Turkey has sent warships to international waters off Cyprus amid a growing row over oil and gas exploration deals the island's internationally recognised government signed with Egypt and Lebanon, the NTV news channel reported.Turkish officials were not immediately available for comment.NTV did not say how many ships had been sent to the Eastern Mediterranean, but added that they would stay there for a while.The move follows a harsh warning by Ankara for Egypt and Lebanon to delay the deals which it said infringed the rights of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot statelet on the divided island."Turkey is determined to protect its rights and interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and will not allow attempts that would erode them," the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement Tuesday.The Cyprus government signed an agreement with Lebanon on January 17 for the delineation of an undersea border to facilitate future oil and gas exploration.Similar accords were struck with Egypt last year.Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkey seized its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup in Nicosia aimed at uniting the island with Greece.

By JIM KRANE
The Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Citing Iranian involvement with Iraqi militias and Tehran's nuclear ambitions, the Bush administration has shifted to offense in its confrontation with Iran building up the U.S. military in the Persian Gulf and promising more aggressive moves against Iranian operatives in Iraq and Lebanon. The behind-the-scenes struggle between the two nations could explode into open warfare over a single misstep, analysts and U.S. military officials warn.
Iraq has become a proxy battleground between Washington and Tehran, which is challenging at least rhetorically America's dominance of the Gulf. That has worried even Iraq's U.S.-backed Shiite prime minister, who in a reflection of Iraq's complexity also has close ties to Iran.
Iran and the United States are already sparring on the ground.
On Jan. 20, militants kidnapped and killed four American soldiers in a raid in Karbala, and a fifth was killed in the firefight. A U.S. defense official said one possibility under study is that Iranian agents either executed or masterminded the attack, a suspicion based on the sophisticated and unusual methods used in the attack, including weapons and uniforms that may have been American.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because the ...   more »

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
ATLANTA, Feb. 1 — Cities should close schools for up to three months in the event of a severe flu outbreak, ball games and movies should be canceled and working hours staggered so subways and buses are less crowded, the federal government advised today in issuing new pandemic flu guidelines to states and cities.Health officials acknowledged that such measures would hugely disrupt public life, but they argued that these measure would buy the time needed to produce vaccines and would save lives because flu viruses attack in waves lasting about two months.“We have to be prepared for a Category 5 pandemic,” said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in releasing the guidelines. “It’s not easy. The only thing that’s harder is facing the consequences. That will be intolerable.”In an innovation, the new guidelines are modeled on the five levels of hurricanes, but ranked by lethality instead of wind speed. Category 1, which assumes 90,000 Americans would die, is equivalent to a bad year for seasonal flu, Glen Nowak, a C.D.C. spokesman, said. (About 36,000 Americans die of flu in an average year.) Category 5, ...   more »