Kaloogian, a former state assemblyman who founded Move America Forward to support the war and is now running for Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's House seat, took the photo down on Wednesday.

He said it was innocent mix-up that arose from a trip to Baghdad that he took last summer with Move America Forward. Some of the travelers went home through Istanbul, he said. The group pooled its photos, and his Web master mistakenly selected one of Istanbul, Kaloogian said.

"They used a picture that was wrong. There's nothing sinister about it," he said.

Kaloogian, a Republican, is one of 18 candidates seeking to replace Cunningham, who was convicted of bribery and conspiracy and sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison.

Josh Key was speaking before Canada's refugee board hearing his asylum plea.

Among the incidents, he described soldiers kicking the severed head of an Iraqi like a football in Ramadi.

Mr Key served as an explosives expert in Iraq for eight months, and deserted to Canada with his family in 2004. He faces a court martial back in the US.

The soldier, 27, also told Canada's refugee board he saw a US army squad leader shooting the foot off an unarmed Iraqi man.

The army's attitude in Iraq was "just shoot and ask questions later", Mr Key said.

Appeal

Mr Key says he refuses to fight in a war he regards as immoral and illegal.

About 20 US soldiers have applied for asylum in Canada. Two have already had their applications rejected.

The Immigration and Refugee Board said it was not convinced the men would face persecution if they were sent back to the US. They have said they will appeal against the decision.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Key said he was in Iraq when he realised the war was unjustified.

"The only people that were getting hurt was the innocent; that was innocent Iraqi people, as well as innocent soldiers."

On his return to the US, he told the army that he did not want to return, but was advised that he would face prison if he refused. It was then that he decided to desert.

"Before I went to Iraq, I was trained on how to escape terrorists. You learn to only go where crime is already at. You only go somewhere where who cares about a deserter if somebody is getting murdered every night. I went to Philadelphia," he said.

He spent 14 months in the city, before deciding to flee to Canada.

During the Vietnam war, more than 100,000 Americans went to the neighbour country to avoid the draft.

Although both coasts have set up monitoring systems for any signs of the avian virus "we expect there will be access (to the United States) through Alaska rather than upstate New York," said Ryan Broddrick, director of the California Department of Fish and Game. He did not elaborate.

The H5N1 virus overwhelmingly infects birds but has sickened 186 people in eight countries and killed 105 of them. Experts believe it poses the greatest threat in recent years of a global flu pandemic that could kill millions, if it acquires the ability to pass easily from human to human.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt warned against panic when avian flu hits U.S. shores for the first time, saying it would not inevitably mean the start of a human pandemic.

"It is almost certain that a wild bird will find its way into the United States with H5N1 on board. That will not be a crisis," Leavitt told reporters in Los Angeles.

But he warned states to lay the groundwork for possible human to human transmission. "There is clearly a lot of buzz (but) I worry there is not enough busy-ness," he said.

Leavitt said research published on Wednesday finding that an experimental vaccine against bird flu in humans works only at very high doses was "not unexpected."

"We are working to develop adjuvant technology that will allow us to boost the effects of vaccine and we are optimistic that that can be part of the solution," he said.

GlaxoSmithKline on Thursday announced the start of human trials of two new bird flu vaccines using adjuvants -- additives that are put into vaccines that boost the immune system and make it respond more efficiently.

If the vaccines work they would be ready to manufacture by the end of the year, the company said.

In six U.S. hospitals, researchers involved in the Study of Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) analyzed the healing effects of third-party prayer-in which individuals pray for a stranger whom they have never met. The study volunteers-about 1,800 heart patients undergoing bypass surgery-were randomly divided into three groups: members of the first two groups were not told definitively that they would receive prayer-one of these groups received prayer, and the other did not-while members of the third group were told they would certainly be prayed for.

Daily prayers by three Christian groups began on the eve of the patients' surgeries and lasted for two weeks. The results? A tad, er, disheartening.

In the 30 days following bypass surgery, doctors found that prayer had no positive effect on rates of postoperative complications. In fact, complication rates in the first two groups-the ones that didn't know whether they were receiving prayer-were were nearly identical. About 52% of the patients who were included in the Christian groups' prayers suffered complications, compared with 51% of the group that received no prayer at all. Meanwhile, the last group, which expected prayer and received it, had the highest rate of post-surgery problems, at 59%.

What It Means: Some previous studies have shown that prayer can have some impact on health, but this new one suggests that it offers no benefit. Whether it may help save your soul, however, is up to you.