Eurasia Press & News

Egypt on Tuesday banned all poultry imports from France and Germany after the potentially fatal H5N1 strain of bird flu was discovered in birds there.

The issue of civilian deaths in Afghanistan is itself becoming a “battleground” with truth often a casualty, showing the difficulty of establishing facts in a war fought in often remote areas.

Taliban guerrillas killed three policemen in an ambush on a convoy of U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan on Wednesday, a provincial official said.

The head of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has told the BBC that fighting the insurgency is a “long term endeavour” which could take decades.

The 22-country Arab League will send envoys on a historic first mission to Israel this week to discuss a sweeping Arab peace initiative and how it might prop up embattled Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli and Arab diplomats said Sunday.

Iraq’s foreign minister has warned that a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces could lead to civil war and the collapse of the Iraqi government. From northern Iraq, VOA’s Margaret Besheer reports the Iraqi diplomat was reacting to growing debate about the future of American troops in Iraq.

The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

Lebanese troops have fought new battles with Islamist militants around a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the country, reports say.

Egypt should receive record net foreign direct investment of more than $10 billion in the current fiscal year ending in June, according to the country’s primary governmental authority on investment.

Egypt agreed Monday to offer 80 percent of the country’s third-largest public sector bank, Banque du Caire, to a strategic investor, a cabinet spokesman said.