BIRD FLU

The lethal A(H5N1) bird flu virus has been detected in wild birds in Italy and Greece, European officials announced yesterday, the first time its presence has been detected in the European Union. It was also detected in Bulgaria.

"The bird flu virus has arrived in Italy," said Francesco Storace, the Italian health minister, at a news conference, announcing that 17 swans had been found dead in three southern regions, Calabria, Sicily, and Puglia.

Testing at the National Avian Influenza Lab in Padua determined the cause to be the A(H5N1) virus, he said, although it was not clear if all 17 swans had been tested.

The arrival of bird flu in Western Europe had been predicted for some months, since the virus has marched steadily from China, to Russia, to the Balkans and, in the last week, to West Africa. It is being carried by migrating birds, so all countries on their flight paths are vulnerable.

"In some ways we would have expected it earlier in Italy," said Dr. Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

The Italian outbreak seems to have been a model of early detection, underlining how bird flu can be controlled in countries that have the money and the scientific resources to do it.

Recent outbreaks in poor countries like Nigeria, Turkey and Iraq have percolated for months before they were discovered, allowing the virus to spread widely to commercial chicken flocks and even to humans.

While the A(H5N1) virus currently does not readily spread from human to human, scientists worry that it will mutate into a form that can, setting off a devastating worldwide human pandemic.

Only about 160 people have become infected with the disease, mostly through close contact with sick birds, and about half of them have died. In Italy, police officers near Messina, in Sicily, found two dead swans on Thursday and performed rapid screening tests on them in the wild, which suggested that the swans had a flu virus, according to ANSA, the official Italian news agency. Such simple tests are not specific enough to indicate a particular virus or strain, like A(H5N1).

The carcasses were immediately sent to a veterinary institute in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, which sent samples to the lab in Padua, where the positive test results were returned yesterday.

In the wake of the tests, Mr. Storace prohibited all movement of live animals in the affected regions. There are no signs of infection in commercial poultry yet, he said.

"There is no immediate danger for our country because our system of surveillance is efficient and has not contaminated bird farms," Mauro Delogu, an Italian virologist at the University of Bolgona, told ANSA.

In Greece, health officials announced that three swans in the northern part of the country tested positive for the virus, and hours later, European Union officials said some swans in Bulgaria, near the Danube Delta, did as well.

Dead swans have become an important flu sentinel because they are very susceptible to the virus and are so large that people notice when they die, Mr. Lubroth said.

Swans in southern Italy do not normally migrate, he said, but their wetlands are along many bird migration routes.

Last autumn, several European nations, including Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands, mandated that all commercial poultry be kept indoors, to prevent any contact with migrating birds. Greece now requires that poultry be kept indoors and bans the sale of live birds at street markets.

Trying to calm public fears, the European Union's health commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, said: "We should not be unduly surprised or alarmed if such cases are found in the European Union. What is important is that we have the framework in place to take the appropriate measures as soon as possible to contain it and prevent its spread to poultry, and that is what we are doing."

Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she was not surprised that infected birds had been found in southern Europe.

"I view that as an expression of how birds fly," she said. "It's just like West Nile marching across the U.S. — you follow the flight patterns."

The variant strain of the A(H5N1) flu found in Turkey and confirmed in Africa last week is identical to one found last year in dead migratory birds in a nature reserve in northern China, and later in Siberia. It is different from strains circulating among poultry in Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Two species of ducks, the northern pintail and the garganey, migrate in a southwesterly direction each fall from Siberia to Turkey and the Black Sea coast, and in some cases to central Africa, according to a recent article in New Scientist. Other species that share the same African wetlands migrate north in the spring, which raises the threat that the disease will be spread more widely around Western Europe later this year.

But movements are unpredictable. Dr. William B. Karesh, director of the field veterinary program for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs New York City's zoos, noted that northern pintails from Siberia were also found from East Africa to Britain, which suggests that some picked it up from domestic flocks during the fall migration.

"The simple presence of the same species of wild birds in two geographic areas does not indicate a transmission route," he said.

