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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

U.S. flu pledge tops expectations

Compiled from wire reports The Spokesman-Review

Beijing The United States intends to pledge $334 million to the fight against bird flu, according to an official statement shown to the Associated Press today.

That is significantly more than the organizers of an international donors organizers were anticipating. The gathering in Beijing has taken on a new sense of urgency after the first deaths from the virus were recorded outside Asia. There were hopes it would raise at least $1.5 billion.

“We’re talking about a tremendous amount of money here for an issue that is clearly of global importance. The stakes are very high,” said James LeDuc, a viral illness expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Conference organizers had expected the United States to make one of the largest pledges, somewhere between $200 million and $300 million.

Accused Marines stay in U.S. custody

Carmen, Philippines The United States on Tuesday refused a Philippine request to hand over four Marines charged with rape, provoking anti-American protests in the capital and the Muslim south, where U.S. troops began annual counterterrorism training of Filipino soldiers.

In a letter to the Philippine government, the U.S. Embassy invoked the bilateral Visiting Forces Agreement, which allows large-scale U.S. training in the country, and vowed to keep the Marines in its custody during an upcoming trial.

Prosecutor Prudencio Jalandoni said he was disappointed but would ask the court handling the rape case to abide by the U.S. decision and set a trial date.

A Philippine judge last week issued arrest warrants for the Marines, who were charged with rape late last year while on liberty following counterterrorism maneuvers with Filipino troops.

Prosecutors allege that Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith raped a 22-year-old woman Nov. 1 inside a van at Subic Bay, a former U.S. Naval base northwest of Manila, as fellow Marines cheered him on. Smith claims he only had consensual sex.

Al-Jazeera pursuing Blair-Bush transcript

Cairo, Egypt Al-Jazeera has hired a British law firm to request a partial transcript of a conversation in which President Bush allegedly told British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the Arab broadcaster’s headquarters should be bombed.

Yosri Fouda, acting Al-Jazeera bureau chief in London, told the Associated Press the network had hired Finers Stephens Innocent LLP in an “attempt to put pressure on the British government” to hand over part of the record of the conversation between Bush and Blair.

“We would like to know the truth,” Fouda said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Fouda said the Doha, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera was only asking Blair for a transcript of “the ten lines” of the conversation that purportedly involved the network, which is highly popular throughout the Middle East. He acknowledged that Britain’s desire to keep the rest of the conversation secret was understandable as a matter of state security.