Razor-thin birds wash up on shore. Like last year, scientists say, this year's bird deaths appear related to changes in the marine food web that they still don't understand but that look as if they are related to unusual weather. [News Source]

How serious is the risk? Over the last year, it has been impossible to watch TV or read a newspaper without encountering dire reports about bird flu and the possibility of a pandemic, a worldwide epidemic. [News Source]

The 1918 flu killed millions. Does it hold clues for today? As another bird flu spreads across the globe, killing domestic fowl and some wild birds and, ominously, infecting and killing more than 100 people as well, many scientists are looking back to 1918. [News Source]

Local labs wary of bird flu. A network of medical laboratories set up as an early warning system against bioterrorism is joining the battle against bird flu. [News Source]

Officials urge businesses, local officials, households to prepare for pandemic. Businesses, local officials and even individuals who don't think they need to prepare for a predicted global outbreak of dangerous flu could be in for a bad surprise. [News Source]

Fear of virus is sickest thing about bird flu. Fear causes the public to blur the distinction between birds and people, and so, as the H5N1 virus infects flocks of birds in Pakistan and Israel, nightly news watchers track the path to the United States. [News Source]

A pandemic is worrisome but ‘unlikely’. Having observed A(H5N1) for many years in Asia, Dr. Jeremy Farrar thinks it is unlikely that the virus is poised to jump species, becoming readily transmissible to humans or among them. [News Source]

From the chickens’ perspective, the sky really is falling. The A(H5N1) influenza strain circulating the globe now may never seriously threaten humans, but for another subset of the earth's living creatures, it is already a disaster. [News Source]

With every epidemic, health officials face tough choices. For health officials, few decisions can be as crucial as deciding if and when to sound early warnings when they believe that an epidemic is possible but do not know whether it will become a real catastrophe. [News Source]

At the U.N.: This virus has an expert ‘quite scared’. Dr. David Nabarro, chief avian flu coordinator for the United Nations, has become gun-shy about making predictions about the A(H5N1) virus. [News Source]

Making a ferret sneeze for hints to the transmission of bird flu. Researchers at the disease centers and in other labs are studying the transmission and virulence of bird flu in ferrets and mice, trying to answer questions that take on more urgency as the virus advances. [News Source]

Dominica braces for bird flu. A Dominican health official warned Sunday that there was a serious risk of bird flu reaching the Caribbean by next year, and said the government was finalizing plans to combat the virus. [News Source]