N.D. to test for bird flu. Migrating ducks and geese that stop in North Dakota will be tested to see if they are carriers of the highly pathogenic form of H5N1 avian influenza. [News Source]

Roche to have capacity to exceed demand for Tamiflu by year end. Swiss drug maker Roche Holding AG said that, by the end of this year, its capacity to produce the drug Tamiflu will far exceed current demand. [News Source]

Scenario explores bird flu outbreak. A group of Illinois emergency officials gathered around a table in Springfield this week to imagine a frightening and fortunately fictional scenario. [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]

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]

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]

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]

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]