-tech manufacturing plants and mom-and-pop hardware stores, the lights flickered off, machines ground to a stop and air conditioning cut out as officials scrambled to save the state's massive power grid from total meltdown.

Elevators froze, escalators became old-fashioned stair cases and traffic lights stopped functioning, bewildering motorists from San Francisco to San Diego.

The sudden resumption of rolling blackouts -- which officials blamed on a spate of unseasonably warm weather and the loss of several key power generating plants -- served as a vivid reminder to Californians that the power crisis created by rocketing wholesale energy prices and their state's bungled power deregulation effort was far from over.

``It's like a sauna,'' San Francisco International Airport spokesman Ron Wilson said as officials turned air conditioning off in the massive terminals, part of last-ditch conservation efforts which went into effect around the state Monday.

The fresh wave of outages, called on the last day of winter, raised new concerns about how the nation's richest and most populous state can get through the long, hot summer without economically crippling disruptions.

In Washington, President George W. Bush (news - web sites) said he saw no quick fix to what has become a national power problem, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites) repeated his prediction that more blackouts were ``inevitable'' for California.

Monday was the third time since January that blackouts were ordered in California and the first time that Southern California was included in the order. The first round of power cuts took place early in the afternoon, and a second round was ordered in the early evening as people returned home from work and turned on their stoves, televisions and home computers.

A young surfer looks out at the setting sun following a day of rolling power blackouts across California March 19, 2001. California's deepening energy crisis struck the length of the state for the first time as officials ordered a series of rolling blackouts that doused lights from San Francisco in Northern California to the boutiques of Beverly Hills and beach communities of San Diego. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

Officials warned that Tuesday could see yet more blackouts imposed around the state.

Jim Detmers, vice president of the Independent System Operator (ISO), which manages most of the state grid, warned that the outlook Tuesday ``is extremely tight throughout all the western region and in California.''

Gov. Gray Davis (news - web sites), who has been scrambling to put together a rescue package to save the state's cash-strapped utilities and ensure stable power supplies through the summer, appeared defensive when questioned on the latest power crisis.

``Deregulation was the product of a Republican governor, a Republican author, and a Republican PUC (public utilities commission) that was unduly impatient,'' Davis, a Democrat, told a news conference Monday.

``We had been dealt a hand where no plant had been built for 12 years before I was governor and we've been making great progress lining up long-term contracts at more attractive rates and promoting conservation.''

Conservation Comes Too Late For Beverly Hills

The blackout disrupted the lunch hour in fashionable Beverly Hills, where chefs at ``Debbie's on Wilshire'' were forced to read food orders in the dark as credit card machines and electronic cash registers crashed and irritated customers fled -- even after the owner offered to serve their patrons on the honor system.

``I don't know why they would pick this area during the lunch hour,'' said angry restaurant owner Wayne Wald, adding that he lost 70 percent of his business due to the blackout.

Next door, the fuming proprietor of Giti International Oriental Rugs complained that the outage ruined his appointment with an out-of-state couple who came to look at an $85,000 carpet. ``They should have been able to look at every color, every style,'' said Solomon Afraim.

``They said they were going to do some other things and come back. I hope they will. ... We left Iran because of this kind of thing.''

In San Francisco the power outages hit businesses in Ghiradelli Square, a tourist area near Fisherman's Wharf.

But Bill Miller, owner of Boudin Sourdough Bakery & Cafe, said he was now baking bread by hand. ``We are doing everything manual now, which is the old methods,'' Miller said. ``Luckily I was trained that way in the old days.''

In the high-tech workplaces of northern California, if emergency generators did not kick on there was no such fallback.

Computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. said the blackouts had forced it to shut operations for two hours at a manufacturing plant in Newark, outside of San Francisco.

``The standard procedure when the power goes out is to leave the building,'' company spokeswoman Diane Carlini said. ``During the outage basically the facility was not operating.''

Carlini added a sales and engineering facility in San Diego where the firm develops their higher end servers also lost power during the blackouts, which Sun knew were coming.

Fire Knocks Out Two Generators

The California Independent System Operator (news - web sites) (ISO) ordered rolling blackouts at 11:46 a.m. (2:46 p.m. EST) in a last-minute bid to ease strain on the transmission grid and avoid a widespread, uncontrolled outage.

A transformer fire at a big Southern California power plant knocked two generators off line, pushing electricity supplies to dangerously low levels.

But grid operators said the problem had been building all morning, with an early hot spell boosting air conditioning demand in the Southwest and a drought in the Northwest drying up the flow of hydro-electric power on which California typically depends for emergency relief.

This was the first time rolling blackouts have struck Southern California, though Northern California endured two consecutive days of outages back on Jan. 17 and 18.

Rolling blackouts typically last 60 to 90 minutes at a time before utilities switch the light back on and ``roll'' the outages to the next circuit on the grid as long as needed to restore a balance between supply and demand on the grid.

