All the time in the world

Human cases of bird flu in China. Human cases of bird flu in Indonesia. Human cases of bird flu in Vietnam. Bird flu spreading in poultry. All this in the last month.

And this week:

After days of intensive talks between the House and Senate, negotiators dropped a plan for $8 billion in funds that Democrats pushed through the Senate last month.

Conservative Republicans in the House insisted that an emergency U.S. effort to stockpile vaccines and anti-viral drugs that could be effective against the deadly flu would have to be paid for by cutting other government programs.

Republican leaders in the House said that instead of attaching the bird flu money to a health and labor spending bill moving through Congress, they would try separate legislation later this year or early next year. (Reuters)