Turkey reports five new bird flu cases
Fears of human bird flu in Turkey grew today as five more cases were reported across the country and 21 patients in an Istanbul hospital waited for test results.
A Turkish health ministry official told the Anatolian news agency that laboratories had identified the virus in the Black Sea provinces of Kastamonu, Corum and Samsun and in the eastern province of Van.
If any of the 21 people under observation in Istanbul are found to be infected with the disease, they would be the first human cases of bird flu in Europe.
The Turkish cases - which took a step closer to Europe with the confirmation of three cases in Ankara yesterday - are the first to cross the species barrier outside south-east Asia.
Dick Cheney rushed to hospital
Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, was rushed to hospital in Washington DC today after suffering from shortness of breath.
The 64-year-old, who has a history of health scares, was suffering from fluid retention as a result of anti-inflammatory medication, the hospital said in a statement.
Doctors administered an electrocardiogram but found no evidence of unusual heart activity. They expect him to return home from the George Washington University Hospital later today.
Before becoming vice-president in January 2001, Mr Cheney had four heart attacks. The first was in 1978 when he was 37, a second followed in 1984 and 1988. All were described as mild, but following the third attack he underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery.
He suffered his fourth heart attack was in the weeks between the contested November 2000 presidential election and George Bush's eventually victory. He had a two-hour operation following the attack that doctors described as "slight".Before becoming Mr Bush's vice-president, Mr Cheney was White House chief of staff and defence secretary for George Bush Sr during the 1991 Gulf war. Between the two Bush administrations he was chief executive of Haliburton.
He has a reputation as the most powerful US vice-president of recent times
Two Thai fishermen 'confess to killing British tourist'
Two Thai fisherman have confessed to the rape and murder of a British tourist who was attacked during an evening beach stroll on New Year's Day at a resort island in Thailand, police said today.
Katherine Horton, 21, a university student from Cardiff, Wales, was vacationing on the popular Thai island of Koh Samui. Her battered body, still clad in an evening dress, was discovered the morning of 2 January by a jet skier in the Gulf of Thailand.
Police said they arrested two fisherman early today at a pier in Koh Samui, after questioning more than a dozen suspects, both Thai and foreigners.
"The suspects have admitted to raping and killing the British tourist, but we have brought them to Bangkok for DNA testing to be sure," Police Maj. Asawin Khawanmuang told reporters at police headquarters in Bangkok.
The arrests followed an unusual public appeal last week by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to find the killers, saying that the slaying hurt the country's image and could damage its tourism industry, already suffering a downturn from last year's tsunami and the bird flu scare.
Tony Banks, minister and maverick, dies aged 62 after massive stroke
With an acerbic wit and a readiness to throw comic jibes at his political opponents, Tony Banks was one of the most colourful figures in British politics.
Last night, Tony Blair led tributes to the former sports minister, who died four days after suffering a massive stroke while on holiday in the United States.
He died in hospital in Florida, four days after he collapsed while having lunch on Thursday during a trip to stay with his family on Sanibel Island, off the west coast. He was flown by helicopter to Fort Myers where doctors found that he had suffered a stroke and severe brain damage.
Last night Mr Blair said Mr Banks was "one of the most charismatic politicians in Britain, a true man of the people".
Mr Banks, who adopted the name Lord Stratford after his home in East London when he was made a life peer last summer, was a man of one-liners who combined his ready wit with a serious passion for subjects from animal rights and football to political memorabilia and high art.
During his long political career as MP for West Ham, Mr Banks became known as one of Parliament's greatest wits. His quips, from branding William Hague a "foetus" to describing Margaret Thatcher has having "the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa-constrictor" were even immortalised in a book. He once said of John Major, "He is so unpopular, if he became a funeral director people would stop dying."
But the left-winger will be best known for his pivotal role in forcing a ban on fox-hunting into law.
He was born in Belfast in 1943, but was brought up in south London. He was educated at York University and the London school of economics. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was a leading member of the Greater London Council, before entering the House of Commons as MP for Newham North West - later West Ham - in 1983.
For an MP seen by many as something of a maverick, the avid Chelsea fan was a surprise appointment as Minister for Sport in 1997. He eventually relinquished the job to become the Prime Minister's envoy for England's failed attempt to host the 2006 football World Cup.
On the backbenches, he was a passionate supporter of animal rights, served as vice president of the League Against Cruel Sports and tirelessly pushed for a full ban on hunting with hounds.
He chaired the Commons committee responsible for works of art, and was responsible for commissioning a statue of Margaret Thatcher to stand in the Commons. He even commissioned a replacement copy of the £150,000 marble work when it was later beheaded .
Mr Banks stood down from the Commons at the last election after representing the east London constituency of Newham North West, latterly renamed West Ham, since 1983. His decision to stand down was uncharacteristically low key but his departure spared no prisoners, as he described as his constituency case work "intellectually numbing, tedious in the extreme".
He was elevated to the House of Lords and took the title Lord Stratford as a "nom de politics", expecting always to be addressed as plain Tony Banks.
The Prime Minister said: "Whether he was campaigning for the regeneration of East London, fighting for animal welfare or expressing his enthusiasm for Chelsea Football Club, he was someone who said what he thought and was loved by people for it."
He added: "I was proud to have him as a sports minister in the first term of the Government and, like everyone in the Labour Party, will miss him and regret that he was taken from us so soon."
Mr Banks' friend, the former Conservative minister David Mellor, said: "I think the great thing about Tony was that he was a man of passion in his politics and was in possession of a sharp and witty tongue.
"But he exuded such joie de vivre that no one could seriously take offence to his opinions. He delighted in living up to the old parliamentary convention that whatever was said in the chamber you would be friends outside of it.
"These days in the Commons, that's been forgotten but Tony never forgot that."
Ten million girls aborted as Indians seek male heirs
At least 10 million female foetuses have been aborted in India over the past two decades by middle-class families determined to ensure they have male heirs.
The figure is revealed by a survey of more than a million homes published today which found that sex determination in pregnancy and selective abortion accounted for 500,000 missing girls each year.
Termination of pregnancy on the basis of sex was made illegal in India in 1994, but better-off families find ways round the law. Many couples believe their family is unbalanced without a son who will continue the family name and bloodline, earn money, look after the family and take care of his parents in old age in a country which has no social security system.
Population censuses in India show that the number of girls has been falling steadily for the past 20 years relative to the number of boys. For every 1,000 boys up to the age of six the number of girls dropped from 962 in 1981 to 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001.
The practice of female foeticide has taken the place of infanticide and is extensive in China as well as India, aided by the development of ultrasound. Dr Sheth says: "Female infanticide of the past is refined and honed to a fine skill in this modern guise. It is ushered in earlier, more in urban areas and by the more educated ... A careful demographic analysis of actual and expected sex ratios shows that about 100 million girls are missing from the world - they are dead."
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