News in Brief

EU talks on Serbia, Kosovo fail
Afp, Brussels

Serbia and Kosovo yesterday failed to find common ground on how to defuse longstanding tensions at EU-sponsored talks, officials said.
"The gap between the two sides is very narrow but deep," said EU foreign affairs head Catherine Ashton, who chaired the eighth round of talks in Brussels aimed at normalising ties between Serbia and breakaway territory Kosovo.
The main sticking point has been the future of the Serb minority living in Kosovo, especially the north, since Pristina declared independence in 2008.

WWII bomb defused in Berlin
Afp, Berlin

German sappers successfully defused a World War II bomb unearthed near Berlin's main train station in a delicate operation that snarled rail and road traffic for several hours yesterday.
The 100-kilogramme explosive was dropped by an Allied plane during the Second World War and discovered Tuesday, a police spokesman told AFP, adding that experts believed it was a Soviet-made bomb.
More than six decades after the war, authorities believe there are still some 3,000 bombs buried beneath Berlin alone.

Man dies of H7N9 bird flu in China
Afp, Shanghai

A man in the Chinese province of Zhejiang has died of the H7N9 strain of bird flu, state media said yesterday, bringing the total deaths attributed to the virus to three since the first human cases.
Two other deaths have been reported, both in China's commercial hub of Shanghai. Other cases have been happened in the eastern provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui, the government has said.

200 rhinos killed this year in SA
Afp, Johannesburg

Poachers have killed over 200 rhinos in South Africa this year, the environment ministry said Wednesday, as a major security operation fails to curb illegal hunting for the rhino horn trade.
The toll since the beginning of the year is now 203. Even soldiers and police with helicopters deployed to stop the slaughter struggle to secure the vast reserve, which is roughly the size of Israel.
Last year, 668 rhinos were killed.