WASHINGTON, Oct 1, 2008 (AFP) - The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a new test that can rapidly diagnose and identify human influenza infections and human bird flu, the agency announced.

The test, developed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will be available to CDC-qualified laboratories this year, the FDA said in a statement Tuesday.

JAKARTA, September 7, 2008 (AFP) - With nearly half the world's human bird flu deaths, concern is building over Indonesia's refusal to share virus samples and its health minister's increasingly strident denunciations of global 'conspiracies'.

TOKYO, August 27, 2008 (AFP) - Japan's Sharp Corp. said Wednesday that it has developed an air purifier that eliminates 99.9 percent of the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu within 10 minutes.

The system has been improved from an earlier version which was shown in 2005 to have eliminated 99 percent of the H5N1 virus when airborne, Sharp official Kenji Ota told reporters.

MEDAN, August 6, 2008 (AFP) - Three people have died and 13 have been admitted to hospital with symptoms of bird flu in Indonesia, a nurse treating the patients said Wednesday.

Officials and residents in Asahan district of North Sumatra province said villagers began showing symptoms of avian flu after a large number of chickens died suddenly last week.

JAKARTA, August 4, 2008 (AFP) - The death toll from bird flu in Indonesia has risen to 112 after a 19-year-old man died from the virus last week, a health ministry official said Monday.

Contagious Diseases section chief section I Nyoman Kandun confirmed that the man had died in hospital in the Jakarta satellite city of Tangerang.

LAGOS, July 29, 2008 (AFP) - Nigerian authorities have reported a fresh outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in the northern states of Katsina and Kano, the official NAN news agency said Tuesday.

The virus was confirmed through tests on affected birds on a poultry farm in Kano State and it has killed 4,249 birds, NAN quoted a state agriculture official as saying.

SEOUL, July 29, 2008 (AFP) - A cat found dead in a South Korean city was infected with a virulent strain of bird flu, the first mammal in the country known to have had the H5N1 virus, health officials said on Tuesday.

HONG KONG, July 2, 2008 (AFP) - The familiar clucking of chickens returned to Hong Kong's markets on Wednesday after a three-week ban, but bird flu fears may soon consign the local preference for freshly-killed meat to history.

JAKARTA, June 6, 2008 (AFP) - Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari refused Friday to say how many Indonesians had died of bird flu and insisted it was no longer necessary to announce the toll on a case-by-case basis.

HONG KONG , June 5, 2008 (AFP) - Hong Kong said Thursday it was suspending all imports of poultry from Britain following a bird flu outbreak there.

The southern Chinese city's Centre for Food Safety said the processing of all applications for importing poultry and poultry products from the United Kingdom would be halted with immediate effect.

LONDON, June 4, 2008 (AFP) - An outbreak of the H7 strain of bird flu at a farm in central England is 'highly pathogenic,' officials said Wednesday.

All the chickens on the farm have been slaughtered following detection of the virus, which does not pose a high risk to humans, at the farm in Banbury, Oxfordshire late Tuesday.

LONDON, June 4, 2008 (AFP) - An outbreak of the H7 strain of bird flu at a farm in central England is 'highly pathogenic', officials said Wednesday.

All the chickens on the farm have been slaughtered following detection of the virus, which does not pose a high risk to humans, at the farm in Banbury, Oxfordshire late Tuesday.

TOKYO, June 4, 2008 (AFP) - Japan said Wednesday that it was suspending imports of poultry from Britain after a bird flu outbreak on a farm there.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said in a statement that the suspension was expected to be a temporary measure aimed at reducing the risk of fresh bird flu outbreaks in Japan.

HONG KONG, June 4, 2008 (AFP) - A Hong Kong research team has successfully tested a new drug combination that could help tackle the deadly bird flu virus in humans, scientists said in a paper due to be published Thursday.

DHAKA, May 22, 2008 (AFP) - A 16-month-old boy has been confirmed as Bangladesh's first human case of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, a senior health ministry official said on Thursday.

'We got the confirmation yesterday from the CDC (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) yesterday,' Mahmudur Rahman, a senior health ministry official, told AFP.

GENEVA, May 19, 2008 (AFP) - Insufficient food, climate change and pandemic flu are three global crises which could undo progress in public health, the World Health Organisation's director general said Monday.

LONDON, May 19, 2008 (AFP) - The European Commission has granted the first licence to market a vaccine in preparation for a pandemic of H5N1 bird flu in Europe, British pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline said on Monday.

SEOUL, May 13, 2008 (AFP) - South Korea is to disinfect all poultry farms nationwide to combat its worst outbreak of bird flu, the agriculture ministry said Tuesday.

In the capital Seoul, all 15,000 chickens, ducks and other fowl -- including pet birds in school aviaries -- have been culled after a second case of the potentially deadly H5N1 virus was confirmed there.

