LONDON - PREMIER League strugglers Blackburn Rovers announced on Tuesday they had sacked Paul Ince as their manager - just six months after appointing the former Manchester United and England midfielder.

Rovers are currently second bottom in the table and on course for relegation from English football's lucrative top flight after winning just three of their 17 league games so far this season.

SINGAPORE'S trade minister said on Tuesday that economic growth this year could be weaker than forecast, as the trade-dependent country suffers from a slowdown in the global economy.

'We believe the growth for this year will come slightly below our earlier projections of 2.5 (per cent),' Mr Lim Hng Kiang told reporters on the sidelines of an Asean trade meeting.

SIX southeast Asian nations signed trade agreements on Tuesday paving the way for a single market in the region, pressing on with the pacts despite the postponement of a key summit.

The economic ministers of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore and Malaysia signed three separate deals covering trade in goods, investment and services.

HONG KONG - THE re-emergence of bird flu in in Asia and Egypt has prompted experts to ask tough questions: are poultry vaccines effective against a virus that is constantly mutating, and are governments doing enough to stop it spreading?

The virus turned up last week in a farm equipped with modern biosecurity measures in Hong Kong, killing over 100 chickens and leading to the culling of some 80,000 birds there, in nearby farms and a wholesale market.