The Avian Flu is Spreading, and Still Threatens a Global Epidemic

Economist.com article (Subscription required.)

"Avian influenza -- bird flu -- is still spreading, despite frantic countermeasures since the current outbreak first began in late 2003. And as it spreads, so do fears that a human epidemic will emerge from it. These fears were hardly soothed, this week, by news that an American college had inadvertently dispatched thousands of samples of a deadly human flu virus to laboratories around the world."

In early April it claimed its 50th human victim; "it has affected 11 countries all the way from Japan to Indonesia, and caused the death or destruction of over 120m Asian birds."