■ GHANA
H5N1 strain detected
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has spread to fowl in this West African nation, a WHO official confirmed on Wednesday. Officials had said earlier this week they were investigating a suspected outbreak of the disease in birds around the eastern port city of Tema. Though H5N1 had been documented elsewhere in the region, the country had not previously had a case confirmed, the Health Ministry said. Sophia Twum-Barimah, a WHO spokeswoman in the capital, Accra, said the virus was first detected by a local lab and then confirmed by an Egyptian research center. "The public should remain calm. The situation is being technically and expertly handled," Health Minister Ernest Debrah told reporters.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Fishermen catch deer
A pair of Cornish fishermen came back with a bigger catch than usual, after hooking a live deer which had apparently fallen into the sea, a report said on Wednesday. Chris Earl and Tony Allsopp were out in their boat to check lobster pots when they spotted the animal, complete with antlers "and big worried eyes," swimming through the waves off the southwestern English coast. They found the deer near a small island called Gull Rock, apparently heading further along the Cornish coast. Animal experts said it may have fallen into the sea by nearby woods, adding that deer are known as good swimmers. Having returned to dry land -- Allsopp sitting atop the animal, as there was no other space in the boat -- the pair hauled it into Earl's van, and it was later released into the woods.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Man superglued to bike
A gang stripped a man before supergluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report yesterday. SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg. "The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut," SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying. The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home, SAPA said.
■ UNITED STATES
Baez gets cold shoulder
Military authorities who run Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital have spurned an offer from renowned folk singer Joan Baez to perform for convalescing troops, she said on Wednesday. Baez, 66, was to have appeared last week alongside rock/folk singer John Mellencamp at a concert for ailing soldiers, but officials declined to sign off on her participation, she wrote in a letter published on Wednesday in the Washington Post. "I was not `approved,'" she wrote.
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