U.S. listeria toll rises to 23 with two Louisiana deaths

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By David Beasley

Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:20pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - Two more people in the United States have died from a listeria outbreak caused by tainted cantaloupes linked to a Colorado farm, bringing the death toll to 23 across 12 states, health officials said on Wednesday.

Deaths from the largest U.S. food-borne listeria outbreak in over two decades have now reached Louisiana where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said two people had died. Deaths had previously been reported in Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming.

The death toll from the outbreak now exceeds the number who died from a multi-state listeria outbreak linked to hot dogs and deli turkey from a Michigan processor that started in 1998 and stretched into 1999.

Prior to that in 1985, listeriosis killed 48 people in a California outbreak linked to inadequately pasteurized soft cheese in the largest outbreak on record.

Some 116 people from 25 states have been sickened in the current outbreak. Because listeria can cause illness as long as two months after a person has consumed contaminated food, health officials have warned that the cases of illness related to the cantaloupes likely will rise through October.

The Food and Drug Administration announced that Jensen Farms in Colorado had issued a voluntary recall of its Rocky-Ford brand cantaloupes in mid-September.

"Cantaloupes that are known to not have come from Jensen Farms are safe to eat," the CDC said on Wednesday in a statement. Consumers should ask the grocery store if they have doubt about a cantaloupe's source, the agency said.

Listeria monocytogenes is a frequent cause of U.S. food recalls in processed meats and cheeses, but contamination in fresh produce is a new and worrisome development.

People most at risk are the elderly, pregnant woman and people with a weakened immune system, such as those who have had organ transplants or cancer.

Symptoms include fever and muscle aches, sometimes preceded by diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

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Death toll in Syria rises to 2,900: U.N.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: FACES BLURRED AT SOURCE. People protest against President Bashar al-Assad on the first day of Eid Al-Fitr in the city of Suqba August 30, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Handout

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA | Thu Oct 6, 2011 12:32pm EDT

GENEVA (Reuters) - The death toll in Syria has risen to more than 2,900 since pro-democracy protests began in March, the United Nations human rights office said on Thursday as activists warned that the country could descend into armed conflict.

"Based on our detailed list of individual names that we have been keeping, the total number of people killed in Syria since protests began now stands at more than 2,900," Rupert Colville, spokesman for U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, told Reuters.

The United Nations' previous death toll was 2,700 from the bloody crackdown by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which generally denies reports of human rights abuses and says it has no choice but to restore law and order.

Colville noted that the latest figure did not include those who have disappeared and whose fate is unknown.

On Friday, the U.N. Human Rights Council is to review Syria's record, part of its regular examination of all U.N. member states. The United States and other Western countries are expected to denounce what they say are atrocities by Syria.

The Geneva forum last month launched an international commission of inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity which a preliminary U.N. investigation said were being perpetrated by Syrian security forces.

Sergio Pinheiro, a Brazilian heading the new three-member investigation, was to meet a high-level Syrian delegation in Geneva this week to seek permission to enter the country. The team, which plans to gather testimony in the region, is due to issue a report by the end of November.

"DETENTION CENTRES A NIGHTMARE"

Radwan Ziadeh, an exiled Syrian activist, said on Thursday that more than 30,000 Syrians had been imprisoned since protests began, many in schools or soccer fields converted into detention centers.

"Mass killings continue," he told a discussion on torture in Syria. "Detention centers are a nightmare for Syrians now."

His businessman brother Yassin and four other members of his family are among those being detained, Ziadeh said.

His Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies had documented the deaths of 183 children at the hands of Syrian forces, many under torture, as well as 18 cases of rape in Homs, he said.

"Child of Syria," a film produced by the center and shown for the first time in Geneva, told the tale of Thamer al Sharei, a 15-year-old boy from the southern city of Deraa who disappeared during demonstrations on April 29.

His parents, interviewed after fleeing to Jordan, said they retrieved his battered body from a morgue, riddled with 11 bullet holes and a drill hole in his cheek, two months later.

"If it were not for the childhood scar on his forehead, I never would have recognized him," his father Mohammed says in the film. "They have taken torture to a new level."

"If they are doing this to children, what are they doing to grown-ups?," he asks.

Ibrahim al-Jahaman, identified as a former detainee at Bab Touma prison near Damascus at the time, says in the film: "I think he was in a semi-conscious state, I'm not sure he felt the blows he was getting."

Ziadeh said Syrian forces felt immune from any accountability. He voiced dismay at the U.N. Security Council's failure to condemn Syria, after China and Russia vetoed a European-drafted resolution on Tuesday.

It was important for the Security Council to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes by Syrian forces, he said.

"Unfortunately this will encourage more people to radicalize as they see no hope of action by the international community," Ziadeh said.

Jeremie D. Smith, of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, also warned of the situation deteriorating further in Syria if world powers failed to act.

"Syria is bound to become more destabilized, more radicalized, if there isn't any form of hope for these people."

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay)

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