[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[mhking]

[firebrand]

A friend of mine who lives in Forest Hills, Queens, a flyover zone for the airports that serve NYC, told me a few years ago that she had seen huge clouds of parrots flying in the sky one day. After she pinched herself to make sure she hadn't somehow awoken in a Garcia Marquez novel, she came to the conclusion that they must have escaped while being imported. We never saw anything about it on the news. I now wonder about West Nile, although we'll never know. It did start in Queens, I believe, and the timing is right.

[PhilDragoo]

Two experts, Ken Alibek, author of "Biohazard" and former deputy head of the Soviet biological warfare project, and Dr. Manuel Cereijo, professor at Florida International University, believe that this indeed could be the case.

NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene West Nile Virus Information

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Fidel Castro - Cuba

Bump!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Cuba Offers to Help U.S. Contain West Nile Virus*** HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba offered on Friday to help the United States contain an outbreak of West Nile virus because it says the disease could spread to the Caribbean and Central America when infected birds begin migrating south in the autumn. "The government of Cuba is prepared to cooperate in any way it can with the authorities of the United States and other countries in research and efforts to counter this new danger to the health of the population of this hemisphere," the Cuban government said in a statement.

Cuba has made major advances in tropical medicine and recently controlled an outbreak of dengue, a disease that is spread to humans by mosquitoes, as is the West Nile virus. Cuban doctors currently are helping fight dengue in Honduras, one of the Central American countries hit by an outbreak of the potentially fatal disease. No case of West Nile virus, which is moving across the United States mainly through bird migration, has been detected south of the U.S. border, in Cuba or in any other Caribbean and Latin American nation, the statement published by the ruling Communist Party's daily Granma said. ***