ISO officials have warned that things will only grow worse as California struggles to keep pace with soaring demand during the summer months, when air conditioning drives energy use to its annual peak.

Emergency Imports, Warnings

California's power woes are due in part to the financial problems of its two largest investor-owned utilities, which under the terms of the state's 1996 energy deregulation law have been unable to pass along soaring wholesale power rates to consumers -- leaving them more than $13 billion in debt.

Both PG&E Corp. unit Pacific Gas & Electric and Edison International subsidiary Southern California Edison (news - web sites) have said they do not have enough cash to continue buying power, and as they default on more and more debt many industry analysts worry they may simply go bankrupt.

On Monday, Rosemead, Calif-based Edison International said it would not pay its common stock dividend for the first quarter of 2001.

In Florida, even an Oxo cube is enough to sow the seeds of panic

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Stephen Castle in Brussels

15 March 2001 - Independent News

The United States yesterday moved to prevent foot-and-mouth entering the country with travellers arriving from Europe being warned they could face having their luggage, shoes and feet disinfected on arrival.

Amid an atmosphere of growing concern and a series of anecdotal stories that even included British arrivals in Florida having their Oxo cubes confiscated, officials in the US said they would do anything required to keep the disease out.

But the measures, together with the US ban on some EU produce provoked a furious reaction in Brussels and could trigger a new transatlantic trade war. The Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, is expected to raise the issue tomorrow with the US president, George Bush, at a St Patrick's day meeting in Washington.

US officials fear the disease could devastate the farming community and cost the economy billions of dollars.

The US reacted to the first case of the disease in France on Tuesday by widening the ban it imposed last month on the import of all live animals and raw meat from Britain, to cover all 15 countries within the EU.

In a statement yesterday, the United States Department of Agriculture clarified that the temporary embargo will prohibit imports of live animals, "swine or ruminant meat (chilled or frozen) and other products" but "does not include cooked pork products".

Yesterday, the Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said security at the 110 US ports of entry would be increased. Under already existing regulations, all arrivals are asked if they have recently visited a farm. Those who answer yes will have their shoes and luggage disinfected with a bleach solution. Anyone who lies about bringing food into the country faces fines up to $1,000 (£700).

At the same time, officials have warned American tourists heading to Britain to avoid visiting any farms or zoos. Any soiled shoes, luggage, cameras, laptops or mobile phones should be disinfected before to returning, they said.

Ms Veneman said: "We haven't had a case since 1929. The measures we are taking are to ensure that we remain a foot-and-mouth disease-free country."

At Washington's Dulles International Airport, Department of Agriculture officials yesterday displayed the sort of disinfecting treatment that the 250,000 daily arrivals to the US might face. They also launched a public awareness campaign about foot-and-mouth.

Craig Reed, the head of the agriculture department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said: "The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is on heightened alert for arriving travellers, cargo and mail from the United Kingdom and other countries where the virus has been found. Any one of these travellers could unknowingly bring in a disease or pest which could devastate our agriculture."

In Brussels the European Commission attacked the joint US/Canadian decision, describing it as "disproportionate" because the ban applied to all EU countries rather than just Britain and France. The commission warned it could cost farmers and food processors almost 500m euros (£31.5m) a year.

The European Commission argues that targeting embargoes on regions affected by infectious disease was standard international practice. Its protest comes against a background of bitter transatlantic trade disputes ranging from EU banana quotas to US hormone-treated beef.

Denmark and Ireland are the two countries worst affected by the ban. Ireland, which has food exports of just under 100m euro a year has managed to salvage some of its key products. However its substantial sales of pork products, including sausages, look doomed.

Denmark is faced with the loss of its pork exports which represent about 70 per cent of those sent to North America from the EU. The US has sent 20 vets to help their counterparts in Europe and to monitor the spread of the disease. A further 20 are due to be dispatched shortly.

North America represents less than 10 per cent of EU animals and meat exports but the value of the trade remains significant. Last year Europe exported live animals – mainly high value breeding stock – worth 252m euros to the US and 4.4m euros to Canada. Meat and offal exports were worth 207m euros and 4m euros Krespectively. Not all that trade will be lost, however, and EU countries were in detailed negotiations with the US authorities in an attempt to limit the economic damage.

Russia remains the biggest market for the EU, swallowing abKout 40 per cent of meat exports and – so far – remains open. The next biggest destination is Egypt, which represented 20 per cent, but which has now closed its borders.

Meanwhile, with about 90 countries announcing some form of ban on European food produce the EU is worried some are taking advantage of the crisis to erect unjustified trade barriers. The EU's veterinary experts called on Morocco, Slovenia, Tunisia and Hungary to lift bans on the imports of grain from the UK, and possibly other member states.

Beate Gminder, a spokeswoman for David Byrne, the European Commissioner for health and consumer protection, said: "Cereals are certainly not a factor for the transmission of foot-and-mouth disease so we consider this to be excessive."

