Pope will visit Toronto, Mexico during summer
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope John Paul II will visit Mexico in July for the canonization of a Mexican Indian, part of another busy year of travel that will test the pontiff’s health.

The Vatican said a visit to ground zero in New York City, the site of the Sept. 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center, was not under consideration, despite Italian press reports that suggested the pope had expressed a desire to see it.

The Vatican said Thursday that John Paul will fly to Mexico City from Canada, after he attends the Roman Catholic Church’s World Youth Day celebrations in Toronto.

John Paul always receives a particularly warm reception in Mexico, which he has already visited four times and was the site of his first foreign trip a few months after he assumed the papacy in 1978.

Details are still in the works, but the stop is expected to be brief in Mexico City, where he will raise to sainthood Juan Diego. The Indian is said to have had a vision of an olive-skinned Virgin Mary on Dec. 12, 1531, while standing on the site of an Aztec shrine on a hill.

John Paul recently approved Juan Diego’s elevation to sainthood after the Vatican certified that he had performed a miracle for a believer in 1990 by answering a mother’s prayers to save the life of her son, who fractured his skull after jumping from a building.

Order to destroy smallpox virus stocks reversed
GENEVA (AP) — Acting on fears of bioterrorism, the World Health Organization’s governing body on Thursday reversed a long-standing order for the destruction of all smallpox virus stocks and recommended they be retained for research into new vaccines or treatment.

The U.N. health agency’s 32-member Executive Board endorsed a recommendation by WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland to drop a 2002 deadline for destroying the virus, held at top security laboratories in the United States and Russia.

It set no new target for destroying the stocks, saying only that a report on the progress of research should be drawn up in “two to three years.”

U.S. assistant surgeon general Kenneth Bernard told the meeting that research into improved vaccines was vital following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent anthrax scare. The risk of the highly contagious virus being used as a bioterrorism weapon can no longer be considered remote, he said.

The Russian delegation echoed those views, saying more research was needed to create vaccines against new forms of the virus, including one produced through gene technology.

Smallpox used to kill 3 million to 4 million people per year and left millions more hideously scarred and blind. It was declared eradicated in 1979 after a massive WHO-spearheaded campaign.

Virus samples were placed in two secure laboratories at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and a similar Russian facility in Siberia.

In 1996, WHO set a target of mid-1999 for destruction of the virus. But after U.S. and Russian resistance, it extended the deadline to “not later than 2002.” This will now be dropped if the executive board’s recommendation is adopted — as expected — by the full World Health Assembly in May.

Although international teams carry out regular checks of the facilities to ensure maximum security standards, there have been long-standing fears that samples may have found their way into the hands of nations such as North Korea or Iraq.

Saddam says Iraq will be prepared for U.S. attacks
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Iraq won’t be caught off guard if attacked by U.S. forces, President Saddam Hussein said Thursday.

During an address marking the 11th anniversary of the start of the Persian Gulf War, Saddam accused the United States of resorting to war rather than dialogue. He warned it would lead to the United States’ collapse “in the near future” as the world’s sole superpower.

Some U.S. politicians have called on the Bush administration to target Saddam’s regime next in the war against terrorism.

Saddam said Thursday that Iraq “will not be taken by surprise” and is ready to confront any possible U.S. attack on Iraq.

“The events of Sept. 11 and the American reaction to them came to reveal extensively how the United States is going headlong in antagonizing the world,” he said in a 30-minute speech.

“The ascent to the summit is not achieved by brutal force. But it needs a strength of mind and a sensitive human conscience,” Saddam said.

More than 12,000 Iraqis rallied in downtown Baghdad on Thursday to mark the start of the U.S.-led bombing campaign in 1991 that preceded the ground operation that ended Iraq’s seven-month occupation of neighboring Kuwait.

President Bush has warned Saddam that his government must allow the return of U.N. arms inspectors who have been barred from Iraq since 1998.

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