China reopens town sealed after plague death

A Chinese town sealed off after a man died of plague re-opened on Thursday after authorities found no further cases of the illness, state media said. Authorities barred 30,000 people living in Yumen in the northwestern province of Gansu from leaving, while road blocks prevented others from entering, after a 38-year-old died from plague last week. "We have not discovered any new plague cases," the state-run China News service cited Gansu's health bureau as saying. It added that authorities had exterminated rodents and fleas in designated quarantine zones, while 151 close contacts of the man had been kept in isolation for nine days without showing symptoms.