Christian Lapointe, the president of the French grain office, ONIC, added: "I have never seen wheat catch foot-and-mouth disease. Wheat can't carry the disease anymore than an automobile, a three-piece suit or a jet plane

Monday March 19 3:11 AM ET
Quake Jolts Indonesia's Ambon City

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - An earthquake jolted parts of Indonesia's Ambon city on Monday, but there were no reports of damage or casualties, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said.

The 5.7 magnitude temblor hit Ambon at 2:52 p.m. local time, said Sutrisno. The epicenter was about 60 miles beneath the Banda Sea.

Residents said the temblor created a brief panic, but no reports of damage.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelagic nation, is prone to frequent seismic upheavals.

Sunday March 18 9:32 AM ET
Foot-And-Mouth May Halt British Agriculture for Year

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - British farmers' leaders warned Sunday that agriculture could be at a standstill until the end of the year as vets admitted they were still a long way from defeating the foot-and-mouth epidemic devastating the industry.

As the number of foot-and-mouth cases across Britain rose to 303, Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers' Union, said farming and exports would feel the pain inflicted by the crisis for many months to come.

``The downstream consequences of this disease will mean that there will be movement restrictions on livestock, certainly on the sheep, for the foreseeable future -- certainly for the rest of this year,'' Gill told BBC television.

``I would be pleasantly surprised if we were exporting sheep meat before the end of this year.''

Jim Scudamore, Britain's chief veterinary officer, said that while the virulent livestock disease was ``contained,'' he could not predict when the crisis would end. ``I think is going to take a long time,'' he told BBC television.

Agriculture Minister Nick Brown said the government was doing all it could to stamp out the disease, which threatens to destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of farmers and is costing billions of pounds. But asked how long that might take, he replied: ``I cannot say.''

Economists warned that the effect of the epidemic on farming industries, sports events and tourism could cost Britain's economy as much as nine billion pounds ($13 billion) -- equivalent to 1.1 percent of annual gross domestic product.

Eu's Fischler Upbeat On Europe

The outbreak in Britain is a devastating blow to the farming community which is only just recovering from mad cow disease. Tourism is also losing tens of millions of pounds a week from restrictions on people's movement through the countryside.

Sporting events including horse racing and rugby union have been called off, countries around the world have banned imports of meat from Britain and other European countries, and British travelers are being disinfected on arrival abroad.

But the European Union (news - web sites)'s Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler was upbeat about preventing the disease spreading across Europe.

France found one outbreak of foot-and-mouth in a cattle herd last week, but has found no signs yet of the disease spreading.

``Assuming there are no big outbreaks of foot-and-mouth in other member states, it's certainly possible that we'll have this problem fully under control in a few months,'' Fischler told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.

Britain's Brown, facing a wave of protest about plans to slaughter millions of possibly healthy animals in areas worst hit by the disease, appealed to farmers to understand the mass cull was vital to stop the spread of disease.

``The idea of taking out the animals that are potentially infected before the disease emerges is designed to get this to a conclusion as swiftly as possible,'' Brown told Sky television.

More than 170,000 sheep, cows and pigs have been slaughtered since the outbreak began almost a month ago.

Farmers' groups in Cumbria, in the northwest of England and on the border with Scotland, attacked the government's ''slaughter on suspicion'' policy, saying there was no need for healthy animals to be killed.

Some farmers threatened to barricade themselves onto their land and stand before the slaughterman's gun to stop their stock being killed.

Brown said the mass cull of healthy but high risk animals would be delayed until he and his fellow ministers had visited Cumbria and explained the policy to farmers. But he insisted the slaughter would go ahead despite the protests.

The British Army -- which has been on standby to step in to the crisis -- could be brought in to coordinate the mass cull and help with the logistics of destroying the thousands of carcasses, Brown said.

Foot-and-mouth (news - web sites) is not a threat to humans but causes blisters in the mouth and on the hooves of cloven-footed animals. It can be spread like wildfire by movements of vehicles and people in agricultural regions.

Saturday March 17 12:59 AM ET
Nations Fight Foot-And-Mouth, Grains Threat Looms

By Mike Miller

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Across Europe, Asia and the Americas, nations scrambled to keep foot-and-mouth disease from their herds as the expanding crisis threatened on Saturday to spill into the world's huge grains trade.

Among the latest in a litany of restrictive trade moves, China banned meat imports from countries with outbreaks of the disease, including France and Argentina and Colombia suspended imports of meat from Britain -- the epicenter of the highly-contagious disease -- France and Argentina.

Bosnia banned imports of animals from Britain and France and Portugal prohibited imports of livestock and animal products from seven countries outside the European Union (news - web sites).

And Japan, one of the globe's biggest agricultural importers, reportedly began taking steps to stop buying grain from Argentina, which confirmed this week an outbreak of the highly contagious livestock disease.

