Possible Bird Flu at Mexican-US Border

From Reuters:

"MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's agriculture ministry denied rumors in U.S. commodities markets on Thursday that a case of H5N1 bird flu had been found near the U.S. border.

"We are free of highly pathogenic bird flu," Jose Angel del Valle, the ministry's animal health director, told Reuters.

U.S. grain prices were lower early on Thursday amid talk of the deadly bird flu in neighboring Mexico, but livestock markets -- which stand to benefit -- were treating it as a hoax, traders said.

The rumors apparently began on a Brazilian Web site, which reported that a duck found dead in the town of Nogales, near Arizona, had died of bird flu.

The Western Hemisphere so far has had no confirmed cases of the deadly version of bird flu, which has killed more than 100 people in seven countries: Turkey, Iraq, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China and Cambodia.

Mexican authorities killed some 300 birds after detecting low pathogenic bird flu on homesteads in the southern state of Chiapas last December.

Del Valle said the agriculture ministry had a strict system of monitoring chicken farms and that other government bodies were closely watching wild bird populations for any sign of the virus."

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So Mexico is denying the presence H5N1 in their poultry and yet are also starting culling programs? Actions speak louder than words, I don't doubt the US will see H5N1 before the end of the month.

H5N1 Confirmed in Gaza

From Kahleej Times:

JERUSALEM - Israeli tests have confirmed the presence of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu in poultry in the Gaza Strip, a representative of Israel’s health ministry, Moshe Haimowitch, said late Wednesday after a meeting with Palestinian experts.

“We have undertaken tests and have confirmed that the H5N1 virus is present in a poultry farm in the region of Netzarim� in the Gaza Strip, Haimowitch, the head of veterinary services in the health ministry, said on military radio.

Netzarim is a former Jewish settlement near Gaza City which was evacuated along with other Gaza settlements by the Israeli army in August last year.

Israeli and Palestinian doctors, veterinarians and agriculture experts met late Wednesday at the Erez crossing, between Gaza and Israel, to work together to fight against the H5N1 outbreak, Haimowitch said."

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If Israelis and Palestinians can at least get together to fight the Bird Flu maybe this world isn't so fucked up after all...

Residents Oppose Construction of Bioterror Lab

From Kentucky Lexington-Herald:

"Residents in southeastern Kentucky who are opposed to the building of a bioterrorism laboratory there have collected 2,800 signatures on a petition.

Scientists at the gigantic research lab would study treatments for viruses and diseases that could be unleashed on America through the food supply.

Some Pulaski County residents said they worry about the potential for leaks from the 500,000-square-foot lab, or that it could become a target for terrorists.

"We are concerned about potential dangers and disruption of our quiet farming community," the petition says. "We feel it poses a genuine threat to the health and way of life of our community and surrounding counties."

Rep. Hal Rogers, a Somerset Republican, led the effort to put together a consortium of political and academic officials from Kentucky and Tennessee to try to win the project for Somerset.

At least two other states are vying for the proposed $451 million National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility and its 400-plus jobs."

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Another case of NIMBYism leading to the downfall of our country. We have to build defense labs somewhere people. Hey government, Idaho wants it! Whatever it is... Idaho wants it! Bring on the labs and the jobs and the hazy death cloud, we're into that kinda shit up here.

Screw you Pulaski residents, you are acting against your best interests. When Idaho has a sweet biodefense industry blossoming and first access to all the vaccines, you will be welting up in the streets - bleeding from most every orifice.

Bird Flu Confirmed in Israel

From Recombinomics:

"I can confirm that preliminary tests showed the poultry died of H5 bird flu but we do not know yet exactly which strain," a ministry official told AFP. Hundreds of dead poultry were found at the Ein Hashlosha kibbutz in the Negev desert east of the Gaza border and dozens more in nearby communities, prompting the agriculture ministry to seal off the area. The above comments strongly suggest H5N1 bird flu has been detected in Israel. The number of dead birds indicates the H5 will type as H5N1 and it will be the Qinghai strain."

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Also, Isreal is quarrantining turkey farms:

"Israel's health minister said there is a "reasonable basis for concern'' the illness that has killed a large number of turkeys in southern Israel is the dangerous H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Israel Radio reported estimates of dead turkeys in two communities ranging from 1,600 to 17,000. The Agriculture Ministry was testing the birds but final results of the tests were not expected until Friday morning.

The outbreak, if confirmed, would be the first case of the virus in Israel."

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We're still waiting on all the tests of course...

Israeli Poutry Worker May Have Bird Flu

Quick blurb from Ynetnews:

"A man suffering from high fever, apparently as a result of pneumonia, arrived at the Bnei Tzion Hospital in Haifa Thursday noon. As the man works with chickens, and the possibility he may have contracted bird flu exists, he was put in isolation.

