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Six people have died, 87 have been infected, and some 1,800 schools and kindergartens have temporarily shut their doors amid an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in South Korea. It’s likely the most significant outbreak of the disease outside the Middle East, and over the weekend, the World Health Organization released details on new cases of the disease in South Korea. It also issued a surprising piece of advice for individuals seeking to avoid infection: Drink neither raw camel milk nor camel urine. That’s perhaps not as strange as it sounds. While the exact transmission mechanisms remain unclear, it...

Recent scientific findings date their arrival earlier than ever thought, sparking hot debate among archaeologists For much of its length, the slow-moving Aucilla River in northern Florida flows underground, tunneling through bedrock limestone. But here and there it surfaces, and preserved in those inky ponds lie secrets of the first Americans.For years adventurous divers had hunted fossils and artifacts in the sinkholes of the Aucilla about an hour east of Tallahassee. They found stone arrowheads and the bones of extinct mammals such as mammoth, mastodon and the American ice age horse.Then, in the 1980s, archaeologists from the Florida Museum of...

THe World Health Organisation suggests on a recent outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in Saudi Arabia (among other things): Food hygiene practices should be observed. People should avoid drinking raw camel milk or camel urine, or eating meat that has not been properly cooked.

Saudi Arabian doctors say they've identified camels as one source of MERS infections in humans. The scientists report they matched genetic samples from the virus that killed a Saudi man last November to virus samples present in one of nine camels that he owned. (snip) The health risk from MERS to the American public is low, U.S. officials have said, because the virus is only passed through close contact.

Students at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota cancelled a “Hump Day” party last week featuring a live camel following complaints that the event could be viewed as offensive to Middle Eastern cultures. The campus’ Residence Hall Association nixed its own event after several students began organizing a protest on Facebook. The protest had received more than 100 RSVPs before it was deleted Wednesday, according to aThursday report in Campus Reform. The episode has since triggered a social-media backlash against campus political correctness, with critics expressing incredulity over the idea that a camel is somehow culturally insensitive or racist....

MERS is very scary. This week, while avoiding the term global health emergency, the World Health Organization announced that the deadly viral infection was both serious and urgent. So far, there have been 571 confirmed cases of MERS; 171 of those people died from the disease. There's one place, however, where the mood about MERS isn't scaring everyone. It's also the place where the infection was first reported in 2012 and where almost 500 recorded cases have been found so far: Saudi Arabia. And the skepticism about the virus has taken a strange turn in Saudi Arabia, where people have...

A well-known Saudi farmer sold three of his camels for SR14.2 million (Dh14 million) to buyers from the Gulf kingdom and neighbouring Kuwait. The first two camels were sold for SR6million each while the third fetched nearly SR2.2 million, Sabq newspaper reported. The paper said the deal in the northwestern town of Hail was one of the largest camel transactions in Saudi Arabia despite fears the desert animals could be the cause of Coronavirus that has killed hundreds of people in the kingdom.

Students at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota have cancelled an event to celebrate the end of the year after complaints that bringing a camel on campus could offend those of Middle Eastern cultures. The “Hump Day” event, put on by the Residence Hall Association (RHA), was supposed to be “a petting zoo type of atmosphere” in which students could hang out and take photos with a live camel. According to Aaron Macke, the group’s advisor, the camel is owned by a local vendor and trained for special events. But the event was subsequently cancelled after students took to...

On Tuesday morning in Florida, Orlando Health physicians and a state public health official spoke with reporters about the second MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) case at Dr. Phillips Hospital, where the patient is currently being treated. The patient with MERS initially came to Orlando Regional Medical Center to bring a relative in for testing, according to Dr. Ken Michaels, the health system’s medical director for occupational health. The care team admitted him to the hospital on May 8, when Dr. Michaels said the patient came to the emergency room at Dr. Phillips Hospital displaying possible symptoms of pneumonia. (The...

People are taking photos and videos of themselves kissing camels in defiance of a warning from Saudi health authorities not to go near the animals, which have been linked to the deadly Mers virus. In recent days, Saudi Arabia has urged people to wear masks and gloves when dealing with camels, to stay away from raw camel meat and camel milk, and not to go near sick animals, the newspaper Gulf News reports. But some people have refused to listen to the government's advice, posting videos and sending messages in support of camels. In one video, a man stands between...