Trade sources in the United States said on Friday that Japanese trading houses received e-mails from their Tokyo offices saying the outbreak in Argentina was a concern.

A farmer feeds his sheep on a hill near Loch Lomond outside Glasgow, Scotland, March 15, 2001. Britain started killing tens of thousands of healthy sheep, goats and pigs on March 16 in a macabre final effort to end a foot-and-mouth outbreak threatening livestock and farming around the world. (Jeff J Mitchell/Reuters)

``What the Japanese are doing now is not buying any additional corn from Argentina,'' one source said.

Any steps by importers to restrict grain would deepen the crisis because the world grain market is even larger than trade in meat.

The head of the Paris-based world animal health organization, Office International des Epizooties, had tried earlier in the week to quell such restrictions by saying that the risk of spreading food-and-mouth disease on grain was close to zero.

The disease is not a threat to humans but causes blisters in the mouth and on the hooves of cloven-footed animals. The virus is easily transmitted from animal to animal and can also be carried on clothing and car tires and even on the wind.

An outbreak of foot-and-mouth was discovered in Britain last month and jumped to a cattle herd in France earlier this week.

Britain has decided to kill even healthy animals in a desperate effort to stamp out the disease -- a move that set off a rural revolt by some farmers who vowed not to allow death squads onto their land.

The head of a farmers' group in predicted the slaughter could lead to the death of 1 million animals in a mass cull expected to last several weeks.

Amid the drastic measures, a European Union official expressed hope the United States might scale back its broad ban on imports of EU raw meat and livestock.

The United States imposed the ban earlier this week after the disease spread from Britain to a herd of cattle in France.

The United States set new restrictions on imports of cats, dogs and horses from countries affected by foot-and-mouth. Although the animals cannot become infected with the disease, they can transmit it by carrying the virus on their feet, fur and bedding.

Mass slaughter sets off farm revolt

By Brian Williams and Mike Miller

March 16 2001

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has begun killing healthy farm animals in a desperate attempt to fight foot-and-mouth disease, while governments around the world took new steps to keep the disease at bay.

The drastic measures in Britain set off a rural revolt by some farmers who vowed not to allow death squads onto their land. The head of a farmers' group in Britain, the epicentre of the latest outbreak of the highly contagious disease, predicted the slaughter could lead to the death of one million animals in a mass cull expected to last several weeks.

While Britain moved to stamp out the disease, a European Union official expressed hope the United States might scale back its broad ban on imports of EU raw meat and livestock. The U.S. imposed the ban earlier this week after the disease spread from Britain to a herd of cattle in France.

In Japan, one of the world's biggest meat importers, buyers at an international food fair on Friday clustered around U.S. and Canadian stands to taste freshly cooked sausage and beef but could only look at computer-screen pictures of Belgian meat.

Colombia suspended imports of meat from Britain, France and Argentina, where the disease has also been found. Foot-and-mouth has been present in Colombia for 50 years, but the country has managed to create a zone largely free of it along the Atlantic Coast.

Portugal banned imports of livestock and animal products from seven countries outside the European Union to prevent the spread of the disease.

Farmer Derek Young rounds up sheep which have been selected for slaughter at Crummock Bank farm, in Wigton in Cumbria, north west Britain March 16, 2001. Britain today started killing tens of thousands of healthy sheep, goats and pigs in a macabre final solution bid to end a foot-and-mouth outbreak threatening food and farming around the world. REUTERS/Ian Hodgson

The United States set new restrictions on imports of cats, dogs and horses from countries affected by foot-and-mouth. Although the animals cannot become infected with the disease, they can transmit it by carrying the virus on their feet, fur and bedding.

U.S. PORK PRICES JUMP

Fallout from the disease continued to roil world commodity markets on Friday. Pork prices at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange rose sharply, as they have done each day since Tuesday when the U.S. announced its ban on EU meat imports. Traders figure that bans on imports from Europe will lead to increase demand for U.S. meat.

Expected Japanese demand helped to stoke the market. "The circumstances have made us unable to continue pork imports from Denmark," a trader in Japan said. "Until the disease woes calm down in Europe, we'd better buy the meat from the United States and Canada."

Japan banned meat imports from Belgium, France and Denmark earlier this month but has since lifted the restrictions on Denmark and Belgium.

But prices of feed ingredients such as corn and soybean meal at the Chicago Board of Trade continued to slip, because of fear that widespread liquidation of livestock herds will leave fewer animal mouths to feed.

"Buyers just did not want to step in front of the wheat or corn market before a very uncertain weekend," said Shawn McCambridge, a grain analyst for Prudential Securities.

A European Union official in Washington expressed optimism on Friday that the United States might ease its ban on EU meat imports toward the end of this month.

