The legal paperwork asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan to postpone a federal judge's ruling that eliminated age limits on the pill while the government appeals that overall decision.

U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman has said politics was behind efforts by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to block the unrestricted sale of the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill and its generic competitors.

Last month, he ordered that the levonorgestrel-based emergency contraceptives be made available without prescription and without age restrictions. He then denied a request to postpone his ruling while the government appealed but gave it until Monday to appeal again.

Government attorneys warned that "substantial market confusion" could result if Korman's ruling was enforced while appeals are pending. On Monday, lawyers argued that the district court "plainly overstepped its authority," and that they believe they will win the overall appeal.

Attorneys for the Center for Reproductive Rights have said in court papers that every day the ruling is not enforced is "life-altering" to some women. They have 10 days to respond to the most recent government filings, after which the appeals court will issue a decision.

The appeals court will take up the issue on May 28 and said the judge's ruling remains postponed.

If the government fails, it would clear the way for over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill to younger girls. The FDA announced earlier this month that the contraception could be sold without a prescription to those 15 and older, a decision Korman said merely sugarcoated the appeal of his order lifting the age restriction.

Sales had previously been limited to those who were at least 17.

The judge said he ruled against the government "because the secretary's action was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency precedent" and because there was no basis to deny the request to make the drugs widely available.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Flicking through an old book about Libyan history he never imagined he could buy under Muammar Gaddafi, Ashraf Hussein points to a picture of Tripoli's main square in the 1920s.

"This is where we are standing now, Martyrs Square. Back then it was called Piazza Roma," the 31-year old history masters student said, referring to Libya's Italian colonial days.

"Such books were forbidden before because they told the true history of Libya - Gaddafi did not want that. I bought many such books today."

Hussein was one of the hundreds of Libyans who descended on the capital's Martyrs Square this week to browse through thousands of books in Tripoli's first major second hand book sale after the 2011 war that ousted Gaddafi.

With live traditional music in the background, the crowd huddled around tables, perused and bought books about history, philosophy, geography, poetry, cooking, martial arts and novels.

Organizers of the three-day fair, who will use the funds to build a mobile library that will visit schools, said Western books sold out first on the first day - namely the "Harry Potter" collection.

After a busy first day, they had to cancel the morning opening hours of the fair to make sure there were enough books in the busier evening hours.

"The number of visitors exceeded expectations and there were less and less books," said 25-year old Rami al-Shaheibi, who donated some books. "Now we know Libyans are eager for these books. Next time, we will try to provide more, especially English novels and those from other Western cultures."

Under Gaddafi, Western books were banned under certain periods - while those depicting heroes of the resistance movement against Italian colonialism and independence later were not given the attention they deserved, Libyans say.

Books about King Idris, who Gaddafi ousted in his 1969 coup, were also not available, and any mention of him was usually negative. Instead Gaddafi's Green Book of political ramblings was everywhere.

"There is such a great variety of topics here; many of the topics were off limits before because they were against the regime's ideologies," state employee Salem Ayayd said.

"Only later you could find such things on the Internet but that was not accessible to all."

Some 60 volunteers from civil society organizations such as the al-Tanweer (Enlightenment) Movement that focuses on culture, organized the fair by putting up posters in neighborhoods and messages on Facebook. They managed to collect some 7,000 books.

"This is not about making money or doing business. We want encourage reading, open people's minds through books," Nizar Abudayna, one of organizers, said.

Some visitors beamed as they bought many books for less than 20 Libyan dinars ($15). "There is a saying 'When you buy books, you buy happiness," Suleiman Mansour, another organizer of the sale, said. "Right now, my happiness is indescribable as I look at all the people buying books."

Among the books on sale, there were some publications by authors affiliated with the former regime, which irritated some visitors. "Some people may be annoyed but every book should be given a chance to be put on display," organizer Abudayna said.

"We don't want to limit people's minds again."

(Editing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian)

Dubbed Dahalokely tokana by its discoverers, the dinosaur was a member of a group called abelisauroids,from the Cretaceous period that were common in the Southern Hemisphere, according to a news release. In fact, the dinosaur is the oldest abelisauroid to date found on the island of Madagascar, the researchers write online April 18 in the open-access journal .

