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An 8-year-old New Mexico boy has died and his 10-year-old sister was hospitalized after both contracted bubonic plague, the first recorded human plague cases in the nation so far this year. Plague is generally transmitted to humans through the bites of infected fleas, but also can be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals, including rodents, rabbits and pets. Symptoms of the bubonic form of the plague in humans include fever, chills, headaches, vomiting, diarrhea and swollen lymph nodes in the groin, armpit or neck areas. Pneumonic plague, which is an infection of the lungs, can include severe cough, difficulty...

TRENTON, N.J. — The frozen remains of two mice injected with the organism that causes plague have not been accounted for seven weeks after being discovered missing at a University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey facility in Newark, the university said Friday. The FBI investigated and determined there was no risk to public health or any indication of the terrorist link. It wasn't the first time plague-infected mice have disappeared from the New Jersey facility. Four years ago, in September 2005, three live mice infected with bubonic plague bacteria disappeared from various cages. Officials later said they believed...

An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday. The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria. He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication...

Al Qaeda terrorists have been left fearing the Black Death plague after it wiped out at least 40 insurgents at an Algerian training camp, it was reported today. The horror disease, which killed 25 million people in medieval Europe, is understood to have been found in a militant’s body dumped at a roadside. Terror group AQLIM (al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb) was forced to turn its shelter in the Yakouren forests into mass graves and flee, it has been claimed. Now al Qaeda chiefs are said to fear the plague has been passed into other cells...

One day last October, Eric York lugged the carcass of an adult mountain lion from his truck and laid it carefully on a tarp on the floor of his garage. The female mountain lion had a bloody nose, but her hide bore no other signs of trauma. York, a biologist at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, found the big cat lying motionless near the canyon’s South Rim. He was determined to learn why she died. Because the park lacks a forensics lab, he did the postmortem in his garage, in a village of about 2,000 park employees. Epidemic experts...

LONDON — Plague, the disease that devastated medieval Europe, is re-emerging worldwide and poses a growing but overlooked threat, researchers warned on Tuesday. While it has only killed some 100 to 200 people annually over the past 20 years, plague has appeared in new countries in recent decades and is now shifting into Africa, Michael Begon, an ecologist at the University of Liverpool, and colleagues said. A bacterium known as Yersinia pestis causes bubonic plague, known in medieval times as the Black Death when it was spread by infected fleas, and the more dangerous pneumonic plague, spread from one person...

A Denver Zoo monkey has died of bubonic plague, apparently after eating a squirrel stricken with the disease, Colorado health and zoo officials said on Monday. Five squirrels and a rabbit found dead on zoo grounds tested positive for the flea-borne disease in recent weeks, Denver Zoo spokeswoman Ana Bowie said. Zookeepers on May 15 noticed the 8-year-old hooded capuchin monkey was lethargic, and the next day it was found dead in its enclosure. Zoo veterinarians sent tissue samples to a state laboratory where it was determined the animal died of the plague. The death was announced on Monday. Zoo...

DENVER - Six dead tree squirrels found near the Denver Zoo and City Park have tested positive for bubonic plague, the state health department reported Friday.Experts say it is unusual to find the disease in the center of a city. Caused by a bacterium, plague is transmitted from rodent to rodent by infected fleas. Humans can catch the disease through scratches, bites and coughs."The risk of Denver residents contracting plague is extremely low," said John Pape, an epidemiologist who specializes in animal-related diseases for the health department's disease control division.Symptoms in humans include high fever, fatigue, weakness and a painful,...

Associated Press Writer KINSHASA, Congo -- A rare form of plague has killed at least 61 people at a diamond mine in the remote wilds of northeast Congo, and authorities fear hundreds more who fled into the forests to escape the contagion are infected and dying, the World Health Organization said Friday. Eric Bertherat, a doctor for the U.N. health agency, said the outbreak has been building since December around a mine near Zobia, 170 miles north of Kisangani, the capital of the vast Oriental province. Nearly all the 7,000 miners have abandoned the infected area and sought refuge in...

Bubonic Plague Traced to Ancient Egypt Cameron Walker for National Geographic News March 10, 2004 The bubonic plague, or Black Death, may have originated in ancient Egypt, according to a new study. "This is the first time the plague's origins in Egypt have been backed up by archaeological evidence," said Eva Panagiotakopulu, who made the discovery. Panagiotakopulu is an archaeologist and fossil-insect expert at the University of Sheffield, England. King Tutankhamun lies in his burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. Some researchers now believe that the bubonic plague, or Black Death, originated in the village where builders...

BUBONIC PLAGUE SAMPLES MISSING The FBI is investigating the disappearance of 35 vials - some containing bubonic plague - that have gone missing from a laboratory in Texas. Officials stressed the missing bacteria could not be used as a weapon of mass destruction but that it could kill an individual. The vials went missing from Texas Technical University in Lubbock last night. Police said President Bush had been briefed. The FBI said it was unclear whether the vials had actually been stolen. Some are thought to contain the bacteria that can cause bubonic plague, but stressed that was not confirmed....

Friday, 12 April, 2002, 15:40 GMT 16:40 UKBlack Death and plague 'not linked' The Black Death that affected Britain in the 14th century was probably not the modern disease known as bubonic plague, scientists claim. The symptoms of the 14th century disease are similar to bubonic plague, and historically they have been referred to as one and the same. Bubonic plague is spread by the fleas of rats and other rodents. However, anthropologists in the US believe the Black Death was caused by any number of infectious organisms, probably transmitted through person-to-person contact. The university research team studied church records...