"There are positive sounds coming from them (the U.S. Agriculture Department)," said Gerry Kiely, agriculture counsellor the EU. The department has said the EU ban would extend for at least 15 days from March 13.

In Britain, Agriculture Minister Nick Brown promised substantial aid to farmers facing financial ruin from the disease. He said funds would be targeted at the hardest-hit region of northern England.

Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers Union which backs government plans, endorsed any action that would eradicate the disease from Britain.

"I'm not happy having to slaughter any animals, I'm distressed at the state we're in. But I have to recognise that if it means we can stop the spread of this disease, then this is an action we have to implement," Gill told reporters.

BRITISH FARMERS COULD REVOLT

But Andrew Spence of a pressure group called Farmers for Action told reporters there was a growing revolt against the killing of healthy animals.

"There are a lot of farmers who won't tolerate anyone coming in and slaughtering animals that are not infected," he said.

Under government plans, all sheep, goats and pigs within three km (two miles) of highly infected areas will be killed.

Scots farmer Paul Ramsden, who lives near one of the highly infected areas, said that with the lambing season approaching, he feared a backlash against the measures.

"I think farmers will definitely revolt," he told Scottish television. "Then the police will be involved and where do we go from there?"

Foot-and-mouth, which was first detected at a slaughterhouse near London on February 21, has spread to 261 locations the length and breadth of Britain.

The disease is not a threat to humans but causes blisters in the mouth and on the hooves of cloven-footed animals. The virus is easily transmitted from animal to animal and can also be carried on clothing and car tires and even on the wind.

Large areas of Britain's countryside are "no-go" areas.

Nations around the world are enforcing restrictions on visitors from abroad.

Visitors from Britain are subjected to special inspections at airports and ports to ensure they are not carrying the disease on their shoes or in gifts of food.

Even in Macedonia which according to its defense minister is on the brink of war, measures against foot-and-mouth are in place. Travelers arriving at Skopje airport must wipe their shoes in an antiseptic solution and big signs warn that meat products must be reported.

Portugal has temporarily banned bullfighting as part of its effort to stop the disease from entering the country. But Ireland's horse racing authorities said domestic racing would resume from April 14. Some 23 meetings had been shelved earlier this month in an effort to keep foot-and-mouth from entering the Irish republic.

Farmer apologises for taking disease to Northern Ireland

Reuters - March 17 2001

The sheep dealer who took foot-and-mouth disease to Northern Ireland has claimed he may never be able to return to the province.

John Walsh, who is in hiding after transporting the diseased animals, apologised for his unwitting role in the outbreak but has insisted he has been wrongly victimised.

So far, Northern Ireland has had only one outbreak of foot-and-mouth, at a farm in Meigh, south Armagh involving sheep shipped over from Carlisle by Mr Walsh earlier this month.

But the dealer claims he has been vilified when all he was trying to do was earn a living in difficult circumstances.

He said: "I have a family in Ireland and a special person in Ireland, but as true as God this minute if any of them special people to me died I'd hardly go back to bury them. That's what I feel about the way I have been treated."

Mr Walsh claims the sheep were supposed to go to a factory in Northern Ireland, but after that deal fell through he was left searching for another destination for the animals.

"I didn't start the foot-and-mouth here in England, I unwittingly brought a suspect case to Northern Ireland," he has told BBC Radio Ulster. "So what am I supposed to do, hang myself?"

He also insists that he has cooperated fully with Government officials investigating where the sheep which did not end up in Meigh were taken.

Farmers Warn Of 'Rural Revolt'

Reuters - March 17 2001

A rural revolt is threatening to derail the Government's attempts to control the foot and mouth crisis.

Anger over the mass cull of healthy animals and the mixed messages coming from the Government - prompted an angry reaction from farmers.

As the number of confirmed cases climbed to 273 on Saturday morning, one farmer allegedly threatened officials with a gun when they arrived to slaughter his livestock. The National Farmers' Union leader Ben Gill said many farmers were now suicidal.

And the lobby group Farmers For Action the same organisation that was behind last year's fuel strikes said it was launching legal action against the Government's plans. It began rallying farmers against the cull of thousands of sheep, pigs and goats.

The RSPCA added its voice to the debate, saying the cull is "a step too far".

In a bid to soothe farmers' anger, the Government is sending chief vet, Jim Scudamore, to Cumbria on Saturday to explain to farmers why the mass cull is necessary.

War cry

Up to 300,000 animals who are within three kilometres of exclusion zones in Cumbria, Dumfries and Galloway are to be slaughtered. But cattle will escape the cull.

"This is all-out war and I don't use those words lightly," said leader David Handley. "If this is the way they want to handle it they've got a fight on their hands."

Andrew Spence, one of the group's regional co-ordinators and another veteran of the petrol protests, said he would challenge Tony Blair for his Sedgefield seat in the election and warned that farmers would barricade themselves in their farms to halt the cull.