Health Ministry officials are currently debating whether to run tests for the man to determine whether or not he has bird flu. (Ahiya Raved)"

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I think they have no choice but to test him for bird flu, especially if he dies. Meanwhile, three H5N1 deaths have been confirmed in Azerbaijan.

By running the calculations on numbers found at WHO's site, H5N1 has a roughly 55.4% fatality rate. That is, 55.4% of the confirmed cases resulted in the patient's death.

H5N1 May Have Hit Isreal

From BBC News:

Hundreds of dead poultry have been found on a farm in southern Israel, raising fears of the country's first outbreak of bird flu, officials said.

The dead birds were found in a hen house on Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha next to the Gaza Strip in the western Negev.

Reports said the agriculture ministry suspected the cause of death had been bird flu virus, although it was not clear if it was the H5N1 strain.

The kibbutz and nearby communities have been sealed off as a precaution.

The H5N1 strain of the virus has killed more than 70 people worldwide.

Cases of the of strain have been reported in at least 15 governorates in Israel's southern neighbour, Egypt. "

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There's also some gastroenteritis going around in India.

Chinese Death Camps Riddled with H5N1

From Yahoo 360:

"A long-time reporter who worked for a Japanese television news agency and specialized in news on China told The Epoch Times that some little-known and very frightening things are happening in China today. To protect his identity, The Epoch Times will refer to him as Mr. R.

CCP is Hiding Bird Flu from the World

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has concealed the spread of the H5N1 bird flu epidemic within China from the rest of the world, according to Mr. R. Currently, 425 bird flu patients are detained at the Heping District Contagious Disease Hospital and the Affiliated Hospital of Liaoning College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Huanggu District, Shenyang City. These patients are being used for medical experiments. Liaoning Province has decided to not report these patients to the central government and use all of them as subjects for medical experiments. These people have no chance of survival.

Over 6,000 Falun Gong Practitioners are Secretly Detained at Sujiatun Concentration Camp

In Sujiatun District, Shenyang City, the CCP has established a secret concentration camp, where over 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners are detained, said Mr. R. The concentration camp has a crematorium to dispose of bodies. There are also many doctors on site. No detainees have managed to leave the concentration camp alive. Before cremation, the internal organs are all removed from the bodies and sold. Now there are only a few Falun Gong practitioners at the Masanjia Labor Camp and Dabei Second Prison. Most of them have been moved to Sujiatun. Other practitioners from northeastern China and central China are also being transferred there.

Two Hospitals in Shenyang City Locked Up 425 Bird Flu-infected Patients

I also want to talk about the bird flu problem in China. I believe that most people are aware of bird flu [in China], but do you believe there is no bird flu outbreak in China at present?

On Feb 27, China's State Forest Administration Wild Life Plant Conservation Office Chief Zhuo Rongsheng said, "Now, I can be sure there is no bird flu [in humans] outbreak in China." Yet, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has never stopped suspecting that there is a bird flu outbreak [in humans] in China. The WHO could not find any evidence to support their suspicions, and they remain unsure whether the bird flu [in humans] is still only contained in Guangzhou.

Two days ago, hospital medical staff accidentally leaked information that one person had died of bird flu in Guangzhou. It was then the outside world began to pay attention to the region of Guangzhou. Now the world is closely watching bird flu issue because of its highly infectious nature. However, in China's northeast city Shenyang there is an area that no ones knows or thinks about [with respect to this issue]. Recently I kept a close watch on that. The Wild Life Plant Conservation Office has been saying that there were 150 state level wild life observation stations and 402 provincial level observation stations, but I found that they either do not exist, or they have not been activated.

The Communist regime has stated to the world that there is no bird flu problem in China and they also claim to have many observation stations in China, but the truth of the matter is that there is no monitoring of bird flu in China.

In the past when talking about AIDS, Chinese people think of Hebei Province. Now, when talking about bird flu, people think of Guangzhou. Because there are many poultry farms in Guangzhou's suburb, the infectious problem is more serious than in other places. Actually, the bird flu is not just spread from birds, it can be passed around wild animals like civet cats. I have found and can prove that now there are large number of cases of bird flu infection in Zhalong, Helongjiang province and Xianghai, Jilin Province."

Supercomputer Builds Virus

From News@Nature:

"One of the world's most powerful supercomputers has conjured a fleeting moment in the life of a virus. The researchers say the simulation is the first to capture a whole biological organism in such intricate molecular detail.

The simulation pushes today's computing power to the limit. But it is only a first step. In future researchers hope that bigger, longer simulations will reveal details about how viruses invade cells and cause disease.

Klaus Schulten at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and his colleagues built a computer model of the satellite tobacco mosaic virus, a tiny spherical package of RNA.

Their success depended on the latest version of a computer program called NAMD, which Schulten and his colleagues have built over the past decade to simulate biological molecules. The program allows the several hundred different processors within a supercomputer to work in parallel on the same problem."