World briefs 8/9/02

Canadian man dies from 'mad cow' disease

TORONTO-- A Canadian man has died in the country's first confirmed case of the human brain condition linked to "mad cow"disease, officials said Thursday.

The unidentified man, said to be under 50, contracted the "new variant" form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease while in Britain, which has faced several outbreaks of the disease, said Dr. Antonio Giulivi, an official with the Candian government agency Health Canada.

The man died at St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Officials have contacted 71 people who came in contact with medical equipment used on the infected man. Health Canada officials said there is a remote chance the equipment, though cleaned and decontaminated, could still carry the fatal, brain-wasting illness. There is no cure for the disease.

More than 100 Britons have died from new variant CJD.

The victim's name, exact age and when he died were not made public. Officials have said he died this summer, and doctors confirmed the diagnosis on Aug. 6.

The illness can only be confirmed through an autopsy.

NATO troops attempt to arrest Serb leader

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- NATO troops and U.N. police raided a house near Kosovo's most tense city Thursday in an apparent attempt to arrest a man believed to be a hard-line leader of a Serb vigilante group.

Backed by two armored vehicles and a helicopter, French soldiers and police raided the home of Milan Ivanovic, the leader of the Serbian National Council for northern Kosovo.

U.N. officials said an international prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Ivanovic on charges of attempted murder in connection with an April 8 riot in Kosovska Mitrovica, a city sharply divided between ethnic Albanians and Serbs.

U.S. military's prison at Guantanamo expanding

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- Bulldozers tore at the earth Thursday as construction progressed on a new wing of the U.S. military's prison camp for alleged al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

The 204 new cells at Camp Delta should be finished Oct. 1, bringing the number of cells in the seaside compound to 816.

With 598 men in the high-security camp, only 14 cells are empty. Each detainee has an individual cell with running water, sink, simple toilet and a metal bed frame with a foam mattress.

The total construction cost for Camp Delta, including the latest expansion, is $45 million, military officials said.

Flooding on Russia's Black Sea coast kills 2

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia -- Heavy rains caused flooding in low-lying and marshy regions along Russia's Black Sea coast Thursday, killing at least two people and leaving more than 100 missing. Rail links and power were cut.

Seven villages in the area were flooded, forcing at least 440 people to evacuate, said Oleg Grekov, spokesman for the Southern Federal District's Emergency Situations Ministry. At least 100 people were missing, but there were no details on their situation, Grekov said.

Two bodies of flood victims were found in the village of Abrau-Dyurso, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. At least eight people had been reported missing from that village after a lake overflowed, Grekov said.

Beltsov said he did not know how many people were missing, but he said 10 people were picked out of the water alive, two of them in grave condition.--From wire reports

-- From wire reports