Lebanon Lebanon's pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud faced calls to resign after a UN report implicated Syrian and Lebanese security services in the murder of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. Quake Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said the amount of foreign reconstruction aid promised after the devastating South Asian quake is "totally inadequate," a BBC report said. Iraq The lawyer for a co-defendant of Saddam Hussein, who was kidnapped just a day after the opening of the former Iraqi dictator's trial over a massacre of Shiites, has been murdered, officials said, but a kidnapped Irish journalist was safe in the hands of the British embassy. Health China pledged to step up cooperation in an increasingly fierce global battle to contain bird flu as Thailand reported a seven-year-old boy had been infected with the disease, which killed his father. Health A senior Russian official shrugged off an emergency EU ban on imports of Russian birds aimed at containing the spread of bird flu, describing it as empty posturing given that Russia does not export fowl of any kind to Europe. SKorea The United States and South Korea agreed to accelerate talks on switching the command structure of Korean forces in wartime in what would be a major shift in the half-century-old alliance. Mideast The radical Islamist movement Hamas slammed US President George W. Bush for dropping any concept of a fixed timetable for the creation of a Palestinian state and warned against pressure to disarm "resistance" factions. India A senior US State Department official met with India's foreign secretary for talks on a nuclear deal between the two nations that breaks precedent on decades of non-proliferation policy. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai condemned the alleged burning of the bodies of two suspected Taliban militants by US soldiers in Afghanistan, and demanded a quick US investigation into the case. Uganda Tens of thousands of Ugandans turned out at rival ceremonies to mourn and condemn the country's twice-toppled president Milton Obote, illustrating a bitter debate over the late leader's legacy. EU The European Commission agreed to opening talks this year with Bosnia and set the once-troubled former Yugoslav republic on the long road to EU membership.