Dahalokely was between 9 feet and 14 feet (2.7 and 4.3 meters) long and probably lived only in Madagascar and India. The two landmasses were once connected, and were isolated in the Indian Ocean; they broke apart some 88 million years ago. []

The reptile's unusual name which roughly translates to "lonely little cattle rustler" is derived from the Malagasy language, "rather than the 'traditional' (and Eurocentric) Greek or Latin," paleontologist and project leader Andrew Farke wrote on a .

"A 'dahalo' is a thief most often a cattle rustler. We chose this part because our dinosaur was almost certainly a predator," Farke wrote. "'Kely' means 'little,' because the dinosaur was certainly on the small end of things, even for an abelisauroid.

"Finally, 'tokana' means lonely and this dinosaur would indeed have been lonely, way out there in the middle of the Indian Ocean with no way to get off the island!" Farke wrote.

The finding is particularly important because it helps fill in a 95-million-year gap in the island's fossil record: Previously, no dinosaur fossils from the period between 165 million and 70 million years ago could be identified in Madagascar.

"We had always suspected that abelisaurids were in Madagascar 90 million years ago, because they were also found in younger rocks on the island," Farke said in a statement. "Dahalokely nicely confirms this hypothesis."

D. tokana was also related to some other famous beasts. "This dinosaur was closely related to other famous dinosaurs from the southern continents, like the horned Carnotaurus from Argentina and Majungasaurus, also from Madagascar," project member Joseph Sertich, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, said in a statement.

A self-described "dinosaur-loving kid who never grew up," Sertich told the , "It's not uncommon to find new things when looking in new areas."

The Dahalokely fossils were discovered in the northernmost end of Madagascar near the town of Antsiranana.

Follow Marc Lallanilla onand . Follow us ,& . Original article on .

But revelations that a string of unsolved killings may have been a cold-blooded neo-Nazi campaign against ethnic Turks have shaken the nation, forcing Germans to confront painful truths about racism and the broader treatment of immigrants in a society deeply conscious of the lasting legacy of the Holocaust.

The sole survivor of the group blamed for the killings the self-styled National Socialist Underground goes on trial Monday in Munich, along with four men alleged to have helped the killers in various ways.

Beate Zschaepe, 38, is charged with complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman. She is also accused of involvement in at least two bombings and 15 bank robberies carried out by her accomplices Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boenhardt, who died in an apparent murder-suicide two years ago.

Zschaepe, who surrendered to police four days after Mundlos and Boenhardt were killed, denies the charges. If convicted she faces life imprisonment.

The case is being closely watched by Germany's 3 million ethnic Turks, many of whom still feel marginalized by German society despite having lived in this country for decades or even having been born here.

"There have been only a handful of trials in recent German history that have had a similar effect," said Gurcan Daimaguler, a Berlin lawyer of Turkish origin who represents some of the victims' families. He cited court cases against members of the far-left Red Army Faction terror group starting in the 1970s and the trials of East German border guards who fired at people trying to flee to West Germany during the Cold War.

"These were all trials that went beyond the courtroom," Daimaguler told The Associated Press in a recent interview. He noted that each of them prompted periods of soul searching that in some cases continue until today.

It was only when Mundlos and Boenhardt died following a botched bank robbery in November 2011 and weapons were found at the scene tying them to the killings that authorities acknowledged they had failed to stop what amounted to a far-right terror campaign lasting more than a decade.

Public debate has focused on how Germany's well-funded security services could have been so catastrophically wrong with their long-held theory that the killings were the work of immigrant criminal gangs.

Several high-ranking security officials including the head of Germany's domestic spy service have already resigned over blunders made during their watch. These ranged from failing to act on intelligence about the trio's whereabouts in 1998, shortly after they avoided arrest on lesser crimes; shredding evidence gathered by informants close to the group; and ignoring a racist motive in the crimes despite the fact that random killings without claims of responsibility fit the pattern recommended for decades by racist supremacists.

For years the media described the killings as "Doener Murders" after the popular Turkish dish of spit-roast meat served in snack bars across Germany. Yet only two of the nine men killed worked in doener restaurants, and many Turks say the phrase reflected the dismissive attitude mainstream society had toward the victims.

The police failures prompted Parliament to establish an independent panel investigating whether there was institutional reluctance to deal with far-right extremists.

