Real bird terrorism

for people and the poor birds:

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korean quarantine officials are set to slaughter 273,000 poultry after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, the Agriculture Ministry and health officials said Saturday.

The outbreak occurred at a chicken farm in Cheonan, about 60 miles south of Seoul, earlier this week, the fifth such outbreak since November, said Lee Joo-won, a ministry official.

"We plan to start slaughtering 273,000 poultry within a 500-meter radius of the outbreak site and destroying eggs as early as Saturday evening," Lee said.

The ministry also said it will make a decision whether to kill another 386,000 poultry on Sunday while limiting the movement of about 2.16 million chickens and ducks from 90 farms within a six-mile radius of the outbreak.

And then this:

LONDON (AP) - Mutations in the bird flu virus have been found in two infected people in Egypt, in a form that might be resistant to the medication most commonly used to treat the deadly disease, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The mutations in the H5N1 virus strain were not drastic enough to make the virus infectious enough to spark a pandemic, WHO officials said. But more such mutations could prompt scientists to rethink current treatment strategies.

Samples taken from two bird flu patients in Egypt - a 16-year-old girl and her 26-year-old uncle - were not as responsive as regular H5N1 viruses to Tamiflu, a drug also know as oseltamivir that is used to treat the disease, the officials said

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Well.. if it won't be global warming that kills off the wild birds, avian flu and pesticides will....