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There was nothing extraordinary about the London street

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There was nothing extraordinary about the London street. White mansion blocks, a number of them turned into hotels, continued as far as the eye could see, and lines of traffic ploughed past, black cabs touting for trade. Within an hour, workers would be out of their offices in search of a sandwich on their first day back after the holidays Then someone looked up. There, standing on the window ledge of the fourth floor of an elegant hotel, was a woman The police were immediately called.

But, in what seemed like a moment of madness, Kathy Ward, a highly successful, attractive and popular lawyer, leapt 100ft to her death. The horror of her suicide was made even more public by it being captured by a passing photographer, the macabre image showing her plummeting past the hotel windows, her hair flying.. A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.5 shook Greece today, the Athens Geodynamic Institute said, and was felt as far away as in the Middle East There were no initial reports of any injuries. The quake's epicentre was located about 125 miles south of Athens near the island of Kythira, the geodynamic institute said, amending its previous report of a magnitude of 6.4. The earthquake occurred at 1.34pm and was felt as far away as in Cairo, Egypt, about 745 miles southeast of the epicentre, as well as in Amman in Jordan.The US Geological Survey, based in Colorado, and the National Earthquake Information Center in Denver gave a preliminary magnitude of 6.7, while the University of Thessaloniki, which also has a geodynamic institute, reported the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.9.

The reason for the discrepancies in magnitude was not immediately clear.Initial reports from authorities in Greece indicated there had been minor damage at the airport in Kythira and in buildings on the southern island of Crete.. UN experts headed for a remote area of eastern Turkey yesterday to find out whether it is witnessing the start of the much-feared pandemic of bird flu that could kill 150 million people worldwide. The World Health Organisation, which has sent a team of six to the area, centred on the town of Dogubayazit, in the mountains near the Iranian border, says the result of the investigations should be known "in the next few days". Yesterday, however, fog kept the experts stuck in the capital, Ankara. The area is already the site of the world's worst outbreak of the disease, which has so far killed about 75 people. And the virus, codenamed H5N1, is spreading rapidly in Turkey.Three children from the same family in the area, Mehmet, Fatima and Hulya Kocyigit, have died of the disease. Turkish sources said yesterday that tests had confirmed that another two patients had caught it.In all, 26 people, mainly children, are being treated for suspected bird flu in hospital in Van, where the three siblings died. Ominously it is believed they come from several provinces in the east of the country.Another six children are in hospital in Diyarbakir, 250 miles south of Dogubayazit, and a family of seven are being treated in Istanbul after travelling from the east of the country.The total number of cases, the first reported outside China and south-east Asia, is approaching a third of the total of 142 known to have occurred worldwide since 2003.

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