Reuters Health Last Updated: 2003-04-07 15:02:56 -0400 (Reuters Health) By Jayashree Lengade

BOMBAY (Reuters) - Indian health authorities reported the first suspected case of the deadly SARS virus in the country on Monday, saying a U.S. citizen had taken ill after traveling to Bombay from China, where the disease originated.

"She's at a stage that we're suspecting that she may be infected with the virus," Dr. Subhash Salunkhe, director general for health services for the western state of Maharashtra, told Reuters in Bombay.

"It's not yet confirmed, we're still conducting tests. She's traveled and come from China, Thailand and Vietnam, all high risk countries for SARS."

He said the patient was admitted to the Kasturba Hospital on Monday evening and a team of doctors from the National Institute of Virology at the nearby city of Pune were on their way to Bombay to conduct more tests.

Salunkhe declined to give further details but added that the patient was stable.

"She's been kept in isolation now and she had come (in) with symptoms of fever and a sore throat," said a doctor treating the patient at the specialized hospital in central Bombay.

Symptoms of the pneumonia-like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) include fever, coughing and breathing difficulties. The mortality rate is about three to four percent.

India is on high alert to prevent entry of the virus that has swept large parts of Asia and killed 100 people worldwide and infected more than 2,600.

Airport authorities have been screening passengers coming into the country and hospitals have been identified in major cities where travelers showing symptoms of the flu-like disease will be kept under observation.

Reuters Health Last Updated: 2003-04-07 15:03:56 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The answer to the deadly SARS virus sweeping the world may be a simple necktie, according to a college professor in Cleveland, Ohio.

John Haaga designed the $40 tie and similar scarves for women with silk on the outside and a special filter inside for use in a medical scare or terror attack.

Haaga, professor of radiology at University Hospitals of Cleveland, said he got the idea when he saw images on television of a man covering his face with a tie after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

Sales of the ties and scarves have risen to about 50 a day on the manufacturer's Web site (http:/www.fbsclothing.com/) because of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which has killed at least 90 people worldwide.

Haaga told Reuters he plans to introduce new designs and move manufacturing to the United States from Guangdong province in China, which happens to be the epicenter of the SARS outbreak.

The ties provide similar protection to a commonly used face mask known as an N95 respirator, which filters out particulates, he said.

But, for many, the main benefit may be psychological.

"When they are wearing a piece of clothing that can provide some temporary protection, it gives peace of mind," Haaga said.

Reuters Health Last Updated: 2003-04-07 17:00:33 -0400 (Reuters Health)

TORONTO (Reuters) - The mysterious pneumonia-like SARS virus has claimed its 10th Canadian victim, health officials said on Monday, adding that another case is being investigated as a possible SARS death.

Health officials in Ontario said the number of people with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) had risen to 188, with 88 probable and 100 suspect cases.

As of Sunday, there were reports of 217 probable or suspect SARS cases across Canada.

The illness has killed about 100 people worldwide and infected more than 2,600 since it emerged in southern China in November. Canada has the third-highest number of cases in the world after China and Hong Kong, and the bulk of them are around Toronto, which has a large Chinese immigrant population.

Thousands of people have been quarantined in Ontario to prevent the spread of the virus.

Outside Ontario, cases have been reported in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Prince Edward Island.

SARS symptoms include high fever, chills and breathing difficulties, and the disease has a mortality rate of about 4 percent, roughly the same as measles. By comparison, hundreds of thousands can die in a year from various strains of influenza, and malaria kills about 1 million a year, mostly children.

Reuters health Last Updated: 2003-04-07 16:08:56 -0400 (Reuters Health) By Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Airlines suspend flights. A medical conference is canceled in Canada. Thailand forces tourists to wear masks. Such responses to a new but so far limited epidemic may seem extreme but are part of human nature, experts say.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which has killed 100 people worldwide and infected more than 2,600, came to the world's attention just last month and has led to some unprecedented measures.

The World Health Organization issued its first travel warning based on a disease, advising people to avoid worst-hit areas like Hong Kong and southern China.

Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific cut flights to Hong Kong by 14 percent, while Continental Airlines suspended non-stop flights between Newark and Hong Kong on Monday.

Yet SARS is hardly the deadliest disease. It is less infectious than influenza and, with a 4 percent mortality rate, not nearly as deadly as HIV/AIDS, which kills all its victims. Malaria kills up to a million people every year, mostly children.