Its chairman, Sebastian Edathy, has said that not only did Germany's 36 security services fail to exchange information in the case, but the potential for far-right violence was massively underestimated even as some officers instinctively blamed the victims.

An internal document drawn up in 2007 by police in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and obtained by The Associated Press asserted that the likely killer couldn't have come from Western Europe because "in our culture the killing of human beings is a grave taboo" a striking comment in a country that made genocide against Europe's Jews a matter of state policy in the last century.

Zschaepe, Mundlos and Boehnhardt met as teenagers in the eastern city of Jena amid an ideological vacuum following the 1989 collapse of the Socialist dictatorship in East Germany.

The region suffered economically during the early 1990s, with anti-immigrant sentiments voiced openly even by mainstream politicians, providing a fertile recruiting ground for far-right groups.

Thomas Grund, a social worker in Jena who knew the trio when they first showed up at his youth club 20 years ago, said Zschaepe showed no hint of political extremism until she befriended the two young men who, he said, would later become her lovers.

Grund says social workers warned throughout the 1990s that extremist groups were setting up base in small towns and villages in the region but authorities did little.

Sometimes, he says, it appeared as if officials were protecting the far right.

Such claims have been made by people across the political spectrum, skeptical that a group such as the National Socialist Underground managed for more than a decade to slip through Germany's sophisticated surveillance net for neo-Nazi activity. Edathy's parliamentary committee has uncovered several instances where security services appeared to hide what they knew about the group. Whether they were simply trying to cover up their own failures, protect their informers, or actually protect the group has been a matter of intense debate.

At a memorial event last year German Chancellor Angela Merkel apologized to the victims and their families for the wrongful suspicions that swirled around them. Police spent a great deal of time probing the victims' backgrounds and business dealings, suspecting them or those close to them of being involved in the drug trade and other illegal activity.

She also pledged to take all necessary steps to help those affected by the crimes, and prevent a repetition of the investigate failures in this case.

Merkel's apology was well received by many Turks at the time. But some noted she didn't spell out that most of the victims were targeted because they were different from mainstream society: Turkish, and Muslim.

"Here in Germany we are scared of using the word racism," said Daimaguler, the lawyer. "As long as we don't call it what it is we will never be able to solve the problem."

The authorities' reluctance to highlight the xenophobic motive also worries Barbara John, the official intermediary between the victims' families and the government.

She is currently campaigning to ensure memorial plaques to honor the victims highlight the racist nature of the crimes.

John, a longtime campaigner on immigration issues, said this would go some way toward giving the victims' families a sense that they are being taken seriously by the authorities.

"Germany society as such isn't racist, but there is a deep-rooted lack of trust toward the immigrant community," she said, noting that it was only recently the families started receiving financial compensation from the government.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned last month that the trial could shape the way his country is viewed abroad.

But the handling of the case has already left its mark on relations between Germany and its Turkish residents.

"The murders might have been prevented if someone had considered that racism could have been a motive," said Kenan Kolat, who heads the Berlin-based Turkish Community in Germany. "No one considered it and that was the biggest mistake."

___

Frank Jordans can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter

"Its incredible, you just try to live an honest genuine life and the next thing you know, you've got the president calling you," he told ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday.

Collins said President Barack Obama had been encouraging in the telephone conversation.

"He was incredibly supportive and said he was proud of me and said this not only affected my life but others going forward," he said.

Asked about the scale of reaction to his decision to come out, Collins said: "That's kind of mind-boggling... I never set out to be the first," he said.

"I'm ready to raise my hand but, you know, you still look around like, 'OK, come on guys.'

"It's time for someone else in the room to raise their hand and say: 'You know what? Yeah, so big deal. I can still play basketball. I can still help the team win, and that's what's most important,'" he added.

The 34-year-old center revealed his sexuality in an article published by Sports Illustrated on Monday and said he was glad that he was now 'out'.

"I know that I, right now, am the happiest that I've ever been in my life," he said.

"A huge weight has been lifted. I've already been out to my family and my friends, but just to, you know, sort of rip the Band-Aid off and come out on my own terms."

Collins is currently a free agent after spending last season with the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards but said he expects future team-mates to welcome him.

"From my team-mates I am expecting support because that is what I would do for my team-mates, team is like a family and the NBA is like a brotherhood and I am looking it at that we will all support each other on and off the court," he said.

