World in brief

British WWII photos to go online

LONDON - A huge British archive of World War II aerial reconnaissance photos, including pictures of the D-day landings in Normandy, is to go on the Internet on Monday.

Under the digitalization project announced Saturday, some 5-million Royal Air Force photos of Western Europe will be available to the public on the Web site www.evidenceincamera.co.uk. archivists said. The site did not appear to be accessible Saturday.

"These images allow us to see the real war at first hand - as if we are RAF pilots," said Allan Williams, head of the Aerial Reconnaissance Archives project at Keele University in north-central England.

The photos, a key source of intelligence for Allied commanders during the war, include American troops landing in Normandy on D-day, the effects of the bombing of Cologne, Germany, and the German battleship Bismarck being hunted by the Royal Navy.

HONG KONG - Health officials said Saturday that tests had confirmed more cases of Asia's twin health threats this winter, bird flu and SARS.

Vietnam said four more people had fallen ill with the H5N1 strain of flu spreading through Asian poultry.

China said two people previously categorized as suspected cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, had been reclassified as confirmed cases.

But World Health Organization officials said they had not confirmed the Vietnamese cases or the reclassified Chinese ones, and needed more information.

The WHO has begun describing avian influenza, popularly known as bird flu, as the bigger threat. Influenza tends to be more infectious than SARS, the organization said, with influenza outbreaks moving swiftly around the world each winter and killing tens of thousands of people in a mild year and hundreds of thousands or more in a bad year.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon executed three convicted murderers Saturday, ending a five-year break from the death penalty.

All three men were put to death in the courtyard of the Roumieh prison, the country's main penitentiary in a Beirut suburb. One was hanged and two were shot.

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