News In Brief

Pirates kidnap two US sailors
Reuters, Abuja/london

Pirates have attacked an oil supply vessel off the Nigerian coast and kidnapped the captain and chief engineer, both US citizens, security sources said yesterday.
Pirate attacks off Nigeria's coast have jumped by a third this year as ships passing through West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, a major commodities route, have increasingly come under threat from gangs wanting to snatch cargoes and crews.

Iran temporarily halts uranium enrichment
Afp, Tehran

Iran has temporarily halted its production of enriched uranium to 20 percent purity as it has sufficient stocks to fuel its Tehran research reactor, a lawmaker was quoted yesterday as saying.
"There is no production at all ... as right now there is no need for the production of 20 percent (enriched) uranium," the parliament website reported conservative MP Hossein Naqavi Hosseini as saying.
Iran's nuclear enric hment programme is at the core of its dispute with world powers, who suspect it masks a drive for atomic weapons despite repeated denials by the Islamic republic.

$450m needed to tackle malaria: WHO
Afp, Manila

Hundreds of millions of dollars are needed to stop a deadly form of drug-resistant malaria jumping from Southeast Asia to the rest of the world, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.
Resistance to the anti-malaria drug artemisinin has now been detected in Myanmar and Vietnam, the WHO said, five years after it warned that the drug was no longer effective in treating the disease on the Cambodia-Thailand border.
Malaria, which is caused by a parasite infecting mosquitos that feed on humans, kills 660,000 people each year, according to WHO figures.

Gunmen kill policeman in Egypt's Sinai
Afp, Cairo

Suspected Islamists militants yesterday killed a policeman in a drive-by shooting in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, where troops are battling to contain near daily violence, security officials said.
The attack in the North Sinai provincial capital of El-Arish came a day after militants killed a soldier in the central Sinai, and two days after roadside bombs killed a security force member and a civilian.