Asked about what advice he would give to a young gay man hoping to make it in the NBA, Collins said he should focus on the game.

"It doesn't matter that you are gay but the key thing is - its about basketball. Its about working hard, its about sacrificing for your team," he said.

Collins could well be the first of several gay players in top sports to come out but he said everyone's decision on how open to be was based on their own circumstances.

"I hope that every player makes a decision that leads to their own happiness. I know that I, right now am the happiest I have been in my life," he said.

(Reporting by Simon Evans, editing by Justin Palmer)

I have a completely different energy than him. So when I first went up, it felt like: he’s the headliner. He’s very kindly calling me the headliner but he’s the headliner. It’s a very weird thing to have the leader of the free world and the coolest guy in the room do a solid 25 minutes of pure laughs and then touch us all at the end with his comments and then to say: now we need a comedian. You don’t! So I was thinking, like, well there’s no need for me. But I’m here and I’ve got good jokes, so let’s go.

Claire, breaking it down on the dance floor. I love this woman like sharks love blood.

With two Jersey boys at

Best pic I took all night: Callista Gingrich's hair meets Duck Dynasty

Alright, roll over and go back to bed, this disgrace is over. If you see anything around the web that we missed, feel free to send along a little message. Until next year, folks. 

Now comes the most ambitious phase of the quest: getting the new trees into the ground.

Ceremonial plantings of two dozen clones from California's mighty coastal redwoods will take place Monday in seven nations: Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Germany and the U.S.

Although measuring just 18-inches tall, the laboratory-produced trees are genetic duplicates of three giants that were cut down in northern California more than a century ago. Remarkably, shoots still emerge from the stumps, including one known as the Fieldbrook Stump near McKinleyville, which measures 35 feet in diameter. It's believed to be about 4,000 years old. The tree was about 40 stories high before it was felled.

"This is a first step toward mass production," said David Milarch, co-founder of Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, a nonprofit group spearheading the project. "We need to reforest the planet; it's imperative. To do that, it just makes sense to use the largest, oldest, most iconic trees that ever lived."

Milarch and his sons Jared and Jake, who have a family-owned nursery in the village of Copemish, Mich., became concerned about the condition of the world's forests in the 1990s. They began crisscrossing the U.S. in search of "champion" trees that have lived hundreds or even thousands of years, convinced that superior genes enabled them to outlast others of their species. Scientific opinion varies on whether that's true, with skeptics saying the survivors may simply have been lucky.

The Archangel leaders say they're out to prove the doubters wrong. They've developed several methods of producing genetic copies from cuttings, including placing branch tips less than an inch long in baby food jars containing nutrients and hormones. The specimens are cultivated in labs until large enough to be planted.

In recent years, they have focused on towering sequoias and redwoods, considering them best suited to absorb massive volumes of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas primarily responsible for climate change.

"If we get enough of these trees out there, we'll make a difference," said Jared Milarch, the group's executive director.

Archangel has an inventory of several thousand clones in various stages of growth that were taken from more than 70 redwoods and giant sequoias. NASA engineer Steve Craft, who helped arrange for David Milarch to address an agency gathering, said research shows that those species hold much more carbon than other varieties.

The challenge is to find places to put the trees, people to nurture them and money to continue the project, Jared Milarch said. The group is funded through donations and doesn't charge for its clones.

"A lot of trees will be planted by a lot of groups on Arbor Day, but 90 percent of them will die," David Milarch said. "It's a feel-good thing. You can't plant trees and walk away and expect them to take care of themselves."

The recipients of Archangel redwoods have pledged to care for them properly, he said. The first planting of about 250 took place in December on a ranch near Port Orford, Ore. Others will be planted during Earth Day observances Monday at the College of Marin in Kentwood, Calif., and in parks and private estates in the other six countries.

"I know the trees will thrive here," said Tom Burke, landscape manager at the College of Marin. "We've had redwoods in this area since God planted them."

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis has indicated for the first time that he may make changes to the Vatican's scandal-ridden bank as part of a broad review of the Holy See's troubled administration.

Before Francis was elected last month, many of the cardinals who went on to choose him expressed concern about the harm done to the Church's image by three decades of scandals at the bank, which Italian magistrates are now investigating for money laundering.