Apology

Agriculture Minister Nick Brown apologised to farmers for Thursday's ambiguous statement to MPs that led hundreds of farmers to believe healthy cattle would face mass slaughter.

Mr Brown stressed the measure applied strictly to pigs and sheep and added: "We didn't explain ourselves very well yesterday. Having re-read my statement it is accurate but I can see that it is ambiguous."

But he urged farmers to rally behind the Government. "The war we should be fighting is against the virus. To be fighting each other is a ridiculous thing to do," he said.

Compensation

Mr Spence was fiercely critical of the Government's handling of the situation.

"What upsets us deeply is that we are looking at a mass cull of healthy animals while this government allows the importation of meat from countries that are rife with foot and mouth disease," he said.

"This is hypocrisy at its greatest. You are talking about meat coming into the UK from Argentina, from Namibia, from south African countries which have rife foot and mouth."

All the sheep to be slaughtered will passed through markets at Welshpool, Northampton and Longtown and include those handled by two major dealers. The cull is expected to take three to four weeks.

Mr Gill played down fears of a "rural revolt" and said he did not believe civil disobedience among farmers was an immediate risk.But he warned that the Government needed to present farmers a multi-million aid package.

Tourism

Mr Gill went on to demand the closure of roads in Cumbria and Scotland to stop motorists spreading the disease on their tyres.His plea was backed by farmer John Bateson in Cumbria who called on ministers to seal off the whole county.

Mr Bateson warned that trippers were still putting farms at risk of infection by using rural roads.

"The whole area should have been closed off to the public," he said. "If we don't get this under control we won't have any tourism for years."

His warning came as tourism chiefs called for an extra £5 million for promotional campaigns to woo foreign visitors.

Britain mass slaughter sets off farm revolt
17 MARCH 2001

FINAL SOLUTION? Ministry of Agriculture officials watch as the carcasses of sheep and cattle are incinerated on a farm near Wigton in Cumbria. Britain has now started killing tens of thousands of animals in a macabre final solution bid to end a foot-and-mouth outbreak threatening food and farming around the world.

LONDON (Reuters): Britain started killing healthy sheep, goats and pigs on Friday in a macabre final effort to end a foot-and-mouth outbreak threatening farming around the world.

The drastic measures set off a rural revolt by some farmers who vowed to defend their land and not allow death squads on to their land.

The head of Britain's farmers predicted the slaughter could lead to the death of 1 million animals in a mass cull expected to last several weeks.

Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers Union (NFU) which backs government plans, said any action that eradicated the disease from Britain's shores should be taken.

"I'm not happy having to slaughter any animals, I'm distressed at the state we're in. But I have to recognise that if it means we can stop the spread of this disease, then this is an action we have to implement," Gill told reporters.

But Andrew Spence of a pressure group called Farmers for Action, told reporters there was a growing revolt against the killing of healthy animals.

"There are a lot of farmers who won't tolerate anyone coming in and slaughtering animals that are not infected," he said.

Under government plans, all sheep, goats and pigs within 3km of highly infected areas will be killed.

Scots farmer Paul Ramsden, who lives near one of the highly-infected areas said that with the lambing season approaching, he feared a backlash against the measures.

"I think farmers will definitely revolt," he told Scottish television. "Then the police will be involved and where do we go from there?"

The disease, which was first detected at an abattoir near London on February 21, has spread to 261 locations the length and breadth of Britain. It has also been found in France and there are suspicions it may have spread to other countries.

Foot-and-mouth is not a threat to humans, but causes blisters in the mouth and on the hooves of cloven foot animals. The virus is easily transmitted from animal to animal and can also be carried on clothing and even on the wind.

Large areas of Britain's countryside are "no-go" areas.

NFU leader Gill called for even tighter isolation.

He called for the government to shut country roads, saying vehicles driving past animals grazing behind rural hedgerows and dry stone walls could be spreading the disease.

Abroad, nations around the world are enforcing bans on imports of British and other European food products.

World commodities markets were braced for volatile trading as governments scrambled to contain the spread.

Traders expected bans on meat imports to increase demand for US products, while prices of feed such as corn and soybean meal were poised to tumble because widespread slaughter will leave fewer animals to feed.

In Britain, the visible signs of the mass cull were grim.

Smoke rose from hillsides where destroyed animals were flung on pyres, while even near a main motorway workers laid a death bed of straw and coal for more carcasses.

Neil Young, a Cumbrian farmer who rears cattle and sheep about 3km from a site of foot-and-mouth, said the government's "slaughter-on-suspicion" policy was not the right approach when the incident was so isolated.

"We've just got one round here, I just don't see any need," the 20-year-old farmer told a Reuters correspondent from his farm about 400km north of London.

"If they come up to Cumbria and they're wanting to kill everyone's sheep, there's going to be a lot of aggro. They are not going to get them easy. They won't be getting on my land."

Young had not slept for a week, worrying about his future.

