EU veterinary experts met in Brussels to discuss ways to keep bird flu from infecting domestic fowl as the lethal virus spreads across Europe. But EU governments failed to agree Tuesday on a plan to vaccinate commercial poultry.

Some countries, including France and the Netherlands, are pushing for flu vaccines for domestic poultry. But others, including Britain, say vaccinations are costly and difficult - and provide no guarantee of immunity since the drugs only ward against the flu in general, not H5N1.

"The use of poultry vaccines to guard against the spread of H5N1 will inflict huge costs on poultry farmers, cause undue distress to poultry and, owing to the difficulties of catching free-range poultry, may not act as a blanket solution," Neil Parish, a British Conservative member of the European Parliament, said in Brussels on Tuesday.

H5N1 has devastated poultry stocks and killed at least 92 people, mostly in Asia, since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

In India, health workers were wrapping up a massive slaughter of chickens Tuesday.

Most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds. But scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted between humans, sparking a human flu pandemic.

Farmers said consumers were shunning poultry amid the bird flu scare.

Germany reported 22 more cases of bird flu on the northern island of Ruegen, raising its total to 103.

Austria said Tuesday that an EU reference laboratory in Britain confirmed that a wild swan found dead last week had H5N1. Preliminary tests in Austria also indicate that three other swans and a duck discovered in the southern province of Styria also have bird flu, said Peter Wagner, the top veterinarian in the province.

Results from the EU laboratory also confirmed H5N1 in three dead swans in Hungary, government spokesman Andras Batiz said in a statement. Hungary is awaiting results from samples taken from four other swans suspected of carrying H5N1.

All seven birds were found some 100 miles south of Budapest, near Hungary's borders with both Serbia and Croatia.

"The government and the competent authorities have already implemented the steps needed to guarantee the population's safety and prevent the spread of the disease to domestic birds," Batiz assured the country.

Greece and Slovakia said more wild birds have tested positive for an H5 subtype of bird flu, and further tests were being conducted to determine the exact strain.

Elsewhere, Croatia on Tuesday reported a new case of H5N1 - in a swan found dead in Ciovo off the country's southern coast, the country's second outbreak since October.

European countries stepped up precautions. In Paris, the Jardin des Plantes park closed its aviary, and the Bois de Vincennes zoo on the capital's outskirts devised duck-proof feeding boxes for their flamingos. A wild duck tested positive in France for H5N1.

In London, the six legendary ravens at the Tower of London were moved indoors. Britain so far has been spared bird flu, but wardens are taking no chances - legend holds that the British monarchy will fall if the ravens ever leave the Tower.

"It's purely precautionary," Derrick Coyle, the tower's Yeoman Raven Master, said Tuesday. "I always said that if bird flu got as far as Germany, I would put the birds inside."

Austria's health ministry said the chicken had been kept in a cage where an infected swan was also being held.

Commercial poultry stocks have not been affected, a health ministry spokeswoman said.

The swan had been taken to an animal sanctuary in Graz earlier this month from an area affected by the virus, she added, in breach of regulations imposed after the first H5N1 case was recorded in wild birds in Austria.

Hungary, the latest EU member to confirm the H5N1 virus, said on Tuesday that tests showed the virus in three dead swans found last week.

Croatia also confirmed the H5N1 strain on Tuesday in a swan found dead on Ciovo island, just off the coastal city of Split. Slovakia is testing suspected cases in two wild birds.

The lethal H5N1 strain has killed more than 90 people since late 2003. It can be caught by humans who handle infected birds, but is not yet known to have passed from one person to another.

Scientists have warned that if the virus mutates, it could create a pandemic that could kill millions of people.

Sensitive issue

In Brussels, EU vets and health experts are hoping to break the deadlock over the first plans presented to the European Commission on bird flu vaccination.

The move towards vaccination is spearheaded by the Netherlands and France, the EU's two largest poultry producers.

They are concerned it will be very difficult to keep all free-range poultry indoors, away from potentially infectious wild birds.

France proposes vaccinating 900,000 ducks and geese in three areas thought to be at high risk, among them the coastal Landes region, starting from 1 April.

But Germany, Austria, Denmark and Portugal all oppose vaccination at this point.

Correspondents say the European Commission fears the relatively complex procedure may leave some birds unprotected - and so at risk of contracting and spreading the disease.

The BBC's Europe correspondent, Tim Franks, says if permission is given to the French and the Dutch it would point to a growing consensus among EU veterinary experts.

It would also suggest that concerns among some members about the cost and efficacy of the vaccinations are being overcome, he says.

