Morning Briefing

"A cholera pandemic that has swept poor countries in three waves over nearly four decades has been traced to a bacterial strain that first emerged in Bangladesh, scientists reported on Wednesday," Agence France-Presse reports. "The new probe, published in the British journal Nature, points to the likely role of modern travel in transmitting the bacteria -- and the importance of the Gulf of Bengal as a 'reservoir,' or source from which the germ can always be transmitted," AFP writes (8/24).