Today's other stories in brief
Eating cloned animals safe, studies suggest
WASHINGTON - Cloned animals may often be born deformed and die young but scientists, who have looked at every aspect of their biology to try to explain why, can find no evidence that it would be dangerous to eat them.
None of the more than 700 studies reviewed in detail showed any evidence to suggest that milk or organ or muscle tissue from cloned animals could harm someone who ate it, the US Food and Drug Administration said in its final report on the subject yesterday.
In 2002, a National Academy of Sciences panel said there was no reason to believe that meat or milk from cloned animals may be unsafe. But it said the FDA should do a review, and because of the outpouring of opinions and fears about the subject, the agency extended its review for more than a year. - (Reuters)
UN meeting over Iran sanctions
WASHINGTON - Foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany will meet next week in Berlin to discuss possible further sanctions against Iran, diplomats said yesterday.
The diplomats said the ministers would try to close differences at the meeting over a third UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran for its refusal to give up sensitive nuclear work. - (Reuters)
Two charged over Sarkozy threats
PARIS - Two men have been charged over death threats made to French president Nicolas Sarkozy's 10-year-old son.
Louis Sarkozy, the youngest of the French leader's three sons, received several threatening phone calls on a mobile registered to his mother, former first lady Cecilia Sarkozy. Police said the two men, aged 21 and 22, have been detained and are to be tried next month for allegedly having placed the calls. - (Reuters)
Gandhi's ashes to be scattered at sea
DELHI - Some of the final ashes of Mohandas Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence who helped found modern India, will be scattered in the Arabian sea following intervention by his descendants to prevent a museum displaying them.
A small steel urn holding the ashes was sent to a Gandhi museum in Bombay last year by a businessman whose father had preserved the remains. The political and spiritual leader, who was given the title Mahatma, was shot dead in 1948.
- (Guardian service)
Third death from yellow fever
BRASILIA - Brazilian officials yesterday confirmed that a third person had died of yellow fever this year as millions of people, fearing a resurgence of the deadly disease, lined up at hospitals and clinics to get vaccinated.
The latest death, in the southern state of Parana, followed the death of a man in the capital, Brasilia, last week that prompted concerns yellow fever could swamp urban centres, from which it has been eradicated since the 1940s. - (Reuters)