A grisly but essential issue. With medical experts and government leaders racing to prepare for a potential bird flu pandemic, a cadre of mortuary specialists has begun quietly grappling with the grisly but essential question of what to do with the dead if it happens again. [News Source]

Wild birds only partly to blame in spreading H5N1. An expert group meeting in Rome reached a consensus: Wild birds play a role in the virus's huge geographic jumps, but the main means of transmission is the commercial poultry trade. [News Source]

US officials test for bird flu in arctic Alaska. In a coastal marsh near the frozen Arctic Ocean, a black-and-white feathered spectacled eider leaves a gift for Corey Rossi, a wildlife biologist for the US Department of Agriculture. [News Source]

Chicken farmers to try tree plantings to reduce stink. University of Delaware researchers found that planting trees around chicken houses can reduce odor. [News Source]

CDC updates advice on avian flu testing, lab work (CIDRAP) Jun 8, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday released updated guidelines that provide more details on when to test a patient for the H5N1 avian influenza virus, as well as substantially more specifics on laboratory testing. [News Source]

Ag Secretary says bird flu easily found. Scientists have a new test that can tell within four hours if a bird is possibly infected with bird flu -- but it still will take about a week to know if that suspect case is really sick with the deadly Asian strain. [News Source]

Fresh bird flu outbreak in China. A new outbreak of bird flu has been discovered in poultry in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, according to the country's agriculture ministry. [News Source]

US gov’t approves multi-million $ wild bird avian flu surveillance network (EurekAlert!) In an effort to improve the tracking of avian influenza, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded $5 million in support for a new initiative that will monitor wild bird populations for the disease around the globe, according to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which will spearhead the project involving more than a dozen private and public [News Source]

Fresh bird flu outbreak in China. A new outbreak of bird flu has been discovered in poultry in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, according to the country's agriculture ministry. [News Source]

India is free of bird flu: official (Gulf Times) NEW DELHI: Bird flu has subsided in India with no new cases reported since March, the top official in charge of prevention efforts said yesterday. [News Source]

Have we got it right about bird flu? (News-Medical-Net) Health officials in Indonesia must have breathed a sigh of relief at the the World Health Organisation's (WHO) news that bird flu has been ruled out in the cases of four Indonesian nurses who fell sick after caring for people infected with H5N1 virus. [News Source]