Thailand

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Commerce Department lowered tariffs on $1.7 billion worth of shrimp imports from Thailand, India, Ecuador and Brazil yesterday, potentially lowering prices for America's most popular seafood. Thailand, the largest exporter of shrimp to the United States, faces average duties of as much as 6 percent, down from a 10.3 percent preliminary tariff proposed in July after the United States determined that Thai companies were illegally "dumping" exports at below-market prices.

USING SOME 50 military aircraft, the government of Thailand last weekend celebrated the 77th birthday of that nation's widely revered king by dropping more than 100 million tiny "peace bombs" -- small white paper cranes -- across the landscape of its three southern and largely Muslim provinces. The origami offerings -- of a Japanese-originated symbol of peace -- were as close as Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has come to apologizing for the deaths in army custody in late October of 78 Muslim protesters, largely by suffocation, and the shooting of six others.

Gene and Melodie Taylor travel to Thailand tomorrow to adopt Ty, a 2-year-old boy who has no idea that hundreds of people in and around Carroll County had a hand in bringing him to his new home in America. Ty Christopher Taylor will come home in two weeks to a room filled with plush animals, books and toys - all presents from the couple's family and friends, including a poster board signed by well-wishers. On the walls of his new room, the toddler will find characters from the Finding Nemo movie swimming in a sea of blue, part of a mural painted by his new mother, Melodie Taylor, 33, an art teacher at Northwest Middle School in Taneytown.

Gene and Melodie Taylor travel to Thailand tomorrow to adopt Ty, a 2-year-old boy who has no idea that hundreds of people in and around Carroll County had a hand in bringing him to his new home in America. Ty Christopher Taylor will come home in two weeks to a room filled with plush animals, books and toys - all presents from the couple's family and friends, including a poster board signed by well-wishers. On the walls of his new room, the toddler will find characters from the Finding Nemo movie swimming in a sea of blue, part of a mural painted by his new mother, Melodie Taylor, 33, an art teacher at Northwest Middle School in Taneytown.

BANGKOK, Thailand - A day after Thai and international officials confirmed the first probable human-to-human transmission of a virulent strain of avian influenza in this country, public health systems around the globe were scrambling to prepare for a possible pandemic. Scientists say they cannot predict how quickly, if at all, the strain might develop the ability to spread easily among people, and whether it will remain as lethal as it has proven. The strain, A(H5N1), has killed 30 of the 42 Southeast Asians it infected in the past year, as well as millions of chickens and wild birds, across wide areas of Asia, and it has infected pigs, household cats and even zoo tigers.

IN RECENT weeks, the likely last big wave of Lao Hmong refugees began arriving in the United States from a squalid encampment at a Buddhist temple in Thailand -- primarily bound for established enclaves in California's Central Valley, the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and Wisconsin. Their exodus to America is very welcome and long overdue and underscores the United States' incomplete relationship with Laos some 40 years after America began waging covert war there with intensive bombing to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines.

Basket bingo might help a Carroll County middle-school art teacher and her husband finance a trip to Thailand to bring home a child. When Gene and Melodie Taylor decided to adopt a 2-year-old boy in Southeast Asia, their family and friends rallied around them. "Because of the cost, we found out people have fund-raisers, so we started tossing around the idea," said Melodie Taylor, 32, who teaches at Northwest Middle School in Taneytown. Born and raised in Westminster, Melodie Taylor lived in the county seat until two years ago, when she and her husband moved to Fairfield, Pa. Gene Taylor, 47, is a safety risk manager at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

Fans of Thai cooking, rejoice. With Nancie McDermott's new cookbook, Quick & Easy Thai (Chronicle, due out April 1, $18.95), you can have a Thai dinner on the table in less than an hour. About all you need are a few pantry staples, a couple of cans of coconut milk, fish sauce and red curry paste. McDermott, who learned Thai cuisine as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, is true to her word in delivering quick and tasty recipes. The instructions are easy to follow, even for the novice cook, and many recipes are accompanied by tempting photographs of the finished dishes.

PANG THRUK, Thailand - In a village where generations of farmers have raised chickens, people ordinarily might scoff at the idea of remembering one particular rooster. But they are unlikely to forget the rooster that a 6-year-old boy, Captan Boonmanut, received last month as a gift from a favorite aunt, a bird that contributed to the boy's death and a new, worldwide health alert. Captan had cradled the rooster in his arms. The boy's uncle had culled it from a brood of fighting cocks because the bird seemed too big for anything other than a hungry household's next meal, and it also seemed too sick.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai officials announced yesterday that two boys had become infected with avian influenza and that six more people were suspected of having it. The acknowledgment confirms that the deadly disease has now spread across Southeast Asia, and it raised fears among doctors of a possible global influenza epidemic if the virus evolves to pass easily from person to person, instead of just from contact with infected birds. Vietnam has reported five confirmed cases in people near Hanoi, all of whom died before the lab tests were even finished, and is testing seven additional suspected cases across the country.