A report last year by Moneyval, a European anti-money laundering body, found that the bank, officially the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), had failed to meet some of its standards on fighting financial crimes, and called for increased oversight.

In an impromptu sermon at a Mass for Vatican employees including staff from the bank, the pope said they should concentrate on the true mission of the Church and that Vatican departments were needed "only up to a certain point".

"The Church is not an NGO (non-governmental organization). It is a story of love," he said, according to a transcript published by Vatican Radio.

"I know that people from the IOR are here, so excuse me. Offices are necessary but they are necessary only up to a certain point."

It was the first time Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina, had mentioned the Vatican bank in public since his election.

The account of the sermon in the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, omitted the mention, however. Italian media said this was a sign of conflict within the Vatican on how to deal with the bank.

Vatican sources have said the pope could restructure the IOR and has the power to close it if he wants to.

Italian media have reported that the bank, which currently answers to a commission of cardinals and enjoys great autonomy, could be placed under the control of another Vatican department to enable tighter control.

Famiglia Cristiana, Italy's leading Catholic weekly, has called for the funds in the IOR, which manages money mostly for dioceses and religious institutions, to be administered by an independent "ethical bank" external to the Vatican.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said he was not aware of any imminent changes affecting the bank.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

According to Zane Benefits’ website, on April 9, 2013, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a Funding Opportunity Announcement for health insurance marketplace navigators. The release came one week after the HHS released proposed rules for navigators. Eligible self-employed individuals and private and public entities can apply to serve as Navigators in the 33 states with a Federally-facilitated or State-Federal Partnership health insurance marketplace. CMS anticipates that each state will be awarded at least two grants.

Federal Navigator Funding Opportunity Summary

According to Zane Benefits’ website, the navigators, which CMS envisions as individuals and entities that will provide consumers with unbiased information about exchanges, health insurance plans, qualified health plans, and public programs including Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, are a brand-new role in the healthcare industry.

The CMS announcement states that applicants must be “self-employed individuals and private and public entities" and lists several eligible groups including trade, industry and professional associations, chambers of commerce, unions, licensed insurance agents and brokers, state or local human services agencies, etc. As with other releases, CMS notes that during their term as navigators, individuals and entities are not permitted to receive any direct or indirect consideration from a health insurance issuer connected to the enrollment of individuals into Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) or non-QHPs.

Ineligible entities include health insurance issuers, subsidiaries of health insurance issuers, associations that include members of, or lobbies on behalf of, the insurance industry, or recipients of any direct or indirect consideration from any health insurance issuer in connection with the enrollment of any individuals or employees in a QHP or non-QHP.

CMS anticipates that each state will be awarded at least two grants, one of which will go to a well-established non-profit. Amounts will vary by state population with the largest award expected to go to Texas. The awarded grants will initially provide funding for one year. CMS will train the navigators, but navigators must also comply with state licensing or certification requirements.

Federal Navigator Funding Opportunity - Amounts of Grants

According to Zane Benefits’ website, the funding opportunity provides up to $54 million in total funding. Grants will range from $600,000 to $8.1 million based on the number of uninsured lawfully residing residents in the state. Thirteen states will receive the minimum funding level of $600,000 while Florida and Texas will receive a large portion of the funding at $5.8 and $8.1 million respectively. A list of states with the number of uninsured residents can be found in the application.

Federal Navigator Funding Application

According to Zane Benefits’ website, those who are interested in applying for navigator funds must submit a letter of intent by May 1 with the final application due may June 7. Grant award recipients are expected to be announced by August 15, coinciding with the launch of navigator training and the certification process.

As we've discussed previously, it is important to note that health insurance agents and brokers do not need to become navigators to assist their clients with exchange-based coverage. It appears that in many states, agents and brokers will be able to work with their clients and then receive compensation through the health insurance carriers just as they do today. However, final rules have yet to be released for the federally-facilitated marketplace.

--

About Zane Benefits

Zane Benefits was founded in 2006 to provide a revolutionized SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) administration platform ("ZaneHRA") for Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) and defined contribution health care. The flagship software provides a 100% paperless administration experience to employers and insurance professionals that want to offer better health benefits without a traditional group health insurance plan at lower costs. For more information about ZaneHRA, visit .