KOLKATA, May 10, 2008 (AFP) - Bird flu has spread to the hilly Darjeeling district of eastern India which has been hit by avian influenza several times already this year, a minister said Saturday.

OTTAWA, May 8, 2008 (AFP) - A Canadian high school student has won a national science competition for her new molecule that binds to flu viruses, which may eventually be used to diagnose or prevent flu infections.

JAKARTA, April 30, 2008 (AFP) - A three-year-old Indonesian boy who died last week had bird flu, a health ministry official confirmed Wednesday, bringing the toll to 108 in the country worst hit by the disease.

The child, from a village in Wonogiri in Central Java, died at a state hospital in nearby Solo city on April 23, health ministry spokeswoman Lili Sulistyawati said.

MANILA, April 29, 2008 (AFP) - Rampant smuggling of Peking ducks and other exotic poultry meat could bring deadly bird flu into the Philippines, a government official warned Tuesday.

TOKYO, April 29, 2008 (AFP) - Japan has detected bird flu of the virulent H5N1 strain for the first time in 13 months, officials said Tuesday, following tests on a group of swans.

The swans were found eight days ago on the banks of Lake Towada in Akita prefecture, about 550 kilometres (340 miles) north of Tokyo, the prefectural administration said in a statement.

TUKADDAYA, Indonesia, April 25, 2008 (AFP) - Hundreds of Indonesian villagers and health workers took part in a massive drill here Friday to prepare for a potentially devastating outbreak of human-to-human bird flu.

TUKADDAYA, Indonesia, April 25, 2008 (AFP) - Hundreds of Indonesian villagers and health workers took part in a massive drill here Friday to prepare for a potentially devastating outbreak of human-to-human bird flu.

CHICAGO, April 17, 2008 (AFP) - A new bird flu vaccine being developed by US researchers could provide broader protection, last longer and be easier to mass produce than existing vaccines.

The vaccine protected mice from bird flu infection for more than a year and researchers are hopeful that similar results could be found in humans.

CAIRO, April 16, 2008 (AFP) - An Egyptian toddler has caught the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, the Egyptian health ministry said on Wednesday, bringing to 50 the number of people infected by the virus.

WASHINGTON, April 16, 2008 (AFP) - Viruses that originate in East and Southeast Asia migrate around the world and 'seed' outbreaks of the most common strains of the influenza virus A (H3N2), a study released Wednesday found.

TOKYO, April 16, 2008 (AFP) - Japan is to vaccinate thousands of medical workers and officials against bird flu to prepare for a possible pandemic, a health ministry official said Wednesday.

TOKYO, April 16, 2008 (AFP) - A Japanese government panel met Wednesday to consider a plan to give bird flu vaccines to 6,000 medical workers and officials to prepare for a possible pandemic, an official said.

JAKARTA, April 14, 2008 (AFP) - Indonesia and the United States must work together to prevent a global bird flu pandemic, the top US health official said here Monday.

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt said bird flu was a danger to the whole world and stressed the importance of international cooperation.

JAKARTA, April 14, 2008 (AFP) - Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will meet the top US health official on Monday to discuss the bird flu crisis that has killed 107 people here, his spokesman said.

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt is in Indonesia on a one-day visit, the president's spokesman said.

BEIJING, April 12, 2008 (AFP) - China has rejected a study which found a probable case of human-to-human bird flu transmission in the country, state media reported.

The study, published in British medical magazine The Lancet this week, said a 24-year-old man was likely to have infected his father with H5N1 before dying, raising the spectre of a feared flu pandemic.

MOSCOW, April 11, 2008 (AFP) - Russia's agriculture ministry confirmed a bird flu outbreak in a village in the Far East region of Primorye which was quarantined on Friday after scores of chickens died.

MOSCOW, April 11, 2008 (AFP) - Russia's agriculture ministry confirmed a bird flu outbreak in a village in the Far East region of Primorye which was quarantined on Friday after scores of chickens died.

CAIRO, April 11, 2008 (AFP) - Egypt's health ministry announced the death on Friday of a woman from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the 22nd human death from the disease since it was discovered here in 2006.

CAIRO, April 11, 2008 (AFP) - Egypt's health ministry announced the death on Friday of a woman from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the 22nd human death from the disease since it was discovered here in 2006.

MOSCOW, April 11, 2008 (AFP) - Russia's emergency situations ministry quarantined a village in the Pacific Far East region of Primorye due to a suspected bird flu outbreak, local ministry and agricultural control officials said Friday as quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency.

PARIS, April 9, 2008 (AFP) - Closing schools during a deadly flu pandemic could cut the overall number of infections by 15 percent, saving tens of thousands of lives, according to a study released Wednesday.