The latest victims of the pneumonia virus that has killed 23 people around the world appear to have caught the disease from an infected passenger aboard a flight. Singapore ordered a 10-day quarantine of 740 people who may have been exposed to the virus A task force was set up to help those quarantined buy food. Parents in Beijing took their children to clinics to be checked for signs of the illness.The World Health Organisation said 13 countries had reported a total of 487 cases of Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome (Sars) and 17 deaths up to yesterday, compared with 150 cases in seven countries eight days earlier.In Hong Kong, where 290 people have been diagnosed withprobable cases – of whom 286 have severe pneumonia – nine of the latest victims are thought to have been infected while travelling by air to Beijing. One of the passengers had been visiting a relative with the disease in Hong Kong. Ten hospitals were infected there and cases were rising rapidly, the Hong Kong deputy director of health, Leung Pak Yin, said.A WHO spokesman said the reports of infection aboard a plane were being investigated, but played down the link with air travel .The WHO has maintained since the outbreak began last month that there is no reason for restricting travel because transmission of the disease requires close contact.Dr David Heymann, the executive director for communicable diseases at WHO, said the position in Hong Kong was causing grave concern. One hospital had 150 cases, 30 of whom were in intensive care, and medical staff were stretched to the limit.. David Blunkett has been asked to order a criminal investigation into evidence given to MPs by the editor of The Sun that reporters paid police officers for information.

Unlike an interview which Mr Black gave to The Guardian which did pre-judge this inquiry after we’d had only one session.”Mr Bryant challenged Mr Black on why a journalist, Neil Wallis, was a member of the watchdog’s code committee when he had lost two PCC adjudications while he was editor of The People. The MP said: “You might as well have Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken sitting on the Committee on Parliamentary Standards.”Mr Black was accused by MPs on the committee of failing to take action over claims made in Parliament last week that reporters had harassed grieving families of servicemen killed in the Gulf. But the PCC director said he was “very proud” of the watchdog’s record and he did not recognise the picture of public dissatisfaction being painted by the MPs.After the hearing, Mr Bryant said that he had received details of eight alleged incidents where reporters had paid police officers “It seems it’s an issue throughout the country,” he said. “I’m told the police are encouraged to have good working relations with the media but if it involves taking money then that is wrong.”Mr Black was asked if he supported calls by Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief of The Independent and The Independent on Sunday, and Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, for an ombudsman to be appointed to hear appeals against PCC rulings. He said he did not think the view of a single ombudsman should override the findings of 16 commission members..

Bullying is still considered to be a big problem by more than half of schoolchildren despite years of official programmes to stamp it out, a survey showed yesterday. Half of primary school pupils and nearly one third ofsecondary pupils said they had been a victim of bullying during the past term.But despite the scale of the problem, two out of three secondary pupils said they would be afraid to tell a teacher that they were being bullied for fear of being labelled a “grass” and suffering further attacks. Almost a third of pupils thought that learning a martial art would be a better way of reducing bullying than informing the school authorities.A separate report by Ofsted, the education watchdog, said bullying in schools was more widespread than adults sometimes acknowledged.The Government responded by announcing a “zero tolerance” approach. Consultants would be appointed to help schools to stamp out bullying as part of a £470m behaviour and attendance programme.Ivan Lewis, a junior Education minister, admitted that the Government had not given bullying enough priority in the past, but said his own experience as a victim made him determined to clamp down on it.

“The stakes are very high for individual children and for the whole of society. In a civilised society there has to be zero tolerance of all forms of bullying,” he said.He added that a range of measures would be in place by this autumn. Schools that did not involve pupils had higher levels of bullying.Ofsted’s report, Bullying: Effective Action In Secondary Schools, also said the schools that were most successful at dealing with bullying were ones that “took full account of pupils’ views”. But it said no matter how many times teachers and parents told children to report any problems, there would always be some young people suffering in silence.Inspectors concluded that they could not possibly judge whether bullying was now more common, because greater awareness and research meant today’s cases attracted more attention.The report, based on visits to six local education authorities in England, also urged headteachers to make more use of “positive peer pressure”.Both reports were launched at a ChildLine conference in Islington, north London.Earlier, the Prime Minister’s wife, Cherie Booth QC, who chaired the conference, called for adults to ensure that they listened to children. “It does seem astonishing, doesn’t it, that ChildLine speaks to around 20,000 children and young people a year about bullying,” she said. “We wouldn’t hesitate to listen to adults about their problems and we certainly shouldn’t hesitate to listen to children and young people too.”Minister tells of misery that lasted yearsIvan Lewis, the Education minister for young people, told an anti-bullying conference yesterday he was forced to endure nearly three years of bullying at his independent secondary school in Manchester.Mr Lewis, 36, who has two children, told the ChildLine conference in London his ordeal stopped only after he fought one bully and suffered a broken nose. “I can still recall the sheer misery of being bullied,” he said.