Originally, the Doha round of the World Trade Organization trade talks was supposed to be the "development round," helping to alleviate global poverty by boosting trade to the developing world. But that vision is now gone--the negotiations, begun just after 9/11, have pretty much collapsed, and not many believe that they can be revived in the near future.
A British company reported Wednesday it had achieved the best results ever seen on an experimental human vaccine for bird flu and said mass production might be possible by 2007. A global health official called GlaxoSmithKline's early results "an exciting piece of science." If future tests are as promising, it would be a major step in the frustrating campaign to protect people from a possible deadly flu pandemic.
BEIRUT--The refugees come in hundreds of cars along the twisted mountain roads in the Chouf Mountains. The ride from Tyre to Beirut is normally 45 miles along a major highway that takes, even with traffic, maybe an hour or so to drive. But the highways now are almost completely cut at each overpass or bridge south of Beirut. From Tyre to Sidon, you can use the highway with long detours and impromptu dirt paths around the destruction, but once you hit Sidon, just 30 minutes south of Beirut, the cars have to wend their way through the mountains, through Druze and Christian villages that have not been targeted, for more than three hours.
AP - Israeli troops pulled back from a Lebanese border town Saturday after a week of heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas who hailed the retreat as a victory. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returned to the Middle East to push a refined U.S. peace plan.
AP - The U.S. command announced Saturday that it was sending 3,700 troops to Baghdad to try to quell the sectarian violence sweeping the capital, and a U.S. official said more American soldiers would follow as the military gears up to take the streets from gunmen.
AP - Israeli troops killed a top leader of the radical Islamic Jihad in a West Bank raid Saturday, the group said, and the Israelis pressed ahead with their offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Condoleezza Rice arrives in Israel to push peace Hezbollah chief says Israel failing to beat guerrillasIsrael rejects 72-hour humanitarian cease-fireHezbollah agrees to parts of Lebanese truce plan Civilians killed in Lebanon; rockets hit Israel
Seattle police are beefing up security at temples and mosques Saturday after a woman was killed in a suspected hate crime killing linked to the Middle East crisis.
To fully understand the challenges facing the Democratic Republic of Congo, one must go back four and a half violent decades to the time of independence.
![[logo]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/bbc_news_120x60.gif "BBC News")
![[logo]](http://www.csmonitor.com/images/logo_88x31.gif "Christian Science Monitor"){kind=logo}
![[logo]](http://graphics.nytimes.com/images/section/NytSectionHeader.gif "NYT > Home Page")
![[logo]](http://www.usnews.com/usnews/images/rss/logo_rss.gif "USNews.com"){kind=logo}
![[logo]](http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/nws/th/main_142b.gif "Yahoo! News")
![[logo]](http://image.guardian.co.uk/sitecrumbs/Guardian.gif "Guardian Unlimited")
![[logo]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/.element/img/1.0/logo/cnn.logo.rss.gif "CNN.com"){kind=logo}
