A gift from Scotland to Brazil: drought and despair. Brazil-Scotland; refinery-rainforest. At first glance, the two places seem totally unconnected, but Grangemouth and Sao Jose do Buriti are tied by a single thread: carbon trading. [News Source]

Alarm as dengue cases rise in SE Asia. Vietnam and Malaysia have raised concerns over the spread of dengue fever, which has killed hundreds in Southeast Asia and infected tens of thousands this year. [News Source]

US poll shows waning concern about avian flu (CIDRAP) Jul 6, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – Only 27% of Americans describe themselves as concerned about avian influenza, down from 35% last year, according to a national survey released this week. [News Source]

Bird flu test facilities are still limited (The Nassau Guardian) Even though the concerns raised by dead birds washing onto the coastline of Grand Bahama have been quelled and the incident has nothing to do with avian influenza or bird flu, the worrying situation revealed yesterday is that the Ministry of Agriculture still has limited facilities to conduct testing if an outbreak of the deadly virus were to occur in The Bahamas. [News Source]

Bird Flu Threat Level Raised In Germany And France (Medical News Today) Several countries in Europe are bringing in measures and stepping up threat levels to prevent recent outbreaks of deadly H5N1 avian flu in the wild bird population from spreading to commercial and farm birds.According to Euronews, officials in France and Germany have this week found a number of wild birds that died from the deadly virus. [click link for full article] [News Source]