Morning Briefing

"The World Health Organization says it will take a role in helping sort through an international scientific controversy over two bird flu studies that the U.S. government deemed too dangerous to publish in full," the Canadian Press/Winnipeg Free Press reports. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant director-general for health security and environment, on Sunday in an interview with the Canadian Press "said the agency will pull together international talks aimed at fleshing out the issues that need to be addressed and then work to resolve them." On the advice of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity (NSABB), the journals Science and Nature "have grudgingly agreed to abbreviate the papers, leaving out the details of how the work was done," according to the news service.