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WASHINGTON – The FBI sought to close the book on its long, frustrating hunt for the killer behind the 2001 anthrax letters Friday, formally ending its investigation and concluding a mentally unhinged scientist was responsible for killing five people and unnerving Americans nationwide. After years of false leads, no arrests and public criticism, the FBI and Justice Department said Dr. Bruce Ivins, a government researcher, acted alone. Ivins killed himself in 2008 as prosecutors prepared to indict him for the attacks. He had denied involvement, and his family and some friends have continued to insist he was innocent. Investigators had...

The FBI has concluded that a former Army researcher was solely responsible for the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks, ending a nearly nine-year investigation, NPR has learned from sources familiar with the case. Officials planned to release new evidence Friday proving that Dr. Bruce Ivins, 62, mailed poison-laced letters to a handful of politicians and newspaper outlets — a finding the bureau advanced during its preliminary investigation more than a year ago. Five people died and 17 were sickened by the attacks. Government investigators were still several major legal steps away from indicting Ivins when he killed himself in 2008. The...

NEW YORK, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Seven people were exposed to a suspicious white powder in a U.S federal building in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday, authorities said. The offices of the Social Security Administration on the 40th floor of the building -- which houses several agencies including the Federal Bureau of Intelligence and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services -- were evacuated. "There was a mailing that was opened at 2:15 p.m. in the offices of the SSA (Social Security Administration)," said FBI spokesman Jim Margolin. "It contained a white powder that was contained and isolated and will be analyzed." He...

The investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks ended as far as the public knew on July 29, 2008, with the death of Bruce Ivins, a senior biodefense researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Md. The cause of death was an overdose of the painkiller Tylenol. No autopsy was performed, and there was no suicide note.

The health ministry in France has issued a warning after eight people died and seven fell sick in two European countries from using heroin contaminated by anthrax. "Since December 6, there have been 15 confirmed cases of anthrax among heroin users, 14 in Scotland and one in Germany," the ministry's General Directorate for Health (DGS) said in a statement. "Eight people died," it said. "The likeliest source is heroin contaminated by anthrax spores." Most of the casualties had injected the heroin, but others also inhaled it or smoked it. Anthrax is a potentially lethal bacterium that exists naturally in the...

The Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating a statewide anthrax scare. Local lawmakers are among the targets. Letters with white powder were sent to the offices of Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions and Congressman Jo Bonner around the state. The 15th floor of the RSA Tower in downtown Mobile, where one of Bonner's offices is located, has been evacuated as a precaution. So has Bonner's office in Foley. It's located in a shopping center on McKenzie Street. More than a dozen businesses, including the News 5 bureau, have also been evacuated. The FBI says everything they've tested so...

Envelopes containing white powder set off anthrax scares in five Alabama cities, shutting down two federal courthouses Monday and trapping a congressman in his office as authorities tested the substance. No one was injured, and investigators said at least five of the letters — all sent to the offices of senators or congressmen — were believed to be from the same source.

Federal agents are now investigating reports of possibly eight threatening letters with a white substance in at least four Alabama cities this morning, an FBI official confirmed. Angela Tobon, media spokesperson for the Mobile FBI, said the letters were all mailed to federal offices and "are all the same ...white powder with threatening letters," she said.

Here’s some news I missed.Edward Jay Epstein reported on December 21 that the FBI’s anthrax case has fallen apart. In 2008 the FBI declared that Dr. Bruce Ivins, who died an apparent suicide in July 2008, was the perpetrator who sent anthrax-laced letters to members of Congress and others just days after the September 11 attacks. The FBI’s investigation, apparently the most lengthy it had ever conducted, was directed primarily at scientists who had access to anthrax materials. But, Epstein reports, it turns out that Dr. Ivins did not have access to the sophisticated form of anthrax used in September...

WASHINGTON, DC, December 30, 2009 (ENS) - President Barack Obama today ordered federal agencies to establish a national system for dispensing medical countermeasures in the event of a large-scale biological attack, "with anthrax as the primary threat consideration." The U.S. Postal Service would be responsible for delivering the medical countermeasures, such as antibiotics, to residents for self administration across all communities in the United States, according to the President's Executive Order issued today. Anthrax is an acute infectious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis, which can cause human disease through ingestion, through the skin, and by inhalation. Although...

