A primer for pandemics. “Bird flu” has already shown that it can jump from fowl to humans, and now even to cats, which indicates that it might be the next global killer. [News Source]

Bill on animal disease records being discussed. A bill to keep animal disease records secret in Tennessee has been delayed while sponsors are negotiating with open-government activists. [News Source]

Horse owner cries foul over registry. Eventually, the government ID program could require that each horse, cow, steer, bull, pig, sheep, goat, turkey, chicken and other domestic and exotic livestock be individually registered and tagged with a radio frequency identifier that could be used to track the animal's movements. [News Source]

Brown criticized for bucking federal disaster plan. The House committee investigating the government's response to Hurricane Katrina says that the former FEMA director did not give an official government disaster plan a chance to work. [News Source]

Study finds mutations needed for bird flu pandemic. Scientists said on Thursday they had identified some of the mutations the H5N1 avian influenza virus needs to gain a permanent foothold in the human population, causing a greatly feared pandemic. [News Source]

Blame chicken farms for bird flu. According to Earl Brown, a University of Ottawa flu virologist, lethal bird flu is entirely man-made, first evolving in commercially produced poultry in Italy in 1878. [News Source]

Scientists find how bird-flu virus ‘humanizes’. Researchers have found that by putting one or two mutations into the H5N1 bird-flu virus, they were able to give it greater ability to slip into human cells. [News Source]

The cost of bird flu hysteria. Renownned bird flu expert Robert Webster said there were ''about even odds at this time for the virus to learn how to transmit human to human," and ''society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die." [News Source]

Exodus of Africans to Europe stirs crisis. African migrants desperate to escape the world's poorest continent are streaming through Mauritania to embark on a perilous ocean voyage to Europe that has already killed hundreds. [News Source]

Winds ease in Texas, slowing wildfires. The strong winds that pushed wildfires across nearly a million acres of the bone-dry Texas Panhandle were easing early Thursday, but in Oklahoma, the fire danger was picking up. [News Source]

NASA confirms the melting of polar ice caps. The polar ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising. It's not a Hollywood disaster movie. It's not a theory. It's news from NASA. [News Source]

Labs unify health, ag work. At first glance, it seems like a bureaucrat's joke: locating the new Agriculture Department headquarters near the downtown heart of Minnesota's most urban county. [News Source]