* Astronomy

Bird flu 'could mutate to cause deadly human pandemic'

The H5N1 bird flu virus could change into a form able to spread rapidly between humans, scientists have warned.
Researchers have identified five genetic changes that could allow the virus to start a deadly pandemic.
Writing in the journal Science, they say it would be theoretically possible for these changes to occur in nature.
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Hong Kong orders chicken cull as bird flu alert raised

Hong Kong is culling 17,000 chickens after three birds were confirmed to have died from the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain in the past week.
The government has banned imports and the sale of live chickens for three weeks after a chicken carcass was found at a wholesale market on Tuesday.
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NIH Scientists Find Earliest Known Evidence of 1918 Influenza Pandemic

Examination of lung tissue and other autopsy material from 68 American soldiers who died of respiratory infections in 1918 has revealed that the influenza virus that eventually killed 50 million people worldwide was circulating in the United States at least four months before the 1918 influenza reached pandemic levels that autumn.
The study, using tissues preserved since 1918, was led by Jeffery K. Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The researchers found proteins and genetic material from the 1918 influenza virus in specimens from 37 of the soldiers, including four who died between May and August 1918, months before the pandemic peaked. These four cases are the earliest 1918 pandemic influenza cases they know to be documented anywhere in the world, the scientists say.
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