Bird flu spreads to Cameroon
Cameroon has become the fourth African country to be struck by the deadly bird flu virus, as the government announced its first confirmed case on Sunday.
The H5N1 bird flu strain was detected in a duck on a farm close to the northern town of Maroua, near the border with neighboring Nigeria, the government said in a statement broadcast on state radio. The fatal virus was first discovered in Africa on a commercial poultry farm in Nigeria in February. It has since been reported in Niger and Egypt.
Slobodan Milosevic found dead
Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president who was on trial at The Hague for alleged war crimes, was found dead in his cell today, the U.N. war crimes tribunal said. Authorities have launched an investigation into his death. His lawyer wants an autopsy elsewhere as Mr Milosevic feared he was being poisoned.
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic began his career as a party official in communist Yugoslavia. He rose to power in 1987 and the wars that followed cost at least 100,000 lives. Since 2001, Milosevic has been in court at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague. His trial was nearing its end. His death means that he has escaped judgement.
Now there will never be a judgement from outside the region, which former Yugoslavs might one day be able to look to as impartial This single fact is a tragedy. It means that, for some, Milosevic will remain a virtual saint, who set out to save the Serbs from their enemies - while for others he will remain a force for evil who destroyed Yugoslavia and set out to commit genocide. His death means that now there will never be a judgement from outside the region, which former Yugoslavs might one day be able to look to as impartial.
In the region though, and in the short term, the passing of Slobodan Milosevic will make little difference.
German cat gets deadly bird flu
A domestic cat in Germany has become the first European Union mammal to die of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
The cat was found dead at the weekend on the Baltic island of Ruegen, where dozens of birds infected with H5N1 have been found.
Further north, Sweden has detected "aggressive" bird flu in two wild ducks and is testing to confirm H5N1.
Meanwhile, vets from 50 countries have been meeting in Paris for a second day to discuss ways to combat the virus.
The H5N1 infection in the German cat was confirmed by officials at the national laboratory, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, but tests are continuing to determine if it is the exact strain that has been found in birds.
Laboratory chief Thomas Mettenleiter said pet owners on the island should keep cats inside for the time being.
Cats have been known to contract the virus from eating infected birds. Three rare civet cats in Vietnam died of bird flu last August. In October 2004, dozens of tigers died at a private zoo in Thailand after a bird flu outbreak.
There are no recorded cases of cat-to-human infection, but the German finding will raise concerns of further cross-species transmission.
President Bush visits Afghanistan
US President George W Bush has arrived in Kabul in a surprise stop at the start of a maiden trip to South Asia.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai greeted Mr Bush, who is making his first visit to the country since the US-led overthrow of the Taleban in 2001.
The US has about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, where they are hunting al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters.
Later on Wednesday, Mr Bush will head to India, where some 20,000 people have protested in Delhi against the visit.
In a sudden change to a schedule kept secret for security reasons, Mr Bush headed to Afghanistan before, rather than after, his visit to India.
Security is tight in Kabul, with reports of helicopters flying over the city and US military Humvees patrolling the streets.
Ahead of the US president's arrival, Kabul airspace was closed to civilian air traffic.
We are confident in the security precautions that have been taken. One of those was not informing you of the trip until now said an official.
Mr Bush immediately headed to the presidential palace with Mr Karzai for talks.
President Bush is accompanied by wife Laura and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The president is also expected to address US troops at the main Bagram air base.
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UN calls for Guantanamo closure
UN human rights investigators have called for the immediate closure of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.
The UN report on conditions in the Cuba camp says the US should try all inmates or free them "without further delay".
Some aspects of the treatment of the 500-strong camp population amount to torture, the UN team alleges.
The US has rejected most of the allegations, saying that the five investigators never actually visited Guantanamo Bay.
It called the report's conclusions "largely without merit and not based clearly in the facts".
One of the five investigators responsible for the report, UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak, said that the detention of inmates for years without charge amounted to arbitrary detention.
"Those persons either have to be released immediately or they should be brought to a proper and competent court and tried for the offences they are charged with,"
via
BBC
Clashes erupt in Haiti election
At least one person has been killed and several injured in clashes in Haiti, as tensions mount over the results of last Tuesday's election.
Supporters of presidential front-runner Rene Preval manned burning roadblocks in the capital and occupied a hotel, demanding he be declared the winner.
Witnesses said UN peacekeepers had opened fire on protesters, but the UN said its troops had fired in the air.
Saddam goes wild in Court
Saddam Hussein was brought back to the courtroom by force as his trial resumed Monday, and prosecutors made their strongest efforts yet to tie him to executions carried out after an attempt to assassinate him in 1982.
