More Food Poisoning in Japan

TOKYO — Dozens of people were sickened in a new food poisoning outbreak Saturday, and the death of an elderly woman raised the death toll from Japan’s E. coli bacteria epidemic to nine.

The fresh outbreak in Hiroshima affected 42 people attending the Japan Esperanto Congress. Thirteen of them were hospitalized.

Officials in Hiroshima said the new cases were not caused by the 0157 strain of E. coli bacteria that has sickened 9,000 people nationwide. They did not specify what else might have prompted the outbreak, according to Kyodo News Service.

Meanwhile, an 80-year-old woman died Saturday in a hospital in Yamagata, about 180 miles northeast of Tokyo, where she had been treated since July 23. A spokesman for the Yamagata regional government said she died of kidney and lung complications.