A Long-Buried Tomb Is Opened in Egypt

The first intact tomb discovered in 84 years at the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt, was formally opened Friday. The tomb, discovered by a team of American archaeologists a few days ago, is just a few feet from King Tutankhamen's tomb.

An intact tomb, the first discovered in 84 years at the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, was opened just 16 feet from King Tutankhamen's tomb.
The discovery of the tomb, a rectangular chamber cut from the rock, was announced this week by Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The tomb contains five mummies from the 18th dynasty era (about 1567 B.C. to 1320 B.C.) in wooden sarcophagi with lids carved in human shapes and colored funerary masks. It also contains 20 sealed clay storage jars used for offerings and as vessels for beer, Mansour Bouriak, director of Luxor monuments, said in a telephone interview from Luxor.

"This cache is important because it will tell us what the Valley of the Kings was really like," Mr. Bouriak said. "It also proves that the Valley of the Kings is not exhausted. It has a lot to offer to us just waiting to be discovered."

The Valley of the Kings, on the west bank of the Nile, holds numerous Pharaonic tombs, but no intact tombs had been discovered since Howard Carter, a British Egyptologist, opened King Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922.

"I believe the most important and interesting fact about this discovery is that it came after 80 years," said Dr. Salima Ikram, former professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo.

The tomb was discovered 16 feet from the tomb of King Tutankhamen, who reigned during the 18th dynasty, a time in which Ancient Egypt's power peaked. Thebes, now known as Luxor, was the capital.

Mr. Bouriak said that although the archaeologists had not entered the tomb, they had observed its contents through a 5 by 6 foot vertical shaft.

"One thing we are sure of, those mummies are not royal," Mr. Bouriak said. Royal sarcophagi carry certain signs and epitaphs and more, he said.

"Studying them will help us know who those people were, what they did," he said.

Led by an Egyptologist, Otto J. Schaden, the team consisted of up to nine archaeologists, some from the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the University of Memphis, in Tennessee, and from the University of Akron, in Ohio.

Dr. Schaden, who has been working in Egypt since 1992, discovered the tomb 13 feet below ground, hidden under rubble and workmen's huts. Dr. Schaden said in a statement that this suggested that the tomb had been concealed since at least the latter part of 19th dynasty.

Mariam Ayad, assistant director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology, said in a telephone interview that Dr. Lorelei H. Corcoran, the director of the institute, and an Egyptology student, Sharon Nichols, had been with Dr. Schaden when the tomb was discovered. They arrived in Egypt in December as part of an annual expedition.

"It is an honor to be buried in the Valley of the Kings," Dr. Schaden said in a telephone interview from Luxor. "They could be relatives of the king, his brother-in-law, a gardener or a minor person in the palace given special honor by the king." He added that sarcophagi carried the names and all information about the person buried, but that so far the team had not been able to enter the burial chamber and could see only through a hole in the shaft.

Dr. Hawass, of the antiquities council, said the archaeologists had also found eight pits possibly used by ancient Egyptians to enter and leave the tomb. He added that the mummies might have been buried in the small tomb very rapidly.

Between 1887 and 1922, several other tombs were found in the vicinity, including a major find of 40 intact royal mummies in 1887, the priests of Amun and 100 sarcophagi in 1891, and 12 royal mummies in the tomb of King Amenhotep II in 1898.

Thanks for news !! my friend keep out of birds

I've always hated birds, and look, they are all the way trouble

Totally agree with you ..) i like parrot although i don't touch them..

Sharon is 'critical but stable'

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's condition remained critical but stable the morning after he underwent emergency abdominal surgery, according to a hospital statement Sunday quoted by news agencies.

Blair vows probe into abuse claims

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised to investigate allegations of abuse by his country's forces in Iraq after a newspaper released what it said was a video showing soldiers savagely beating Iraqi youths.

1 million to roll into Rio for Stones

Roll over, bossa nova. The Rolling Stones are taking over Rio de Janeiro's famed Copacabana Beach next Saturday for what promises to be a historic rock 'n' roll extravaganza.

Organizers expect more than 1 million people to fill the beach area for the free concert by the aging but still agile rockers -- one of the biggest crowds ever for a rock show.