Christina MerharZane Benefits800-391-9209 6725

LONDON (Reuters) - A new bird flu virus that has killed 13 people in China is still evolving, making it hard for scientists to predict how dangerous it might become.

Influenza experts say the H7N9 strain is probably still swapping genes with other strains, seeking to select ones that might make it fitter.

If it succeeds, the world could be facing the threat of a deadly flu pandemic. But it may also fail and just fizzle out.

The virus' instability also raises questions about whether H7N9 might become resistant to antiviral drugs such as Roche's antiviral drug Tamiflu, a possibility already suggested by analyses of genetic data available on the strain so far.

"Even with just the three (gene) sequences we have available, there's some evidence that one doesn't quite fit with the other two. So we might think this virus is still fishing around for a genetic constellation that its happy with," said Wendy Barclay, a flu virologist at Imperial College London.

"Maybe there are other viruses out there that it is still exchanging genes with until it gets to a stable constellation."

To be able to say with any confidence whether this new strain, which before March had never been seen in humans, could go on to cause a pandemic, scientists need to know a lot more.

H7N9 A TRIPLE MIX BIRD FLU

So far, genetic sequence data from samples from three H7N9 victims and posted on the website of GISAID, the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data, show the strain is a so-called "triple reassortant" virus with a mixture of genes from three other flu strains found in birds in Asia.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine last week, researchers who conducted a detailed analysis of the strain's origin said it seemed that so far the reassortment of genes to make H7N9 had taken place in birds rather than in humans or in any other mammal - a somewhat reassuring sign.

Barclay said this may continue, and could mean it is some time before the strain finds a form in which it can spread swiftly and efficiently in bird populations.

Yet genetic analyses also show the virus has already acquired some mutations that make it more likely be able to spread between mammals, and more able to spark a human pandemic.

A study in the online journal Eurosurveillance by leading flu experts Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and Masato Tashiro at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo, said the H7N9 sequences "possess several characteristic features of mammalian influenza viruses, which are likely to contribute to their ability to infect humans".

These features, the scientists wrote, "raise concerns regarding their pandemic potential".

That sentiment was echoed on Saturday by the World Health Organization (WHO), which said "genetic changes seen among these H7N9 viruses suggesting adaptation to mammals are of concern" and warned: "Further adaptation may occur".

PANDEMIC POTENTIAL

While experts take some comfort in the lack of evidence so far that H7N9 is passing from person to person - a factor that would dramatically increase its pandemic potential - they are find little comfort in not yet knowing how the 60 or so people confirmed as having this flu strain became infected.

"We know H7 viruses can spill over into humans ... and for me the most important thing to find out now is from which species do we think this H7N9 is spilling over," said An Osterhaus, head of viroscience of the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands.

"Is it one species? Are there different species? At this stage we are still lacking a lot of data."

He said rigorous surveillance of wild birds, such as ducks and quail, and poultry such as chickens, as well as well-known flu-carrying mammals such as pigs, should yield answers.

Recent pandemic viruses - including the H1N1 "swine flu" of 2009/2010 - have been mammal and bird flu mixtures. Experts say these hybrids are more likely to be milder, because mammalian flu tends to make humans less severely ill than bird flu.

Pure bird flu strains - like the new H7N9 strain and like the H5N1 strain that has killed around 371 of 622 the people it has infected since 2003 - are generally more deadly for people.

The world's worst known pandemic, the "Spanish flu" of 1918 that killed more than 50 million people, was a bird flu that had picked up gene mutations that enabled it to spread efficiently in humans.

David Heyman, a flu expert and head of Britain's Chatham House Center on Global Health Security, said it is important to put the discovery of H7N9 in humans into the context of modern-day scientific capability.

He said that in the years since the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China in 2003, there has been a significantly increased focus on detecting and reporting flu-like respiratory infections in Asia and across the world.

The harder scientists look, he said, the more likely they are to find viruses that are potentially threatening but may equally be the sort of events that in the past might have flared up and petered out again under the flu surveillance radar.

That said, he stressed this is no time to relax.

"Influenza viruses are very unstable. And (any) mutation is a random event - so nobody can predict when it will happen," he said. "You can't take your eye off anything. You have to keep your eye on everything."

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, additional reporting by Ben Hirschler in London and Giles Elgood)