Tibet-China railway: Link for plague - The completion of the first railway linking Tibet to other Chinese regions could fuel the spread of rat-borne diseases such as plague that mainly affect remote areas of northwest China, the state media said on Saturday. Biff- hysteria sells.

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China slams online counterfeits: China recently announced it would create a court to focus on enforcing intellectual property rights.

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New evidence questions the simple link between prion proteins and vCJD: While newly published research confirms that under laboratory circumstances prion-protein can be absorbed across the gut, it also shows that this is unlikely to occur in real life. In addition, the results show that the places in the gut that do take up these disease-associated proteins are different from the locations where infectivity is known to be amplified. The findings will be published in the Journal of Pathology. Biff- Never bought into the magic bullet theory for mad cow disease; it's no more persuasive than that for AIDS.