World Highlights

¤ Myanmar has reported what is believed to be the secretive country's first case of bird flu, while Afghanistan yesterday feared yesterday it was the latest country to discover the deadly virus. German authorities said that seven dead ducks in a Bavarian poultry farm were found to have a form of influenza and were being tested for bird flu, in what could be Germany's first case of the virus in domestic fowl. Azerbaijan's Health Ministry said three people who died earlier this month had been infected with bird flu in the country's first case in humans.

¤ Hundreds of Maoist rebels yesterday seized a passenger train in eastern India with around 200 people on board, police said. A Maoist rebel on the train pulled the emergency cord, forcing the train to stop in a densely forested area in Latehar district, 160 kilometres west of Ranchi, the state capital of Jharkhand state.

¤ A Taliban spokesman said yesterday four foreigners kidnapped in Afghanistan had been executed on the orders of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. An official at the Ecolog services company in Kabul said four of its workers from Macedonia had gone missing in southern Afghanistan.

¤ A former head of Saddam's Revolutionary Court said yesterday he had issued death sentences for 148 Shi'ites in the 1980s but insisted they had confessed to an Iran-backed plot to kill the former Iraqi leader and that their trial was fair. Awad Hamed al-Bandar is on trial along with Saddam and six others for the killing of 148 men from Dujail after an attempt on Saddam's life in the town in 1982.

¤ The White House yesterday dismissed as politically motivated a Democratic senator's attempt to censure President George W. Bush for ordering domestic eavesdropping on US citizens without a warrant. Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin told ABC'sThis Week yesterday that he intends to push for a resolution in the US Congress that would censure the President for what he considers an unlawful wiretapping programme authorised by the White House after the September 11 attacks.

¤ Washington plans to curtail contacts with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction and other parties if they join a Palestinian government led by the Hamas militant group, Western diplomatic sources said yesterday. The warning came as Fatah officials held another round of inconclusive coalition talks in Gaza with Hamas, which defeated long-dominant Fatah in January elections.