The bird flu disease which began to paralyze most of Asia last year has been detected in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia's Ural mountains.

A quarantine has been imposed in several villages in the Oktyabrsky district of Chelyabinsk - a rural district with hundreds of lakes

The Bird flu has spread west to a sixth region in Russia, triggering the slaughter of hundreds more birds.

The disease has reached the Chelyabinsk region of the Ural mountains which separate Asia from Europe

The fifth suspected victim in the same underpopulated area of Idaho, died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a rare brain-wasting disease that typically afflicts only one in a million people.

"Is what is happening in Idaho an anomaly, a statistical fluke? That is possible," said Ermias Belay, a top CJD expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta who is helping advise officials in Idaho. "But once it exceeds 1.5 or 2 per million, you start asking questions

The first group meeting was held for patients whose surgeons unknowingly washed instruments in hydraulic fluid instead of detergent.

A freelance medical writer organized the meeting of about 50 people. He was one of 3,800 patients who underwent surgery with instruments washed in the fluid in late 2004, at two hospitals onwed by Duke University Health systems

A new study finds that surgically implanting tubes in a child's eardrum to help drain a middle ear infection doesn't guard against developmental problems later in life