Scientists are concerned that egg shortages could cause bird flu vaccine delays: “In the race to develop a human bird flu vaccine, scientists could be hampered by a shortage of eggs if there was an outbreak of avian influenza in poultry at the same time, scientists said on Friday. With current flu vaccines based on [...]

“The severity of a global economic slowdown caused by a bird flu pandemic, estimated to slash 1 to 12 percent off world output, largely depends on how people and governments react, economists said on Wednesday. Initial confirmation of a bird flu strain that easily transmits between people would have an immediate shock effect on the [...]

A tsunami warning system covering the Indian Ocean region is now “up and running”, Unesco has said. The UN organisation, which has overseen the project, says the whole region can now receive and distribute warnings of possible tsunamis. The system is in place 18 months after the devastating tsunami of December 2004 that killed more [...]

“The Earth was hotter in the late 20th Century than it had been in the last 400 or possibly 1,000 years, a report requested by the US Congress concludes. It backs some of the key findings of the original study that gave rise to the iconic “hockey stick” graph. The diagram, which shows a sharp [...]

“The H5N1 bird flu virus mutated somewhat among Indonesians in the largest known human cluster, but did not evolve into a more transmissible form, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday. A spokeswoman for the U.N. agency, Maria Cheng, said the result had come from its investigation into a cluster of cases in northern [...]