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Bird flu epidemic rumbles on around the world 12:31 11 January 2007 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie The H5N1 bird flu virus shows no signs of going away in 2007, with outbreaks in poultry and people flaring up across its heartland in east Asia and, most worryingly, in Africa. Other countries the virus reached in winter 2006, including Europe, are watching nervously for its return. And hitherto unaffected areas are anxiously testing mysterious bird deaths to see if they will be next. The biggest flare-up so far has been in Vietnam, where an outbreak in poultry that started in early...

Many people worry about putting on a few pounds during the holiday season. But when you reach for a Christmas cookie, keep in mind that you're not the only one who's going to enjoy that tasty treat: It will also get eaten by the bacteria living in your gut. And it turns out that the kind of bacteria living there may affect how much weight you gain. Until a couple of years ago, scientists didn't have the tools to figure out exactly what lives in a person's digestive tract. But with new genetic probes, they can do a kind of...

The number of Colorado lodgepole pines killed by bark beetles jumped nearly fivefold in 2006 as the explosive, decadelong bug epidemic continues to gain steam. About 4.8 million lodgepoles were killed this year, up from roughly 1 million trees last year, according to Bob Cain, an entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Golden. The lodgepole acreage under attack by mountain pine beetles jumped about 50 percent this year to 644,840 acres, up from 430,526 acres last year. The new numbers, which are considered preliminary, come from aerial tree-damage surveys conducted this summer. "We had a significant increase in both...

The number of Chinese testing positive for HIV is growing dramatically according to new figures, adding to fears that a once-hidden epidemic is spreading through the country's booming sex trade.By the end of October, 183,733 people had tested positive for the virus this year, compared to 144,089 for the whole of last year, a rise of almost 30 per cent in 10 months. While local Aids activists say the government is still underestimating the crisis, international agencies said the increase was partly due to the extension of testing programmes as the authorities become more open about a disease whose infection...

SEOUL, Nov. 15 (Yonhap) -- Scarlet fever has been spreading fast in North Korea for nearly a month and is showing signs of becoming a full-blown pandemic despite efforts by North Korean authorities to contain the disease, a source close to the North said Wednesday. The disease first broke out in the communist state's northern Yanggang Province last month, but is quickly spreading to other parts of the country, the source told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity.

Three million body bags may be stockpiled in disaster plans Last Updated: 1:17am GMT 06/11/2006 Secret plans to stockpile millions of body bags to be used in the event of a flu pandemic, terrorist attack or other disaster are being considered by the Government and health experts, according to a senior minister. The proposals reflect mounting concern at the lack of space to store bodies in morgues and bury them in the event of mass deaths. A senior member of the Government involved in policy planning for a flu pandemic told The Daily Telegraph that "various scenarios" involving hundreds of...

People who lived during the 1918 influenza epidemic may hold secrets in their blood that could help fight a future pandemic, but finding them now is a race against time. People who were toddlers at the end of World War I -- when the epidemic swept the globe and killed 50 million -- are in their 90s now. Nearly a lifetime after the notorious outbreak, researchers are hoping those who lived through it will come forward and donate a vial of blood, which then will be analyzed for antibodies to the virus. In particular, a New Jersey researcher is seeking...

'Friendly Fire' an Epidemic in S. Africa Thursday September 28, 2006 2:01 AM By CELEAN JACOBSON Associated Press Writer PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) - South Africans are killing relatives and acquaintances at an alarming rate, police said Wednesday, acknowledging traditional methods for battling crime do little to stem the tide. According to an annual police report on crime, nearly 50 people killed every day across the country - a figure that will likely add to South Africa's reputation as a violent society. The government is desperate to counter the country's violent image, especially in the run-up to the soccer World...

An Empire's Epidemic Scientists Use DNA in Search for Answers to 6th Century Plague By THOMAS H. MAUGH II, Times Staff Writer By the middle of the 6th century, the Emperor Justinian had spread his Byzantine Empire around the rim of the Mediterranean and throughout Europe, laying the groundwork for what he hoped would be a long-lived dynasty. His dreams were shattered when disease-bearing mice from lower Egypt reached the harbor town of Pelusium in AD 540. From there, the devastating disease spread to Alexandria and, by ship, to Constantinople, Justinian's capital, before surging throughout his empire. By the time...

About 1.7 million people die from TB globally each year A "virtually untreatable" form of TB has emerged, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Extreme drug resistant TB (XDR TB) has been seen worldwide, including in the US, Eastern Europe and Africa, although Western Europe has had no cases. Dr Paul Nunn, from the WHO, said a failure to correctly implement treatment strategies was to blame. TB experts have convened in Johannesburg, South Africa, to discuss how to address the problem. TB presently causes about 1.7 million deaths a year worldwide, but researchers are worried about the emergence of...