But SARS is new and that scares people, said David Ropeik of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

"Whether it is an over-reaction depends on whether it is a real threat, and we don't know yet," Ropeik said in a telephone interview. "The characteristic at work here is if it is new, it is always scarier."

POTENTIAL FOR DEVASTATION

Virus expert C.J. Peters, who helped discover the Ebola virus in Africa, said he would take extreme care with SARS.

"I have been involved with a lot of emerging diseases, viral diseases, and this is unlike any other because it is transmitted from person to person more efficiently than any of the others," Peters, now at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, said in a telephone interview.

"People got lathered up over Ebola because it can be 90 percent fatal, but a huge Ebola epidemic is 200 to 300 cases. It is not transmitted very efficiently."

SARS, in contrast, has spread to 19 countries and is carried by travelers.

Ropeik said tourists who abandoned plans to visit China and residents who fled affected apartment blocks are acting on primordial instincts, not logic.

"It is steeped more in emotion than in fact," he said. "When a threat is new to you, the safest thing is to get out of the way and then you'll live. The more you don't know, the more you treat it as a threat and the better you survive."

Also, he said, the enormous media attention given to SARS has made people more aware of it. "The more you are aware of a risk, the more you worry about it, he said.

That is why no one panics when an especially bad influenza epidemic kills 500,000 people around the world in one year. "The reason we are not afraid of flu is we are not thinking about it," he said.

But people may over-react, Ropeik said. "The danger is, sometimes it can lead us into more risk."

ILLOGICAL REACTIONS

For instance, during the anthrax attacks in the United States in October 2001, thousands of people who were not near an anthrax-laced letter took antibiotics just in case.

Sound scientific evidence shows such actions can lead to the mutation of bacteria in a person's body, making antibiotics less likely to work the next time that person needs them.

People want to have a sense of control over their destinies, Ropeik said. That is why people rushed to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting when the U.S. Homeland Security Department warned of risks of a chemical attack.

People can also under-react. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention complains that one-third of Americans who should get flu shots every year do not, even though influenza kills 36,000 Americans a year.

CDC infectious disease chief Dr. James Hughes said the CDC was trying to find out just what the risk of SARS is. He said it was too early to know because it is not yet clear how many people have been exposed to the virus.

Hughes said the CDC had tracked down several Americans who had been staying in the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong's Kowloon district where a single patient infected seven others. The CDC is also working on surveys of people who flew on the same aircraft with known SARS patients.

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forbes.com What's Hot Now Martha Lufkin for The Art Newspaper

A Connecticut art broker is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to involvement in a money-laundering scheme intended to exchange illegal drug proceeds for art. Two New York art dealers charged in the case have not been scheduled for trial.

The federal indictment charges Shirley D. Sack, 74, and Arnold K. Katzen, 63, with conspiring and attempting to sell two paintings for $4.1 million in cash to an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer.

According to the defendants, the paintings in question are Amedeo Modigliani's "Jeune femme aux yeux bleus," valued at around $2.5 million, and a pastel by Edgar Degas, "La Coiffure," valued at around $1.6 million. These were seized by the U.S.

"Katzen and Sack indicated to the undercover agent that they could resell the paintings overseas as part of the money-laundering scheme," said the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Michael J. Sullivan. The undercover sting investigation, apparently prompted by an informant's tip, was conducted by the U.S. Customs Service and the FBI.

The U.S. alleged that the Connecticut art broker, Alan M. Stewart, who pleaded guilty in December 2001, acted in the money-laundering transaction. The defendants face maximum sentences of 20 years in prison and $250,000 fines.

Under U.S. law, it is a crime to conduct a financial transaction involving the proceeds or represented proceeds of an illegal activity with intent to conceal the nature and source of the illegal proceeds.

The indictment says that Sack and Katzen promoted themselves as fine art dealers who were "capable of selling various works of art to be paid for in cash, as a way to launder money earned through illegal drug trafficking. The pair "offered to resell overseas any works of art first sold by them," the indictment says. One of the acts alleged as part of the conspiracy was the purchase of a cash-counting machine to sort out any counterfeit bills from the millions the pair expected to receive, the indictment says. The conspiracy took place in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, the U.S. says.

The allegations were supported by an affidavit of a U.S. Customs agent, which states that he had received information about Sack.

According to the affidavit, Sack, seeking a buyer for a $12 million painting supposedly by Raphael, stated that she did not care "if the money was drug money, Russian organized crime money or mafia money; she just needed a buyer," and gave the name of Alan M. Stewart as her agent.

