Fort Worth's jet-setting pianist helps the Humane Society of the United States celebrate its 50th anniversary. No dogs and cats at the keyboard, just Cliburn in a rare solo recital Wednesday night at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He'll perform longtime favorites by Brahms, Chopin and Debussy. If you want to go, it'll costa ya: VIP tickets (including a reception afterward) are $250-$500 ($2,500 for a set of four box seats). They're available from the Humane Society at www.hsus.org, (888) 259-5088. Cheap seats are $19-$69 at (800) 444-1324 or www.kennedy-center.org, but why skimp at the Kennedy Center?
Clarke County District Attorney Robert ("Bobby") D. Keahey
P.O. Box 850
County Courthouse
Grove Hill, AL 36451-0548
Phone: 251-275-3144
Fax: 251-275-3145
Asia's Bird Flu Strikes House Cats
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Bird flu has jumped to new species in Asia, killing three house cats and infecting a white tiger in Thailand, a Thai veterinarian said Friday. U.N. health officials cautioned the cases were not confirmed.
Thai officials said the pet cats in Nakhon Pathom province outside Bangkok were the first domesticated mammals known to have contracted the disease in the current outbreak.
Thai veterinarian Dr. Teeraphon Sirinaruemit also said a white tiger at Khao Khiew zoo near Bangkok was found to have the virus but has recovered and is healthy. The zoo is the same where a clouded leopard died of bird flu last month, the first mammal apart from humans known to have died from the virus this year.
The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned that the reports on the domestic cats "require more careful scientific analysis" and for now it cannot verify that the animals died of bird flu.
In Geneva, World Health Organization spokesman Dick Thompson said that even if the cases were confirmed, there probably would not be a high risk associated with domestic cats being infected. They would be hit by the same avian influenza as birds, which does not pass easily to humans, he added.
"It isn't the kind of animal we would be worried about as a mixing vessel - like we would be if we saw the infection in pigs, for instance," Thompson said.
Health experts are concerned about the bird flu sickening other animals, in part because that could prompt mutations in the virus that in turn could make it easier to pass among people. That concern holds especially for pigs because of their genetic similarities to humans.
The virus has killed at least 22 people in Thailand and Vietnam, while infecting birds in 10 Asian nations. A World Health Organization official said it's possible that Indonesia could have human cases despite government claims to the contrary.
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