"You see the lambs take their first breath, you get them a drink, you look after them and you just turn round and say 'Why do we bother, they might be slaughtered tomorrow'."

Friday March 16 5:02 PM ET
World's Biggest Oil Rig Sinking, Nine Men Missing

By Denise Luna

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - The world's biggest offshore oil rig, hit by a series of blasts that apparently killed 10 people on Thursday, may sink in 48 hours as the chances of recovery fade, the rig's Brazilian (news - web sites) owners said on Friday.

The president of state oil company Petrobras (news - web sites) Henri Philippe Reichstul also told reporters the possibility of finding any of nine missing workers alive was ``very remote''. So far one person has been confirmed dead.

``Petrobras is in mourning,'' he said.

An oil platform owned by Brazilian company Petrobras lists badly off the northern coast of Rio de Janeiro, March 15, 2001. The world's biggest offshore oil rig threatened to sink into the ocean spilling crude oil March 16, a day after an explosion that apparently killed 10 people. (Petrobras via Reuters)

If the giant 40-story rig off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state sinks and damages shutters of underwater wells, it could cause Brazil's worst environmental catastrophe, according to engineers.

Three powerful blasts rocked the rig with 175 workers aboard on Thursday. The cause of the explosion is still unknown.

``The prospects of stabilizing the platform are diminishing,'' Reichstul said, adding that the company, Brazil's biggest, was doing everything possible to save the rig.

Workers were pumping nitrogen into the damaged hull of the platform to keep it afloat. The accident has jeopardized Petrobras' oil production goals.

The rig, insured for $500 million, is listing to one side and slowly sinking as blasts had damaged one of its support columns. Officials said on Friday it was listing around 24 degrees, or over 2 times more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

``If the rig sinks there is the distinct possibility that some or all of the 21 pipelines could rupture,'' said Argemio Pertence, director of the Association of Engineers who worked for Petrobras for 25 years. ``It would be a catastrophe.''

He said that if it does not sink there is virtually no risk of environmental damage. No spills have been reported so far.

The P-36 rig could produce up to 180,000 barrels of crude oil per day, making it the world's biggest platform, but after starting operations last year, it was only pumping out 80,000 barrels daily, or 5 percent of Brazil's total output.

Mourning And Protests

If the death toll climbs, the incident could also be Petrobras' worst accident since 1984 when 36 people were killed in a platform explosion and fire.

One worker was in a hospital with severe burns and doctors described his condition as ``very serious'' on Friday.

Petrobras lamented the incident in a statement in main newspapers: ``It was an accident of serious proportions and particularly painful as it involves the loss of human lives.''

A rescue ship circles an oil platform owned by Brazilian company Petrobras, as it lists badly off the northern coast of Rio de Janeiro on March 15, 2001. The world's biggest offshore oil rig threatened to sink into the ocean spilling crude oil March 16, a day after an explosion that apparently killed 10 people. (Petrobras via Reuters)

Public outrage mounted against Petrobras, which has had two major oil spills and a series of accidents in which 81 workers died in the last three years.

Oil workers at Reduc, one of the country's biggest refineries, held a two-hour protest wearing black arm bands before punching in and employees at another refinery held a moment of silence for the victims of the explosion.

``I don't know if I'll be able to go back to work,'' said a platform worker in Macae, where Petrobras' heads up offshore operations for Rio state. ``I've always known that there is a constant risk but this just makes you think again.''

Workers accuse Petrobras of outsourcing work to inexperienced workers to cut costs, thus putting employees at risk and endangering the environment.

In January 2000, a Petrobras pipeline in Rio's scenic bay ruptured. The 340,000-gallon spill coated scores of marine birds and fish. The oil giant dumped more than four times as much crude into a major river six months later.

LOSSES OF $50 MILLION A MONTH

The rig is located in the Roncador oil field 78 miles offshore in the Campos Basin, which produces 80 percent of crude in Brazil's booming oil industry.

If the immense platform, whose deck is now dipping into the water, did sink, it could still dump the 316,000 gallons of diesel and 79,000 gallons of crude stored on the rig into the open sea.

Petrobras said it had five ships around the rig able to contain this potential spill.

All production was halted at P-36 and Petrobras said it could lose $50 million a month with the rig out of operation. Oil imports would then rise, hurting Brazil's fragile trade balance.

Friday March 16 6:00 PM ET
Governments Struggle to Ward Off Foot-And-Mouth

By Brian Williams and Mike Miller

LONDON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Britain began killing healthy farm animals on Friday in a desperate attempt to fight foot-and-mouth disease, while governments around the world took new steps to keep the virus at bay.

The drastic measures in Britain set off a rural revolt by some farmers who vowed not to allow death squads onto their land. The head of a farmers' group in Britain, the epicenter of the latest outbreak of the highly contagious disease, predicted the slaughter could lead to the death of 1 million animals in a mass cull expected to last several weeks.

