Bird flu, what is it? Avian flu (H5N1) aka bird flu is a type of influenza A that mainly infects birds but occasionally affects humans. Avian flu can be transmitted from live birds to people, although transmission between humans is very inefficient. The initial symptoms of avian flu are similar to those of other influenza viruses, including fever, generalised muscle pain, cough and sore throat. However, it is more likely to result in high fever, chest infection, respiratory failure, multi-organ failure, and death. For more information: [url=http://www.info.gov.hk/info/flu/eng/files/checklist-e

stipped form the BBC

A blast at a Chinese plant 12 days ago sent the equivalent of 10 tanker-loads of toxic chemicals into the Songhua river, Chinese state media report.

About 100 tonnes of lethal substances entered the Songhua as a result of the blast in Jilin, and the leak is now passing through the city of Harbin.

All taps are off in Harbin but the water supply may be restored on Sunday after being shut down for three days.

The company behind the blast has apologised for the accident.

Harbin's 3.8m residents are undergoing their third day without water.

It would appear that the Chinese Government yesterday opened up an official homepage in English.

Gov.cn, the official web portal of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, opened on a trial basis Tuesday its English version, English.gov.cn.

The site has a lot of information and exciting topics such as: "The First Group Of Tourist Areas Listed As Grade 4A."

For attaining permanent residence status, it has this advice:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man drank too much, wet his bed and set fire to his apartment while trying to dry his bedding, police in the western town of Muelheim said Monday.

"He was too drunk to go to the toilet," said a police spokesman. "The next morning he put a switched-on hairdryer on the bed to dry it and left the apartment." When the 60-year-old returned, his home and belongings were in flames.

Firemen eventually put out the blaze.

 link

Some people will do anything for a smoke these days...  Smoker tried to open plane door A French woman has admitted attempting to open an aeroplane door mid-flight so that she could smoke a cigarette. The woman was arrested when the plane landed in Australia

Sandrine Helene Sellies, 34, who has a fear of flying, had drunk alcohol and taken sleeping tablets ahead of the flight from Hong Kong to Brisbane.

Gallery of funny and bizarre street signs:

http://www.swanksigns.org/index.asp

Is it just that I find Chinese news more interesting, so I look at more Chinese news than other news?  Or is that that there's a strange number of strange incidents?  Tonight one of my fellow diners related the story of a man and a woman whose only child had drowned in an accident.  The wife had undergone tubal occlusion, so they discussed and decided that the husband would find another woman and have a child with her, so that the family line could go on. The child was born. The wife paid the (younger) woman 100,000 RMB, and everything was happy... Until the younger woman had another child, and it became evident that the man had fallen for her. Well at some point, the story ended with the wife killing the younger woman by strangling her and slitting her throat with a razor.

Google has incorporated street maps for some cities in China into its cool scrolling and zooming "Google Maps" interface.

This version of Google Local covers big cities (Kunming and Dali are in it, but Lijiang is not), and the information comes from mapabc.com.  Unfortunately, it's only in Chinese.

It's named, appropriately enough: http://bendi.google.com/

Two pretty interesting articles on the Economist about China.  This well-written but unfortunately titled article about Bush's visit to China this weekend gives a good overview of the background to the meeting.  This got a chuckle out of me:

Mr Bush isn’t short of opinions on China’s rise either. In Kyoto this week, on the first leg of his Asian tour, he said: “As China reforms its economy, its leaders are finding that once the door to freedom is opened even a crack, it cannot be closed.” He went on to heap lavish praise on Taiwan’s democracy, in a move sure to irritate his hosts in China, who consider the island to be a renegade province.

And this other one is about a rogue copper trader who has put China in debt 100,000-200,000 tons of copper -- copper which the country seemingly doesn't have available to deliver.  The trader (one Mr. Liu) has disappeared, and some sources say his company denied that a Mr Liu even worked there.

Found a new proxy server today, useful for accessing blocked sites.

http://wubi.org/px/nph-index.cgi/000000A/http/www.google.com/