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Is it safe to travel to places that have reported cases of bird flu? Is there a danger that a traveler might bring this disease back home?

At least 17 major outbreaks of avian flu strains have resulted in the deaths of millions of birds. The 1997 outbreak in Hong Kong also led to transmission to humans. Since 1997, the World Health Organization sites a reported 218 human cases of avian flu, resulting in 124 deaths. Most of these took place in Asia.
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What made the Mayans so blood thirsty? It may have been because of drought, caused by climate change.

The downfall of the Tang dynasty in China and the Mayans in South America occurred around the same time and both may have disappeared due to climate change. German researcher Gerald Haug studied the incidence of monsoons over the past 16,000 years by looking at geological formations. In New Scientist, Catherine Brahic quotes Haug as saying that the link to the downfall of these two great contemporary civilizations with weather changes “blew me away.”

Art credit: gimp-savvy.com
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A recent spate of strange bird deaths have increased worries about the possible pandemic of bird flu. On January 8, police in Austin Texas shut down a central area of the city after dozens of birds were found dead in the streets. The dead birds were pigeons, sparrows and grackles, which all are birds known to be affected by the bird flu virus, although there is no sign that this is what caused the bird deaths. No dangerous gas leaks or poisons were detected.
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We recently wrote about mysterious orange orbs that were spotted in the UK. Back in the 1940s, a long series of green fireball events took place over the western United States, accompanied by some of history’s most significant UFO sightings, including the Kenneth Arnold Sighting that gave the world the phrase “flying saucer,” and the Roswell incident. There have been a series of green fireball events recently, the most recent one in Singapore.

The bright light took only a few seconds to streak across the sky above the city. On the Channel NewsAsia web site, Valarie Tan quotes one of the observers, Ismail Yussof, as saying, “I thought it was a comet. I was stunned, staring at the sky. A lot of people were watching it.”
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