Nature Magazine's Avian flu web site
Avian flu : Web focus : Nature
Authoritative timely news on the spread of H5N1. Check out their "avian flu mashup in Google Earth", which allows you to use Google Earth to track the spread of avian flu (the above link requires that Google Earth be installed in order to view the latest information).

I first heard about their Google Earth "mashup" in the January 5, 2006 Nature podcast (interview with Declan Butler, an editor at Nature who developed this tool and writes about "Mashups" in that week's issue of Nature; read it for free on-line).

Glossary: Mashup - refers to websites that weave data from different sources into a new service.

2/20 Update-The US CDC offers weekly updates on diseases via their MMWR (Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report) newsletter. The February 17th issue includes a graph of U.S. deaths due to pneumonia and influenza (their reporting category), and shows how to discern seasonal deaths from an epidemic:

- posted by Larry H @ 6:00 PM