"We think an immediate transition is

in the best interests of

the Yemeni people because the instability and lack of security currently

afflict

ing Yemen cannot be addressed until there is some process that everyone knows is going to lead to the sort of economic and political reforms that they are seeking."

Saudi officials say progress is continuing on a deal

broker

ed by the Gulf Cooperation Council for President Saleh to step down, which until now he's refused to implement.

Dozens of doctors and nurses in Bahrain who treated injured anti-government protesters earlier this year have appeared in court, charged with attempting to

topple

the kingdom's monarchy. The 47 defendants appeared behind closed doors in a special security court in Manama.

Officials in Germany say they still can't prove

definitively

the cause of the deadly E. coli outbreak, which has killed more than 20 people, despite the announcement on Sunday that they were almost certain it came from a farm producing bean sprouts in the state of Lower Saxony. Results from half of the samples tested so far at the farm have proved negative. Guenael Rodier is director of communicative diseases at the World Health Organisation. He said it was proving difficult to find the source.

"There are a number of quite pretty decent threads which have been

followed up

. We will test it a couple of days before all the lab result and all the epidemiological data will help us to track down the