EU ministers are also discussing the economic impact on the poultry industry and the issue of compensation for farmers.

Poultry sales have plunged in Italy, Greece and France since the confirmation of H5N1 outbreaks.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said the situation was not yet serious enough to warrant compensating farmers.

Most of the dead were buried by mud from landslides in hilly parts of the city.

"Today we found four bodies so the total is now 24," said Rinaldi, a search and rescue official in Manado, about 2,200 km (1,365 miles) northeast of Jakarta.

Another search and rescue official on the scene in the seaside city said rescuers were still searching for survivors.

Floods and landslides are common in Indonesia, especially during the wet season. Many landslides are caused by illegal logging or the clearing of farmland that strips away natural barriers to such disasters.

Landslides killed at least 130 people on Java island last month.

Rescue efforts were continuing on Tuesday, and a main road linking Sanaa with cities to the south remained closed, he said Tuesday.

Some 1,900 people were still trapped in around 100 flood-besieged homes, Dhamar's Red Crescent chief Abdul Salam al-Ahsab told reporters.

Rescue teams were trying to reach the trapped residents, he added.

The flooding occurred at the start of Yemen's rainy season. Last April, 10 people were killed in torrential floods.

Dennison, 35, was hired in May 2004 by the mine's former owner, Anker Energy, and was fired in August of that year after the company learned he was not certified to do safety inspections, according to the indictment.

"This type of allegedly fraudulent activity has no place in the mining environment, especially when the safety of miners is placed at risk," U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Johnston said.

A call to Dennison's home in Wallace went unanswered. A reporter for Bridgeport television station WDTV said Dennison declined to comment to the station until he consulted an attorney.

If convicted, Dennison could face up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines for each of 113 counts. He could receive up to five years and $250,000 in fines for each of the remaining counts.

Dennison was never issued an underground miner's card. His only certification is as a mining truck driver, according to the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training.

On his first inspection form, Dennison allegedly failed to include his foreman's certification number. On subsequent inspections, the indictment says, he listed a number that belongs to a foreman who does not know Dennison.

The indictment, issued by a grand jury in Elkins, also alleges that Dennison lied to an investigator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration who questioned him.

The cause of the blast at the mine about 100 miles north of Charleston has not been determined, but is believed to have occurred in an abandoned section of the mine that had been sealed off.

Survivor Randal McCloy Jr. is recovering at a rehabilitation hospital.

The Sago Mine was cited for 208 alleged safety violations during 2005, at least 17 of which were considered serious. The mine's current owner has said it inherited many of the problems and had been working to correct them.

The mine was purchased last year by Ashland, Ky.-based International Coal Group. ICG formally took control of the mine in November, but started work there as management consultants in June.

ICG officials declined to comment on Tuesday's indictment because the company "neither operated nor owned the mine at the time," spokesman Matt Barkett said.

Here on the high sage plains of western Wyoming, often called the Serengeti of the West because of large migratory herds of deer and antelope, the Pinedale region has become one of the most productive and profitable natural gas fields on federal land in the Rockies. With the aggressive backing of the Bush administration, many members of Congress and the energy industry, at least a sixfold expansion in drilling is likely here in the coming decade.

Recent studies of mule deer and sage grouse, however, show steep declines in their numbers since the gas boom began here about five years ago: a 46 percent decline for mule deer and a 51 percent decline for breeding male sage grouse. Early results from a study of pronghorn antelope show that they, too, avoid the gas fields.

Yet as these findings have come in, the wildlife biologists in the Pinedale office of the BLM have rarely gone into the field to monitor harm to wildlife.

"The BLM is pushing the biologists to be what I call 'biostitutes,' rather than allow them to be experts in the wildlife they are supposed to be managing," said Steve Belinda, 37, who last week quit his job as one of three wildlife biologists in the BLM's Pinedale office because he said he was required to spend nearly all his time working on drilling requests. "They are telling us that if it is not energy-related, you are not working on it."

Belinda, who had worked for 16 years as a wildlife biologist for the BLM and the Forest Service, said he came to work in the agency's Pinedale office 20 months ago because of the "world-class wildlife." He has quit to work here for a national conservation group, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, as its energy initiative manager.

"It is a huge attraction for biologists to work in western Wyoming," he said. "But in this [BLM] office, they want you to look at things in a single-minded way. I have spent less than 1 percent of my time in the field. If we continue down this trend of keeping biologists in the office and preventing them from doing substantive work, there is a train wreck coming for wildlife."

Belinda is not alone in his view that the BLM, in its focused pursuit of increased drilling, is neglecting its congressional mandate to manage federal lands for "multiple use."

