Bird flu devastates poultry in western India

Health workers today planned to complete a massive slaughter of chickens in western India aimed at containing an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus.

More than half a million birds have been killed in the Navapur district since the virus was found in samples from 30,000 dead chickens. The government plans to cull a total of 700,000 birds within a 1.5-mile radius of the outbreak in the state of Maharashtra.