Diarrhoea epidemic spreading in Ethiopia 15:30 05 September 2006 NewScientist.com news service A diarrhoea outbreak in Ethiopia has infected at least 15,000 people and killed 148 so far, the United Nations announced on Tuesday. Heavy flooding in the region is partly responsible for the epidemic, and the outbreak of acute watery diarrhoea could spread even further, aid agencies fear. Ethiopia's southern region is particularly hard-hit, says Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "We are concerned that this epidemic could cross the border, contaminating the whole of the southern region of Ethiopia and Kenya,"...

Science moves in mysterious ways, and sometimes what seems like the end of the story is really just the beginning. Or, at least, that is what some researchers are thinking as they scratch their heads over the weird genetic sequence of the 1918 flu virus. Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, a molecular pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Technology who led the research team that reconstructed the long-extinct virus, said that a few things seemed clear. The 1918 virus appears to be a bird-flu virus. But if it is from a bird, it is not a bird anyone has studied before....

Saratoga Man 1st West Nile Case In Santa Clara Co. (BCN) SARATOGA, Calif. The first confirmed human case of West Nile virus in the Bay Area in 2006 is a 65-year-old Saratoga man who was never hospitalized and has recovered, Santa Clara County public health officials announced Tuesday. The county Public Health Department suspects that a second man, a Cupertino resident over 50, may also have been infected with the virus but the results of confirming tests will not be known until next week, according to county Deputy Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody. "We know that West Nile Virus is...

Text of report by Radio-Television Kosovo TV website on 10 August More than 250 cases of meningitis have been reported so far. Children are most vulnerable, and then pass it on to their parents, said Dr Muharrem Bajrami of the infection ward at Prishtina [Pristina] hospital. The infection ward is full of parents whose children have been affected by the disease. The towns of Vushtrri [Vucitrn], Gllogoc [Glogovac] and Malisheve [Malisevo] have been the most affected areas by meningitis, although there are cases coming from all over Kosova [Kosovo], said Dr Bajrami. He added that extreme poverty was the main...

The Chinese Ministry of Health has confirmed on Aug 8 that the country's first human case of H5N1 bird flu occurred two years earlier than previously thought, in November 2003. A letter published by eight Chinese scientists on June 22 in the New England Journal of Medicine said that the bird flu virus had been isolated in a 24-year-old man who died in Beijing in 2003. The man, surnamed Shi, became ill with pneumonia and respiratory disease in November 2003 and died four days after being hospitalized. China was then in the aftermath of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and...

N Korean flood toll thought to be 10,000 Up to 10,000 North Koreans are believed dead or missing in what Pyongyang's official media is describing as the worst flooding in a century, a respected South Korean humanitarian group says. "About 4,000 people are now listed as missing, and we expect the final toll of dead and missing to reach 10,000," the independent aid group Good Friends said. North Korea's official media has so far admitted that hundreds of people are dead or missing after the country was battered by heavy rainfall for nearly two weeks from July 10. Seoul-based Good...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - It's a true epidemic: the red, white and blue, stars-and-stripes banners are everywhere in the United States - on house facades, front lawns, cars and clothes. Hitting an high point on the July 4 US Independence Day holiday, it is a genuine phenomenon of American national pride that, inevitably, gets a good but also sometimes unwanted boost from commercial exploitation. "It's a little strange, this obsession of the flag," French author Bernard-Henri Levy wrote after traveling across the country. "Everywhere, in every form, flapping in the wind or on stickers, an epidemic of flags that has spread...

TORONTO (CP) - It could take half a century or more for someone infected with prions - the cause of mad cow-like diseases - to start showing symptoms, say researchers, who drew that conclusion after studying a similar illness among Papua New Guinean people who once feasted on their dead. Their findings suggest that the number of human cases of variant Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (vCJD) could end up being much larger than originally suspected, say the researchers, whose study is published in Friday's edition of The Lancet. With 160 cases, the United Kingdom has the highest number of recorded cases in...

Methamphetamine use is rare in most of the United States, not the raging epidemic described by politicians and the news media, says a study by an advocacy group. Meth is a dangerous drug but among the least commonly used, The Sentencing Project policy analyst Ryan King wrote in a report issued Wednesday. Rates of use have been stable since 1999, and among teenagers meth use has dropped, King said. "The portrayal of methamphetamine in the United States as an epidemic spreading across the country has been grossly overstated," King said. The Sentencing Project is a not-for-profit group that supports alternatives...

The Deadly VirusThe Influenza Epidemic of 1918 True or False? The Influenza Epidemic of 1918 killed more people than died in World War One.Hard as it is to believe, the answer is true. World War I claimed an estimated 16 million lives. The influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people. One fifth of the world's population was attacked by this deadly virus. Within months, it had killed more people than any other illness in recorded history. The plague emerged in two phases. In late spring of 1918, the first phase, known as the...