The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will ban the pesticide carbofuran on domestic or imported food, in effect prohibiting the chemical in the U.S.

The agency imposed the ban because its chemical residue has unacceptable safety risk to young children. Up to a million pounds of carbofuran are used on U.S. farms annually, but it affects less than 1 percent of the nation's farm lands. However, it is used extensively in developing nations on basic food crops such as rice, bananas, coffee and sugar cane

Bangladesh health authorities confirmed on Thursday that a 16-month-old boy who became infected with bird flu had recovered after treatment. The south-Asian country has become the 15th country to have a human case of H5N1 avian influenza, according to news services.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta confirmed on Wednesday that child is from Dhaka, the capital; an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report quoted Saluddin Khan, a government official, as saying

Britain's leading drug manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has won European Union approval for the first human bird flu vaccine that will protect people against the H5N1 strain of the deadly disease.

Glaxo, which has already spent $2 billion developing the vaccine, has orders from Switzerland and the United States for the vaccine

Korean officials said Tuesday some 6 million ducks and chickens have been slaughtered since the spread of bird flu in this capital city.

The agriculture ministry said that this year is the worst bird flu outbreak to hit the city

Authorities have decided to cull thousands of chickens and imposed restrictions on import of poultry after confirming a fresh outbreak of bird flu in the country's northeastern Tripura state.

Samples of dead poultry from villages in Mohanpur under West Tripura district sent to the High Security Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Bhopal last week tested positive, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported quoting sources