● ACCIDENT. Doctors re-attach boy?s hands and foot. Surgeons in Australia have successfully re-attached a boy?s foot and both his hands which were severed in a freak basketball accident, a hospital spokeswoman said. The 10-year-old was swinging from a basketball hoop outside a friend?s home late Saturday when the backboard, attached to a rain gutter, fell on him, severing his left foot and hands, Deanne King, spokeswoman for Princess Margaret Hospital in Perth said. The boy underwent a blood transfusion during the seven-hour surgery, conducted by a team of 25 surgeons.

● HEALTH. Japan confirms 16th case of mad cow disease. Japan has confirmed its 16th case of mad cow disease in a nine-year-old slaughtered cow, the Health Ministry said yesterday. The cow, from the northernmost island of Hokkaido, tested positive for the brain-wasting disease officially known as bovine spongiform encephalitis, which was first discovered in Japan in 2001. The government subsequently introduced testing for all cows slaughtered for food. The Health Ministry said in a statement on its Web page that the carcass will be incinerated.

● FARMS. North Korea confirms bird flu outbreak. North Korea confirmed yesterday a bird flu outbreak at two chicken farms in the capital Pyongyang and said the farms slaughtered and buried hundreds of thousands of chickens infected by the disease. But no one is reported to have been infected among breeders on the farms. Members of the communist state?s emergency veterinary committee have been working to prevent the spread of the disease to other poultry farms, and officials of the Agricultural and Public Health ministries have been mobilising a campaign to prevent its spread.