BOSTON — A New Hampshire woman who is critically ill with gastrointestinal anthrax most likely swallowed spores while participating in a community drumming circle, state health officials said Tuesday...The woman was among some 60 people who attended the drumming session on Dec. 4 at the United Campus Ministry near the University of New Hampshire in Durham...Investigators found traces of anthrax on two African drums and an electrical outlet in the room where the event took place, Dr. Talbot said, and are theorizing that the woman swallowed spores that were aerosolized by the drumming. The state has not identified the woman...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Capitol Police are investigating a suspicious package with a powdery substance that was found at the office of Sen. Max Baucus. The Montana Democrat is chairman of the Finance Committee and a leader in the Senate's health care debate. Police spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider said there were no reports of illness. Schneider said the substance is being tested. An Associated Press photographer at the scene, in the Hart Senate Office Building, heard officers say there was a threatening note with the package. Schneider would not confirm there was a note.

Socialized medicine’s finest hour arrived on October 16, 1975, by the marshes of Bhola Island off the coast of Bangladesh. There, in the frame of three-year-old Rahima Banu, the World Health Organization finally cornered smallpox, the most dreadful killer on the planet. Then as now, there was no known cure for the highly contagious smallpox, but vaccinating others on Bhola Island kept the virus from skipping to new human hosts, and little Rahima was the last one left. We have been slouching down the road to pharmaceutical serfdom ever since. Where that has left us will become clear one windless...

November 26, 2009, 0:00 a.m. Apocalypse When?Our enemies are contemplating attacks worse than 9/11. By Clifford D. May The Heritage Foundation recently convened a meeting of experts to discuss “Weapons of Mass Destruction and America’s Communities,” the various ways our terrorist enemies might attack us and our allies in the future, and what might be done to stop them. You can imagine what a merry gathering this was. The most obvious concern: the spread of nuclear weapons. Within the group, there was consensus that if Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, is not prevented from acquiring nukes, the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius appealed anew Wednesday for widespread inoculation against a surging swine flu threat, calling the vaccine "safe and secure." Sebelius unconditionally vouched for the safety of the vaccine, saying it "has been made exactly the same way seasonal vaccine has been made, year in and year out." Appearing on morning news shows to step up the Obama administration's campaign for vaccinations, Sebelius said that "the adverse effects are minimal. ... We know it's safe and secure. ... This is definitely is a safe vaccine for people to get."

"Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." George Orwell's truth comes to mind as one reads that Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to go after the "rough men" who, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night, allegedly went too far in frightening Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, engineer of the September 2001 massacres. Yet, it seems now indisputable that those CIA interrogators, with their rough methods, got vital intelligence that saved American lives, as Dick Cheney has consistently contended. According to The Washington Times, which reviewed the newly...

WASHINGTON -- A panel of experts convened for a second day on Friday to probe the scientific process used by the FBI to identify used to identify the anthrax used in the deadly, 2001 mailings. The meeting featured presentations from three experts who worked on the case. Scientific methods were explained, and the 15-member panel was asked to use the study as a means to prepare for future attacks. A lawmaker also addressed the group, criticizing the FBI's handling of the country's first, widespread bioterrorism event. "If the technical and scientific procedures are as flawed as the non-technical procedures, they...

Laboratory Says Security Is Tighter, but Earlier Count Missed Dangerous Vials An inventory of potentially deadly pathogens at Fort Detrick's infectious disease laboratory found more than 9,000 vials that had not been accounted for, Army officials said yesterday, raising concerns that officials wouldn't know whether dangerous toxins were missing. After four months of searching about 335 freezers and refrigerators at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, investigators found 9,220 samples that hadn't been included in a database of about 66,000 items listed as of February, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, the institute's deputy commander. The vials...

In this deeply disturbing interview, the trailer trash torturer who appalled the world by appearing in shocking 'souvenir' photographs remains utterly unrepentant and says she has 800 MORE torture photos that could rock the White House Normally, not much happens in Keyser, West Virginia, but today the folks in this quaint little railroad town, nestling in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, are spoilt for choice. Either they can whoop and holler along to fiddle music at the annual Strawberry Festival or head down to the bookshop, where a local 'celebrity' - as her agent-cum-lawyer describes her - is signing...

Rob Rossi loved baseball. Exiting the trolley near Petco Park, he admired all the new residential development around the stadium. Rob and his son Charlie took their seats and joined 42,000 happy San Diegans singing "Take me out to the ball game." Charlie cheered when the Padres scored their first run of the evening. Rob hardly noticed the small plane circling slowly overhead. On Saturday, Rob woke up with a splitting headache. His chest felt like it was on fire. Why is it so hard to breathe? And today is Charlie's Little League game! "Daddy," his son gasped from the...