Salon.com > Kirsten Grieshaber

2 new E. coli deaths as EU holds emergency meeting

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:53:00 +0000

Germany reported two more deaths and 300 more E. coli cases Wednesday, but its health minister insisted that new infections were dropping, giving some hope that the world's deadliest E. coli outbreak was abating.

Health Minister Daniel Bahr spoke before an emergency meeting in Berlin with health officials from the European Union, which is getting concerned about Germany's handling of the crisis.

"I cannot yet give an all-clear, but after an analysis of the numbers there's reason for hope," Bahr told ARD television. "The numbers are continuously falling -- which nonetheless means that there can still be new cases and that one unfortunately has to expect new deaths too -- but overall new infections are clearly going down."

Bahr said the death toll has risen to 26 -- 25 in Germany plus one in Sweden.

Germany's national disease control center, the Robert Koch Institute, said the number of reported cases in Germany rose by more than 300 to 2,648. Nearly 700 of those affected are hospitalized with a serious complication that can cause kidney failure. Another 100 E. coli cases are in other European countries and the United States.

Bean sprouts likely cause of E. coli outbreak

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 17:03:00 +0000

German agricultural authorities on Sunday identified locally grown beansprouts as the likely cause of an E. coli outbreak that has killed 22 people and sickened over 2,200 others in Europe.

The Lower Saxony agriculture ministry was sending an alert Sunday warning people to stop eating the sprouts, which are often used in mixed salads, ministry spokesman Gert Hahne told The Associated Press.

"Bean sprouts have been identified as the product that likely caused the outbreak," Hahne said. "Many restaurants that suffered from an E. coli outbreak had those sprouts delivered."

Hahne said the sprouts were grown on a farm in Lower Saxony in northern Germany. He did not elaborate but planned a news conference later Sunday.

Hahne said while official test results have not yet conclusively shown that the Lower Saxony-grown sprouts were to blame, "all indications speak to them being" the cause.

He also said authorities would still keep their warning against eating tomatoes, cucumbers or lettuce in place for now.

The crisis is the deadliest E. coli outbreak in modern history.

Beloved polar bear Knut has died

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 03:20:00 +0000

Berlin's beloved polar bear Knut, an international star who as a cuddly, fluffy cub graced magazine covers, movies and merchandise, died Saturday. His death at the young age of four took zookeepers and animal experts by surprise.

The celebrity bear died suddenly in his compound at the Berlin Zoo on Saturday afternoon, bear keeper Heiner Kloes told The Associated Press. He waded into the water in his enclosure before having a short spasm and then dying in front of hundreds of zoo visitors.

While the life expectancy of polar bear in the wild is between 15 and 20 years, animals in captivity can live even longer because they are not exposed to hunger, thirst or infections. A postmortem will be conducted on Monday to try to pinpoint the cause of death, Kloes said.

"He certainly did not die of old age," Thomas Pietsch from the Vier Pfoten group for the prevention of cruelty to animals told German news agency DAPD.

His death was met by an immediate outpouring of sorrow. As the news of Knut's death spread through the city, more Knut fans showed up at the zoo, assembling in front of the bear compound to mourn his loss.

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit called Knut's death "awful," telling the B.Z. daily, "we all held him so dear."

Assange portrayed as “emperor” in insider book

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:05:00 +0000

A tell-all book by a former WikiLeaks insider casts founder Julian Assange as an "emperor" who has become just the kind of public figure he is trying to expose.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the former WikiLeaks spokesman who left the secret-spilling website after a bitter dispute with Assange, writes about his euphoria at the website's spectacular rise as well as his disillusionment with a leader he describes as delusional and power-crazed.

The Associated Press reviewed a German-language copy of "Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website" ahead of its release Friday in 16 countries. Domscheit-Berg was launching the book Thursday with a press conference.

"WikiLeaks turned pale computer geeks, whose cleverness otherwise would not have been noticed by anybody, into public figures, who put fear into politicians, CEOS and military chiefs around the world," he writes in the book.

But Domscheit-Berg, who last month launched a rival website called OpenLeaks, also traces the arc of an increasingly fraught relationship that eventually erupts into conflict.

Germany offers program for extremists to quit

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:14:00 +0000

Germany's domestic intelligence service on Monday started a program for Islamist radicals who want to quit extremism, an initiative under which people will be offered help finding new jobs and moving home.

A spokeswoman for the agency, who was talking on condition of anonymity in line with agency policy, declined to say how much money had been allocated or how many employees were working for the program.

However, she said the agency would guarantee confidentiality to users, and also help with safety measures if people seeking to quit are threatened by radicals.

"Our program is an offer for those who want to leave extremism behind," she said. "Once we find out what their needs are, we will develop the program accordingly."