Europe's first space mission to the planet Venus will shed new light on the greenhouse effect here on Earth, scientists said yesterday. The Venus Express spacecraft is scheduled for launch next week, and one of its primary goals is to understand the nature of the intense greenhouse effect heating Venus. Scientists involved in the £140m mission said that studying the extreme environment of Venus, which has been called Earth's "evil twin", will help climate researchers to make better predictions about global warming caused by changes to our own atmosphere.Venus, the second planet from the Sun and the closest neighbour to Earth, is one of the least understood bodies in the solar system, primarily because it is shrouded in dense, impenetrable clouds of sulphuric acid. The World Health Organisation estimates that a mild pandemic could cause between 2 million and 7.5 million deaths. David Nabarro, the United Nations co-ordinator on avian and human flu, said the death toll could rise as high as 150 million in a severe pandemic Last year's Boxing Day tsunami killed around 250,000.. At its worst a pandemic of avian flu could have a devastating global impact, greater than a terrorist attack, nuclear accident or environmental disaster. Is the threat of bird flu really as great as some people say it is? Yes.

One of Britain's leading specialists in influenza said a pandemic strain of bird flu that can spread between humans is more likely to arise as more birds become infected.. The bird flu virus that has arrived in Europe poses an unprecedented threat, with experts warning that the number of human infections reported in Asia could be just a small proportion of the actual figure. * 21 May 1997: Lethal flu virus H5N1 isolated from human patient in Hong Kong Six people in close contact with poultry die Hong Kong's chicken population culled

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* February 2003: Virus kills person in Hong Kong.. They found that in the least-polluted area of the city, 51.7 per cent of live births resulted in a boy, while in districts with the worst air-quality, only 50.7 per cent of births were male.. Researchers in Brazil studied the proportion of male to female births in different areas of Sao Paulo, one of the most polluted cities in the world. High rates of air pollution can reduce the number of boys born and may be linked to increased rates of miscarriage, the conference was told.

Blunkett - a wine buff - will be highly envious.* Another day, another pillar of the arts world finds himself in trouble with the animal rights brigade.Last week, Kenneth Branagh arrived at the venue of his new West End play, Ducktastic, to find a troupe of vegetarians protesting against the use of trained ducks in his show. Now the graffiti artist Banksy faces similar treatment.Banksy's new exhibition Crude Oils, in a west London gallery, has upset the charity CavyRescue - which campaigns on behalf of rodents - because it features rats running freely around the space, representing "the triumph of the little people"."Things like this only undermine all the hard work we and other animal charities are trying to achieve," says a spokesman "This is not art, it's cruelty.". I did think about that the other day when I was interviewing Abi Titmuss, and she said, 'how dare you take the piss out of me when you're off the scale'."I think D-list is a fair reflection of my status in life."Mr Hollingshead wins a bottle of Dom Perignon 1998 for his pains. "However, he's also got a book to promote, and knows that each copy he flogs means £20 in his publisher's back pocket." Canny!* David Blunkett sadly failed to draw blood at his showdown with Piers Morgan yesterday, but - thanks to Pandora - he did see the former Mirror editor on the rack at least once.Reader Iain Hollingshead won my competition to find a "killer question" to ask Blunkett's adversary : "Do you regret being so nasty to D-list celebrities now that you've become one?"Morgan replied in the affirmative: "It's a fair cop.