Other stories from around the world in brief
Portuguese police arrest arson suspects
LISBON - Portuguese police have arrested 18 suspected arsonists in the past month, police said yesterday, as fire fighters struggled to put out new fires across the country.
Around 1,000 firemen were battling 10 fires in the centre and north of Portugal, and authorities kept the country in the second highest level of fire alert due to high temperatures.
Meanwhile, police have arrested five men suspected of deliberately starting forest fires raging across northwestern Spain that have killed three people, authorities said yesterday.
Sixty-seven fires were still active across Galicia, fire department officials said yesterday. - (Reuters)
Pro-democracy tribute in Burma
RANGOON - Hundreds of former student activists yesterday quietly commemorated the 18th anniversary of pro-democracy uprisings in Burma, which propelled Aung San Suu Kyi into the political limelight and cost thousands of lives.
More than a dozen plainclothes security officers observed and filmed a religious ceremony at a Buddhist monastery in Burma's largest city, Rangoon. - (AP)
Indonesian bird flu deaths total 43
JAKARTA - Indonesia yesterday overtook Vietnam as the country with the
largest number of human victims of bird flu after the World Health Organisation raised its national tally of confirmed deaths to 43.
The health ministry in Jakarta said a boy aged 16 had died after infection by the H5N1 virus, and it is awaiting confirmation of a further case, of a 16-year-old girl, that would increase reported infections to 56 and deaths to 44.
China yesterday confirmed the country's first human case of the H5N1 virus was in late 2003, two years earlier than originally reported, prompting the UN's health agency to call for greater transparency. The case had spurred questions about whether there might have been other human H5N1 infections. - (Financial Times)