Extremely Deadly Virus will Come from the Muslim World By Shoebat Foundation onMay 10, 2014 inFeatured, General Exclusive by Walid Shoebat When it comes to MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) it kills nearly a third of the people it sickened. Most people still haven’t twigged to the existence of MERS but that may be changing, with new MERS infections popping up recently in Malaysia, Greece, the Philippines, Egypt, and late last week, the United States became the 16th country to detect MERS in an American who has been living and working in Saudi Arabia. Some potential explanations for the...

The owners of a farm shop and tea shop were puzzled to find one of their two camels was giving birth on Thursday – as both camels are female. Andrew and Maria Henshaw had no idea that Doris the camel, which lives with its half-sister Delilah, was pregnant until it began to calve. Mr Henshaw, a farmer, who runs the Mainsgill Farm Shop near Richmond, North Yorkshire, suspects that Doris, who has not been near a male camel from more than a year, was impregnanted before she was brought from Cornwall to North Yorkshire.

'More beautiful than women, horses and all other animals': Welcome to the Arab beauty contest where million-dollar CAMELS with false eyelashes and lip filler compete for huge prizes • Visitors trek across desert for lavish event in Liwa, United Arab Emirates • Men happily declare they prefer camels to their wives - and all other women • Prize camels can change hands for as much as £1.8million at all-male event • Festival also features camel races and milking competitions Thousands of men leer on, playboys skid around outside in expensive cars, and top models command fees reaching into the millions...

It's called Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, after the region where almost all the patients have been reported. But the name may turn out to be a misnomer. A new study has found the virus in camels from Sudan and Ethiopia, suggesting that Africa, too, harbors the pathogen. That means MERS may sicken more humans than previously thought—and perhaps be more likely to trigger a pandemic. MERS has sickened 183 people and killed 80, most of them in Saudi Arabia. A couple of cases have occurred in countries outside the region, such as France and the United Kingdom, but...

Archaeologists from Israel’s top university have used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint the arrival of domestic camels in the Middle East -- and they say the science directly contradicts the Bible’s version of events. Camels are mentioned as pack animals in the biblical stories of Abraham, Joseph and Jacob, Old Testament stories that historians peg to between 2000 and 1500 BC. But Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures say camels weren’t domesticated in Israel until centuries later, more like 900 BC. “In addition to challenging the Bible's historicity, this anachronism is...

Two researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) studied the bones of camels found in an area of ancient copper mines in the Aravah Valley, south of the Dead Sea. Using radiocarbon dating and other techniques, they determined that camels were first used in the mining operations near the end of the 10th century BC. They state that this is the first evidence of domesticated camels in ancient Israel. This would be almost 1,000 years later than the time of the patriarchs, when camels first appear in the Bible. Their study was quickly used to claim that the Bible was written...

Camels and wrestling. Yes, the two can go together. Male camels can weigh as much as a ton. In Turkey, the animals are trained to square off in bouts of strength and skill. They do this before crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. As camels are tall, lumbering creatures, you don't want to get in their way. They can move surprisingly quickly, especially when two are locking necks, almost like a double helix, as they try to overpower each other. Turkey's largest camel wrestling tournament is held annually here in Secluk a market town of about 20,000 people. Camels...

DAMASCUS, Syria – Scientists have unearthed a camel jawbone in the Syrian desert that they think may be a previously unknown tiny species of the animal and say dates back a million years.

A team of Iranian and British anthropologists working on human remains discovered at the 5200-year-old Burnt City have identified a male rider who they believe was a messenger in ancient times... “The marks indicate that he had gathered his right leg while riding. Thus the riding was carried out on a big animal like a camel or ox,” Foruzanfar explained. There is evidence that draft animals were used in the Burnt City in ancient times, but gathering a leg while riding is something someone does while riding a camel over long distances. Thus, it is surmised that the man was...

Damascus: Swiss researchers have discovered the 1,00,000-year-old remains of a previously unknown giant camel species in central Syria. “This is a big discovery, a revolution in science,” Professor Jean-Marie Le Tensorer of the University of Basel said. “It was not known that the dromedary was present in the Middle East more than 10,000 years ago.” “Can you imagine? The camel’s shoulders stood three metres high and it was around four metres tall, as big as a giraffe or an elephant. Nobody knew that such a species had existed.” Tensorer, who has been excavating at the desert site in Kowm since...