For years the BLM has reallocated money Congress intended for wildlife conservation to spending on energy. A national evaluation by the agency of its wildlife expenditures found three years ago that about one-third of designated wildlife money was spent "outside" of wildlife programs.

An internal BLM follow-up study found last year that this widespread diversion of money has caused "numerous lost opportunities" to protect wildlife. The study found that the unwillingness of the agency to use wildlife money for conservation programs has "reduced ability to conduct on-the-ground restoration" and made the BLM unable "to conduct adequate inventory and monitoring of habitats and populations."

The sum effect of these diversions, the study said, has damaged the credibility of land-use planning by the BLM. These findings were echoed last year in a report by the Government Accountability Office, which said that BLM managers order their field staff to devote increasing time to processing drilling permits, leaving less time to mitigate the consequences of oil and gas extraction.

"It has become almost a cultural practice in the BLM to spend money that is appropriated for one purpose for whatever purpose somebody deems is a higher priority," said a senior BLM official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said he would be fired for speaking publicly. "There is really no penalty for this."

The BLM's Wyoming director, Bob Bennett, disagreed strongly with this assessment. Bennett said that the BLM is "doing our level best to deal with the impacts" of energy development on wildlife.

A pronghorn antelope is fitted with a radio transmitter, and early findings show that the animals -- as well as mule deer and breeding male sage grouse -- avoid the gas fields.
A pronghorn antelope is fitted with a radio transmitter, and early findings show that the animals -- as well as mule deer and breeding male sage grouse -- avoid the gas fields.
"If a wildlife biologist is working on an application for a permit to drill, that doesn't mean he is not doing wildlife work," Bennett said. "The wildlife job is a broad job, and it does involve energy."

Here in Wyoming, what has angered Gov. Dave Freudenthal (D), along with state wildlife managers, environmental groups, many local residents and some oil industry executives is what they describe as growing evidence of a lack of balance in the federal push for more drilling -- even as scientific studies show significant and worrisome declines in wildlife around gas fields. Those studies have been funded by the BLM and the energy industry.

The BLM's pace of issuing new permits to drill in Wyoming and across the West has continued to increase, even though the oil and gas industry -- which is chronically short of drilling rigs and skilled workers -- cannot drill nearly enough holes in the ground to keep up with the permits that have already been granted. In the past two years, the BLM issued a record 13,070 drilling permits on federal land, but industry drilled just 5,844 wells.

"The pressure comes from Washington," said Freudenthal, who said he has assigned more state wildlife biologists to Pinedale and other active drilling areas in an attempt to keep up with the federal push. "As you go up the chain of command of BLM and into the Department of Interior, I am not sure they share our commitment to balance. No matter how large the benefits are from this development, it does not justify turning a blind eye to the environment."

At the BLM state office, Bennett said his agency would like to "take it slow and easy. We are trying to do that to the extent we can." But he said the bureau is under "a lot of national pressure, from industry and from Congress. The demand for gas is a real issue to people."

Pinedale is an especially profitable place to address that demand. With more gas extracted from a smaller footprint than anywhere else on federal land in the West, it produced an estimated $4 billion worth of gas last year.

In the Pinedale BLM office, as in agency offices across the West, monitoring and research on the impact of drilling on wildlife are almost never done by staff biologists, according to Roger L. Bankert, associate field manager for lands and minerals.

"This is an energy office, and our biologists don't have time to do the monitoring," Bankert said. He said it is "done by private consultants who are hired by the energy companies," with BLM approval.

Under a federal law intended to enlist the local community in the planning of oil and gas development, the Interior Department has named an advisory group to study and make recommendations about the impact of drilling here. The chairman of the group, Linda Baker, says she is alarmed by what she describes as the BLM's refusal to listen to her group's advice or adapt its management to findings that drilling is harming wildlife.

"We are seeing the handing over of a multiple-use valley to the energy industry," Baker said. "This is a disaster in the making."

Rather than slowing down to assess wildlife impact and to allow energy companies to catch up to drilling permits already issued, as recommended by Baker's group, state officials and several national environmental organizations, the BLM appears to be stepping on the accelerator. It has just released a proposal that recommends granting permits for drilling 3,100 more wells in nearby Jonah Field -- a sixfold increase over the number of current wells.

Federal management of drilling here has angered a former senior energy executive who lives near Pinedale.

"There is no well-thought-out, overall development plan for this field," said Kirby L. Hedrick, a former vice president at Phillips Petroleum Co. in charge of worldwide exploration and now a member of the board of directors of Noble Energy Inc. in Houston. "The BLM has been approving plans ad hoc."