In March 2001 in Boston, meeting with an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer who showed interest in buying the putative Raphael, Stewart said he could move cash, exchange cash for gems in addition to art, and handle the resale of the Raphael, the agent's affidavit says. Eventually, the deal shifted to the Modigliani and Degas, the affidavit says, and Stewart fell out of the transaction.

Meeting with the undercover agent in May 2001, Katzen suggested exporting the Modigliani and Degas out of the U.S. for resale, which could take "six months to one year," the indictment says. Katzen proposed to the agent that they build up an inventory in Europe to be marketed "creatively" and that they establish a long-term relationship in moving "large amounts," the indictment says. To assure the would-be buyer, documents were sent to establish authenticity, the indictment says.

The dealers met the undercover agent at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston, where they had stored the paintings, and confirmed that the bill of sale was made out to a "straw" company, Universal Investments.

The curtain closed at the Boston Seaport Hotel, where in the final scenes of the crime, according to the indictment, Sack and Katzen "unwrapped and displayed for the undercover agent the Modigliani and the Degas," and put the money-counting machine to work, counting $300,000 in cash.

At that point, apparently federal agents arrested the dealers and seized the paintings.

Sack discussed transferring the proceeds from the resale to an offshore account, the agent's affidavit says, and the dealers explained that the buyer would see a net loss in funds. When the undercover agent mentioned normally paying "10% to 15%" to launder money, Katzen said the works could easily be sold at a 10% discount, the affidavit says. Katzen said he would move the money very, very slowly, the affidavit says, and told the agent he had a client in Europe who was ready to buy the Modigliani "under these circumstances."

The Saudi Prince, The "Goya" And The "Foujita" Four people, including a Saudi prince, were recently indicted on narcotics charges in Miami. The indictment cites one of the defendants with money laundering and seeks forfeiture of two works of art in connection with the deal. The oil paintings, seized by the U.S. in New York, are "Bandits attacking a coach" attributed to Francisco de Goya and "Buste de jeune" attributed to Tsuguharu Foujita. Both works are also known by other titles. The indictment charges one José Maria Clemente with financial transactions designed to conceal the source of illegal drug proceeds.

At a hearing in Miami in July 2002 on whether another of the defendants, Doris Salazar, should be freed on bail, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Arango gave a glimpse of the government's case.

She alleged that in 1999 a drug transaction took place in which two kilos of cocaine were flown from Caracas, Venezuela, to Paris on a private jet owned by Nayef Al-Shaalan. He is believed to be "a Saudi Arabian prince who is not in direct line for the throne" and who was also Salazar's lover and owner of Cannes Bank in Switzerland, Arango said.

The deal was to yield about $20 million in cocaine proceeds as Al-Shaalan's 50% share, Arango said. She described Clemente as a Spaniard and banker in Switzerland who was the drug group's "European money launderer" who had been "organizing their drug money and laundering it through banks in Europe and Switzerland."

The drug deal was planned on a trip organized by Prince Al-Shaalan to an encampment in the Saudi desert, featuring tents, Humvees [all-terrain vehicles], and "horses and camels," Arango said.

In Paris, the cocaine was taken to "a nice villa in the suburbs of Paris," Arango said. A seizure of 190 kilos of cocaine off the Spanish border led authorities to the stash in France, she said.

Arango said that two cooperating witnesses were "very involved in," and that Prince Al-Shaalan and Clemente knew "a lot" about, "the art world," saying that "some of their investments were made in art." As a result of a money-laundering debt, the "two paintings arrived in Miami" to repay a drug debt, she said.

The paintings were sent "in respect to a money-laundering transaction," which was "related to this drug deal," she clarified, adding that "it was the money-laundering debt that Clemente was repaying." The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration believes that oil paintings are "a way in which drug dealers launder money. It is an investment for their drug transaction proceeds," she said.

Telling the court that Salazar might flee if allowed out on bail, Arango said that Salazar had various different passports and a number of original oil paintings at her house. But at a later detention hearing on August 7, Arango said that the oil paintings had been examined and were found to be worthless reproductions.

Of the four defendants, Salazar is in federal custody in Miami; Clemente was arrested in Spain in mid-December and is awaiting extradition, either to Switzerland or the U.S.; Ivan Lopez Vanegas was arrested in early February in Columbia and is awaiting extradition to the U.S., while Prince Al-Shaalan has not been arrested.