Finland to participate in anti-bioterror exercise

Found this at Xinhua China View News:

"HELSINKI, Feb. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- Finland will participate in an anti-bioterrorism exercise to be organized under a NATO program on Feb.20-21, the Finnish Foreign Ministry said in a press release on Thursday.

The civil emergency preparedness exercise, called the Green Cloud, aims to improve the government's response to an incident of biological terrorism. The scenario will be a situation in which a dangerous infectious disease has been deliberately spread onboard a cruise vessel visiting several harbors of North Sea and Baltic Sea countries.

The exercise, under the auspices of NATO's Partnership for Peace Program (PfP), will be a simulated map exercise and will be carried out at NATO headquarters in Brussels by national experts within the field.

Earlier civil preparedness exercises organized under the PfP have taken place in the field, many of which Finland has been a participant. This year, however, the exercise will be, for the first time, an indoor simulation for financial reasons in accordance with the civil exercise program approved in 2005.

Sweden, Austria and Switzerland, among other countries, will also attend."

Looks like Scandinavia's having it's own little '84, probably due to it becoming the #1 target of terrorist wrath in recent weeks. Hopefully they publish a nice little international report on how it went. That would be just sooo Scandinavian!

France Says Turkeys May Have Died of Flu

VIENNA, Austria, Feb. 24, 2006

(AP) France said Thursday that it may have found its first case of the virulent H5N1 bird flu virus in domestic birds, while an Austrian official warned of spotty European preparation for a possible outbreak.

The developments came as the European Union prepared for urgent talks Friday on how to battle the disease, which has spread over the past year from Asia to Africa and Europe.

Austrian Health Minister Maria Rauch-Kallat said Thursday that governments' readiness to deal with a possible bird flu pandemic in Europe was uneven and that steps must be taken to bring them to appropriate standards.

Scientists fear the H5N1 flu strain, which has already spread to 10 European countries, could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted between humans, sparking a pandemic.

Rauch-Kallat declined to say what countries lacked appropriate plans to combat a potential pandemic.

"There are countries that are well-prepared ... and there are countries that are less well-prepared," she said in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of Friday's EU health ministers meeting that she will preside.

Avian Flu Ravaging Nigeria

From http://www.alertnet.org/:

"The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus was confirmed in two more Nigerian states on Thursday as authorities grappled to contain the disease with quarantine orders and culling.

Nigeria reported Africa's first confirmed cases on Wednesday of the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza, which has forced the slaughter of more than 100 million birds in Asia and jumped to humans in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

The bird flu outbreak was first reported at a poultry farm in northern Kaduna State, affecting tens of thousands of birds, but by Thursday authorities had reported new cases of fowls with H5N1 in neighbouring Kano State and Plateau State."