An Indonesian man has died of bird flu, the health ministry said, in the country's ninth fatal case this year.

Eight million chickens have so far been slaughtered in Mexico and 66 million more were vaccinated in a bid to contain a bird flu outbreak in the west of the country, authorities said.

US health officials on Friday warned the public to be careful around pigs after an outbreak of flu among visitors to county fairs.

A new kind of bird flu has been causing deadly pneumonia in baby seals off the northeastern US coast and could pose a risk to humans, according to US research released Tuesday.

Mexico will start vaccinating some 10 million poultry Thursday against the highly contagious bird flu strain that has already led to the deaths of five million birds which either fell ill or were slaughtered.

Dozens of pet birds smuggled from southern China into Taiwan tested positive for the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus and were destroyed, Taiwanese authorities said Tuesday.

Officials have slain 2.5 million birds at poultry farms in western Mexico over the past three weeks in an attempt to contain a bird flu outbreak, the agriculture ministry said.

Hong Kong on Thursday closed a popular tourist spot where hundreds of caged birds are on display after the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus was detected at one of the stalls.

An epidemic of H1N1 flu has infected almost 900 people and claimed 11 lives in Bolivia, health officials said Tuesday.

At least 11 people in Bolivia have died from H1N1 flu in recent months, with most of the cases occurring in just the past few weeks, health officials here said Tuesday.

Authorities in China's remote northwestern region of Xinjiang have culled more than 150,000 chickens following an outbreak of bird flu, officials said.

The A(H1N1) "swine flu" 2009 pandemic probably claimed over a quarter of a million lives -- 15 times more than the 18,500 reported, a paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal said Tuesday.

The US journal Science published research Thursday on how a mutant bird flu may spread among mammals and possibly humans, following months of controversy over the risks of bioterrorism.

Hong Kong health authorities urged the public not to panic after the southern Chinese city reported its first human case of bird flu in 18 months in a two-year-old boy.

A 10-year-old Cambodian girl has died from bird flu, the World Health Organization said Monday, the country's third fatality from the virulent disease this year.

Canadian researchers have found more clues that may help lead to the creation of a universal vaccine against the seasonal flu, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The Dutch government on Friday gave a top scientist the green light to publish a research paper in the United States on a mutant killer flu virus, following approval by a US panel of experts.

The One Pass payment platform for Internet news websites was shut down as Google continued house cleaning launched when co-founder Larry Page took charge last year.

Agricultural authorities in northwest China have culled about 95,000 chickens after an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus, state press reported Wednesday.

The author of a paper on a mutant bird flu strain said experts agreed to publish it only after he explained that the virus was "much less lethal" than previously feared.