New Food Poisoning Outbreak Reported

Dozens of people were sickened in a new food poisoning outbreak, and the death of an elderly woman raised the death toll from Japan’s E. coli bacteria epidemic to nine. The fresh outbreak in Hiroshima affected 42 people attending the Japan Esperanto Congress. Thirteen of them were hospitalized. Officials in Hiroshima said the new cases were not caused by the 0157 strain of E. coli bacteria that has sickened 9,000 people nationwide. Meanwhile, an 80-year-old woman died in Yamagata, about 180 miles northeast of Tokyo, where she had been treated since July 23.