In Latin America, some countries are taking draconian steps to stop bird flu before it even shows up.
In recent days, five countries banned poultry from Colombia. Then, Colombia banned rice from Bolivia and Ecuador.
Experts say it's wise for governments to prepare for a potential worldwide flu outbreak that could arise if the bird flu sweeping Asia morphs into a form that's easily spread among people.
But they say these import bans make no scientific sense. And the measures have unnecessarily raised cross-border political tensions and hurt commerce.
This strange episode began on Oct. 10, when Colombia took the unusual step of notifying world health authorities about a flock of chickens infected with a mild type of bird flu different from the virus in Asia. Chickens can get several varieties of bird flu, not all of them risky to people.
Colombia's action suffered an almost immediate backlash for being overly cautious and for raising the bird flu specter unnecessarily.
Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela halted imports of Colombian poultry -- even though Colombia insisted tests by the US Department of Agriculture under supervision of the Pan-American health officials proved the virus was not the H5N1 sweeping Asia or another highly pathogenic strain.
Colombia "didn't even have to report this low pathogenic virus," said Richard Lee, a bird flu expert and professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
But the reaction by Colombia's neighbors, he said, was "definitely not justified."
Yanzhong Huang, a bird flu specialist who heads the Center for Global Health Studies at Seton Hall University in the US, said the action by Colombia's neighbors might confuse the public if the poultry bans are long-term.
"It could reinforce the misperception that you could catch flu by eating fowl," Huang said.
Experts say no one has caught bird flu from eating properly cooked poultry.
Colombia struck back at some of its neighbors last week by halting imports of rice from Bolivia and Ecuador, though Colombian officials denied that the move was retaliatory.
Colombia's Agriculture Minister Andres Felipe Arias was quoted on El Tiempo newspaper's Web site as saying that "migratory birds land in rice fields."
But rice has never been identified as a "passive carrier" of bird flu, and any flu in rice would be killed in cooking, said Lee.
Lee said that it was "pretty damned unlikely" that anyone could die after eating rice.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.