Chinese Man Dies of Bird Flu

A 24-year-old man from eastern China has died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the first case in the country since June, bringing the death toll from the disease to 17.

The man, surnamed Lu, was taken to hospital in Jiangsu province on Tuesday with a fever and died on Sunday, Xinhua news agency said, adding he had had no contact with dead poultry and there had been no reported poultry outbreak in the province.

"The local government has adopted relative prevention and control measures. All of the 69 people who had close contact with Lu have been put under strict medical observation. So far, they have shown no signs of symptoms," the report said.

With the world's biggest poultry population and millions of backyard birds roaming free, China is at the centre of the fight against bird flu. The country has had 26 human cases.

Scientists fear the bird flu virus could mutate into a form that could pass easily from person to person, sparking a global pandemic.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said Chinese authorities had informed them about the case and they were in touch with the Ministry of Health.

"It looks like MoH is doing the right thing in terms of follow-up action," WHO spokeswoman Joanna Brent said, referring to the surveillance of his close contacts.

"At this stage we don't have any more information about how he (Lu) would have contracted it," she said.

Olympic Ticketing Blunder

The director of the Beijing Olympic ticketing department has been sacked in the wake of the chaos surrounding the second round of ticket sales for the 2008 Games.

The sale of 1.85 million tickets on a first come, first served basis was abandoned after less than a day last month when overwhelming demand caused the ticketing system to collapse.

Rong Jun admitted organizers had underestimated demand but his apology to the Chinese people earlier this month was clearly not sufficient to save his job.

Zhu Yan was introduced as his successor at a news conference on Friday.

Zhu, who works for the city government as head of the "Digital Beijing" project, said Rong remained with the department in another role.

"Rong Jun is still my colleague working with us," he said.

"In the past year the department has done a lot of fundamental work but ticketing is a complicated job which involves the policy, public interests and concerns, and technological solutions."