OK Fine!! I’ll stop shooting the pigeons. (NYT via Red Star News).

The New York Times has an article about the new Asian flu outbreaks in (China’s) Qinghai (province). Rumors that more than hundred people have already died could not be verified:

For the last two weeks, rumors circulated on some Web sites tracking infectious diseases that more than 120 people, including six tourists, had died of avian flu in Qinghai, and that hundreds had been quarantined.
However, they all proved traceable to a site run by antigovernment dissidents, which said it could not verify information members had posted anonymously. Pictures on the site purporting to show hundreds of dead birds were grainy, and allegations that the site’s “reporters” had been arrested were unconfirmed.
“We’re now more skeptical of the sourcing than we were,” said Bruce Klinger, an analyst for the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm that drew attention to the reports and then contacted American diplomats in China in an effort to confirm them.