The trial continued as a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a crowd of people waiting outside a bank in Baghdad, one of several attacks across Iraq that left at least 18 people dead and dozens wounded Monday.
As he entered the courtroom, Mr. Hussein, dressed in a dark jacket and Arab dishdasha rather than his usual suit, lashed out angrily at the judge for forcing him to return to the courtroom. Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman ordered Mr. Hussein and his fellow defendants out two weeks ago for disruptive behavior, and two sessions have been held without Mr. Hussein since then.
Hussein also yelled "Long live Iraq" and "Long live the Iraqi people." The former Iraqi president cursed the judge and called him a criminal.
Tracking Terror
A battle-hardened veteran of the jihad comes to a major American city. He has all the skills and tradecraft he learned fighting a military superpower.
This jihadi recruits a small group of like-minded sympathizers and together they carry out a bold plan to attack the most striking symbols in that city.
Sound far-fetched? Think again. Think about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the first one. A man named Ramzi Yousef was the veteran of Afghan training camps who brought together a group of plotters to deadly effect.
Now consider the Iraq war and the possibility that it might spin off hundreds or thousands of committed jihadis who have a combination of fervor and lethality - and that one might be coming to a city near you, ready to repeat history.
That's the next big fear -- the one that has intelligence and counterterrorism experts in places like the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and some of America's biggest cities so worried.
Osama bin Laden raised the specter of such an attack in his recent audio message: "Iraq has become a magnet for attracting and training talented fighters."
Bin Laden boasted Islamic terrorists were able to carry out attacks in Madrid and London, adding, "the reason of the delay of similar operations in America is only a matter of time. It is not because we could not penetrate your measures. The operations are in the planning stages, and you will see them in the heart of your homeland as soon as the planning is complete."
While bin Laden may be in no position to order fresh attacks, he remains a powerful inspiration for jihadis.
Cheney accidentally shoots hunting companion
The US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, has accidentally shot and injured a man during a quail hunting trip in Texas.
The victim, named as Harry Whittington, was on the trip with Mr Cheney at the Armstrong Ranch when the accident happened on Saturday.
Harry Whittington, 78, was listed in stable condition after being brought in on Saturday night, said Yvonne Wheeler, a spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas
The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. The vice president's office did not disclose the accident until the day after it happened.
Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the ranch, was a member of the hunting party and witnessed the accident.
She said Cheney, an experienced hunter, did not realize Whittington had rejoined the group without announcing himself, which is proper protocol among hunters.
"They had no idea he was there," Armstrong said..
BUSH EXPOSES TERRORISTS PLANS
US President George Bush has revealed details of a foiled al-Qaeda plot to use a hijacked airliner to strike the west coast of the US.
Mr Bush said the plotters, thwarted in 2002, planned to use shoe bombs to storm the plane cockpit.
The attackers would have flown the plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles, California.
Mr Bush said al-Qaeda recruited the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah to carry out the attack.
The president said the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was behind the west coast plot.
Planning began in October 2001, but it was thwarted in early 2002 "when a South East Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaeda operative", Mr Bush said.
Mr Bush said the target was the Liberty Tower building
GUANTANAMO CRISIS
Hunger striking Guantanamo Bay detainees are being strapped to chairs for hours to force-feed them through tubes, the New York Times has reported.
The tough treatment started after it was determined that the prisoners were trying to die, unnamed sources said.
Since December there has been a drop in the number of protesters from 84 to 4, spokesman Lt Col Jeremy M Martin said.
Human rights groups have challenged the US in the past over whether hunger strikers have been force-fed.
The US military defines a hunger strike as missing nine consecutive meals.
BIRD FLU IN NIGERIA.
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in two more Nigerian states, the Agricultural Ministry said Thursday.
The strain has been confirmed at two farms in Kano state and one in adjoining Plateau state, said Tope Ajakaiye, a ministry spokesman.
The highly pathogenic strain of avian flu, found in Nigerian chickens, is the first time the strain has been found in Africa, the World Organization for Animal Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Wednesday.
Africa's first documented case was reported Wednesday in Nigeria's Kaduna state, bringing the total to three states.
According to an OIE news release, the first outbreak occurred in a commercial setting in the village of Jaji in the northern state of Kaduna.
Nigerian authorities quarantined the infected birds and began culling them. About 50,000 birds were affected, the organization said.
Nigerian Information Minister Frank Nweke Jr. said three farms were quarantined, one each in the states of Kaduna, Kano and Jos and that they could be out of operation for up to a year.
Cameroon has become the fourth African country to be struck by the deadly bird flu virus, as the government announced its first confirmed case on Sunday.
