World in brief

Bird flu still spreading, but vaccine in works

Avian influenza is still spreading in birds in Asia despite the slaughter of millions of chickens and other poultry, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, scientists have passed the first major hurdle in the complex process of developing an experimental bird flu vaccine for humans in case it is needed, an official of the World Health Organization said. The scientists are also working to develop a safer and easier test to detect the H5N1 strain of avian influenza now spreading across Asia, a mutation of the strain that caused outbreaks in Hong Kong in 1997 and 2003.

The steps are being taken as a precautionary measure because of fears that H5N1 might swap genes with a human strain to create a new one that could cause a worldwide epidemic, the organization said. The chance of that occurring is considered low.

So far this season in Thailand and Vietnam, the organization said, 17 people have been infected with the H5N1 strain; 13 died. According to the organization, nine of the 13 Vietnamese cases were fatal, as were all four Thai cases, including that of a Thai boy, 6, whose infection had been previously confirmed. The organization reported his death on Wednesday.

Avian influenza is caused by a flu virus that normally infects only birds. In people, the symptoms of the H5N1 bird flu range from those typical of the flu - fever, cough, sore throat and muscle aches - to eye infections, pneumonia, acute breathing problems, and other severe and life-threatening complications.

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is looking into allegations that a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. was involved in payment of $180-million in bribes to win a contract for a natural gas project in Nigeria, officials said Wednesday.

The $4-billion Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas Plant was built in the 1990s by a consortium that included Kellogg, Brown & Root during a time when Vice President Dick Cheney headed Halliburton. A call to Cheney's office seeking comment was not immediately returned Wednesday night.

The Associated Press, quoting two unnamed senior Justice Department officials, reported that the department had asked Halliburton to provide documents. Halliburton has complied, the officials said.

Halliburton, already under fire for its handling of contracts related to the war in Iraq, disclosed the Justice Department request in a Jan. 21 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - President Ahmed Tejah Kabbah and international sponsors declared a successful end to disarmament in Sierra Leone on Wednesday, closing a final chapter in an 11-year war that was one of the modern world's most vicious.

Disarmament took guns out of the hands of 72,490 former fighters in the West African country, including 6,845 children, Kabbah said on state radio. Other African nations already are studying Sierra Leone's campaign as a model.

LIMA, Peru - A decapitated baby boy found on a hilltop near Lake Titicaca may have been killed last week in a human sacrifice ritual, police said Wednesday.

The remains of the infant, believed to have been 7 months old, were discovered Tuesday in the Yunguyo area near the Bolivian border, a police officer in the regional capital of Puno told the Associated Press.

Investigators believe the killing may have been a ritualistic sacrifice meant to appease a pre-Columbian earth god, because the body was found on the hilltop surrounded by flowers, liquor bottles and containers of blood.

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