In recent months, many CNN reports on controversial government issues -- human rights, Tibet, and the Falun Gong spiritual movement -- have been blacked out. "We regret the Chinese action and we are checking the circumstances and details of the interruption," a CNN spokesman said. "In the meantime, we will continue reporting forthrightly and responsibly on SARS and other important matters."

"Most people in China don't read Caijing, a business biweekly with a small circulation and a reputation for daring reportage. And they don't have access to newspapers like the Singapore Straits Times, which said in a recent column, "In other countries, Dr. Jiang would probably have been lauded as a national hero." Instead, Jiang remains an unknown figure in China, neither praised nor punished, but who has been asked by the government not to talk to the press without prior permission, though he spoke briefly with a reporter on Tuesday."

'China's SARS data has serious flaws because the information does not show how half of the country's patients caught the highly contagious respiratory illness, a World Health Organization spokeswoman said Saturday.
"Right now the situation is that we have a whole load of people, and we don't know where they got the disease," WHO spokeswoman Mangai Balasegaram told The Associated Press. "The problem with the data is that there are holes in it."'

'Several hundred demonstrators peacefully protested in Times Square and elsewhere in the city Saturday to attract attention to China's ban on the Falun Gong meditation movement. The protesters listened to music and speeches and passed out literature to people passing by in Chinatown and midtown Manhattan.'

'The US State Department has voiced concern over what it perceives as pressure on Hong Kong from the mainland to restrict Falun Gong criticism of Beijing's policies on the banned spiritual group. The report, issued on Monday, said a series of developments in 2001 sparked worries about pressures on the special administrative region (SAR) to suppress the group's freedom of expression, despite its legal existence in Hong Kong.'