A round up of today's other stories in brief.
New $1bn strategy to halt bird flu
GENEVA - Health experts presented a $1 billion (€850 million) plan yesterday to halt the spread of bird flu while Indonesia said initial tests showed the virus had killed a 16-year-old girl.
The strategy aims to root out bird flu among poultry and stopping it from spawning an influenza pandemic which could kill millions of people around the globe.
The urgency was underlined after Indonesia reported what it confirmed would be the 65th death blamed on the H5N1 bird flu virus since late 2003.
"The test result showed positive, but we're still waiting for confirmation from Hong Kong," Hariadi Wibisono, a senior official at the health ministry, told Reuters. - (Reuters)
Iran hopeful of funds for uranium
TEHRAN - Iran said yesterday it was confident it would attract investment of up to $350 million from foreign companies to help it complete its first uranium enrichment plant.
In a move Tehran says will prove to the world that its nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful, the government last week approved a plan to allow private or state-owned foreign companies to participate in its uranium enrichment project.
The offer has fallen on stony ground in Washington and the European Union, chief critics of Iran's nuclear programme. - (Reuters)
Yates faces new child murder trial
HOUSTON - Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001, will face a second trial after the state's highest criminal court refused yesterday to reinstate the murder convictions against her.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a lower appeals court's ruling issued in January that overturned jury verdicts against Yates because of errors in the testimony of an expert witness. - (Reuters)
Weah trails and makes fraud claim
MONROVIA - Former finance minister Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took an early lead in Liberia's presidential run-off yesterday but her rival, former soccer star George Weah, denounced the poll as fraudulent.
Weah, a former AC Milan striker who is popular among Liberia's poor youth, made the fraud charge as electoral authorities announced first results from Tuesday's second-round poll, which had gone ahead peacefully in the West African state. - (Reuters)
Israel split on Labour leadership
TEL AVIV - Israeli exit polls were split on whether veteran statesman Shimon Peres would emerge victorious from a Labour Party leadership election yesterday.
A Peres victory would likely preserve a governing alliance crucial to keeping Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in power. Defeat by his strongest rival, trade union chief Amir Peretz, could spell the early end of the coalition government.
Israel Radio said Peres garnered 41 per cent of the vote compared with 46 per cent for Peretz and 13 per cent for infrastructure minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. - (Reuters)
Egypt votes in legislative election
CAIRO - Egyptians voted yesterday in the first stage of legislative elections expected to make only minor inroads in the domination of parliament by President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP). But the elections are especially important because they could decide who can run to be president of the Arab world's most populous nation at any time up to 2010.
Opposition parties need at least 23 of the 444 elected seats in the lower house to retain the right to field a presidential candidate during the next parliament's term. - (Reuters)