Bird flu found in France, India
India and France both confirmed their first outbreaks of the deadly strain of bird flu among fowl on Saturday.
The news came as other nations fought to contain outbreaks of the H5N1 strain, which has spread from Asia amid fears of a worldwide flu pandemic if the virus mutates into a form that is easily transmitted between humans. Bird flu has killed at least 91 people – most of them in Asia.
France confirmed its first case of the H5N1 strain in a wild duck found dead in a bird reserve 20 miles northeast of Lyon. All fowl have been ordered indoors or vaccinated there.
In western India, officials began slaughtering 500,000 birds in a 1.5-mile radius around the poultry farms in the town of Navapur where the confirmed cases were detected.
Tens of thousands of chickens have died from bird flu in recent weeks in western India; people suffering from flu-like symptoms in the region were to be tested for the infection.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Red Light District hosts open house
Dutch prostitutes gave the public a peek behind the curtains of Amsterdam’s famed Red Light District on Saturday, hoping to stave off an attempt by city politicians to stop lingerie-clad women from advertising themselves in neon-lit windows.
Thousands of tourists and Dutch visitors took up the offer by the district’s sex clubs and topless bars to step in for a free drink and a look around to counteract the establishments’ seedy reputation.
Women allowed visitors into the cubicles where they conduct their business to explain hygiene regulations and the alarm system used when a prostitute encounters a difficult customer.
“The Red Light District has received a lot of negative publicity recently,” said Mariska Majoor, an ex-prostitute who runs the district’s Prostitution Information Center. “We want to show the world that it is safe out here.”
The open house came in response to proposals by the head of Amsterdam’s Labor Party, the city’s largest party, to discourage women from marketing themselves in windows.
London
Penguin chick hatches in zoo
The penguins who had their chick stolen just before Christmas have hatched another egg at a zoo in southern England, officials said Saturday.
Kyala and Oscar’s new chick was born Tuesday.
Three-month-old Toga disappeared in mid-December from the Amazon World zoo on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast. The bird is presumed dead; experts said it was too young to survive without its parents.
Zoo officials have installed closed circuit television cameras and motion sensors to make sure that Toga’s as yet unnamed sibling remains safely with its parents, who are a rare breed of penguin found on the southern coast of Africa.