While Britain moved to stamp out the disease, a European Union (news - web sites) official expressed hope the United States might scale back its broad ban on imports of EU raw meat and livestock. The United States imposed the ban earlier this week after the disease spread from Britain to a herd of cattle in France.

A Holland cow and her calf stand drooling from foot-and-mouth disease on Las Casualinas Ranch located 140 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, March 16, 2001. Argentina, the world's No. 5 beef exporter, has already suspended its meat exports. (Leonardo Zavattaro/Reuters)

But elsewhere, the chain reaction of trade sanctions continued in frantic efforts to contain the disease.

Department of Agriculture officer Sarah Finnell confiscates meat from a traveler who flew into Chicago's O'Hare airport from Europe March 16, 2001. In an attempt to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease into the United States, the USDA is stepping up its enforcement efforts at all international airports. (Scott Olson/Reuters)

Japan, one of the world's biggest agricultural importers, reportedly began taking steps to stop buying grain from Argentina, which confirmed this week an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Trade sources in the United States said on Friday that Japanese trading houses received e-mails from their Tokyo offices saying the outbreak in Argentina was a concern. ``What the Japanese are doing now is not buying any additional corn from Argentina,'' one source said. Any steps by importers to restrict grain would deepen the crisis because the world grain market is even larger than trade in meat. The head of the Paris-based world animal health organization, Office International des Epizooties, had tried earlier in the week to quell such restrictions by saying the risk of spreading food-and-mouth disease on grain was close to zero. Buyers at an international food fair in Japan on Friday clustered around U.S. and Canadian stands to taste freshly cooked sausage and beef but could only look at computer-screen pictures of Belgian meat. Colombia suspended imports of meat from Britain, France and Argentina, where the disease has also been found. Foot-and-mouth (news - web sites) has been present in Colombia for 50 years, but the country has managed to create a zone largely free of it along the Atlantic Coast. Portugal banned imports of livestock and animal products from seven countries outside the European Union to prevent the spread of the disease.

The United States set new restrictions on imports of cats, dogs and horses from countries affected by foot-and-mouth. Although the animals cannot become infected with the disease, they can transmit it by carrying the virus on their feet, fur and bedding.

U.S. Pork Prices Jump

Fallout from the disease continued to roil world commodity markets on Friday. Pork prices at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange rose sharply, as they have done each day since Tuesday when the U.S. announced its ban on EU meat imports. Traders figure that bans on imports from Europe will lead to increased demand for U.S. meat, especially from Japan.

But prices of feed ingredients such as corn and soybean meal at the Chicago Board of Trade continued to slip, because of fear that widespread liquidation of livestock herds will leave fewer animal mouths to feed.

``Buyers just did not want to step in front of the wheat or corn market before a very uncertain weekend,'' said Shawn McCambridge, a grain analyst for Prudential Securities.

A European Union official in Washington expressed optimism on Friday that the United States might ease its ban on EU meat imports toward the end of this month.

``There are positive sounds coming from them (the U.S. Agriculture Department),'' said Gerry Kiely, agriculture counselor the EU. The department has said the EU ban would extend for at least 15 days from March 13.

In Britain, Agriculture Minister Nick Brown promised substantial aid to farmers facing financial ruin from the disease. He said funds would be targeted at the hardest-hit region of northern England.

Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers Union which backs government plans, endorsed any action that would eradicate the disease from Britain.

``I'm not happy having to slaughter any animals, I'm distressed at the state we're in. But I have to recognize that if it means we can stop the spread of this disease, then this is an action we have to implement,'' Gill told reporters.

British Farmers Could Revolt

But Andrew Spence of a pressure group called Farmers for Action told reporters there was a growing revolt against the killing of healthy animals.

``There are a lot of farmers who won't tolerate anyone coming in and slaughtering animals that are not infected,'' he said.

Under government plans, all sheep, goats and pigs within two miles (three km) of highly infected areas will be killed.

Scots farmer Paul Ramsden, who lives near one of the highly infected areas, said that with the lambing season approaching, he feared a backlash against the measures.

``I think farmers will definitely revolt,'' he told Scottish television. ``Then the police will be involved and where do we go from there?''

Foot-and-mouth, which was first detected at a slaughterhouse near London on February 21, has spread to 261 locations the length and breadth of Britain.

The disease is not a threat to humans but causes blisters in the mouth and on the hooves of cloven-footed animals. The virus is easily transmitted from animal to animal and can also be carried on clothing and car tires and even on the wind.

Large areas of Britain's countryside are ``no-go'' areas.

The disease scare has led to some drastic measures. Portugal has temporarily banned bullfighting as part of its effort to stop the disease from entering the country. But Ireland's horse racing authorities said domestic racing would resume from April 14. Some 23 meetings had been shelved earlier this month in an effort to keep foot-and-mouth from entering the Irish republic.